Foundry changes its Amazons

I bought a number of Foundry's Amazons when they first came out for my Argonauts project.  They weren't wearing a lot of clothes and had Pylos helmets and hoplon shields which wouldn't have been right for the Bronze Age period but then again my Foundry Argonauts are very Classical in the Ray Harryhausen Jason and the Argonauts film style.  I had actually started converting the Pylos helmets to boars' teeth ones.

New Bronze Age Amazon (left) with old Amazon (right)

However, when I looked at the Foundry website the other day I noticed that the previous Amazons had disappeared and been replaced with much more Bronze Age styled figures.  Excellent!  I ordered some straight away.  They have fringed skirts and boars' tusk helmets.  However, what has happened to the old Amazons? I was going to get some of the chariot borne figures (who did have a Bronze Age look) and the cavalry but they have all gone from the website.

A mystery.

Salute 2013

It had sort of passed me by that this year's Salute is going to have a Jason and the Argonauts theme, although, in reality, that just means that the South London Warlords will be running a themed game.  Nevertheless, they will have the author of the new Osprey, Neil Smith, on their stand.

I notice that they seem to have changed the cover for the book since I first noted it here.  I think I preferred the original, however, of the Argo.  The artist for the book, however, is the very talented young Spanish painter Jose Daniel Cabrera Peña and it will be interesting to see what he brings to the Bronze Age World.

His almost Frazettaesque illustration for the cover of Jason and the Argonauts gives us a a properly archaic Jason and an enticing Medea.  His dark ages and medieval work is simply excellent so I am hopeful that the illustrations could be very fine indeed.

Battle of Assandun 1016

Osprey have now listed the contents of Jason which look interesting:

The Man with One Sandal
Narrative: Jason and his Mission
Sources for Jason
Greek Mythology: Its purpose and relevance
The Gods: Who were they and what did they do?
The Voyage Out
Preparations: Greek Ships and Jason’s Crew
Narrative: Lemnos
Narrative: The Doliones: “real” fighting, Greek arms and armour
Narrative: The Harpies
Narrative: Clashing Rocks Colchis
Narrative: Jason’s 3 Tasks & the Golden Fleece
Jason & Medea
The Voyage Back
Narrative: Sirens
Narrative: Talos
Narrative: Jason’s Arrival
Jason’s Demise
Narrative: Jason’s Betrayal: Euripides’ Medea
Jason’s Legacy
Jason in Books & Movies

I just need to get some more Argonauts done!

New Rules on the horizon

Crooked Dice, the people who have made sixties style Spy-Fi games cool, have announced a set of rules for Ray Harryhausen film type skirmishes.  These will certainly be worth a look when they get them out as the Tribes of Legend rules were very disappointing.

The Argo by Grand Manner

The Argo with stern piece attached

This is the first resin piece by Grand Manner that I have ordered through the post and ! was nervous about it arriving in one piece.  It was beautifully packed, however, and the five parts (hull, steering oar, stern piece mast and boom) were all in great condition with just some sanding and minimal filling needed.  I have attached the stern piece, using a pin for extra strength, and have filled most of the small holes and joins. I have just  a few bits left to do with Citadel's excellent liquid Greenstuff to cover some slight indentations.

Looking at the picture on their website I thought it might be a bit small for my Argonauts but at slightly more than 14 inches long it works out at around seventy feet, scale size.  Given that this was about the size of most of Colombus's fleet it is quite capable of sailing around the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.

2000 Argo

It is a lovely model, designed by Tony Harwood (you can see his work on Dampf's modelling page), and is more reminiscent of the Argo from the 2000 Hallmark TV mini-series (actually built for their version of The Odyssey (1997)) than the one from the classic 1963 Ray Harryhausen film, which was more like a classical Greek galley.  This is a good thing as it has a more appropriately archaic look I think.   

It also looks a lot like this painting.  I think I am going to base the paint job on the Harryhausen one, though. More on the Argo as I start to paint it.

1963 Argo

A new book on Jason and the Argonauts...from Osprey!

I haven’t forgotten about Jason and the Argonauts and, indeed, only this week I bought the magnificent book: Ray Harryhausen  Master of the Majicks Volume 3: The British Films on special offer (reduced from £200 to a comparatively bargain £125). The book, which is one of the most beautiful I have ever bought, has a long (nearly sixty large format pages) chapter inside on the making of the Jason and the Argonauts film which is full of useful picture reference. 

The pages are too large for my scanner!

Volume 2 featured his earlier, American,  mainly SF, films and is now selling for up to $1200 a copy so £125 doesn’t seem too bad for a book with such spectacular pictures. Apparently when Harryhausen was shown the book even he hadn’t seen many of the behind the scenes photos. 

More Jason news is that Osprey, of all people, are launching a range of books looking at myths and legends and the first one, due out in March 2013, is on Jason and the Argonauts.  From the point of view of this blog another one in the series will look at Hercules.  The other four titles announced will be on dragonslayers, King Arthur, the war of Horus and Set and Thor.  

I am painting a 24 figure unit of Prussians at present and am looking for a small unit to paint before my next big one, so something relating to the Argonauts could well be on the cards, as I have a number of figures under way.  It’s probably a toss-up between some more Argonauts and some Amazons. 

Bronze Bull

The flash makes him look shinier than he is but the light is so bad today that I can't use daylight

This bronze bull is from the new Foundry Tribes of Legend range and is obviously meant to be one of the Khalkotauroi.  These were a pair of fire-breathing bulls made by Hephaistos as a gift for king Aeetes of Colchis.  Some accounts say that Hephaistos merely gave the bulls to Aeetes rather than having made them.  The bulls had bronze hoofs and a bronze mouth but in Apollonius’ account they appear to be automatons rather than living creatures.

In the 2000 TV version of Jason and the Argonauts they interpret this as a mechanical bull and the Foundry version is very strongly based on the one from the mini-series.  It appeared to be much larger, proportionately to the size of Jason, than the Foundry model, however.

ln this production there was only one bull and I suspect that I won’t bother to get another.  It was, however, one of the models that I found very attractive in the initial Foundry range, although not so much that I would pay £12 for it plus £8 postage!  Luckily I managed to get it on eBay for rather less than this.  I painted it yesterday afternoon and having just given it a metallic finish using Vallejo’s excellent bronze paint I decided it looked too shiny so added some patches of verdigris and some brown and black washes to tone it down a bit. 

Wargames Foundry Amazons

Taking advantage of their free postage deal over Easter I have taken delivery of three packs of Foundry's new Amazons for Tribes of Legend.

I have to say that my expectations were quite low but I was surprised at how much I like these figures.  Size wise they work perfectly with the older Foundry Argonauts and the proportions are nice as well.  Above all they have attractive faces, which an awful lot of manufacturers (Games Workshop, Pulp Figures) have trouble with on female figures.

Oddly, they have all come packed with GW-style round slotta bases, although the bases of the figures don't have the relevant shape to fit them.  I mount my skirmish figures on washers and the metal bases of a couple were so small I had to add some tomato puree tube metal for them to stand on.

These figures are to represent the women of Lemnos and their Thracian look (given the proximity of the Thracian coast to the island) works perfectly for this.  I got a pack of Peltasts (above), a pack of slingers and some women with javelins.

Very pleased with these and they will be fast-tracked.