We delve into the Path of Cirith Ungol with today’s Middle-Earth unboxing and review! A brand new plastic kit is on the way featuring Shelob and Gollum, and in this article we’re going to take a look at it, see how it goes together and paint it up to see what it looks like in the flesh! Shelob isn’t along though, as we also have the Foot Knights of Dol Amroth rereleased too

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us these kits over early for us to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Middle-Earth goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing and review of the Cirith Ungol and Foot Knights sets, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So let’s check out these kits and take a look at what the finished models look like!

The Path of Cirith Ungol

First up we have the new plastic kit, and it’s a great one! We’ve previously had a metal Shelob before – but this is the first time we’ve got her in plastic. She’s not alone though! The box also contains Gollum and Frodo, well what’s left of him after Shelob has cocooned him!

There’s just a single frame here, and the bulk of the kit actually goes into building the rocks that she is crawling over. This part was the messiest to build, but the rest of her was pretty easy. I was a little worried that the legs would be fiddly to build and hard to position, but they actually went together really well and had clear locator points to place them.

I hate spiders, so this was an interesting one to work on, but I was really happy with how she turned out! She’s quite a big model, sitting on a 100mm base – I’m not sure how big the previous one was, but this new Shelob is suitably imposing on the battlefield (though a little harder to move with her bigger base)

I was really impressed with the Gollum sculpt, and think he’s got a great likeness to the film! I’ve got a couple of older metal ones, but this new one stands up with them – though he is a little fiddly to put together being so small.

One thing missing from this set that I would have liked to see is a new plastic Sam carrying the Phial of Galandriel, but sadly he isnt included. I do wonder if we’ll maybe get a set with the 4 Hobbits at some point, which might explain the omission, but it would have been nice to see him here.

Bar that small quibble though, this is a great kit and I can’t wait to see what rules are in the accompanying book!

Foot Knight of Dol Amroth

Coming alongside the Cirith Ungol book and kit is a rerelease of an old Forge World kit, the Foot Knights of Dol Amroth. Now when I first heard this was on the way to us I was hoping that this would be a new plastic version of the kit, but this is just a rerelease of the old kit with no changes made. Price on this one is £46.50, which while pricey is in line with other resin kits

While an older kit, these still are fun models to build and paint up! There’s quite a lot of options here, parts for a horn blower and banner, a choice of lots of different shields and an assortment of heads (Which makes identifying one as a Captain easy too)

If you’ve not built resin models before one of the things to make sure you do is give them a good wash in soapy water first – Resin models are popped out of a mold and have a release agent on them to make it easier for that to happen. This release agent can resist paint and lead to paint peeling and chipping if you don’t clean it up first.

The models don’t have loads of parts to them, so this is a pretty easy one if you are trying resin for the first time – just make sure you get rid of all the flash and gates with a sharp knife too.

Hopefully one day we see this return in plastic, but until then at least we have this kit for people who want to finish their Dol Amroth forces.

Both of these kits are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 31st January

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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