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!

N is for New Finds, Pt.3 - Here and There

Some other bits that have come in over the last 18/24 months or so (it's all got a bit behind!), some of which I can't even remember the source of, but they should all be available off a Google search!

These (Homade iSoldier) were reduced somewhere, designed to be some sort of a ipad/ifone/isnob prop thing, I couldn't see how they would work that well but hey, I wasn't buying them for an ithingy, I was buying them as a couple of GI's on pitchers mounds!

The four on the left all came from Wilkinson's before Christmas, the natural successor to Woolworth's, they often have useful toys, and these were obviously meant to catch the eye of parents looking for stocking-fillers. The bag of China rip-offs was a mix of ex-Matchbox DAK poses in herb-green, While I can never resist a bag of paratroopers.

The space vehicle erasers were broken when I go them home but a bit of glue sorted that and the wooden guardsman was a trip down memory lane. The two to the right...did I say I can't resist paratroopers...top from Asda a year or so ago, the lower from a discount store in the Autumn.

The two to the left here were both bought from a new cake decorating supply shop, sadly the shop has already folded, but they managed to find two interesting items; The Goofy is a late Culpitts vinyl with the Culpitt moulded into the rear of the figure, while the other one looks like Grandmother Stover, the character for a brand of cake decorations and dolls-house accessories from the US of the 1960's? How they ended-up in the window of a new unit is anyone's guess.

The blind box was one of the last (?) and came from what used to be Esdevium Games in Aldershot - again - over a year ago and I can't remember what the new name of the store is . The angels came from a Christian Charity pop-up, just before Christmas and went on to special people.

More Toy Story (check the link-list) GI's, I ripped into the silly train with a small tool kit and scalpel and ended-up with three nice 70mm 'Disney' figures for the collection and a pile of bits for the spares box!

V is for Vinyl, Polyvinyl Chloride

Looking at the World Of Warcraft figurines the other day caused me to take these at the same time, and I then didn't get round to posting them, so here they are, as a comparison re. modern PVC/Vinyl, factory-painted production.

Following on from Hero-clicks (see below) came Horror-clicks, and these were shifted at the end of their run via Poundstretcher here in the UK. All this stuff ends up in clearance, sometimes posh (TK Maxx) sometimes not (your local pound shop/dollar store), but those who pay for them at retail, are subsidizing those of us who take advantage of the clearance,

Getting on my socialist horse here for a second; If the manufacturers priced them slightly cheaper, they'd sell more first time around and have less clearance!! Capitalism - it's an illness and a madness.

HELP!

Occasionally a film will produce themed sets, Indiana Jones is a good example with 20 and 30mm sets from Galoob and Disney respectively [to be covered another day]. Another was the third remake of King Kong, Playmates took-up the franchise and produced a couple of play-sets with various figures and monsters and these are some of them!

Heroclix, born out of Mage Knight and from Wizkids the same Wizards of the Coast stable as the Star Wars Miniatures game [See comments! Mea Culpa]. Originally Marvel Characters for use in a role-playing board game, these have now morphed into a multi-comic/graphic novel character game with a card element.

Like the [otherwise totally unrelated!] Star Wars Miniatures game, this collection contains so many figures in so many issues that it's impossible to follow if your head is already full of 1950/60's plastic toy soldiers, so I tend to buy them by the half-handful at car-boot sales, also they were issued in 2000, the year I consider the cut-off for serious collecting/documenting.