Lewis Collins

This one is incredibly special for me, being the designer as part of the Middle-Earth team that got to make these was a dream come true!!

Plastic Mordor Orcs were the first miniatures I was brought back in 2004 and from that point on I was hooked! So being able to re-do this kit was just a dream project, the Lord of the Rings films have been such a huge part of my life since the day I saw Fellowship in the cinema, and the miniatures GW produced were a way for me to enjoy that journey in a new and exciting way all over again, up until that point I kind of felt lost as a child and wasn’t really sure what direction in life I wanted to take as none of it really seemed to excite me particularly, until I watched the behind the scenes DVDs of return of the king and specifically the “Bigiatures” section where they showed the amazing team at Weta creating the miniatures for the films, and that was it, it all made sense and I felt a direction and excitement and knew “that’s what I’m going to do” - fast forward 22 years and I’ve been able to remake the models that got me started and effectively gave my life a purpose and from which everything great in my life has then come from!

When designing the kit there were a few things I had in mind, we wanted them to capture the feel of the original Perry metals, and there were some helmet designs that we really wanted to see, there were also a couple of fan favorites from the plastic orcs gone before, but this was a chance to refine and tweak those, but whilst retaining their “essence” - for me as a gamer of SBG one of the biggest things I wanted to tackle was the orc bowmen, so may of my friends, myself included have frames with 2 orc archers still attached, and that always made me sad, that 2 of your 12 models may not be used in matched play games because they just aren’t that useful en masse, so making the archers have options to use hand weapons and shields was something I just had to make happen! And I’m so glad I did, there will be no waste for competitive players!

Customisation was also a huge driver for me, and convertibility! #gamesworkshop #lordoftherings #warhammercommunity #warhammer40000 #warhammer40k