Many of you reading this may not know this, but when I was younger I played miniatures wargames. These are games without a board, where you have armies of metal or plastic miniatures that you line up along a table or other playing surface (I have used a demarcated area of the floor in the past), and then you have at it. I mostly played either fantasy or sci-fi games, but I haven't actually played any of those in a number of years. Playing with painted figures is a great spectacle, though, so I have always had a soft spot for gaming miniatures. I still collect some of them, when I find something that catches my eye. For example, I have this wonderful miniature of Napoleon Bonaparte on horseback that is much more fun to use when playing
Field Commander: Napoleon than the cardboard counter that comes with the game.
A few years ago (I don't remember quite when, exactly) I picked up a miniature set on eBay of the attack on Weathertop in the first Lord of the Rings book/movie, where Aragorn and the hobbits are at Weathertop and the nazgul attack. Five nazgul, Aragorn, four hobbits, and a little campfire came in the set. Even when I was bidding on the miniatures, I knew that this begged to be done up in a nice diorama. Alas, my modeling skills are essentially nonexistent, so this wasn't something that I could do myself with any hope of having a quality result. So, I contacted Fineline Studios, and they were able to do it up for me. It wasn't cheap, but the result is quite impressive, as is evident by the photographs below. I apologize ahead of time for my lousy camera skills, but hopefully the craftsmanship comes through.
