F is for Finally Finished Finding Festering Feted Filibuster Fellows!

Another perennial on ITLAPD is the Supreme pirates, and while I've had no problems getting a decent sample of the living pirates, the undead were taking forever to track down, however in a big lot I finally tracked down the missing two poses.

And this is all six with duplicates (no I can't remember what I was thinking - maybe colour variations which were drowned-out by the flash?), I think the yellow one and the purple one are the elusive pair . . . I know I was up to four last time we looked at them!

While, as I say, the 'living' pirates are really quite common and appear in various paint-schemes, so I just keep adding them! If you hold a blunderbuss like that, you are going to burn you hand!

Knives; nasty wounds! Note the guy shading his eyes - lower pose has another dagger in his belt, these two are 'tooled-up'!

The other two; I think the ones with coloured bases must have come-out first (with the undead), and then when they dropped the undead (?), they just kept pushing out the normal ones?

MPC is for Many Pestilent Creatures!

Bit of a box-ticker, but - like the Cherilea Chinese the other day - a nice set, while also perfect for Halloween!

MPC's 60mm horror figure set, I think I have all of them, and seem to remember reading that some of these are 'late' colours and some 'early', which - as they all came together from serious collectors - must make mine an intermediate sample!

The set references various tropes of popular culture as applied to horror, gothic sensibilities or the occult and from top left to bottom-right in either image are;

Count Dracula/Vampire type

Dr Frankenstein's Monster/Lurch type

Wolf-Man/Werewolf (with bat's ears?)

Mummy/Zombie

Death/The Grim Reaper

Living Dead/Skeleton (with pet bat)

Psycho/Night-stalker/Ripper/Serial-killer type (the one I don't like!)

Witch (with drunken pet bat!)

Pretty standard MPC base marks and hole, really just here to make the post!

Now this is nice; obviously around 120mm, and made in a sort of . . . well . . . foamed polystyrene? But not expanded, soft packaging type stuff, it's more like the recycled mixed polymers you get turned into beams for residential-street name-plates or park bench struts? Anyway - it's tough and hard wearing, a bit cartoony but really a nice sculpt of a Count Dracula type vampire about to pounce.

I just can't remember where it came from; I think it was a purchase, but it may have come from someone, so apologies if I'm not crediting you? And no markings of any kind, so a branding/origin still sought for this fine chap.

 

He's the Charbens 4-and-1/2-inch range, they did several and a Batman & Robin

B is for Bonus Buccaneers!

I need to crop these and spellcheck the post so i will edit it tomorrow, but shiver-me-timbers as I just checked my Hotmail before leaving the Libary and found these! So a late bonus (I'll shed-yule them for 16.00, it's now 15,33 and I know the 4th post has only just published!) courtasy of Brian Berke; they look to be the Ja-Ru figures painted-up, with scaleing 'Beserker' from crescent!

U is for Undead part 1 - Overview/Comparison

At this time of year, snow on the ground, family in our thoughts, friends round, cards, food, gifts and a real fire, carols on the radio in the background and your favorite comedy on the flickering Cods eye, I find there is nothing quite as festive as the blood-curdling screams of skeletal warriors hacking each other to the last scrap of DNA.

Being serious; when I did the unfinished projects a couple of three weeks ago, there were a few other 'back burners' I'd forgotten and this is one of them. I love the Undead, but I hate Games Workshop, so this group pulls me both ways.

They used to give you 8 warriors for around a fiver, now they give you 5 figures for what? £12-odd? Someone like HaT will sell you 40+ figures for £4.99, yet GW have the global empire...as the Americans would say - Go Figure!

The entire contents of one set, 3 poxy poses, no animation, no arm variations and; are the two on the right injecting steroids into their heads? The whole set appears to have been sculpted in Plasticine with a toothpick and GW are so sure you'll f**k-up the basing, the only spares they give you are 3 extra bases. The kids who buy into this stuff are being taken for a ride by an over confident, arrogant 'Corp', and I sincerely hope the proliferation of new 28mm producers spells the end of their (GW's) hold on the market.

The old sprue, gave you 4 poses, 5 weapon/arm positions (one a spare), separate shields, positionable heads, 5 weapons...did I say 5 weapons...

...sorry, I of course meant 13 different weapon arms, at various angles and attitudes.

The fact that I have a set of the new ones at all is down to GW's reliance on that Corporate American trick, the 'Contents are subject to change or may vary' type thing. I won't make that mistake again. The old one's I buy on eBay as I've tried never to pay full whack for GW.

U is for Undead part 2 - Infantry

Infantry are the backbone of an army, even if it's a rather odd backbone!

The real beauty of the old set was it's almost Historex/Airfix Multi-pose aspect, the little ball socket joints at neck and shoulder made it very easy to produce variation without all those angle joins and filler you would need with more 'solid' figures.

"Cu'mon Mo, drop the sword, putt'em-up, putt'em-up, what's with the helmet woose? I'll take you with one hand behind my back, eh dude? One-on-one, Mano-et-Mano, you Lilly-livered son of a Siberian shit-shoveller"

"Will you just wait there while I find you arm and beat you to death with it"

'Two legs good, four legs better'. I will - one day! - get a bit of filler in his hips to make a better join. Once he had four legs, the head was a natural progression!

Comparison between the grace of the old design and the clay like clumsiness of the new product. QEII is laid up, Concord no longer flies, Digital is no better than Terrestrial with less coverage (Channel 5 will be twenty years old before half the UK are able to get a good picture!) and GW are pedalling backwards with this set!

U is for Undead part 3 - Cavalry

I don't know if cavalry were ever part of the GW 'vision' (another thing I hate about GW, it's their rules or no play today kiddo!), I've certainly never found mounted legs, but as they are skeletal all you have to do is bend the legs in a bit, add a touch of glue and Bob's your fleshless Uncle!

Defending against Cavalry attack, I wish now I'd left the shield off, it's going to whack his leg when he brings the sword over his head! The other guy cowers quite convincingly though.

If you're going to put a horned horses head on a four legged man, you might as well put the mans head on the horse/cow body...No?

More of the same, sadly there was only the one pose of this animal and I didn't try much with it until I started the chariot.

U is for Undead part 4 - Armour

Some pictures of an Undead Chariot

Some more (with the pose changes to the draft-animal)

It's...yeah, more pictures of the same!