So, as requested - nay, demanded! - here is the first part of my report on the new toys I got whilst at Salute.
To begin with, something that I found and had had no intention of getting - the first pack from
Commando Miniatures 'End of Empire' range. These figures are designed for the various post-WW2 conflicts that the British Army was involved in - e.g. Aden, Indonesia, Malaya, etc. I succumbed to the temptation of them as this is another rarely gamed period/theatre (much like the 14th Army) and they had a launch offer of the 6 figure pack for £5 instead of £7. Now I've got the figures home and looked at them, I'm not ... overwhelmed with joy that I've got them ... the quality of the sculpts is not that brilliant - in particular, there is just something odd about the face of the guy in the middle of the first pic, and the left hand of the bren gunner is detached and just floating in the air beneath his gun ... but overall the figures are acceptable. When you buy the pack you get a choice of SLRs or Armalites as weapons - I went for SLRs, but forgot to include them in the photo - d'oh! The final pic shows a couple of accessory packs I got - machetes and radios (£1/pack)
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| 3 figs from pack - middle guy has Sterling SMG & odd face |
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| other 3 figs in pack |
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| accessory packs |
Next up -
Essex Miniatures Saxons (listed as 25mm, but matching my Gripping Beast 28mm plastics). I got these to add some variety to my Anglo-Saxon warband for SAGA. They are quite nice figures - nothing fancy, but nothing negative about them either. That said, they do have the smallest bases of any 28mm figure I've ever bought!
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| l - clubman, m+r - spearmen (spears are separate) |
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| l-r - bowman, clubman, spearman, bowman (bows + spear separate) |
Each faction is different in SAGA and has its own 'Heroes of the Viking Age' that it can select to give them a warlord with extra abilities, albeit at extra cost. The Anglo-Saxons can select "Aelfred the Great" for theirs who has several great abilities, but is weaker in combat than a 'normal' warlord. I'd like to try him out, so decided to get a mounted saxon to use for him (so he can runaway faster!). Surfing the net I found 'SK1 Mounted General' in Essex mini's list and
the pic from their site (top left on page) looked perfect. However, when I collected him at Salute, I was more than disappointed with the 'variant' I'd got, and found that he didn't come with a horse! Anyway, the figure is in the pic below, along with the Gripping Beast plastic warlord I'm using. I intend to remove the metal figure's head and replace with a spare plastic head (from the GB box) identical to that on the plastic warlord below. I also have a horse I can use for him luckily. I'll put more pics up as the conversion progresses.
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| l - GB plastic Warlord; r - disappointing 'mounted general' |
To round off the additions to my SAGA warband I also got the
Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd box. Long-term followers of my blogging efforts will recall that I have had previous experience with Wargames Factory figures, specifically their Zombies which I was quite disappointed with, to the point where I used quite a few as corpses rather than Zeds.
So, it was with some trepidation that I opened the Saxon Fyrd box, but I'm happy to report that these seem much better than the zeds, and I've already started putting them together and will put pictures of them in a later post.
Finally for this post, are some scenic items I got from
S&A Scenics. I got 8 of these trees:
3 of the pools on the left (to indicate patches of marsh) and 6 of the rocks on the right (to indicate rough/broken ground).Very nice pieces that I'm well pleased with!
