Amazon Miniatures Livestock
I was recently casting around for stuff to add to my Middle Eastern city board and decided to get some livestock.
After having a look at various options I decided to go with a selection of animals from Amazon Miniatures. These are cheaper than the Mega Minis animal packs but lack some of the charm of the figures from that line. The Mega Minis sheep are particularly nice and are currently doing sterling service with my Home Guard as decoy sheep. The Amazon range had more of what I wanted however so that's where the money went.
The photo above contains the following packs:
3 x FM02 Sheep (6) £3.00 / $5.50
1 x FM06 Ram (2) £1.00 / $1.85
1 x FM07 Goats (6) £3.00 / $5.50
1 x FM12 Middle Eastern Goat (6) £3.00 / $5.65
2 x FM08 Farm Poultry (6 Mixed) £1.50 / $2.82
I also bought a couple of excellent dead camels which aren't shown here. They'll turn up in a game report at some point.
Three packs of sheep FM02 and a pack of rams FM06 based on 60mm bases. Cost: £2.50 per stand.
Since these are scenery pieces that will occasionally do service as loot tokens in some games I painted them quickly over a couple of days with simple dry-brushing for highlighting. They are cleanly molded and have deep detailing that took to this approach well. Their relative crudeness as sculpts is easily off-set by their ease of painting and once based in little groups I think they look good.
One pack of goats FM07 and one pack of Middle Eastern goats FM12 (curled horns) freely mixed on 40mm bases. Cost: £1.50 per stand.
I based them on circular plywood bases from Litko Aerosystems using Basetex, grit and static grass in my 'generic base' style that I use for most of my games now. All-in-all, for under £20.00 I got a couple of days enjoyable painting and some useful game pieces that will add interest to many settings. I consider that a bargain and I'll be going back for more.
Two packs of farm poultry FM08 minus two of the four cockerels and with some extra hens that were included on 40mm bases. Cost: £1.50 per stand.
Black Hat Civilians
Mike at Black Hat Miniatures gave me a set of his modern civilians the other day. I had a lot of fun painting them up, and although Mike didn't ask me for my opinion of them, I think they deserve a review.
There are ten figures in the set, sold in two packs of five for £8.00 a pack. They are larger than some ranges, typically standing 35mm tall, but are not too big to mix in so long as you're not too picky (and I'm not). The moulding is clean and the castings required little or no cleaning up before painting. The smoothe surfaces and bold characterisation on the figures made them easy to paint and allowed me to add as much or as little freehand embelishments as I wanted. The details that are present are well thought out and boldly executed. It's unlikely that there'll be any additions to this range which is a pity, I could happily paint a pack of these a month as an antidote to the stress caused by painting too many over-fussy modern figures put out by other manufacturers.
The figures have been sculpted in an almost cartoony style and are full of character and personality; so much so that I tried to paint each figure as an individual rather than as a background civilian. Luckily for me, many of them were close enough to characters from various films, games and tv shows that they could become them with the right paint job and a little bit of imagination. You can check out who's who with the link below:
Here's a picture of figures from several manufacturers so you can see if they'll fit into your existing collections:
From L to R: Eureka Soviet, Westwind Rage zombie, Rezolution Enforcer, Black Hat civilian, ERM Enforcer, Copplestone Tintin, TAG Rambo.
These chaps get a high mark because I enjoyed painting them so much and they provided me with so many zombie and alien fighting personalities.
Mega Minis SWAT Team
These figures were sculpted by Jason Miller (Big Miller Bro) and are available from Mega Minis
(You can download a very nice card SWAT van from Mega Minis for free while you're there too.)
They were released in December 2005 and the catalogue number, should you want your own set, is 80001. Retailing at $19.99 for 20 figures or £14.99 if you're in the UK like I am.
Jason sent me a set and asked me to paint them up and see what I thought of them. Normally I don't do commissions but I didn't already have a SWAT team and I get to keep them now they're done so I agreed (accent on the ‘greed', can't say no to freebies).
The castings are very clean and required minimal preparation, always a good thing, I like to get on with the painting bit and hate having to carve away at figures before I can start.
The sculpting is ok. It's not the best around but it's not too bad. Some of the anatomy is a little off but the poses are solid and believable and the detail is good. I found some of the weapons to be unconvincing but not so much that you'd want to change them. For a near-future SWAT team these chaps will do fine.
They were a joy to paint; I finished them in a couple of evenings and enjoyed every step of the process. I'm happy with the results now they're done and I'm looking forward to sending them out onto the mean streets to hunt down zombies or raid a secret alien base.
I think, given the price point, that these are a pretty good buy and I'll be getting the rest of the range, trailer trash and some normal civilians, when they're available. Easy to paint big crowds at an affordable price.
