I am not a fan of any of the Hobbit figures and am completely ignoring the entire line. Only the mounted Elves spark any sort of interest and I can see myself using those in my LOTR armies.
As for the rest of it..............blah!

The men of Dale look like clowns. The Great Goblin is ridiculous. Radagast
and his rabbits are just plain silly. The goblins are eh, not horrible, but not something I would go out of my way to buy.

So, that's it. I finally said it. The Hobbit line is a big fat zero.

Of course, you may differ, which is what makes the world go round.

Your thoughts?

Oh, and please take this as it is intended. I am a huge GW fan and have thousands (yes, thousands!) of GW LOTR figures. I am not a GW "basher"
(except where their pricing comes into play). The LOTR line is a huge hit. The Hobbit...not so much.

The goblins are, to my mind, incredibly detailed, flavourful and characterful sculpts.

Just they are not a set of details, flavours or characters I want much to do with

The Dwarves are OK. I don't have any Grimhammers yet, nor do I have Mirkwood Rangers, Rivendell Knights or Dale warriors yet. Those are the figures I am most looking forward to getting and painting. None feature in my current collecting plans right now. I do appreciate the Novgorod/Kievan flavour of the Dalemen, and the damn high elves are why I collect miniatures nowadays.

The general detailing on the Hobbit plastics is a huge leap from the older figures. It's just...eh, still nowhere near as good as metals.

Not tried finecast yet, though. Suspect I won't be using a lot of it, though.

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Some are very nice, some not at all in my opinion.

I absolutely adore the look of the mirkwood rangers, the eagles and hunter orcs are really good too.
But I am not at all a fan of all the dwarves. They look thesame like the movies, but I still think they are ugly. certainly the grimhammers. Also the palace guards and the gundabad orcs look silly and unnatural in a way.

In my opinion, GW did a good job recreating the movie characters. So maybe we should blame Peter Jackson of those strange looking armies?

As others have said I'm a fan of some. Not others
I do not like the Mirkwood Rangers, I feel better about them than I originally did but still not a big fan.
I love the new Radagast on foot, it was a joy to paint. Dale I do not like, or lake town either. Everything else I'm fairly neutral on

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I think you're more upset with WETA's design than GW. Nearly all of the hobbit miniatures are far more detailed than the old LOTR figures when LOTR came out. You call the miniatures cartoonish... but this is not GW's fault, this is the film design. I think for the most part GW have done an excellent job in recreating the miniatures from teh film.

Detail is far better. Loads more room for conversions. Even models I wasn't too hot on won me over when I saw them in the flesh.

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No matter who's fault it is, the costuming is just not up to LOTR standards. WETA, Peter Jackson, GW or whomever is responsible doesn't really matter to me. To my mind the figures are ugly and way below the standard of the LOTR line.

I'm going to have to agree with you Nevinsrip. I think very little effort was put into sculpting or painting the Hobbit range. Virtually none of the models look like the actors they're modeled after. Some of the figures are in very odd positions or are proportioned in usual ways. There's only a handful of figures that are any good. In the end, though, I haven't been tempted by even the best models in the range.

WETA's bad choices don't have to automatically yield a bad figure. Legolas should still look something like Orlando Bloom; Bilbo should have some resemblance to Martin Freeman. Gollum's appearance in AUJ is exactly the same as it was in TTT, so there's no excuse for his miniatures looking so much worse than they did ten years ago.

Comparing GW's range to the (quite small) 35mm Knight Models range, and especially GW's own early LotR range, it's clear that GW did not bring their A-Game this time around.

Tauriel is a very nice model, except for the face. Does not look like Evangeline Lilly at all. The Legolas counterpart looks constipated and has a receding hairline.

The Mirkwood Elf rangers and Palace Guard are fantastic, though a few rangers have naff poses. The first Thranduil looks great, but the second looks like he thinks hes in the Matrix.

The new Wargs, Azog and Hunter Orcs are great. Shame about the price.

The Goblins and Great Goblin I think are awful, but thats WETA's fault.

The new Erebor Dwarves, Grimhammers and Erebor era Heroes (Young Thorin etc) are great. The plastic Thorin's company get a "meh" from me.

The plastic Eagles are great, and surprisingly good value. The Finecast Gwahir has a boring pose - Gamezone's metal eagles have better poses and so would be my preference for a Gwahir/ other Eagle hero.

Laketown is pretty good and very movie accurate, but stupidly expensive with all Finecast.


I like maybe 75% of the Hobbit range, but the massive barrier to me is the stupid price. And the accuracy of the face sculpts are awful - several of the models don't look like the actors. Standards have definitely dropped in facial detail on certain miniatures since LOTR.

The only reason I got anything from the range (Rivindell Knights x1, Mirkwood Rangers x2, Tauriel) was because I had a lot of fun at Desolation of Stockport, had just gotten a job and was flush with cash and Element Games gave a good discount for GBHL members.

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How how no-one mentioned the totally shocking Thranduil, The Elvenking. Looks like hes streching after his morning jog. after seeing him done painted several times to a high standard he doesn't look any better.

All in all the scupts for the Evil are solid to fantastic. Gollum sculpts are meh. Good sculpts range is pretty hit and miss for sure.

And as for pricing.

I won't go off topic much but just look at Australian pricing compared to the rest of the world. It's actually cheaper to buy the new multipart space marine box than some of the DoS boxes.

It's actually cheaper to buy the new multipart space marine box than some of the DoS boxes.

It's actually cheaper to buy the new multipart space marine box than some of the DoS boxes.

Just thought I'd let that float for a bit, let it sink in...

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Most of the miniatures are stunning.

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I quite enjoy the Mirkwood Rangers, feel they have very dynamic poses.

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I personally think they did a great job with it all. Ok the pricing is a bit all over the place especially when we compare them to the good old days, but if you compare it to 40k and fantasy (where you need Devlan Mud loads of models) I think the pricing is ok.

Design wise they've done a good job keeping to wetas designs.

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*shrug*

Totally disagree. Plenty of the LotR sculpts whiff, while others are great. It's no different with the Hobbit, except to say that without exception the plastics are fantastic both in terms of design and quality, and far far superior to the LotR plastics, mostly due to technological advances.

As far as hero sculpts are concerned, I find it difficult to find a reason to differentiate the Hobbit models from LotR in terms of quality of design or sculpt.

I have to wonder if it's it really necessary or productive to start a 100% negative thread. C'est la vie.

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This has nothing to do with the figures. The designs are from the movies.

I guess the thread can be seen as negative, but I'm glad to have a chance to discuss this. I thought I might have been the only one who didn't really like the range. I've been curious for a while about how The Hobbit is doing on a larger scale (ie, outside of OR/TLA and the GBHL) and I've been curious about how factors like miniature price and appearance play into it. If GW had a Bilbo that looked like the one from the Knight Models' range, I definitely would have bought it; instead, we have four poorly sculpted Bilbos, three of which are in astounding poses, and none of which look like Freeman at all.


Even if you or I hate the designs from the films, the models should still look something like the characters. Almost none of them do.

To be fair, the LotR miniatures started to look less and less like the actors after RotK, and a few were a miss before the films ended.

I wasn't really thinking about looking like the characters, because the complaining here was about the design.

"I have to wonder if it's it really necessary or productive to start a 100% negative thread. C'est la vie."

Unless I miss my guess this is a FORUM, which by definition, means a open place to discuss various topics freely.
I started the thread because I was curious to see how fellow hard core LOTR/Hobbit figure collectors felt about the new Hobbit line. Perhaps I was in the minority in thinking that the figures were substandard to the earlier LOTR line. Turns out that I am not the only one who feels this way.

I have to wonder why you think that it's a "100% negative thread". It's simply my opinion. Unless you feel that we have to accept whatever slop GW throws at us and shut up and take it. I've also been curious to know how the product is selling. Just a general observation, but I do not think that it is selling all that well. So, perhaps more than a few others feel that it is an overpriced, second rate product.

I was clear to point out that I was not a GW hater and that I own thousands of their figures. But that doesn't mean that I have to like everything that they make.

I have liked most of the range so far. I think it is about equal with LOTR, there are plenty of poses in the LOTR range that are average, there were also many models that people argued in that range that they hated. Dol Amroth was raked over the coals when it was first presented, people hated the tall helms (same may still). I would liken the static Thraduil to his white council original, and I would liken the second matrix style one to the poor posed Monkey Twins... The models still hold a place in the series but are not the greatest of the range.
Obviously everyone is going to like some things and hate others. but for me, I think they are doing a good job on the range sculpting wise, I just wish they could meet customer satisfaction in other area's with the Hobbit, either with support in WD as they did with LOTR when the films were active. Also if they could make numbers of models easier to obtain (price for value) to help grow the market of it. I also think they are not making enough sculpts, I would actually like to see more (command sets for sure, the Film Bolg foot and mounted would be good too). So I can't diss the wave so far.

I can't say how well it is selling, I did buy 12 blisters of Gundabad orcs and Two captains, and that is buying less because they are Finecast. I Have almost 100% of the Hobbit range. I am treating the armies the same way I did my LOTR armies. So I would hope it is doing ok. Since LOTR is mostly bought on the secondary market, GW won't be making much off the line anymore so they are wise not to put much effort into something even we hardcore are no longer buying in bulk or brand new.

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Ah, fair enough Hill-Troll.