Many Mithril Pages @ Faerylands

Speaking of the size of Balrogs, here is a little Balrog review of different manufactures, dating from the late 70's to the GW Balrog.






Back row, left to right are: the GW balrog,  a GW Dragonogre shaggoth that I'm converting into a Balrog, and a Grenadier Chaos Giant conversion into a balrog.

middle row:  Ral Partha "Ral, Lord of the Balrogs", Mithril MB300, PA fire demon.

Front row: unknown, old Ral Partha, Ral Partha armored balrog, really old Ral Partha, old Grenadier, another unknown, and a Grenadier similar to the one in the Sauron's Dark Ones' boxed set. 

It's interesting to me, all the different sizes and styles.  Not pictured is the Balrog from the old Citadel Bridge of Khazad-dum set, but it's packed away to remotely for me to retrieve easily. 

The Mithril is comparable in size to the GW models, but is sort of hunched over and has it's wings folded (one of which fell of before the picture), so it looks smaller.  The Dragon Ogre thingy will make an interesting model when done, but has required a lot of grinding off of the more ridiculous elements (like the little dudes in his hair) and a lot of sculpy work for flames. I'll post a more detailed accountof the whole converison process as it proceeds.

If I can pick one up for that sort of price I'll get one anyway, I think, just to see it in the flesh (er, in the metal...).

That's quite a selection of Bogrolls, Master Presto. I'm mightily impressed. It kind of makes me wonder what your overall collection entails! I notice that you don't have one of the old Minifig balrogs, though - a very curious creation that looked like a circus lion on its hind legs toting a whip and a sword. Probably that's because the Minifigs range isn't heard of much - TE having shut down its production faster than an Elf on speed - and I don't think huge numbers got sold. I used to have a couple of hundred of the little devils (they were 20mm scale) but idiotically sold them for a pittance during one of my occasional lapses of concentration about 20 years ago. Some of the figures were rather good, if simplistic, but some were utter dog-business.

well you must not forget that Balrogs are Valaraukar corrupted and they can't change their fana anymore after their "banishment" from the Maiar order. They were like Arien in the beginning, maiar of Fire, followers of Varda "Elbereth"if I remember well, and could assume any "fana" they wanted. we don't know their numbers for sure, but they are undoubtedly many. Since we don't know the number of maiar... we can't guess the number of balrogs... but Melkor did not create them nor modified them at all... They simply decided to follow him, the same way Sauron left Aulë for Melkor too.

(Just a little message to let you know I closed several old topics in the Prancing Poney section or even elsewhere (tharbad for example, they are out of date and should not , I think receive any more posts, they are still here for reading, but you can't post in them)

One day, I think I'll have to archive the Taproom somehow, but so far, no need

Ah, while it's not busy I shall sit and have a quiet drink in the corner here to celebrate having painted my 3,000th LOTR figure. A red-letter day, I think.

I've painted...dunno. Lots. Several hundred GW and Mithril figures. Then I got rid of the plastic and G. Morley figures, which has reduced the finished models considerably. Unfortunately, I don't really have any good place to show them off. Lots of them are sitting on the prototype gaming table in the vault (yes, I have such a thing) where they stay, alone and unloved. The concrete dust in the vault is pretty poisonous, so you don't want to spend much time in there!

What was your 3000th figure, by the way?

Oh yeah...playing with them.

That might be fun.

I will be able to do it in 2010, maybe. Maybe.

Does this mean that will eliminate the backlog in the Fellowship figures?

Before William there are four months overdue (though some as Theodred we have already seen that is finished)

well Barliman, at last that confirms the fact he received my answer Chris had lost your email (he broke his computer and lost his contact list), I thought you would not mind me giving him your email as he was planning to email you

Thanksfully I had the right email to give him

I wish he had time to be a member of this forum... but I don't think he is the "mailboard" kind of people (or else he would post himself on the Official board I suppose)

Well, I’m back at least and I’m not above making some noise in here…but first a tall scrumpy please!  And , Barli, I’ve never actually heard the ‘ca-ching’ of the register in here with everyone running a tab!  And please put that scrumpy on my tab, please!  Anyway, I was gone to the Far East (or the Far West from my corner of the planet).  I had an extended stay in Japan.  That would be another long posting, so suffice to say I’m back.  In trying to catch up with some of the recent postings I noticed that not much has happened on the Mithril front!  I didn’t win in the painting contest, but I’m glad that one of ours did.  Some fantastic stuff there…and the hard drive issues of Chris Tubb I can certainly relate too ahveing just survived a crash!  Also, I saw Glidor’s posting about the dates of the LR and LT series and it reminded me of those times.  I have some interesting trivia about the LR series regarding the shape of the bases.  As you may or may not know, the LR series was an effort to hang onto their license as producing collectable miniatures. This and the ‘assembly needed’ aspect of some of the very first ones was part of that too. I believe that they were also looking to distance themselves from the old M series as well.  I think the shape was retained for the LT series for the same reason.  The LR series has always been overlooked in terms of the sculpting. The oddly shaped base (circle within a rectangle) was originally intended to accommodate a name plate!
Check out this picture and you can see one in the mold: 

This picture, by the way is of a master mold and was provided to me by the late Adam Dawson, the first and former web master for Mithril

Last edited by Kenakko (Fri, Jul18 2008 3:51pm)

Hear, Hear! Kenakko.

It is good to hear prior times.

Hello fellow travellers.  I'll just stop in for a quick hello, I'm off on vacation this week, and heading to Historicon.   Hopefully, I'll see Jim Corless there, and can while away some time chatting about Mithrils!  And maybe some crab imperial while I'm in Baltimore too!