A good many years ago I saw an impressive Lord of the Rings chess set, with magnificent board, at a trendy upscale shop. Unfortunately, that set was as expensive as it was incredible and Eaglemoss's Lord of the Ring-themed set will likely follow that same trend.

Eaglemoss has long produced painted lead figurines with informative magazine pack-ins but it wasn't until relatively recently that they made the intuitive decision to turn some of those properties into chess sets (thus allowing them to re-sell many of the same characters!). Their Batman chess set has been growing by leaps and bounds but now we also have a Lord of the Rings set to drool over. And I emphasize admire rather than buy because each piece in the set will run you around US$16 meaning that the full collection (meaning twenty pieces) will be a hearty US$320 before shipping which will strike most collectors as being a bit much.

However, that doesn't mean you can't buy *some* of the pieces and just skip the rest of the set. I mean, these are the usual decent-but-not-exceptional quality figurines that Eaglemoss puts out. The first four selections will be Aragorn (white king), Gandalf (white bishop), Gothmog (black bishop), and Gollum (black pawn). By the way, quick point of contention here: while I agree that Gollum is a perfect pick for a pawn, the character really had no faction in the novels/films because he had no intention of restoring Sauron. Actually, as such, I wouldn't be surprised if he also appeared as a white pawn.

At any rate, the figurines seen thus far seem to be of okay quality with Gollum (and his awesome base) being the only real stand-out. If the will of a collector fails this day then said collector can pre-order them now for around US$16 each.

[ Pre-order at Big Bad Toy Store ]