Hopefully Monday. Haven't been to work the last couple days.
Asmus Toys: Nazgûl
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As I promised, here are a few pictures of the Nazgul and steed, with (just) my opinion. I finally found the motivation to futz this thing !
As I said, I find that too much flaws and a poor quality control with cheap materials spoil a bit this figure.
Let's see the brand new Nazgul, all black with no weathering at all out of the box:
Too clean in my opinion, and a shiny mane for the steed, unlike the promo pics.
The first obvious little flaw as many of you already said is the legs of the horse are too close, so it has no balance.
With poor quality control, I mean this kind of thing:
Or this:
The paint app is not very convincing:
And although the sword is made of steel, it is covered up with some kind of shiny silver paint:
You will have to be carefull with this figure, the first movement broke the knee armor, and the wrist broke at the first attempt to put it off.
Also Asmus should pay way more attention to detail. The sword looks toyish:
And it would have been cool to find some details like the robe pattern:
or some effort with the harness, look at the nails and different thickness of leather:
Instead, we have a poor basic piece of black fabric with the usual bat sleeves... "Give me a fabric worthy of Mordor !!":
Note that you can see through the horse:
All these flaws are minor, but they are numerous... (Add that the body is floppy and the Nazgul won't hold his sword properly, and the bonus sword is missing with no answer from Asmus at this day)
In spite of this, the overall aspect is excellent, the proportions are very good, the tailoring is ok. (Way better than ACI general look, but this is just my opinion)
For the mods, I began with the hood that were too tight, I unglued the fabric, cut a part of the plastic stand, and glued the hood back in place:
And after:
I also rubbed the sword with sandpaper, then put some browning liquid on all the metal parts.
I trimmed the mane, cut the bat sleeves, and did some weathering... Finally I'm happy with it, it is a nice figure once futzed, but there is a lot of work...
Asmus if you read me, please pay more attention to details, I want you to succeed with nice figures !
As I said, I find that too much flaws and a poor quality control with cheap materials spoil a bit this figure.
Let's see the brand new Nazgul, all black with no weathering at all out of the box:
Too clean in my opinion, and a shiny mane for the steed, unlike the promo pics.
The first obvious little flaw as many of you already said is the legs of the horse are too close, so it has no balance.
With poor quality control, I mean this kind of thing:
Or this:
The paint app is not very convincing:
And although the sword is made of steel, it is covered up with some kind of shiny silver paint:
You will have to be carefull with this figure, the first movement broke the knee armor, and the wrist broke at the first attempt to put it off.
Also Asmus should pay way more attention to detail. The sword looks toyish:
And it would have been cool to find some details like the robe pattern:
or some effort with the harness, look at the nails and different thickness of leather:
Instead, we have a poor basic piece of black fabric with the usual bat sleeves... "Give me a fabric worthy of Mordor !!":
Note that you can see through the horse:
All these flaws are minor, but they are numerous... (Add that the body is floppy and the Nazgul won't hold his sword properly, and the bonus sword is missing with no answer from Asmus at this day)
In spite of this, the overall aspect is excellent, the proportions are very good, the tailoring is ok. (Way better than ACI general look, but this is just my opinion)
For the mods, I began with the hood that were too tight, I unglued the fabric, cut a part of the plastic stand, and glued the hood back in place:
And after:
I also rubbed the sword with sandpaper, then put some browning liquid on all the metal parts.
I trimmed the mane, cut the bat sleeves, and did some weathering... Finally I'm happy with it, it is a nice figure once futzed, but there is a lot of work...
Asmus if you read me, please pay more attention to details, I want you to succeed with nice figures !
madgophermm5
Freakzoid
I have to agree with what other people are saying, one of my only complaints with this figure is how fragile it feels. I finally got up the courage to try switching the hands and I broke off the armor elbow piece. Granted that was due to partial ham handling to try and get the hand on. The next day once that part had been glued back on the right foot popped off as I was putting the hand on. When I went to put it back on the armor on top of the foot separated. Fortunately these have all been very simple repairs, requiring nothing but glue. However it makes me nervous trying to get him in any kind of posing.
One thing I would say is I wish more companies would look at the way sideshow is currently doing the joints for their hands and feet. They change very easily but don't feel loose. I never worry I am going to break off the peg like I do with other figures.
One thing I would say is I wish more companies would look at the way sideshow is currently doing the joints for their hands and feet. They change very easily but don't feel loose. I never worry I am going to break off the peg like I do with other figures.
Invictus Sol
No Life in the Void
Looking at all these posts I really feel Asmus is cutting too many corners. Charge $30 or $40 more and do it right. ACI's are a bit on the overpriced side (Ringwraith being up there with HT's Iron Man armours, for example) but the figure is excellent, the details are nice and it's a small run comparatively. Now that ACI is sadly out of the game, I really hope Asmus steps it up.
SurlyJ
Super Freak
Why is ACI out? Did they lose the license?
Seems they only had the license for those two characters.
Terrific work! Looks great! Hope mine comes out as well.
Invictus Sol
No Life in the Void
Yep, they lost the HK license (pretty sure "HK license" is just gone now and no longer available to anyone) but are hoping to work something out w/New Line Cinema in the future. Both Aragorn and the Ringwraith were initially projected to have a 2400 figure run, but that was cut to 800, as ACI wasn't able to renew in time to produce the other 1600 of each.
Whoa, I was wondering why it was so limited to 800. I understand losing the license, so only two characters were made, but I didn't understand why they only made so few.
Thanks for the info.
qualitymm
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neco perfeclty said what is the overall problem for this figure... knee armor easily loose but it can be inserted again .
i dont complain about messy fabric but yeah like neco said attention to detail will reward ASmus eventually
i dont complain about messy fabric but yeah like neco said attention to detail will reward ASmus eventually
At one time I would have told you to jump at it. I'm not so sure anymore. It's getting harder and harder to defend this line.
Lejuan
Super Freak
Because I had US dollars stashed in my paypal account, this cost me around $320 shipped. For that price I can put up with the set's flaws. No way would I pay $450, which is close to what I'd now be paying in Australian dollars.
Lejuan
Super Freak
Yeah, there is that. In which case it comes down to how badly you want the character on your shelf. I'm time poor and need to read up on weathering techniques and then buy the right materials. With time, effort and a little extra cash, this set can look worthy of the price tag. But at 450 bucks you'd have to really love the character.
Finally...... 8:30pm at night and UPS delivers. Jeez...
Too late to open it now. Have to wait until tomorrow. No futzing until weekend at best, so I'll just post my initial thoughts on this NAZGUL/STEED set.
Too late to open it now. Have to wait until tomorrow. No futzing until weekend at best, so I'll just post my initial thoughts on this NAZGUL/STEED set.
Travis Baumann
Super Freak
I got my set from BBTS last night. Nice big box but the UPS just left it outside my apartment, didn't even ring or knock (my wife was home all day) so it sat there for over five hours.. luckily no one took it.
I have to say it is impressive when first opening the horse, it is big and cool looking. The flocking came out ok on mine and the glowing eyes are cool. Saddle slips around all over the place and the flexible stand thing is a bit scary and hard to get any serious poses out of. The feet are WAY too close together so this thing cannot stand without the support but I have him propped at home with spacers between the legs - hoping that remedies it a bit. Overall though I was really happy with the steed right out of the box.
The Nazgul himself however is a bit of disappointment out of the box but I was expecting some issues based on the posts on here. His feet were detached in the box but they snapped back in (although very firmly so I too knocked off the knee armor but it reattached easily with super glue). The hands however are another issue. It was so damn difficult to pop a new hand on (so he could hold a weapon as he ships with "open claw" hands) I pressed and pushed and finally it popped on but not before I broke the elbow armor (that one is not so easy to glue on, it held last night but I tried to futz the batwing fabric this morning before work and it popped back off).
After all that work on the hand, his wrists just spin around crazy loose and his elbows are pretty floppy too so he can barely hold his little short sword let alone his great sword. The hood is really stiff and a bit too enclosed around the empty face (the mod above looks much better and I already spread it out a bit by hand).
Once he is plopped onto the horse and his feet put in the stirrups he does look super cool. I am really happy with the look of the set but wish the body and details on the Nazgul himself were a lot better as it is hard to get a cool pose. The robes are bit insane with weird bat wing shapes to the arms that I have not found a good pose/futz for but only had a little while to work with him last night. Looking forward to spending some more time futzing with him.
Overall, really like the steed, wish the rider was better but I think it is a really good set that will look awesome on the shelf once I futz him up a bit. I am not going to go the weathering step, just mess with his robes and position him but I don't think I will be changing his pose that much due to the body.
I have to say it is impressive when first opening the horse, it is big and cool looking. The flocking came out ok on mine and the glowing eyes are cool. Saddle slips around all over the place and the flexible stand thing is a bit scary and hard to get any serious poses out of. The feet are WAY too close together so this thing cannot stand without the support but I have him propped at home with spacers between the legs - hoping that remedies it a bit. Overall though I was really happy with the steed right out of the box.
The Nazgul himself however is a bit of disappointment out of the box but I was expecting some issues based on the posts on here. His feet were detached in the box but they snapped back in (although very firmly so I too knocked off the knee armor but it reattached easily with super glue). The hands however are another issue. It was so damn difficult to pop a new hand on (so he could hold a weapon as he ships with "open claw" hands) I pressed and pushed and finally it popped on but not before I broke the elbow armor (that one is not so easy to glue on, it held last night but I tried to futz the batwing fabric this morning before work and it popped back off).
After all that work on the hand, his wrists just spin around crazy loose and his elbows are pretty floppy too so he can barely hold his little short sword let alone his great sword. The hood is really stiff and a bit too enclosed around the empty face (the mod above looks much better and I already spread it out a bit by hand).
Once he is plopped onto the horse and his feet put in the stirrups he does look super cool. I am really happy with the look of the set but wish the body and details on the Nazgul himself were a lot better as it is hard to get a cool pose. The robes are bit insane with weird bat wing shapes to the arms that I have not found a good pose/futz for but only had a little while to work with him last night. Looking forward to spending some more time futzing with him.
Overall, really like the steed, wish the rider was better but I think it is a really good set that will look awesome on the shelf once I futz him up a bit. I am not going to go the weathering step, just mess with his robes and position him but I don't think I will be changing his pose that much due to the body.
Darklord Dave
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Got mine last night too. I think the steed is great - the light up eyes are really bright and creepy.
The Ringwraith was incredibly frustrating though. Feet lose in the package - in using enough force to get them back on, the head came off the body. Trying to get it back on through the small holes in the clothes and what feels like a muscle suit was incredibly difficult. Changing the hands I broke the hand off. There are no spare pegs and it's designed so the peg is permanently attached to the forearm, so I had to dismantle the forearm (easy enough as it's screwed together) and I then cut down an Hot Toys wrist peg and thinned out the post so it could be used. Finally got everything back together, but the belt leather is just glued and came apart trying to put the scabbard in. I don't think the scabbard can hang right the way the belt straps are made anyway. So still have some work to do to get it to an acceptable point.
But the horse is nice.
The Ringwraith was incredibly frustrating though. Feet lose in the package - in using enough force to get them back on, the head came off the body. Trying to get it back on through the small holes in the clothes and what feels like a muscle suit was incredibly difficult. Changing the hands I broke the hand off. There are no spare pegs and it's designed so the peg is permanently attached to the forearm, so I had to dismantle the forearm (easy enough as it's screwed together) and I then cut down an Hot Toys wrist peg and thinned out the post so it could be used. Finally got everything back together, but the belt leather is just glued and came apart trying to put the scabbard in. I don't think the scabbard can hang right the way the belt straps are made anyway. So still have some work to do to get it to an acceptable point.
But the horse is nice.
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