Subject:
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Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.castle
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Date:
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Sun, 6 May 2001 22:15:33 GMT
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Viewed:
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631 times
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As some of you might know, I just came out of my Dark Ages. As my post-Dark
Ages masterpiece, I'm going to build a replica of J.R.R Tolkien's Middle
Earth, very very microfig-style. However, I want to build Barad-Dur
(Sauron's MASSIVE tower in Mordor) and Rivendell (Elrond's home in Mirkwood)
in minifig-style. I'd like to know how some of you would handle recreating
Middle Earth's races with LEGO minifigs. Here's some of my ideas:
Wizards: Well, we're out of luck here with the current colors of the wizard
hats. Gandalf was a Grey wizard before reincarnation and a White one
afterwards. Saruman's title is "of Many Colors", so no luck there.
Radagast is a Brown Wizard. There are two other wizards but I haven't heard
too much about them. Anyways, it would be easy enough to paint a Majisto
Brown, White, and Silver or Chrome for Saruman. I'll probably use the
space-themed Ice Planet old man head for Gandalf, as the huge eyebrows fit him.
Dragons: Though there were virtually no dragons in Middle Earth near Lord
of the Rings, I want a full Middle-Earth environment here, not one from one
particular time period. Normal Lego dragons won't work here, I'm afraid, as
Middle Earth's dragons are massive and crazy. I'll build Ancalagon the
Black out of black, obviously, using the stickers from the old Aqua-Raiders
sets as perfect eyes. If I get around to it, Smaug will be made from red
bricks with an underside of painted gold bricks. I don't really have an
interest in making Glaudrung--two dragons are enough work.
Orcs: Thinking about using the Bull shields for them, as it suits them
well. I'll either use the trans-green heads from the old Alien sets or the
Jar-Jar Binks heads for the orcs. I think the trans-green would be more
realistic, and it looks like an orcish green when put in a helm. For the
Black Orcs, I could again use the black Alien head. They'll probably wear
the dragonmasters Centurion helms, as they look best, I think. Also,
instead of riding horses, I'll probably mount them on the backs of those
orange Star Wars creatures, though not many orcs ride.
Nazgul and Black Numenoreans: The higher echelon of Sauron's evils will
sport the Fright Knights shields and will have the heads from the old
Stingray sets, as they look very very evil. The Nazgul can either ride
Winged Beasts that I actually BUILD for them, or I can take the Pterodactyls
from the Adventurers sets and color them black.
Khand, Harad, and all of them: All of the races of the south that are
barely mentioned in LOTR will wear a tan, brown, black, and red motif, and
will probably use the Dragon Masters shields and flags. I don't know how to
make elephants for them, so I'll probably end up using the grey Triceratops
from Adventurers, though it isn't big enough to have a howdah on its back.
Ents: Easy stuff here--use the brown wall\tree pieces included in the old
Forestmen and Dark Forest sets, construct arms out of brown hinges, joints,
and plates, and stamp a set of sticker eyes from some set on them.
Elves: Not as easy as most people think. I'll be using the original
Forestmen figs--NOT Dark Forest, with their more roguish and Wolfpack-like
theme. Since elves are magnificent, I'll probably give them all silver
weapons including painted bows. It doesn't seem like there's anything
currently out that can truly embody the Elves the way JRR wanted them to be
embodied.
Hobbits and Dwarves: No idea, but Dwarves will use the Majisto beard and
grey Halberds with the bottoms cut off.
Riders of Rohan: Brown spears, brown horses, grey armor and visor
helms--standard knights.
Gondor and such: A more holy look and feel than the Riders of Rohan--white
horses and flags--they'll probably use the Royal Knight shields.
I'm shooting for these numbers:
Riders of Rohan: 30 knights, all mounted with spears
Elves: 70 soldiers, most with bows, only about 3-4 on horseback
Gondor and the other forces of Men: 70 soldiers, about 15-20 on horseback.
Hobbits and Dwarves: Only about 4 hobbits, and probably around 20 dwarves.
Harad, Khand and the South: about 70 soldiers, 15-20 mounted (2-3 elephants)
Mordor: Nine Nazgul, around 15 Black Numenoreans, and about 120+ orcs
There's the first part of my rant, here's the next:
BARAD-DUR construction
Barad-Dur is the greatest bastion in all of Middle Earth, and it should be
built as such. My vision of this place is to build it in mostly black, with
a bit of red, light grey, and dark grey when necessary. It will be a
fortress with countless towers and bastions, so it won't follow the
traditional wall-with-a-keep build. I want it to be about 6 feet wide by 6
feet long and 5-7 feet tall. I don't want to use spires and stuff to
stretch it to 7 feet either--it will be pure, sturdy construction all the
way to the peak, which will probably be the size of the gatehouse of the
Royal Knights Castle. It won't have a drawbridge, but instead a massive,
gothic iron bridge built over a very large water-less moat about 4 or 5
BURPS high. On the end of the bridge will be a fortified gatehouse about as
big as, say, the Firebreathing Fortress, and a fortified wall will encircle
the entire perimeter of the land across the moat. I'm going for a horribly
evil, gothic look here.I won't be starting soon, though--first I need around
10,000 black bricks of various shapes and sizes, probably 100 black castle
walls, a huge amount of the smaller doors (or maybe I'll use the gate-style
door of the Firebreathing Fortress), an amazingly large amount of both the
straight and curved castle stairways, around 3000 black roof tiles and a
small amount of red ones, close to 100 BURPS, a large amount of grey\black
baseplates, and to top it off, 2000 grey and dark grey bricks. These are
only estimates. But the sacrifice will be worth it to build this huge
thing--in fact I think I'll build the base of it in LDraw rignt now.
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Message has 7 Replies:
 | | Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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| About the only word to describe the dimensions of Barad-Dur that you have proposed is wow. wow, wow, wow, wow, wow and wow some more! But seriously if you intend to put as much care and effort into it as you have done planning this thing out, it (...) (24 years ago, 6-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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| Being a HUGE Tolkien fan, I'd like to provide some input. *Please note that I favour John Howe's paintings of Tolkien's work the most, so I will give links to his paintings. (...) Nitpick: Rivendell (A.K.A. Imladris, The Last Homely House) is (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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| (...) Yay, Tolkien! If LEGO has to go after licenses, I really wish they would get a LOTR deal. I would like to do the Prancing Pony one day. (...) I have a wizard I made that was inspired by Radagast. I'll put up a pic. The other two wizards were (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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| (...) Radagast would probably work better with wolfpack torso, brown legs, brown Star Wars cowl and cape. Reverse the torso and switch the arms around if you don't like the wolfpack symbol. For Gandalf, the gray peasant torso, find some gray arms (I (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
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| (...) (URL) a look at that for Dwarves. Brian did an excellent job on the site: If you haven't seen it, look at it! (And don't give him trouble about the legobuilders part. :) (...) Holy moly!!! Sounds neato! What about Sauron? What will he look (...) (24 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
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