Linear-A Jason and the Argonauts

Linear-A has just released a couple of kits based on the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, best known for the visual effects created by Ray Harryhausen.

The recent 3D printed Linear-A sets have been expensive, and these are no exception. The Hydra, Golden Fleece, and Skeleton Army set (LA136) runs about US$45, while the Talos and Crew set (LA121) runs a whopping US$70.

I went ahead and bought the Hydra set because of the skeletons, but passed on the Talos set due to the price.

I've seen some talk claiming the high prices are due to licensing, but I doubt that is the case. I see no markings on the packaging crediting the Ray Harryhausen Film Library or Columbia Pictures.

In addition, similar products such as the Oxus Civilization and Jesus Story sets released at the same time are similarly priced.

With regard to the Talos set, it includes two multi-part Talos models, but it's not clear how big they are.

In any event, options for sofubi and polystone Talos figures exist from X-Plus, and come in 8", 12", and even 20" sizes.

The 20" Star Ace version is prohibitively expensive for most people, but the smaller figures can be found for around the same price as the Linear-A set.

The box for these sets are quite large compared to their normal boxes.

The largely empty box makes the contents seem rather meager though, given the price.

You can actually fit four of the regular sized Linear-A boxes inside, with room to spare.

Anyway, the two human figures in the set are King Aeetes with his basket of Hydra teeth, and Jason poised to fight the Hydra or Spartoi.

I feel that the figures are actually better scaled than the previous Linear-A sets that I have reviewed, which I felt were on the big and bulky side (particularly for people of antiquity).

The Hydra from the set is a faithful representation of the creature from the film, and the size is quite reasonable.

The other figure on the left is a Mage Knight Hydra, which I wrote about along with other Hydra miniatures in another post.

The Golden Fleece is also quite reminescent of the one from the movie, although the tree is on the bulky side.

The painted Golden Fleece on the left is produced by Crocodile Games.

Jason v. Hydra clip

Of course in actual Greek mythology, it was the Colchian Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece (which I have written about here), instead of the Hydra.

Last up are the skeletons (or Children of the Hydra's Teeth) which are printed in green resin, and quite faithful to their appearance in the movie.

The skeletons may seem frail if you are used to metal or injection plastic skeletons, but they are accurately proportioned. My main peeve though, is that they count the skeletons rising from the ground as three separate poses.

Star Ace Children of the Hydra's Teeth
(Statue, singular)

Argonauts v. Skeletons clip

Overall, I'm satisfied with the set I purchased. I'm not sure if I will buy a lot of these 3D printed Linear-A sets in the future, but we'll see.

Generic no-name medieval and fantasy figures

I recently bought a set of bootleg Caesar figures that had been brought to my attention by a reader a while back. I had seen the likes of them on eBay and Amazon before, but never placed an order because I had the nagging feeling that they would be bigger than 1/72 scale.

The figures look so big here...

I decided to take a chance after finding some being sold for a low price, and soon received a bagged set of 200 miniatures bearing the title "Ancient wars" in the mail.

The majority of these figures are based on Caesar figures, and I'm pretty sure that they are actually a bit larger than the originals, but I haven't been able to do an actual comparison.

Due to their nature, they are obviously not as well defined as the original Caesar miniatures.

There are 12 poses made of plastic that is on the hard side. The material still has a bit of flexibility, but a couple of the figures in the bag did have broken parts.

The distribution of colors in the bag was not equal, and I received more gold figures than black ones. I might get some of the other colors in the future.

Even more interesting are some fantasy figures I found on Etsy. I'm not sure if they were originally intended as game pieces, or if they are just regular toys, but some of the poses seem vaguely familiar to me.

A–D

E–H

I–L

M–P

The figures come in 16 poses, and are made of a soft rubbery vinyl material. Each pose is marked with a different letter on the underside of the base.

They are sold in multicolored, gold, and silver sets. I originally ordered a multicolored set, but I think those sets come with a random assortement of poses.

Upon inquiry, the store was kind enough to send me a replacement order of gold figures that included all of the different poses.

The multicolored figures have a pearlescent hue, while the gold figures have a nice metallic sheen. I don't have any examples of the silver figures, and I think there is a purple colored plastic that isn't represented in my batch.

The detail on the figures is definitely on the soft side, with some being rather crudely sculpted, but overall I rather like them.

I would say that despite being soft on detail, both sets of figures still make decent 1/72 scale gaming pieces, particularly if you have to deal with gamers who are not respectful with your painted miniatures.

New Elhiem Fantasy Figures

Concept art by Greg Taylor

I just received an order from Elhiem that included the figures from their new fantasy line.

Matt has been transitioning from creating weapons and head sculpts using 3D renders to sculpting entire figures digitally, and I have to say he has succeeded spectacularly.

These figures were completely mastered from 3D prints produced by digital sculpts, but they don't have the sterile, artificial appearance of typical CAD drawings, and don't look appreciably different from hand sculpted miniatures.

The first set is the Adventure Party (FAN01), consisting of cleric, halfling rogue, wizard, barbarian, elf ranger, and fighter.

The figures are all tall (heroic 1/72?), but still well within the height range of normal humans. The halfling seems particularly tall to me, but perhaps not so much for someone who prefers the interpretation from the Lord of the Rings movies.

The next image shows the Evil Trinity (FAN03) made up of a lich, wizard, and undead knight.

The wizard and lich are the most impressive in my opinion, because they really don't look like digital sculpts at all. I think the only thing that gives the lich away are what appear to be very faint layer lines on his cloak.

Again, the figures are all tall, with the lich being on the high end of the spectrum.

The final image is of the Female Fighter and Elf Sorceress (FAN04), and the Alternative Barbarian (FAN02) next to the regular barbarian from the Adventure Party set.

The Female Fighter is extremely tall – about as tall as the Alternative Barbarian who scales out to 6' 9" (206cm) by my estimation. The female elf is tall as well, but I'm okay with that.

The Alternative Barbarian is a larger, slightly different version of the regular barbarian. I'm pretty sure the base model was just scaled up slightly to make the alternative sculpt, but unlike the North Star 3D prints that I criticized for using proportional scaling to adjust height, the Elhiem model looks fine to my eye.

Overall, I am very happy with these figures. Some of the sculpts seem a bit tall, and I would personally have liked to see the wizards and human females be a little shorter, but that is just my preference. Also, the figures may appear a bit static for some people, but I like these types of poses for gaming use.

Anyway, I hope to see more figures released for this line, and now that I have a good idea of what to expect, I plan on voting for production of Dark Elves (and maybe the regular Elves as well).

New Dark Alliance Figures

I just received the latest figures from the Dark Alliance line, consisting of one set of Mummies and two sets of Corsairs.

The Mummies are the first set of Egyptian undead in plastic that are actually the size of average humans.

The figures are well sculpted, with nice thin limbs and emaciated faces. Unfortunately, several figures had weapons that were short shot. In any event, the figures can easily be used as other types of undead like [well coordinated] zombies, skeletons, or Mrur.

I'm sure these will be a welcome addition for those who play Warhammer in 1/72 scale and have been waiting to assemble a Tomb Kings army.

The next two sets of figures are what I assume to be Corsairs of Umbar from The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is said to have modeled the Corsairs after the Barbary corsairs of the 16th century. In the lore of Middle Earth, they are the descendants of Númenóreans who were corrupted after Sauron played on the hubris of their kings.

The Corsairs in the Peter Jackson adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy look (to me) like a cross between OG and TNG Klingons from Star Trek.

Corsairs of Umbar

Klingons: TOS

Klingons: TNG

The Dark Alliance Corsairs are clearly modeled after the designs from the movie. Set 1 consists of melee weapon troops, which include corsairs armed with swords, axes and polearms, and nautical themed weapons.

Set 2 consists of missile weapon troops. The first image is of archers, with a Haradrim archer from the War of the Rings boardgame thrown in at the far right for comparison.

The next image is of crossbowmen, with the last two figures on the right being the crew of the ballistas included with the set.

If you don't do Middle Earth or fantasy gaming, I think that the figures (outside of the archers and the swordsman with the weird shield) could easily be used as generic 16th-17th century pirates if you are not too picky.

Oiorpata

Amazons were titled Androktones (Killers of Men) by Herodotus, who said that this name was a direct translation of Oiorpata, the name they were known by in the Scythian language.

There are various claims surrounding the origins of the Amazons, but the majority of those believing Amazons to be historical fact agree that they came from somewhere in Central Asia. Evidence is provided from excavations of kurgans containing remains putatively identified as women warriors.

Others note that Amazons are always encountered outside of the confines of the civilized Greek world, and see them more as allegorical representatives of barbaric lands where law and rationality were completely inverted from the norm.

In ancient Greek imagery, Amazons have frequently been depicted as wearing Scythian dress, with headgear representative of the enemy du jour.

Amazon wearing Scythian cap.

Amazon with sagaris wearing Phrygian cap.

Amazon wearing Persian(?) cap.

At other times, they are depicted as wearing Greek-style armor and helmets.

Hippolyte (mounted) in Greek-style armor, while her
companion wears Scythian garb with a Greek helmet.

Heracles taking down an Amazon wearing Greek-style armor.

Modern imagery is varied, but ranges from typical fantasy cheesecake armor, to what is more or less Greek-style armor.

Anyway, the first set of plastic 1/72 scale Amazons were produced last year by Dark Alliance. They followed up this year with the release of Modern Amazons.

The initial set of Amazons, are dressed in a mix of fantasy and quasi-historical armor.

Archers from Set 1

Sword and spears from Set 1

Spear and sword from Set 2

There was a lot of flash on the figures, and I found the waxy plastic used for the production of these figures to be particularly difficult to work with when trying to clean them up.

The latest set of Amazons have a modern aesthetic that includes a mix of medieval plate armor, cleavage, and bare midriffs.

They are figurative rather than actual Amazons, and fall more accurately into the classification of "fantasy female warriors".

Swords from Set 1

Dual wield, polearms, and archer from Set 1

The archer seems to be different from what is shown on the back of the box. The figures I received had short, unfeathered shafts in their quivers.

I'd be interested to know if others buying this set actually get fully cast arrows for their figures.

These figures had even more flash than the previous sets, but the plastic has a firmer consistency, making clean-up somewhat easier.

I thought it was particularly funny that for more than half of the figures, no matter how heavily armored they were from the front, that their backsides were always exposed.

Looks like an album cover for 2 Live Crew...

The set of Mounted Modern Amazons may be of particular interest to many because of the mounts included in the set.

There was very little flash with this set, and the plastic has a harder consistency that makes clean-up very easy.

Finally, I present a couple of Ral Partha Amazons (Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night 01-085) portrayed in heroic nudity, and a [Amazon] High Priestess from the Wizards and Clerics box set (The Adventurers 98-001).

A comparison of some of the taller Dark Alliance Amazons, and a Ral Partha Amazon.