Saturday 7 January 2023

Lord of the Rings - Heritage / Der Kriegspielers style


As per previous posts, the joy of painting old school minis is something that never leaves me for long... this time it was a few of the Heritage Orcs, back from when they had the licence for the 1978 Ralph Bakshi cartoon version of Lord of the Rings. Max Carr sculpts and they really capture the feel of the movie.


1811 Saruman's Urak-Hai Orcs of the White Hand Clubs






I've since tidied up the helmets a little as I noticed the red at the metal edge looked wrong.

Besides a myriad of blisters for the range (including Cliff Sanderson sculpted 75mm ones), they also did a couple of boxed games... no exclusive minis unfortunately.

Edit - apparently the balrog only came with this set. The blistered variant was much larger.



The full range (and more) is on the Lost Minis WIKI;


A few years earlier Duke Seifried (amongst other sculptors) at Der Kriegspielers sculpted a large 'not' Lord of the Rings range including this Fellowship set. Games Workshop imported them back in the day but they were too expensive for my hobby budget at the time. I've named the Hobbits as I think they should be... Frodo is the only obvious one...

1057 The Companions


The four Hobbits


Gandalf


Strider


Boromir


Legolas


Gimli


Frodo


Sam


Merry


Pippin


The full range can be seen on the Lost Minis Wiki;


Michael over at Classic Miniatures has most of these old ranges available nowadays;


Finally, a couple of minis I am completely at a loss to identify... a wizard and a monk. Early 80's or late 70's I assume. Help!


As always enquiries@deartonyblair.co.uk

7 comments:

Rick Priestley said...

Interesting to see these because back in the mid 70s you couldn't get these US models at all in the UK - I think at some point Wargame Publications imported some US made models and GW a little later. I remember the Heritage stuff (which I think DK became) which was probably the first range I saw in blister packs - and may even have a few kicking around. Very characterful pieces aren't they - not at all like the Minifigs or Garrison fantasy ranges in style.

John said...

Great Uruk-hai paint job. These Der K. Uruk-Hai were only bettered by the previous (1972) MiniFigs Mythical Earth Man-Orcs (Sabre, Pike, Axe. Just how I iamgined U-Hai to be.

Whistling Chris said...

Those Urak-Hai are fantastic. Your paint job really brings the sculpts to life!

Golgfag1 said...

Nicely done sir, I never knew about Minifigs producing these little beauties, classics missed.

CTMM said...

I know it's an older post, but the Heritage Lord of the rings line has always been my favorite.
Thanks for your post.

Lawrence Noe said...

Hi David, any possibility I can contact you somehow. Remember purchasing that Heritage USS Helms Deep set years ago at a garage sale. Just checked closet and it's in there. Can you help me out with any info as I've been looking for years and this is the 1st I've seen anything posted about it besides the wikiminis and theirs not a lot of info there.

David Wood said...

@LawrenceNoe - contact made!