Wednesday 23 January 2013

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM65 Flying Reptile And Wraith

Next up from the lead mountain... Asgard's take on the Nazgul from The Lord Of The Rings:
As with all Asgard sculpts from the early 70's and 80's, it's quite coarse compared to the fine detailed sculpts you see today. In particular, the Wraith is VERY crude - the folds in his cloak are acceptable, but on his legs (which unfortunately you can't see in the picture) I think he's supposed to be wearing chain mail leggings, when it fact it looks like he has a pair of woolly tights on!

The Nazgul/Reptile is a rather splendid sculpt though. The figure came in 3 parts - body and two wings - and I had to use an inordinate amount of super glue and patience to make them stick together, again due to the coarseness of the sculpting. Once assembled, it was a pleasure to paint - a surprising amount of detail, which came up well with washes over a base pink paint job for a suitably unpleasant effect.

The sculpt is something of a rarity - I've not seen another one - although I understand it's still available from Viking Forge in the States. I suspect that it didn't sell well on release for a number of reasons - firstly, Asgard didn't (or couldn't) advertise it as a Nazgul, and secondly it was an expensive sculpt when I acquired it. A third reason is that it was sold in a time when miniatures catalogues only had line drawings of the figures, not photos - and the line drawings from the Asgard didn't do it justice, and gave no indication of the size of the beast. Bit of a shame really, because I think it's an attractive "old school" mini, worthy of a place of honour in any Chaos army.


1 comment:

  1. I agree the rider isn't much to look at, but the beast, now that's a different story......

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