I like them, quite a bit actually. I can see this spiralling out of control pretty easily if I'm not careful. The KotD is neat, but this is just the second one I picked up, either as trade bait, to help someone out or to sell down the road on ebay. It was there, so I grabbed it.
The Morgul Lord is part of a larger plan that should end up with me having 7 wraiths of some sort. I would like one on horse, though the Mouth of Sauron pack should accomplish that rather nicely. I have a $25 GC for Amazon, so I may order it there and use that up. It is a very nice figure and necessary to have in the collection, IMO. Not too concered about the other wraiths in terms of makeup, whatever I can find relatively cheap.
The mouth of Sauron set will also fill my gaps for Aragorn, Legolas and give me the white Gandalf. I had a trilogy white Gandalf, but once I decided to get these figures, I passed that off to my collecting buddy here in the office. He's more of a LOTR fan than SW, as much because of the better distribution of the toys as anything else. We get most, if not all of the figures here, they cost the same (or less, depending on retailer) as SW figures and are bluntly, better value for the money. The only drawback to the set is another Gimli, so my offer of a free one still stands, I'll have two at some point.
There and Back Again will get me my Hobbitses. Not necessarily my favorite versions, but easily the most inexpensive route. I'll either pick it up cheap on ebay or wait until the local retailer marks them down sufficiently. Shouldn't they cost half as much as regular figures?
I'll then need a Sauron, Saruman, Gollum, Boromir and Elrond to fill out what I think I want in this line. Any Gollum/Smeagol will do for me, so waiting until the massive backload of these figures gets clearanced, there's so many around. Sauron I'll watch and see if I can get cheap. Likely not, so off to TRU is the most probable solution. Saruman and Boromir can come from the trilogy line. Elrond I can wait for the new robed version. It does look better and makes more sense, in my mind, anyway. Sword slashing Elrond?
I have Galadriel, Arwen and Eowyn on the trilogy cards already. My original intent (and now perhaps my justification) is that I think my daughter will enjoy these movies tremendously when she is older. I picked up those figures for her, but thought perhaps she needed some boys to play with as well (take that in the manner intended please). I suspect (hope) the wraiths will remain mine with the old wizard. But she will undoubtedly take over the Aragorn and Legolas figures to be sure.
Orc's etc. do not interest me. Key characters to be sure, but minor in most aspects. Too many to chase, too little interest on my part. The same goes for relatively
minor characters such as Faramir, Grima, etc. I say minor with a grain of salt of course, but I do want to limit the line in some way.
I may trundle over to RS to see if I can hawk some of my Star Wars stuff to get some LOTR stuff in return. It may work. I'd do it here, but don't foresee much interest.
In other news, I received my Sauron mini-mates today. Nice pieces, but I have little intent with this line. If someone here needs one, LMK, I have extras. The lack of intent has everything to do with the poor distribution of mini-mates up north. I'm sure they'll be cool, but I've managed to stay away from everything except Mr. Spock for me and McCoy for the Mrs.
Speaking of the Mrs. and totally off on another tangent, she pilfered a Chewbacca today for her office. The path to the dark side is slow, but inexorable.
