9/10/01 - Latest News

Games Workshop spy report
DarthCaeser @ 12:08 am EST

This great report was sent in to us by Ringer Gaming Informant Astaldo 44.:

"I was pleased to be able to attend the Diamond Comics Distribution Retailer summit in Fort Wayne, Inidiana over this past weekend. Diamond owns Alliance Games Distribution, which is going to be the exclusive distributor for the new Games Workshop miniatures game based on the Lord of the Rings films.

For those who don't know, Games Workshop is one of the biggest manufacturers of hobby games, and probably the maker of the finest metal miniatures in the world. The Diamond Retailers summit is not a convention, but is open only to retailers of comics, games and other hobby products.

The centerpiece of the presentation was a showing, on a big projection screen, of the first two theatrical trailers. It was nice to see them somewhere other than my own monitor, but I have to admit that I was disappointed that they didn't show some kind of footage that we hadn't seen before.

They also talked some about the license, but they were pretty careful to skirt around areas that they weren't allowed to talk about. One of the key points was that, due to the requirements of doing a licenced product, the game was going to be a limited print run, and no more would be made after the initial run.

Then we got to take a look at the boxed games themselves, the rulebooks, and the miniatures... my God, the miniatures! They are breathtakingly well done. The ringwraiths in particular are *awesome* and the two different Aragorn figures we saw are the spitting image of Viggo himself.

We saw miniatures of the ringwraiths as they appear to Frodo when he's wearing the ring! (Those would be "Twilight Ringwraiths" I believe -DC)

I am not articulate enough to express how awesome these miniatures are. They are possibly the best I have ever seen, and, for the record, I am not a big fan of Games Workshop's other products (although I do acknowledge their skill in miniatures production.) All true fans of LotR are going to want these miniatures--not just the gamers.

I did have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I am unable to talk about a lot of the specifics. I will say that the folks at GW are swell people, and that they gave us a bunch of info not yet available to the general public."