Come on, gives us some more Lord of the Rings!

Last week I wrote down some thoughts about the new Vampire Counts models and their cost compared to other things in life. I sang the praises of the Perry twins who did an outstanding job on designing these HexWraiths/Black Knights.

The Perry brothers have been around with GW since the beginning and have sculpted some absolute classics during their 30 year tenure. This one might be the most famous one:

In my opinion this model has never been surpassed in the category Mounted Knights. The subtle movement in the horse and the position of the rider are so believable, it's just wonderful to look at. But the Perry twins have also been instrumental in designing large swats of great Lord of the Rings models. Yep, those models from that game that we all hated, taking up space in our beloved White Dwarf etc etc. For years now I check out all the new releases and so many of them were done by the two brothers, who also have a very succesful Historial Wargaming Modeling Business. 

My point is this: my feeling is that because the Perrys have been so involved in LOTR models, that range has become really beautiful, realistic looking and very dynamic. A lot of models have this great movement to them. I just reread an interview with David Rodriguez, the famous Spanish model painter who has won 12 Golden Demons and 2 Slayers. He says he loves painting LOTR models because they look so historical and realistic..
Anyway, here are some examples of great models in the LOTR range:

All of these models have outstanding body position and dynamic flow. The horse riders are great and the Troll Chieftain in a real classic, actually a Perry Brothers model.

Now, LOTR started out as a skirmish game, which gives the models a bit more breathing room; they can stick out over their base, since they don't have models right next to them. In the War of the Ring they solved it by creating larger movement trays with more space in between; why not? Fantasy is really stuck in the movement tray line up and that really hinders the development of some cool rank and file models.

When it comes to the centerpieces of the armies, GW is really pulling out all the stops lately in the Fantasy Range, but now I hope that they will start to create some more dynamics in the plain ranks. We all know the Chaos Warriors and High Elves really suffer from units that almost look the same, model to model. It would be nice if they would look to LOTR and copy some of that realism over into the design of new models....Empire would be a great way to start changing course.

just my humble opinion..

Mike