We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Battle for Edoras, which these miniatures are from.
The Sprues
The Battle of Edoras gives us two new Rohan plastic kits – Rohan Warriors and Haleth and Hama, Princes of Rohan.
The Warriors of Rohan kit is now a frame and a half tool in 3 sections by weapons (hand weapon, spear, bow).
The Princes of Rohan is a single frame, giving foot and mounted versions of the models.
The casting quality is good, as has become the standard for modern GW plastics, and the level of detail matches the modern 40k and Age of Sigmar sprues in the smaller, more true, 28mm scale of LOTR.
Building
A number of decisions have been made by GW that change how easy this kit is to build and play with.
Complexity: The original LOTR warrior figures are all one or two piece figures. This makes them incredibly child friendly in exchange for accepting undercuts (of which there were a few on the original Rohan figures) and loss of detail. It’s great to have a product that 10 year olds can enjoy, but if they were 10 when the original LOTR box came out then they’re 33 now. If this is being bought for children then they’ll need supervision and help building them.
Two-part Heads: to avoid undercuts and any loss of detail the faces and helmets of all the models are separate. This makes for much nicer models, but the faces are very small pieces and have a tendency to jump out of your fingers and try to lose themselves in the carpet. It’s the right decision in sculpting terms, as the detail is great, but when assembling glue both the head pieces together first so if you drop them you are looking for something bigger than 3mm high. Also don’t assemble these on grey carpet. I put a red blanket on my legs to deal with parts jumping off the desk.
Shaft Girth: On truescale models things like weapons, spears, bows and arrows will be fairly thin. This means they’re delicate, and obviously I’m not the only one to have found this as a few of the spears in the official GW photos are bent (obviously the victim of less than gentle handling). Part 88 (one of the arrows) is particularly delicate as it needs to be separated from the sprue in three connections, and three of the spears have four connections. There’s obviously someone in the studio shouting at the sculptors about how the shafts need to be thinner.
Toughness: Everyone has bent spears and pikes on their LOTR figures, it’s a fact of life. The thinner shafts on these will suffer similar abuse, and I’ve magnetised the bases of these models so they can be kept in useful boxes, not stored in foam (which would wreak havoc on them). I would recommend careful handling of these, and thoughtful storage, because while the miniatures are much nicer, they aren’t as robust and toylike.
The Miniatures
So how do they look once they’re built?
Prince Haleth is a solid hero leader, and has the options to be armed with an axe, sword or throwing spear, as well as helmet or bare head on both foot and mounted options. Haleth can be modeled as a Royal Guard captain with little issue because of this if you end up with additional copies of the miniature.
Prince Hama, with his foot model armed with bow, has a bit less ability to become a generic captain, but again he has the options for with and without helmet for both foot and mounted, and is a really nice figure.
The Warriors with hand weapons have a couple of running poses, so one foot on the floor, but look suitably aggressive. There is a pose (the one on the right) which would go nicely in a shieldwall.
The warriors with spears are a solid set of poses, with one poking, 2 standing (and good for a shieldwall) and one throwing their spear.
Another solid set of poses, though the models with arrows have an additional layer of delicateness when being handled. Part 88 is on the centre-right model.
The warriors have a mixture of chainmail, scale mail and leather, which reflects the variety in the Peter Jackson films and the original model kit, and means these would sit very nicely on a tabletop with Saxons and Anglo-Danes.
Conclusion
GW have produced the best looking rank and file troops yet for Lord of the Rings, but have sacrificed child friendliness to give us much better sculpts. I can see even the rank and file guys turning up in painting competitions, though if you are going to paint these to a professional standard then I would recommend sub assemblies.
They won’t paint up as quickly as the old figures, need to be handled a little more carefully than them, but in terms of being pieces of art, they are massively superior to the models that they have replaced.
Let me be clear, I highly recommend these to Middle Earth players and collectors (and even historical collectors in the same scale), and would encourage you to buy them, paint them up and give GW feedback on them to encourage them to do more plastics of this quality for Lord of the Rings.
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