Daughters of Ares

During the 80's, Roger Corman was looking to cash in on the success of Conan the Barbarian, and figured that producing some films with a dash of Argentine sensibilities would be the way to go.

Barbarian Queen

Amazons

What resulted has been described by critics as being an unusual mix of feminist movie and exploitation flick. Corman has also claimed that these movies were the inspiration for the Xena Warrior Princess TV show in later years.

The characterization of these Corman produtions is probably analogous to how one might view the latest set of 1/72 Amazons produced by Linear A.

There are 12 poses made in dark brown plastic.

The figures are largely portrayed in heroic nudity, and are very reminiscent of the Alliance Amazons, except with less clothing. The majority of figures look characteristically Greek, while the sitting figure has a vaguely Egyptian appearance.

Linear A in brown, Alliance in gray

I don't have much more to say about them, but I'm sure there are going to be as many people who belittle these figures as there are those who will have a use for them.

A comparison of Linear A Amazon, Dark Alliance Amazon, and a Ral Partha Amazon.

4D Sd.Kfz. 7

I just received the latest 1/72 scale 4D branded quick build model in the mail, so I took a few minutes to do a quick write-up about it. This time, their subject is the Sd.Kfz. 7 8-ton half-tracked personnel carrier (八吨半履带运兵车).

The model is primarily made of ABS plastic, with 53 parts in dark gray, 3 parts in black, 1 clear windshield, and 2 tracks made of vinyl. The black ABS front wheels have the centers pre-painted in dark gray to match the plastic of the rest of the model.

It took about 30 minutes to put the model together, with most of the time spent repairing some unintended damage that occurred while I was making some final adjustments on the model.

Most of this is invisible after assembly

I didn't follow the provided wheel assembly instructions exactly.

Add parts 6 and 7

Add part 4 (pay attention to the orientation)

Add assembly A1 and part 5

Add part 1

I added the front wheels to the chassis, but pushed them too far in so that when the upper body was added they were set too deeply into the wheel wells. I tried to pull them out a bit to adjust the distance, but ended up breaking one of the attachment points, which required some drilling and pinning to fix.

The tracks are pretty bad

My recommendation is to add the front wheels after attaching the upper body, so that you can adjust the proper distance with the fenders as a reference point.

Add windshield first, then instrument panel

The pegs for the steering wheel column and gear levers need a bit of filing to plug into their holes, but all the other parts fit without too much effort. The rifles are pretty rudimentary and don't look particularly good though.

Note the orientation of the rifles

Serious modelers will probably scoff at the kit like they usually do with 4D quick build models, but there are plenty of other choices for them with regards to the Sd.Kfz. 7.

Overall, I think this half-track is a great value for the price, and I will most likely pick up a couple more. I think there may be a version made in tan plastic as well, but I haven't seen it on eBay yet.

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