Q is for Question Time - Wizards' Wizard?

And odd question as I know it's marked Wizards, presumably Wizards of the Coast, but what it he exactly, is he a giant from the 30mm sets, is he from a stand-alone board game, or is he some kind of mascot, or convention freebie?

The Star Wars, 2000AD and Lord of the Rings sets were also a factory painted, black rubberised-polymer, while he is unpainted polyethylene, in an odd shade of puce/mauve.

 

I know where I got him from as well, Graham Apperley, at last year's Plastic Warrior show, and he probably told me something about the figure, but that's a day when the brain is sent more information than it can store in short-term memory!

 

Anyone recognise this chap, and know what his role or employment looked/looks like, within the Wizards empire? An empire swallowed by Hasbro since we looked at them here, back at the beginning of the Blog!

H is for How They Come In

Wednesday left me loaded with goodies, after purchases in most on the charity shops, ten minutes up the high street (I'm a bloke; in-scan-grab-pay-out, I don't mess about) added several books to the library, a 2nd hand copy of District 9 on DVD and this little-lot!

A Board game (£3) and two 'after' Fontanini Chinoisery statuettes, I say after as they are both unmarked and while the bases (polystyrene) and steel screws are reminiscent of the Italian maker's output, the two figures (polyethylene) are of poorer finish, so I suspect Hong Kong despite the lack of a marking; they were three-quid the pair.

One of those awful costume dolls; 'Empire Made' almost illegible on the gold-card ends, the whole sealed so you'd have to destroy the container to get him out, but he IS a lifeguard, so into the collection he goes; they were only asking 30p!

A handful of animals for 50p rounded-off the loot.

The animals were an odd assortment . . . two Impro pre-historic's, I have a tub of them somewhere which I have seen a couple of times, next time I see it I'll combine with the dozen or so I had accrued here and we'll have a proper look at them, a generic hippo' and a Playmobile wild boar made up the self-seal bag.

There was supposed to be six figures in the box, there wasn't! There was, in fact - 47 figures/36 sculpts! Again I have a whole tub of these so I'll return to them in the fullness of time, I think these are all from the first 60 of what became 240+ items I think, again; I have the notes on a dongle!

Oi . . . soldier! Haircut!

Then today - at time of writing Thursday 30th - I picked this little fella up, although at 95-mil (all-in) hardly 'little', he's a tree decoration who's lost his hanger/loop and will go in the box with all the other Bearskin'ed Guards.

T is for Toy Fair '18 - Esdevium Games . . . Not!

My local games company has changed its name! It's now Asmodee, and they have (or carry) several games with figures in, none were on display at the show though so I'm only showing you catalogue scans in this post, but worth the read if you're not a dedicated follower of these things.

Catan is a popular game, although - I think I'm right in saying - normally the generic or 'original' sets have wooden counters? This Game of Thrones version from Fantasy Flight Games however, has some little figural game pieces which I think are around a 15mm War-gaming compatible size?

From the same 'GoT' trope comes A Song of Fire & Ice, a joint project between CMON Ltd., and Dark Sword Miniatures, and what nice looking miniatures they are. I'm guessing here that expansion packs and extra-figures are the hook?

As well as board games, Asmodee also import a lot of the blind-bag Moshling type stuff (post's half-done, just on the back burner) and more traditional game and pastimes. They also ship-in the Heroclix figure packs from WizKids with Star Trek and DC-licensed blisters illustrated here.

While these may well be more akin to Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars range? New for this year and another one to build-on with extra sets I suspect, Fantasy Flight again, but all these are 'Asmodee' in the UK.

This looks lovely, a kind of Steampunk, Golden Compass, World War One-and-a-Half, Russian Revolution in a box! The woman with a big-cat and the armoured bear are taken straight from the Golden Compass!

Which reminds me, I finally watched the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the other day, several extraordinary ladies - as it happens - but I found it to be very disappointing, with huge plot holes/continuity errors and an overall feel of wasted-opportunity, almost as if three unrelated, shorter, films had been stiched-together with a blunderbuss full of nails!

But back to this game, from Stonemaier (and others) the figures would paint-up well and look to be around the 28mm mark?

The Asmodee line-up for 2018 seems to fill every cell as we move from Steampunk to tick the post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, hardboiled zombie-mutant fantasy box! I don't know if the figures in Fallout (Fantasy Flight again) are metal, but they have that sculpting style, which I know some people like - for painting - but I'm not so keen on the 'Nottingham' school of chunky, over-emphasised 'fine' detailing.

Myth and legend; Eastern-style, with this one from CMON/Asmodee; that's every box ticked except prohibition-era Chicago, I think! From the illustration; figures look to be at the larger end (28mm) but it's not clear, neither is it clear how many useful figures will be found in the Rising Sun box, or need to be purchased separately?

Ah! Prohibition-era Chicago, well . . . New York! The figures look to be about the same size as the old Parker Games game Vendetta, they also remind me of the Cluedo figures I was looking for the other day, grey with coloured bases, although a couple of the games above have similar, these are closer to what I was thinking-of. I like the little 'stash' tin to keep smuggle the playing pieces in.

That's eight games/game-systems and I'd happily give house-room to all of them, sadly; games like these don't often turn-up in charity shops!