Men In Boxes

My centaurs are almost done! Slapped on some base painting and some wash/shading yesterday. More detailing and retouching needed, hopefully all done by tonight. The figures are from Well's Expeditions' defunct Arcane Legions game. Scale at 1:72, the game featured 20mm fantasy figures inspired by Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Asian myths and history. I think it was the collectible miniatures aspect/format that eventually caused the game's demise. Among the figure packs I bought ( army boxes as well as faction boosters) were centaurs which I immediately drafted for Hordes of the Things. The sculpts range from mediocre to bad though, with very little attention given to musculature and facial detail. Heck, the spear centaur loks like a helmeted gorilla! The figs came in big boxes full of other stuff meant for the game. IMHO, they should have just released the rules as a book with the faction specific unit rules as paper/card accessories and the miniatures much like ...

Caesar Miniatures 1/72 Elves. Cueing up an Elf army for HotT.

The finished Anubites for my HotT Egyptian Undead army.

More repurposed figures from Arcane Legions. These are jackal headed warriors, bigger than the undead infantry. In the pc game Age of Mythology, they are called Anubites, after the Egyptian god Anubis and are associated with mummification and the afterlife. I'm basing them for Hordes of the Things, maybe as heroes. WIP base painting.

Arcane Legion only has two poses for the undead infantry but I went ahead and based them as spears for an Egyptian Undead Hott army. The figures are a bit taller than the average 1/72 figure ( they'll be used with Caesar Miniatures Egyptians) but are surprisingly thicker in limbs. The detail is weak, especially on the faces. The plastic acts a bit weird because even careful cutting and trimming with a sharp craft knife doesn't seem to agree with the plastic and you end up with burrs and extra threads. Even the "feel" of the material seems wrong, especially if you're used to cleaning mold lines and such from hard and soft plastic figures.

December ushered in a whirlwind of work and I haven't been able to game nor paint for a week. Arcane Legions made an appearance at my local gaming shop and I'm considering picking up some army packs first. Personally, I'm not planning on trying out the rules. Warmaster and Battlesystem seems to suit our needs quite well already and most of our minis are being based using these rules. On the other hand, I may buy these figures to bulk up my 1/72 plastics, especially with the magical/mythical troops. I've gone thru the Arcane Legions website and would like to get my hands on these models, especially the centaurs, guardian lions and bear cataphracts. Most of the cavalry and infantry though look uninspired and with only 1 pose per figure type, it gives more of a boardgame feel rather than a miniature wargame.

* click the pictures for a bigger copy Apparently, the peeps from Wells Expedition believe so. The company is the new baby of the same people who created classic games like HeroClix, MechWarrior: Dark Age and Pirates of the Spanish Main. Their new game is entitled Arcane Legions and is billed as a ( hold your groans please...) "collectible mass action miniatures game." "The greatest armies of antiquity battle for control of a magically altered world. The year is 37 BCE. The Roman Empire, Egyptian Imperium, and Han Dynasty converge in epic battles across the Middle East. Their legions are full of men and monsters, warriors and sorceresses, undead and gods—this is epic war like none seen before." Personally, I wasn't fond of the clickies like Mageknight and Heroclix. I usually bought these just for the figures -- which of course I repaint and rebase. But Arcane Legions may have something going for them. Arcane Legions is an epic-scale strategic combat simulation i...