White Dwarf Leak! End Times & Hobbit Coming Soon! [Update!]
November 18, 2014 by brennon
The newest White Dwarf leak takes us back to the Warhammer End Times and especially the role that both the Dark Elves and High Elves are going to be taking in this titanic struggle laid out by Games Workshop...
As you can see Malekith himself has mastered his old school dragon once more (no new model then?) and will be riding into war alongside the Phoenix Guard themselves it seems! Civil war once again strikes the elder race of the Warhammer world and I can't wait to see whether or not it's Malekith or Tyrion who allow themselves to be taken over to become the avatar of Khaine himself on the battlefield.
This artwork from the trailer (and the end image of Khaine himself) do seem to point towards the Avatar striding across the battlefield itself. We've heard that there will be no new miniatures with this End Times release and that does seem to be the case. Currently the only things coming for it are Warhammer: Khaine and The End Times: The Curse of Khaine which is a novel to run alongside the story.
More details have emerged about the forthcoming book and a few of the interesting twists in the story. You can read a little more about the various plot points in the 'Reasons to Read' image above but it's safe to say that Tyrion is never going to be the same again. After drawing the sword to protect his people he has become the embodiment of Khaine, his Avatar, and will no doubt be causing quite the drama across Ulthuan.
Elsewhere we are hearing that there are Hobbit releases on the way!
· The Hobbit - Thranduil, King of the Woodland Realm: Thranduil mounted on horse and on foot in a clampack.
· The Hobbit - Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Mirkwood: Two Finecast miniatures of Legolas mounted on horse and on foot in a clampack.
· The Hobbit - Tauriel, Mirkwood Exile: Tauriel on foot in a clampack.
· The Hobbit - Mirkwood Armoured Captain: Captain on foot in a clampack.
· The Hobbit - Mirkwood Armoured Bowmen: Three Finecast miniatures in clampack.
So anyone who has been really interested in getting their Hobbit stuff back on the go can breath easy and it appears they are going to be delivering the releases weekly up until the film hits cinemas I imagine.
Apart from Legolas painted to look like an old man and the same for Tauriel I think these are some pretty awesome Hobbit sculpts for the final film and final installment to the tabletop game from Games Workshop.
What do you think?
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I was really hoping to see a new Malekith model. Dark Elves always were my faction when I was playing WFB and I’d have love to have had a brilliant new sculpt to drag me back in… I had this model when it first came out and sold it many years ago now. No intention of buying it again now…
Rumour is that there’s no new models for End Times III which is disappointing to say the least.
To be fair all three elf factions have had new books and new models recently.
After the ridiculous eagle towing the glider, and the compost heap in heels, I’m not fussed about no new dark elf models. Less disappointment that way. Now the Bretonnians, on the other hand…
So have Chaos! But I don’t think the End Times is about army update schedules, it’s about reinvigorating the game. I can’t help but feel they’re missing a trick by only giving shiny new stuff to the bad guys. If ever there was a time to make Malekith something special, a la Nagash, it was now.
Shame; Imagine a new model fitting on one of Warhammer Forge’s Carmine dragons… now that would have been good!
Making modular / upgrade components like that for existing models is a fantastic idea but knowing GW there probably isn’t enough profit in it for them. Same reason why they did away with their extensive bits catalogue I imagine. Ah, the good old days…. when you could get almost any part for a GW model and endlessly convert others. Thank the lord the independents have picked up that baton.
What about the night times? The fuzzy tingle times?
Sorry mate, the End Times came before they did. Shame as I could have seen them release pink static grass to cover all your models to fit in with the fuzzy tingle times 🙁
All it would take is the crackfox fighting for chaos and this would be interesting 😉
Don’t forget the Hammer Times.
If there are no new models for End Times III then it seems GW is putting less and less effort into each release.
I wouldn’t go that far. There seemed to be a similar amount of effort between Glott Kin and Nagash
If this follows the same pattern as in the last two end times sets then there will be a big model like Glotkin or Nagash, and then the captains models like the Maggoth lords or Mortarchs.
That was my point, there has been a rumour that there are no new models for End Times III, this white dwarf would seem that support that
By less effort I mean the books were smaller and the print run was also smaller. I admit the quality was equally good for both.
The other books have also had old models that just had new rules. They could end up doing that for all the elf releases.
If there was a new model I would expect to see it on the front cover of WD. I imagine all we are getting is an “Ascended Malekith” or similar.
I know, but that Malekith model, like Imrik for the high Elves, is a tired and dated sculpt. Would have been nice to see some new sculpts to go with the release
So there won’t be actual new releases for End Times as far as models go. Not that I would mind with Malekith because I still like that sculpt. Plus I find black dragon that he is riding to be better than nwer GW dragon sculpts.
Really? I think the current plastic High Elf dragon is much better .
@warzan looking forward to the next Cease and Desist letter from GW ?
Loving the fact we’re getting a hobbit release, just wish it wasn’t elves.
Looking forward to the End times book, very interested to see where it goes.
Hobbit models, are less to my liking – but in line with the support for the game, lacklustre
The Hobbit stuff looks great… I would have preferred loads of plastic minis though.
I not personally into the new Warhammer stuff, so for me it’s meh. I understand other folks like it though.
The Hobbit releases are a major disappointment, and that’s not unexpected considering how poorly GW have supported the game. All failcast releases and no plastic Elf army boxes?
That’ll be a zero buy from me…
I was looking forward to The Hobbit, but when it came out with 25mm figures, that shut down any ambitions I had about getting into the game. I wanted the figures for use in other systems as well. A shame, as there are some nice models in there, although the paint jobs leave something to be desired.
The Hobbit is 28mm “true scale” as opposed to 28mm “heroic scale”
I have 28mm true scale mixed in with my heroic scale figures, and the difference isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is with LOTR figures.
They’re an almost perfect match alongside Wargames Factory 28mm historic and they’re also significantly larger than some old Ral Partha 25mm fantasy figures I’ve got
Then by all means enjoy them. I find the difference irreconcilable with the figures I have.
Apparently Mithril holds the license for 28mm, which is why LOTR came out in 25mm.
As far as I know Mithril hold the rights from the Tolkein estate to produce figures based on the books produced by the author. GW hold the rights for figures based on the films and is through Newline cinema which as far as I am aware has nothing to do with the Tolkein family
This is my Mounted Rohirrim and Mounted Celtic Warrior. The celtic horse is a little smaller, more of a pony, but the riders are pretty much the same scale
https://flic.kr/p/pQpQwQ
My point exactly. Those Celts were one of the first WF boxes, and were too small. I binned the horses, and used the riders as barbarian ‘adolescents’ on some different mounts.
The Wargames riders fit quite nicely on the LotR horsew. It’s just a shame you can’t buy the horses separately.
Looks like LotR goes out with a whimper instead of a bang! No surprises there then
They never really had their heart in The Hobbit ever since it became clear that the film tie-in wasn’t a sufficient excuse to make the fans pay twice the price for half the quantity.
Shame really as it was always the best game of the core 3 and often produced some of the best sculpts.
Osbad, not entirely certain this observation is correct. Can’t guarantee mine is either, because I am not tied into GW in any shape size or form, but … The original film schedule was set for TWO movie releases, not three. If GW had as much lead time as the name and stat changes for Bolg seems to indicate along with the rather emaciated “Desolation of Smaug” release, they may well have been caught off-guard, and quite frankly didn’t have anything to “stretch” the game during this last year. In other words, the drought of Hobbit this past year is not… Read more »
There’s still time for them to produce something special for the Hobbit, after all the film isn’t released for another couple of weeks yet and White Dwarf is a weekly thing, but I do share a general lack of confidence and sense of disappointment, I agree that the LotR models are much better sculpts (IMO) than their slightly caricature Warhammer counterparts.
Can’t believe they’re dragging out that old Malekith model again – it wasn’t very good to begin with and time hasn’t been kind. They could have at least just done a new sculpt for Malekith and put him on the newer Dark Elf Dragon. Poor show.
You can always spot a trish carden sculpt a mile away: the model that looks like it was made out of playdoh in 1988.
If GW had really embraced the Hobbit movies and produced the quantity and quality of miniatures that they released for LotR, I would have been a more loyal customer. With almost everything being released in Finecast, and a distinct lack of plastic army boxes (seriously who would consider buying Finecast archers?!?) accompanied by their zealous price hikesthey have offered little incentive to support the game. I guess I’ll just have to be content with my shed load of LotR minis and proxy with them for any Hobbit scenarios. It’s such a shame because I was really looking forward to the… Read more »
People have been playing Wargames in Middle Earth for longer than GW has been producing miniatures, and I remember their first Lord of the Rings range in the 80s. One of the most popular games in our club over here in Northern Ireland is Legends of the Old West. It was produced by GW/Warhammer Historical and it was dropped a few years ago. Yet. we play on and people pick up old copies from eBay and elsewhere. We also support current games systems BTW. My point being, we don’t need GW. We there’s a great community and there are tons… Read more »
Sorry for the ‘we’ typo… it’s early 🙂
Spot on Tony. We don’t need GW in order to keep the game alive. It would certainly be easier to attract new players if they could ready a new army without having to drop a mortgage payment per unit. Hopefully when GW inevitably say goodbye to Middle Earth, another miniature company will take up the licence to produce movie themed miniatures at a more reasonable price. At the very least we won’t have to deal with Finecast. And there’s always proxying as I mentioned earlier. It’s a wonderful game systems and worthy of support. I wonder what the legal position… Read more »
I think you could easily proxy most Historic 28mm ranges alongside existing GW LotR miniatures. For example Wargames Factory Saxons and Vikings would make perfect Rohan or Dunlending warriors. They also have a range of Orcs that could easily proxy alongside the GW LotR Orcs. Perry Miniatures medieval plastics could stand in for Gondor.
I just measured a mithril Orc and its about 26mm from foot to eye level..The figure is crouching slightly so if straight would be about 28mm
I think the scale debate is more centred on the Games Workshop figures.
Not at all. I’ve got two boxes of WF Vikings that I use as barbarians in my game world, and two boxes of Saxons I use as human militia. They don’t look horribly out of place with the heroic GW stuff on my tabletop. I also use the Perry medieval range as line troops in my human and half orc kingdoms, along with GW Empire and Bretonnian figures. Slightl;y smaller, but again, acceptable, especially if you swap out the weapons for something a bit exaggerated. The LoTr stuff is smaller still. If you’re a 25mm collector they’re great. I’ve sold… Read more »
I don’t know how you’re drawing the conclusion that Wargames Factory are too big for LotR. Maybe their infantry are, I don’t know. But their cavalry are spot on. I took a photo of a Rohirrim and WF Celtic Cavalry model next to each other. Both are roughly the same distance from the camera and are posed similarly, drawing a line from toe to eye, it’s almost exactly the same on both models. On the photograph, it’s 4.19cm but obviously that’s not the case in real life due to image scaling. As far as Scale is concerned if anything I’d… Read more »
“After drawing the sword to protect his people he has become the embodiment of Khaine, his Avatar, and will no doubt be causing quite the drama across Ulthuan.”
Cue Games Workshop releasing the Eldar Avatar model as a Elf model perhaps? I’ve just noticed on the pictures that there is a creature looking very much like an Avatar.