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Many of the sets in this series are thinly disguised copies of Lord of the Rings characters, but with this set there is no disguise at all - the box artwork shows these characters in front of the eye of Sauron. The Black Riders, also known as Nazgûl or Ringwraiths, were nine lords and warriors of men who were given rings of power, but became corrupted and enslaved to the will of Sauron. In the Peter Jackson films they are portrayed as wearing long hooded cloaks which hide their faces, and riding large horses with harness and armour, which is exactly as they are modelled here. The lack of faces certainly gives them extra menace, as do the long sword and dagger each carries. The poses are mostly of holding the sword in various ways, but a couple (second row) look more like they are reaching out for something, perhaps trying to grab a hobbit! The second figure in our third row is different, and apparently is The Mouth of Sauron, while the second foot figure is apparently the witch king, the leader of the Nazgûl. He is also notable for holding the most enormous flail, which would surely be far too heavy for ordinary mortal men to lift and use.

So we have established that these are characters worth avoiding if you come across them, although just about everything about their appearance tends to suggest this anyway. We really liked the sculpting of these figures, particularly the long flowing robes that they all wear, which are very effective and look realistic. However we found many of them to be quite a poor fit with the horses, failing to sit on the saddle without a fair amount of prior trimming. The horses themselves look to be about the normal size for this scale, but some of the poses (the ones with dead straight legs in various directions) looked wrong to us. All have the same kind of saddle and caparison on the rear part of the body, as well as a chamfron to protect the face, and two of the poses also have armour along the neck. We found some of these suffered from a very thin base which made it prone to bending as can be seen above, and a couple are also leaning somewhat, meaning it is tricky to get some to stand properly, especially when a rider is added.

In conclusion then, the sculpting is nice and the figures look great, though there are some elements that customers may find annoying. On our sample there was hardly any flash on each rider or horse, which is always good, so there is much going for this set. Aside from the fact that this set provides 11 of the possible nine members of this select group, it is an appealing collection of models which could certainly have benefited from better horses, but is otherwise an interesting element in the franchise that is so carefully not named anywhere on the box.