Nuckelavee

James Torrance, 1901

The lower part of this terrible monster, as seen by Tammie, was like a great horse, with flappers like fins about his legs, with a mouth as wide as a whale's, from whence came breath like steam from a brewing-kettle. He had but one eye, and that as red as fire. On him sat, or rather seemed to grow from his back, a huge man with no legs, and arms that reached nearly to the ground. His head was as big as a clue of simmons, and his huge head kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it was meant to tumble off. But what to Tammie appeared most horrible of all, was that the monster was skinless; this utter want of skin adding much to the terrific appearance of the creatures naked body.

– The Scottish Antiquary, or Northern Notes & Queries, Vol. 5

Nuckelavee is a supernatural creature originating from the Orkney Islands. During summer, it was confined to the sea by the Sea Mother, and I assume it became free to rampage on land after the Gore Vellye and the return of Teran from the bottom of the sea.

I picked up the Nuckelavee miniature from the Pathfinder Battles line (Ruins of Lastwall #28) because I thought it was an interesting sculpt, and it seemed like it might be large enough to look like various artistic representations of the monster.

Unforunately, the miniature was not as large as I thought it would be, and the humanoid portion of the monster is actually similar in size to a 1/72 scale human rather than the 28mm human I was expecting.

To fix the miniature up a bit, I decided to replace the humanoid portion with the upper half of a necrotic warrior from the Arcane Legions game.

I also drilled out the existing eyes of the horse head, and added a new eye to the center of it's forehead.

I may replace the head later, since the humanoid part of Nuckelavee was described as being akin to a monstrous bobble-head, but I like the necrotic warrior head, since other accounts mention that it had a protruding muzzle.

There's still a bit more work to be done, and I'm playing around with the idea of incorporating parts of the design from the RWBY Nuckelavee in my conversion, but I think what I have so far is a pretty good start.

RWBY, Vol. 4 Ep. 10

Arcane Legions Released

Arcane Legions was released today, so armed with a 15% discount coupon from Pair a Dice Games in nearby Vista, I picked up a two-player starter set and a Han booster set. The starter set comes with two sprues of infantry and one commander for each of the major factions in the game. The figures are molded in a very dense gray plastic. Shields come pre-painted, with stenciled designs on the front. I was informed that CA glue works very well for attaching the shields and separate limbs to the figures.

Han Chinese

Egyptians

Romans

Commanders

Boosters come with one rare hero, and two rare/uncommon specialty units. The figures are painted, and come individually sealed. The painting was not quite as awful as I was expecting, though some of the color choices seemed rather questionable.

The hero figure is Zhongli Quan, a real-life Han Dynasty general who was deified as one of the Eight Immortals.


The specialty units I received were the Wu Tou Gui and Goryo. These figures come in linked bags of several identical miniatures. I think I am short one figure, since one of the bags for the Wu Tou Gui seems to be empty. I actually like these figures a lot. I don't know why, but translucent plastic miniatures just seem really cool. The Wu Tou Gui are molded in clear plastic, while the Goryo are molded in translucent green plastic.


I removed the basing pegs from some of the figures to do size comparisons. I'm still deciding whether to do so for each pose or not.

Zhongli Quan, Terracotta Spearman A, and Han Sharpshooter compared to Caesar Qin Dynasty Army.


The standard Arcane Legions figures seem more slender than the Caesar figures, but I think they go well together. I like the fact that there are a lot of infantry with ge-halberds, something that is sadly deficient in the Caesar set.

Cursed Swordsman and Cursed Spearman compared to Eagle Games Mummy.


Very cool, but why are mummies always so tall?

Arcane Legions Egyptian Archer compared to Caesar and Atlantic Egyptian archers.


Arcane Legions Formation Legionary compared to Airfix, LW, and Atlantic legionaries. Also, a Heavy Legionary at the end, in apparently what is some sort of powered armor.



Overall, I'll have to say I'm not disappointed. I like the Han and Egyptians the best. A couple of the poses seem a bit far-fetched (e.g. the Charging Han Infantry), and the sculpting is somewhat simplistic, but the figures are usable, and making them in 1/72 is definitely a plus. Images of all the figures can be found at the Arcane Legions website.

The Future of 1/72 Fantasy

In 1/72 Fantasy Review, a hope was expressed that with the release of miniatures from Dark Hold and Caesar, the long neglected field of 1/72 fantasy would bloom. This was in 2006, and unfortunately, Dark Hold soon ceased production of their figures, while Caesar never made more than a few basic sets of figures.

It is now 2009, and once again, two companies are attempting to enter the field. During spring, Dark Alliance (Orion?) released a set of 1/72 orcs, with possible Light Alliance 1/72 elves to come in the future. Then coming in fall, Wells Expeditions will be releasing the CMG Arcane Legions with what appears to be 1/72 miniatures.

I was told that the average male figure would measure 25mm to the top of his head, which is great news for all 1/72 fantasy aficionados. The base set for the game will contain 110 figures. Army packs will contain 40 unpainted figures, cavalry packs will contain 15 unpainted figures, and booster packs will contain 8 painted figures. The game will consist of three factions: Rome, Egypt, and China. So far, most of the images that have been released are for the Egyptians.



The Egyptian undead are typical for the genre, and look thoroughly desiccated. I'm guessing that there is probably some sort of peg under the base so that they will plug into the movement stand.


Most of their other creatures however, don't seem to fit into the category of classical mythology. Below are some images taken from the Arcane Legions Facebook Group, and an unreleased image of an Anubian Guard.