aelfwine wrote:
The new plastics are...well, alright. They are far better than the original range of plastics. They are also, irritatingly, scarcely compatible in terms of scale. One of the benefits of WOTR was that scale mattered less. Mixing and matching Hobbit range figures with old LOTR Rohirrim, for example, at a skirmish scale is a bit obviously an issue.
The metals, on the other hand, have heft, higher detail, and last longer. I strongly suspect most people's finecast will be looking a bit duff in a few years. By contrast, I can strip a twenty five year old Prince August metal miniature and paint it good as new.
I actually had two or three all metal 1000pt WOTR armies before the theft - Rivendell, Mordor and Angmar. Ouch.
Don't join the bandwagon and diss Finecast please. I've seen enough of that for 3 lifetimes. ALL materials have their ups and downs though yes, admittedly, metal stripping being one of its ups. Finecast has astonishing detail and I once read a blog I totally agree with, it said that the larger the model, the less prominent the flaws of Finecast became and the more prominent the pros. I <3 my GUO model. And I don't actually have any old LOTR plastics, save for 20 Uruk Hai. Its either metal Fiefdoms and Dwarves, Uruk characters (old) or plastic Goblins, Elves, Thorin's Company (new). Elves are tall I guess and the rest are short anyways, to me there is hardly difference worthy of thought, I've met 40kers who like using the old stumpy Terminators, but I don't see anyone complaining abouy them on the battlefield...