"War of the Ring" minis (Thanks Sam!)

I've been uncharacteristically productive hobby-wise lately, so I have a bunch of stuff to show off. But first, some cool news. My perennially popular (okay, click-baity) "Where to buy cheap minis?" post included a mention of the board game War of the Ring, a strategy board game based on the Lord of the Rings, which contained many true 25mm plastic fantasy figures. I said it was promising if the price ever came down, but probably didn't have enough stuff I was interested in to be worth it.

Sam, at the excellent Sam's Minis World blog, saw my post and was motivated to track these figures down. He was kind enough to send me some of the fruits of his search, for which I offer hearty and sincere thanks. He discusses his haul here. Really, this post is more of the same, with shots of the minis and comparisons (with special appearances by the One Inch Guild, among others). I'm just so pleased to finally have some of these figures, and at Sam's generosity, that I wanted to share.

Elves. The gray is supposed to be Legolas, the blue is rank-and-file. A Caesar figure is for comparison, as is Sven the comparison viking.

Various dudes with swords. The unpainted figures are the Witch King, Aragorn, and Boromir. Another Caesar fig and Sven are included. The Witch King will make a fine evil knight, which are kind of hard to find in this scale

Wizards! Gandalf and Saruman are on the right. An unpainted Caesar wizard and a couple repainted Arcane Legions figures are on the left. The War of the Ring figures are arguably a little big, but will look fine at the table.

The dwarves have the opposite concern, as they are generally noticably smaller than my other plastic dwarves. Caesar and Arcane Legions dwarves, then Gimli and some dwarf troops. Gimli looks particularly odd with his smaller size and pointed head.

Hobbits! Very exciting to have actual in-scale halfling figures in plastic. In the middle are Pippin, Merry, Frodo and Sam. Frodo and Sam share a base, but I may be able to separate them. They are flanked by a Games Workshop hobbit and a D&D halfling. They are both noticeably taller than the WotR figures, especially the GW one. But as they are all shorter than Sven, it shouldn't be a problem, unless I'm trying to make a halfling army for some reason.

The Nazgul, with a couple tan Age of Mythology figures for comparison. These are the 1st edition sculpts; the 2nd edition of the game has less top-heavy Nazgul. Sam gave me two of these: If I can find a way to remove the chibi wringwraiths, they'll make great generic monsters.

I should mention that Sam, in addition to just plain old giving me cool stuff and having an awesome blog, also nominated me for a Liebster, which is a sort of combination attaboy and chain letter that lets lesser recognized blogs get some attention. I probably won't be nominating anyone myself, because I'm pretty close to the bottom of the blogger pile. Anything in my links sidebars is certainly worth reading, if you're interested. Anyway, double thanks to Sam for being such a kind and generous fan in so many ways!