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. :-)

Great Crossbows, Batman!

Plastic Ballista by Eccentric Miniatures (partially built).

One of the great finds I came away from "Fall In!" with was a couple of packages of Eccentric Miniatures' "Great Crossbows". (Thanks, Bill, for pointing them out to me!)

These are plastic kits, sold 2 to a pack for $10 US.

I've started putting one together and have posed it with some of our Serqu figures. As you can see, it scales quite well with our stuff. Technically we don't have any artillery crew figures yet but I think the Serqu figures shown have possibilities. The figures are the three spear poses plus one of the archer poses. My idea is to leave off the plumes (and probably fill in the little dimple at the back of the helm). The plan with the archer figure is to cut away his bow and substitute a bolt from one of the sprues in the kit. He has a quiver of arrows - which is separate - though the straps are present. I think I am up to sculpting a replacement quiver using more of those loose bolts from the sprue. 

I asked at the stand about the possibilities of catapults, and they said that a Trebuchet was being worked on. If they do that, then hopefully and onager or mangonel of some sort will follow. And I've mentioned siege engines to them as well - battering rams and towers, and the like. The kit goes together easily with very little fuss. I used GW's "thin" glue to fix the parts together. The bases are 50mm MDF from Gale Force Nine (bought "by the pint" at a previous convention.)

The scale is right. The price is right. What more can one ask for?