Received #348 of the Exclusive edition last week after making my final flex payment and I am floored by this piece. The only other dio from the LOTR line I have is the Duel of Fire and Light, so I had no idea of the scale of the humanoid pieces, and I was pretty surprised to see how big the individual Ringwraiths were.
The individual sculpts of the Ringwraiths are fantastic, and the metal swords are a nice touch. I was a little apprehensive attaching the swords to each individual Ringwraith as some force was required, but was able to do so correctly with some care. One other thing too keep in mind is to take care in moving the Ringwraiths once on the Weathertop base. More than once I bumped into another Ringwarith as I was moving one around. Luckily, there was no damage.
My initial reaction upon seeing the proto pics was that the Amon Sul base was too small and not illustrative enough of the environment as the previous dios in the LOTR dio line were; even with a limited size, Helm's Deep and Orthanc were represented beautifully in their respective dios (at least from the photos I've seen, as I do not own these pieces). However, having this dio in hand, one realizes that a larger, more detailed base is unnecessary as the Nazgul, not the environment, are the focal point of the piece. Sure, it would have been nice to have some of the broken statues in the background of Weathertop, but as is, the sculpt of each Ringwraith conveys their menace perfectly.
The display box is fantastic as well, and probably my favorite Sideshow display box to date, regardless of the line. The box has an eerie green color scheme, reminiscent of the evil glow of Mionas Morgul, and the stylized font is perfect in the design scheme.
Unfortunately, the final production piece of Frodo is not as great as the proto piece, and I am somewhat disappointed in this. In all honesty, I do not feel the extra Frodo piece and the smaller edition size was worth the extra $50 for the exclusive edition. Perhaps if the production Frodo's paint application was as good as the one shown for the proto pics, I would feel differently.
Despite this and the fact that I only own two of the LOTR dios and cannot make a truly informed judgment, I feel this is the best piece Sideshow has to offer in their dio line, and look forward to more dios now that all the remaining LOTR dios have shipped.
I'd like to get a better idea of the actual scale.
