Cimmerians

The Cimmerians were a tribe of steppe people who (according to Herodotus), were driven from their homeland north of the Black Sea by the Scythians.

Battle between Greeks and Cimmerians shown on a sarcophagus from Clazomenae.

They migrated southward, sowing chaos in their path for a century or so, before being broken by the Assyrians and Lydians, and passing into obscurity.

Battle between Assyrians and Cimmerians shown on a bas-relief from Nimrud.

The popular perception of the Cimmerian however, comes from the fiction of Robert E. Howard, who characterized them as the descendants of Atlanteans, and the progenitors of the Gaels.

It is more in the image of these later Cimmerians that the Dark Alliance Cimmerians were made.

The figures are essentially the male equivalent of the Dark Alliance Modern Amazons, with mostly bare-chested, mighty thewed, hair metal barbarians.

The set is advertised as having 40 figures in 10 poses, but there are actually 44 figures in 11 poses. The figure on the far right in the following picture is part of the set, but not shown on the back of the box.

The figure on the far right in the following picture is the lone unmounted figure from the Mounted Cimmerians set.

He is obviously modeled after the former Governator of my state from his breakout role in Conan the Barbarian.

The second set contains figures with more of a death metal/chaos warrior look, who might fit as a modern interpretation of Homer's description of Cimmerians as "dwellers in a land of fog and darkness, at the edge of the world and the entrance of Hades".

The figure on the far right in the following picture is a bit of an oddity in that he is dressed as a berserker, but appears to be wielding a magician's staff (perhaps Dark Alliance was taking the description of berserkers as shamanic warriors too literally).

One thing that I noticed with these sets, was that there was a high percentage of particular figures that were short-shot. Three of the four figures of the spearman pose from Set 1 did not have a properly formed spear tip (I thought the figure was wielding a magician's staff at first).

All of the figures of the single-bladed axe man pose from Set 2 were missing the left horn on their helmets. I reconstructed the horn from melted sprue for the figure in the picture above.

Otherwise, I like these sets. I can see swapping parts between these figures to create Thorgrim and Rexor from the Conan movie, and even the Kurgan from Highlander.