Scale Issues (Gundabad Orcs and Finecast in General)

DomyHill · **Posted:** Thu Apr 24, 2014 11:19 am

So, I've been painting up my Gundabad Orcs which I'm pretty happy with at the moment. But when I received some second hand Uruk Hai in the post from a family friend I couldn't help but notice the rather obvious size difference between the Gundabads and the Uruks, the former being considerably larger.

I don't know if this is the trend with finecast miniatures (I did have a Knight of the White Tower who towered over pretty much every model I have - except the Ent) or if Gundabads are supposed to be bigger than Uruks, which seeing as the Uruks were supposed to be the biggest and the best, I doubt this is the case.

Does anyone know what's going on here? Not that I mind - it makes them easier to paint

! Anyway, here's a picture to show you what I mean:

mertaal · **Posted:** Thu Apr 24, 2014 11:42 am

Everything in the modern world has to be bigger, better and cooler than what went before.

This sounds glib, but I mean it. Jackson feels the need to out-do himself and his previous work, and GW need to do the same. So instead of thinking of something different, cool and thematically coherent they just decide to supercharge Uruk Hai, making them taller, better equipped, scarier and stronger, and pass them off as Gundabad Orcs (which are supposed to be stooped, short and twisted, like all orcs before the Uruk Hai).

They do look cool though. So I guess the lame strategy they employ isn't so stupid after all. It just p*sses on the source material.

There's also a trend in the LotR range to make models bigger than they did previously- It is supposed to be 25mm "realistic" scale rather than the original GW 28mm "heroic", but that baby got thrown out with the bath water a long long time ago. I presume it's because bigger models are more appealing, and easier to paint.

Originally it was said that the different scale was down to two things- firstly, the licence specified the scale must be realistic and not heroic, so that it was visually cohesive with the films. Secondly, by making the models too small they would be incompatible with Warhammer Fantasy, because games workshop thinks that it's a good way to make sure you buy two armies, not one to use for both systems.
Personally I'd have thought the base shape would do that, but what do I know?

jdizzy001 · **Posted:** Thu Apr 24, 2014 11:51 am

Also, the 28mm license is own, and has been owned, by mithril miniatures for a few decades. I think gw allowed scale creep to enter the line soley so they could produce 28mm minis under a 25mm license. After all 28 mm is the industry standard in today's market.

mertaal · **Posted:** Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:03 pm

That's a very good point- I'd totally failed to take that snippet in to account!

Bilbo · **Posted:** Thu Apr 24, 2014 2:07 pm

A lot of the plastics seem to have come out a bit on the small size such as the original plastic Wood Elves and the Uruk Hai which are much bigger in the films, along with the plastic boxed sets hobbits that all have pin sized heads. The Fine cast Dol Guldur orcs are fine scale wise.

Notably with the EFGT BOXED SET SOME OF THE dWARVES ARE AS TALL, OR TALLER THAN SOME PLASTIC ELF FIGURES WHICH IS QUITE ANNOYING. Oops caps!

Moj · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:58 am **Posts:** 93

hell, GW scale is all messed up. that uruk almost looks cute beside the gundabad orc.

and i agree, some of the dwarves in thorin's company could almost pass off as humans. it annoys me to no end that we can't mix all the minis in any scenario because they don't always match up in scale.

example of this was when i compared the new plastic legolas from the hobbit vs the fellowship version of legolas. same character, different head size.

Dorthonion · **Posted:** Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:51 pm

What's a few millimetres between friends?

There are a catalogue of errors in scale even in the original range and how characters and others were portrayed in all of the movies - Gandalf and Aragorn were much taller than most men as an example, and the Numenoreans were all taller than the majority of Men in the time of the War of the Ring. But PJ and others realised that putting that on screen would freak out the majority of people who would see the films without having read any of the books. So serve up content for the average joe....
I always thought that the only very large orcs among the Gundabad contingent were the personal guards, from what I recall in the book and histories but PJ et al have chosen to have all of them as big and bad.

Moj · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:58 am **Posts:** 93

PJ and co have taken too many liberties with the movies.

i was aghast when i saw radagast. he wasn't rad at all.

Ukfreddybear · **Posted:** Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:26 pm

jdizzy001 wrote:

Also, the 28mm license is own, and has been owned, by mithril miniatures for a few decades. I think gw allowed scale creep to enter the line soley so they could produce 28mm minis under a 25mm license. After all 28 mm is the industry standard in today's market.

Mithrils LotR range is 32mm, not 28, so I doubt that has any bearing on it.

Scale Issues (Gundabad Orcs and Finecast in General)

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