Thursday, September 17, 2015

One of the Good Guys: Eccentric Miniatures...B(u)y The Sprue!



Bucklers, pouches and misc weapons


Longbows


Maces


Various Weapons



20mm bases

Eccentric Miniatures is one of my favourite companies. I've gone on about their excellent "Great Crossbows" before - link.

More recently I decided to try their "By the Sprue" range. With the exception of the bases, each of the above sprues cost $2 US. (You get two of the bases sprues in a pack).

The top one is my personal favourite. The bucklers and pouches make it well worth the purchase price. I was considering getting bucklers made, but with this sprue available I can buy them for 25-cents each. Similarly, the pouches will be extremely useful.

Note that the longbow sprue has hands nocking arrows. So if you want to have arrows to stick in shields or the ground in front of your based figures all you have to do is snip the hands off. Note also that there are quivers of arrows but also a couple of bundles of arrows. 

The weapon sprues might be useful for figure conversions. They are a bit plain for Tekumel and the hands are slightly small. One could snip the hands off and just use the weapon, however.

The bases are nice. Straight sides with an indented surface on one side and flat top on the other. The rounded corners may or may not be to your taste.

There are apparently plans to add to the range. A trebuchet was mentioned and I have been lobbying for an onager. :-)  

A possible sprue addition that I think would be very popular would be light and heavy crossbows. One sprue for each. The heavy sprue could have winches to hang from the user's belt. :-)

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Some Air Cars from my collection...



A non-commercial sculpt. I don't think this
was ever commercially available.



From the Lead Bones range by Recreational Conflict
(There is also a 15mm version that might serve 
as a single person sled.)



Parroom Station - not sure if this is still available.



Also Parroom Station. Available?

(Note that most of the above craft also have fins and railings, etc that are not yet attached.)

I think there has been a tendency to give the Air Cars found on Tékumel a very "hard sci/fi" sort of look. My personal preference is something more elegant or "retro" looking. :-)

My thinking is that there would surely be hundreds if not thousands of different sorts of air cars around: pleasure craft, industrial, military, etc. There would be custom made versions and there would be air cars operated by the various non-human races present on Tékumel. All of these could look quite different from each other.

It is conceivable that none of the surviving Air Cars even resemble each other!