Two slow burner female figures that have been stalled on the Painting Table but finally finished for #FEMbruary 2022, that celebration of the believable female figure in our modelling and gaming collections.
#FEMbruary 2022 figure No. 1 this month featured an introduction to #FEMbruary and this skater girl,
#FEMbruary 2022 figure No. 2 – The Generic Empress or Queen
You can glimpse the Empress / Queen in black undercoat on my painting table at the back of this picture and the Ladybird book inspiration for the costume colours.
On the New Year rule of “painting what I have in hand”, I used this joblot-acquired or gifted figure of an Empress figure that could be “Queen Elizabeth The First” but is more likely to be Catherine the Great in 54-60mm brown plastic.
With this impressive Sceptre, she could also be a Queen or Empress of Syldavia in King Ottakar’s Sceptre in the Tintin books, bearing the pelican sceptre.
Shiny gloss toy soldier painting style, pink cheek dot and all.
FEMbruary 2022 figure No. 3 – The Amazonian Armada Elizabeth the First
This archer is from a 54mm generic fantasy figure set by True Legends Toys (USA?), what is probably meant to be an androgynous Legolas type elf man? The others can be seen here:
With impressive enough ‘man boob’ armour, I though it might convert easily enough into a Cate Blanchett type Galadriel or Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury type figure.
Literally a Copper Top, as I used my favourite bright gloss acrylics for the shiny toy soldier look from Revell Aquacolor of Orange and copper highlights!
A tissue paper and PVA skirt was added as no self-respecting queen would show off her legs in such martial manly attire!
The visual inspiration was Cate Blanchett’s Tilbury speech from her Elizabeth The Golden Age film. Trailer / clip on YouTube here.
I was also imagining her with a bow, rather than sword, as it also has the classical Amazon overtones or huntress iconography of Diana and Artemis.
Anyway its all just more classical and Tudorbethan Imagi-National propaganda for my Arma-Dad’s Army project! I love this Holy Grail / Monty Python-esque type muster of troops on the clifftops, again useful for Armada era uniform details.
Some screenshots from the Trailer / clip for uniform and colour reference.
My final #FEMbruary female figure (No. 4) will be out of this world … watch this space! (Two clues there).
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 23/24 #FEMbruary 2022
One of Steve Weston’s versatile Mexican peasants figures in a Tudor head-cloth
For those of you who wonder where the Arma-Dad’s Army 1590s Elizabethan Home Guard Project is going, here is my next addition to the Cornish Muster and townsfolk who oppose the Spanish Fury of the raids along the West Country coast.
‘Battling Aggie’ is a versatile Steve Weston Toy Co. Mexican peasant woman, easily adapted with a tissue paper or kitchen towel head scarf into a handy medieval and Tudor through the English and American Civil Wars to the Wild West.
Spanish Invaders – go home! Don’t look round, Don Pedro …
Although I researched the women who saw this happening, it appears to be mostly Edwardian men who would happily be found stretched out on Wells’ lawn or nursery floor, firing spring loaded cannon at lead toy soldiers. This sometimes, according to the tongue-in-cheek Wells, brought “disdain” from lady visitors who did not see the imaginative play going on at floor or garden level.
Some gamers of players with toy soldiers would say that not much has changed 100 years later if middle aged men are glimpsed crawling round their floor or garden in pursuit of toy soldiers. Or worse still, their front garden …
Gardens and floors seem a natural home for toy soldiers.
Ever since I was a small boy in the early 1970s, I have left toy soldier figures in the garden “on Patrol”, usually a three man Patrol Post or Observation Post OP tucked away in a flower bed or safe area, safely away from being dug up, trampled or mown down.
Each three man Patrol had the following usual figures:
One officer or someone with binoculars, armed
One radio man, armed (usually a bit of a scarcity per box in early Airfix or Matchbox)
One rifleman, SMG or LMG infantryman for Patrol protection
These were usually unpainted plastic 54mm figures. Sometimes these would be WW2 troops, sometimes Cowboys or Civil War figures (despite the lack of radios) and occasionally even knights.
Each of these 3 Man teams (in threes, like Lighthouse Keepers) had a way to communicate with each other or raise the alarm, some firepower to defend themselves and their OP and enough men to have at least one sleeping whilst others were on watch.
My late Dad took a slightly dim view if I left the same figures out on Patrol, neglected for weeks or months. It made sense. More regular changeovers of personnel kept the garden and these Patrol Posts tidier.
Patrol bases were hidden amongst these flowerbeds, rock walls and lawn edges of my Dad’s flowers in full bloom in my childhood garden 1970s/80s. Great Little Wars garden lawns – It looks far too peaceful for a war zone!
Usually in my childhood garden, a small stone base was made for the Patrol Posts with flat stone or slate walls, roof and floor base. Small palisades of wood or twig log piles completed the defence. Some kind of plastic stores box was usually included of “food” and “ammunition” such as Britain’s farm sacks or Airfix sandbags.
Inside the house up in my room would be the HQ team, such as the little travel box three man Patrol that I take away on holiday and travels – to keep in touch by radio with ‘home’ and teams in the field.
It’s odd but I still find that keeping the three man Patrol out there provides a calming link back to my childhood games, my late Dad’s vanished flower garden and our shared playful interest in toy soldiers.
*
I liked the Borrowers scale thing, the threat of giant garden wildlife like snails and other minibeasts, the military birdwatching. RLS’ poem The Dumb Soldier captures this well – see also later for a brief quote from the poem:
Bearing their battered sloppy childhood paintwork … my indoor desktop / travelling Three Man Patrol (TMP) of Airfix figures. About time they got some proper paintwork.
Usually I have used my most expendable pound store figures, as there was always the risk that dogs, lawnmowers and wildlife would trash the Patrol Post.
Retiring three man Patrol March 2021 in the latest OP building
The OP has changed from this safari / zoo animal walkway tower to an odd little house that I picked up about 15 years ago in a pet shop. Italian plastic, originally designed as a rodent hamster type house, sadly I have not seen them since. The label says Casetta per Criceti or a Hamster house (see B.P.S. Blog Post Script)
I liked it straightaway for its white walls and pantile roof. Instant Mexican cowboy town or Mediterranean village hut.
This pet shop where I found this house was a few doors away from a now closed independent pound store where I bought lots of pound store plastic soldier figure packs (Cowboys, Indians copies of Airfix with wagons, pirates, those 60s divers and sea creatures). Another pound store full of plastic tat, vanished and sadly missed …
I have always liked my Patrol or OP posts to have a certain kind of internal logic to them, otherwise they are just useless and silly. So as part of this, the pantiled roof house OP has a rigging type plastic ladder to the roof.
The boat at the foot of the cliff is their Patrol transport in and out of the situation and route of resupply, if not by air. A rope ladder links the house plateau with the river below. Supplies are winched up on ropes and stored in the house. It all makes its own kind of (non)sense.
The blue cowboy in my retiring three man Patrol in the pictures is one such Airfix clone, the blue speedboat in pictures below from a divers underwater play set kit. You got a lot more plastic tat for your pound 15 years ago.
The retiring Patrol after weeks to months in the field (in winter I forget don’t change figures as regularly) are a mix of figures, (what I now know are) some pirate cloned playset Tim Mee USA infantry, * the BMC clone US marine radio man and the blue Airfix clone cowboy. All expendable beach, garden or sandpit plastic figures.
Now in 2021, expendable plastic army men based on cloned Tim Mee, Airfix and BMC figures are being replaced by –
The incoming stores and Patrol of …
genuine new BMC Plastic Army Women.
Again in our new three woman Patrol we have:
Female officer figure with binoculars and pistol
Radiowoman or signaller (with no pistol)
Sniper on the roof tiles
In my BMC Plastic Army Women Parazuellia Women’s Revolutionary Army figures that I painted for FEMbruary, I gave the unarmed Radiowoman a spare pistol in its holster from Airfix Multipose spares.
Having used up all these spare Multipose weapons, I noticed that there is a handy rifle on the trusty old Britains Herald Cowboy raft cargo boxes. That then is the weapon for the radiowoman – my internal logic says that is so.
A supply barrel (old barrel bead or button) is glued to slate to stop it blowing away. These stores will be packed away into the house whilst this new Patrol gets settled in.
The Cliff House OP: Bit of a Greek island feel here – blue pot, blue boat, whitewashed house …
The Patrol house OP has a handy removable red tile roof, but no closing doors or window – so I will assume that there are internal door and shutters. I like the ability to poke a toy soldier rifle out of the window. The house itself is expendable but this one has withstood many frosts and storms (sometimes the roof blows off in very bad weather!)
The Patrol house OP is a pale imitation of those excellent Timpo Wild West plastic buildings of our childhood that now go for such extortionate sums on eBay, even with the working closing doors missing. Timpo buildings would now be too old, brittle and valuable to be left outside in all weathers anyway.
At some point these patrols may mingle and we may have a mixed Co-Ed Patrol, out in the wilderness for weeks and months on end. For now, we will have single sex patrols.
Who knows what they will see, night and day in the wilds of the Yarden or Garden. We might need to alter RLS’ The Dumb Soldier slightly:
“She has lived, a little thing,
In the grassy woods of spring;
Done, if she could tell me true,
Just as I should like to do.
*
She has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.
*
In the silence she has heard
Talking bee and ladybird,
And the butterfly has flown
O’er her as she lay alone.”
*
Alone? Well, maybe not, as there are three highly trained and well equipped Plastic Army women out there anyway, but you may be alone on watch.
The travelling Box HQ three man team remain the same indoors and should now be in radio contact with the new three woman Patrol.
“Come in, Garden Patrol … come in, Garden Patrol.”
The retiring three man Patrol team await a debrief on their return, before a wash and brush up and some well earned leave.
Anyone else have any strange toy soldier superstitions or strange family traditions to do with their toy soldiers?
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN on 13 March 2021
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
Below – some Casetta per Criceti or Hamster House examples online 2021, but not my exact pantile roofed example.
Hamster or mouse houses in wood or plastic – search around, there are some interesting small house examples online. Hamster or small rodent houses are a source of some possible garden wargames houses or cottages. They may prove an alternative to the converted bird box or the useful aquarium ornaments, something to look out for whilst browsing the pet store ?
Daisy’s biography and my 54mm pound store plastic soldier rough conversions to Girl Scouts
Celebrate an amazing woman Juliette ‘Daisy’ Gordon Low (1860-1927) and the Girl Scouts of America that she founded on this day in Savannah, Georgia, 12th March 1912.
The very first Girl Guides registered in Savannah, GA (Georgia, USA) were girls from the Savannah Orphans Asylum Girl Guide Troop.
As few Girl Guide or Girl Scout miniatures exist in larger model scales, you have to make your own as we did using the cheapest and weirdest cloned toy soldier figures.
I have finished the last gloss varnish of the 54mm new BMC Plastic Army Womenin the guise of the Women’s Revolutionary Army of Parazuellia in time for FEMBruary’s end.
Gloss varnish finish for khaki and olive drab figures is a matter of taste. I wanted to achieve that gloss shiny toy soldier look, complete with cheek dots as if Britain’s or other hollowcast figure makers had carried on production past the early Sixties. Gloss varnish also protects the paintwork from the rough and tumble of the garden or the game table.
As these are Revolutionary forces from the Parazuellian ImagiNation of Central or South America, I am using darker than normal skin tones for these women. Usually when I paint darker skin tones, I use a gold or copper cheek dot, rather than flesh pink. Cheek dots add toy soldier style and some definition or highlights to the face.
I photographed them first on a white background outdoors.
The Women’s Revolutionary Army medical team with added Airfix multipose rifles or pistols.
Some shots taken outside show the wider range of random olive drab, khaki and green grey uniforms of these Revolutionary forces, along with the Red scarf. All paints are matt or gloss Revell Aquacolor Acrylic with Humbrol gloss spray varnish.
BMC team added a loose hair braid on this figure
Nicely modelled prone sniper, could also be converted into an LMG with Multipose Bren Gun
This grenadier or bomber now has an Airfix belt pouch or knapsack for her grenades
The uniform painting colour scheme is based on the film costume designs of Anna Duse (1908-1992) in The Magnificent Two film.
President Eric! One of the random Revolutionary Army vehicles – a Dingo scout car?
Some further uniform close ups from the RareFilm screengrab – tan uniforms are those of the President’s of Governmnet forces. Green are the revolutionary figures.
More uniform details of dress uniform and field uniforms of different colour greens and khaki.
I took a few literal ‘screenshots’ of the TV to grab some more uniform reference details, however fuzzy on pause. There are some excellent short glimpses of a women’s cavalry unit
Isobel Black on horseback as part of the Women’s Revolutionary Army cavalry section – note the rifle holder
Some of the standing figures with the utility KP ‘Castro’ Field caps might make good dismounted cavalry figures.
I have yet to use my remaining Airfix Multipose scrap to convert any BMC figure to ones wearing the British WW2 steel helmet or tin hat for the Women’s Revolutionary Army figures.
Margit Saad and Isobel Black wearing WW2 tin hats in The Magnificent Two.
Finally two odd figures added to the Women’s Revolutionary Army forces – a rare plastic 54mm female skateboarder figure from Toy Boarders / Vat19.
and a spare Rosie the Riveter figure from BMC – Rosita the Riveter? – prior to varnish
Next stop is to create some of the men’s Revolutionary Army figures and then some Government Troops in Tan from the much copied BMC and Timmee type pound store plastic figures.
Viva General Carla! Viva Torres!
Blog posted for FEMBruary by Mark Man of TIN 5 March 2021
Green Red and – (Isobel) Black, Revolutionary Captain Juanita Negra in The Magnificent Two (1967)
My Final FEMbruary 2021 female figure painting challenge figures are the new BMC Plastic Army Women in 54mm. In their 1950s / 60s uniforms, they reminded me of a childhood favourite comedy film.
Shiny gloss varnish is not the usual finish for khaki figures, but it’s the 54mm shiny toy soldier look I wantfor these BMC figures – and practical too for gaming and handling.
See more of these painted figures on my post here:
Amonongst my favourite Saturday films as a child was this 1967 Morecambe and Wise oddity, the last of their three films The Magnificent Two, set in the fictional (?South American? Mexican?) Republic of ParaZuellia.
Generic / Western / Cowboy / Mexican / South American architecture
Taking its title from the popular Magnificent Seven film (1960), you get a good flavour of this odd cowboy western town / war movie meets Carry On style comedy mash up in the short official Rank Film 1967 trailer here:
As the trailer boldly claims, the film is “A Saga of Fear. A Drama of Courage. the Time is Now. The Place – Campo Grande, Parazuellia, flashpoint of a troubled continent.“
The synopsis or plot of the film
Mid 1960s: Two British Action Men travelling salesmen [Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise] arrive in Campo Grande in the (Central or South American?) country of Parazuellia to sell their goods.
During the train journey Eric accidentally opens a train door leading to the accidental death of the returning British educated Fernando Torres, the son of an assassinated Revolutionary president and figurehead of a revolutionary movement, and a government secret policeman who is trying to arrest him.
Upon arrival by train in the city of Campo Grande, Eric is mistaken by the revolutionaries for Torres. When they discover the death of the real Torres, they pay Eric and Ernie to maintain Eric’s impersonation of Torres to lead a revolution to oust the unpopular dictator President Dias.
However once the revolution is successful, Eric gains an inflated opinion of himself, promises lots of unaffordable reforms to the people and has to be “assassinated” by his own side in a myriad of absurd further comic plot twists and turns and betrayals.
Aided by chief of the women’s army General Carla (Margit Said), once he is “dead” Eric rescues the President’s young children (who were due to be executed by the revolutionaries). Morecambe and Wise then try to flee the country.
Having delivered the President’s children to the President’s secret hideout, a military museum in the forest on the site of a great Parazuellian victory in the past, they are then warned by Revolutionary Captain Juanita Negra (Isobel Black) that a mobile armoured column of the revolutionaries led by the shady General Carrillo (Virgilio Texera) have followed them.
The bizarre “Battle of Campo Grande” (as the trailer calls it) takes place and the few Presidential forces are bolstered by old cannons and by dummies from the military museum manning the battlements in true Beau Geste / Fort Zinderneuf style.
Wikipedia Source: British quad cinema poster by Arnaldo Putzu.
Captured by Carillo’s Revolutionary forces, Morecambe and Wise are rescued in the nick of time by General Carla, Capatin Juanita and the Women’s Revolutionary Army in an unexpected and not fully clothed tactical manoeuvre that befits a late 1960s British comedy in the style of the Carry On series …
This can be clearly seen on the trailer, various film posters including the one above and on IMDB.
This comically handled tactical manoeuvre, it could be argued, slightly undermines the film’s potentially late 60s feminist credentials.
My need for a colour scheme for these Revolutionary uniforms does not extend to the underwear, which for the record is camo khaki green, red or black in the revolutionary and national colours for the women. I’m not sure if the film dwells on that level of modelling information for all the characters beyond a white vest or khaki shirt and shorts from Eric and Ernie.
Somehow it’s quite abrupt ending parade not long after this Carry On moment is a curious mixture of Gilbert and Sullivan humour about ‘female troops’ (Princess Ida meets Castro’s Cuba) and “sisters doing it for themselves” 60s feminism.
Fifty years on from The Magnificent Two, we now live in a world where many armies worldwide have removed the bar or glass ceiling from allowing women into front line combat roles.
A more detailed, plot spoiler / synopsis from the BFI:
As a child what I most remember was the Action Men battle bit at the start (with some Britains 155 mm guns) and the larger Action Men joke of the Military Museum ‘Beau Geste’ dummies on the battlements trick. I liked watching Morecambe and Wise then, as harmlessly silly, and I still do.
Many people dismiss this and the trio of Morecambe and Wise cinema films from the Sixties as uneven and a box office flop.
I rather like the three Morecambe and Wise films in the way I prefer the early Sixties Bond movies to any of the others.
As one commentator or critic pointed out, it has a rather high body count for a comedy. It would be a proper blood and guts gritty western / War movie, if only Morecambe and Wise hadn’t blundered into it – therein is the joke.
Watching this again on DVD as an adult, I was intrigued by the fictional ImagiNations uniforms and equipment. The Parazuellian Presudentail forces of El Presidente Diaz (Martin Benson) wear American style sand coloured uniforms.
The ‘heroic’ Revolutionary forces of men and women wear American style Green uniforms, men with US green helmets and the women wearing British WW2 tin hats with a red revolutionary star on white circle badge.
Green and Tan 50s 60s US uniforms – what does this remind me of? This Magnificent Two film costume universe is like a large bag of cheap green and tan pound store play set figures and mismatched equipment writ large in its simple colour schemes. The film is a comic Little Wars of an American plastic playset of the 1960s.
1966 Action Man figure, just in time for this 1967 movie
An equally odd mix of equipment – British scout cars, trucks, American half tracks and jeeps, FN Armalite rifles, Vickers HMGs, Sten and Bren Guns – scraped together by the film company help to give the impression of the Government and Revolutionary forces using any equipment they can get their hands on.
Many of the lobby card images by The Rank Organisation are now copyright / licensed of Alamy, so I will not reproduce them here. The Rare Film photo montage gives a good flavour of the adapted uniforms.
The Film Set-tings
The station (based in a now vanished station from Longmoor Military Railway) and city set of Campo Grande can be seen on Reel Streets (set up by John Tunstill of the Soldiers Soldiers website – it’s a small world sometimes).
As ImagiNations go, Parazuellia is obviously a mix of Paraguay, Venezuela and an “-ia” ending. (Presumably there is another nearby country called Vene-guay-a?) A further fictional South American country is mentioned: Urapania, made up of Uruguay and Hispania?
I am reminded strongly of the South American ImagiNations in the Gran Chapo War in Tintin’s 1930s The Broken Ear, based on the real Gran Chaco War.
Anyway it’s an enjoyable Saturday afternoon slice of childhood comedy nostalgia with some interesting possibilities of gaming scenarios with pound store figures and the new BMC Plastic Army Women figures.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 4 March 2021
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
The New Zenda / Ruritania for film makers in the 1960s was obviously South American revolutionary ImagiNations. Recently there have been some blogposts about Viva Max! a 1969 Peter Ustinov fronted ‘comedy Mexican’ screwball film plot about Mexicans retaking the Alamo in 1969. See the trailer here as the IMDB article is sparse:
The Mexicans in Viva Max! wear very similar desert tan uniforms to the Presidential army of Parazeullia. Red Green And White national colours and thinly disguised Mexican type National and Presidential flags crop up in The Magnificent Two. (IMDB Notes them as a blooper.)
IMDB Website Quotes for The Magnificent Two
Ernie: We’ll never sell anything here. I don’t suppose anybody’s got two pesos to rub together.
Ernie: The wrong town, we picked the wrong country! We were doing all right in Urapania until you had to open your big mouth. “Long live the President.”
No Mixed Bathing (No Running, Diving, Bombing, Heavy Petting or Smoking in the Deep End)
It’s FEMbruary – and the first of my believable female miniatures heads towards the painting table. The BMC Plastic Army Women from last year’s BMC Kickstarter.
These are not Pound Store figures themselves but complement that style of plastic figure, often pirated or cloned that ends up in pound stores.
Before I paint a trial handful of these new Army Women, I took the time to give them all a bath and scrub to remove any mould releasant.
All 105 of the figures, 3 stretchers plus 3 dogs and their leads ready for a wash and brush up!
Last seen wearing … snow gloves and cold weather gear for a Christmas 2020 game.
So the BMC Plastic Army Women was my first Kickstarter which arrived in time for FEMbruary … but I also stocked up on an extra FEMbruary project just in case for this year (or next) – Bad Squiddo WWII Pigeoneers!
After months watching and reading about these new figures being designed, mastered and made as my first ever Kickstarter pledge, these BMC Plastic Army Women are finally here – and well worth both the patient wait and the effort by Jeff Imel and team at BMC.
What better way to celebrate their time under the Christmas tree than a snowball fight with some of these new recruits out on the parade ground and assault course soon after they were unwrapped?
Camp Benjamin is named after the comedy film Private Benjamin (1981) with Goldie Hawn about American female army recruits in training.
I tracked down some suitably plastic pound store items that match their traditional army men or women style such as this rope bridge and towers, the odd plastic wall sections as well as other snowball fight cover made from white Lego and old Playmobil snow sections.
Add some Christmas trees and you have that spirit of the Snow Ball!
Turn 3 – already some of the snowballers can shoot from behind Snow cover
Snowballing round the base of the Rosie the Riveter statue (also a BMC copper colour freebie)
Turn 6 – base to base, toe to toe snowball scrapping and snow melee
Turn 11 – Close up snowball fighting The final turn – the last of the Tan figures goes down in close melee.
Each of the squads of four had a box of chocolate rations (colour themed Lego block tan or green) in their sentry box, something to be defended.
Victory Conditions / End of Game either:
a) all four of the rival squad defeated after 6 snowball hits on each
Or
b) capture of the rival squad’s chocolate rations
Range measured in lolly sticks.
Firing per single figure rolling 1 standard d6 dice
Long Range (LR) 3 lolly sticks – 6 required to hit target
Medium Range (MR) 2 lolly sticks – 5 or 6 required to hit target
Close Range (CR) 1 lolly stick – 4,5 or 6 required to hit target
If target hit when behind partial cover (low snow wall etc), roll casualty saving throw of 1d6 – 6 means deflected / saved by the cover, otherwise 1-5 counts as normal snowball hit (lose a point)
Movement is one half lolly stick per figure per turn. Anything like climbing fences, walls etc takes one turn.
IGO YUGO rules. Roll two suitably coloured dice (in this case, tan and green) – highest score moves first, other side second, first side to move shoots first, second side to move shoots second.
Solve any melee as they happen or after firing, as you wish.
Each figure (numbered or named as you wish e.g. Green 1, Green 2 …) needs to have a tally kept of life points – use spare d6, tally chart etc.
Figure removed when hit by 6 snowballs.
Snow Melee
If figures are touching bases, this counts as Snow Melee – extreme close range fir snowballing, close enough to shove snow down each other’s necks sort of thing.
Attacker is whichever colour side went first – roll on dice
Roll one d6 per two duelling figures in melee
1 or 2 – Hit on attacker – loses one point
3 – Both attacker and defender hit – both lose one point
4 – Both sides miss
5 to 6 – Hit on defender – lose one point.
(Melee system adapted from Gerard De Gre via Donald Featherstone Solo Wargaming and simplified by Kaptain Kobold)
Rules
Snowball Fight variations – Alan Gruber, Duchy of Tradgardland – six life points for each character, one point lost each time hit by a snowball.
From High Priest to Princess / Queen in a few easy steps …
One of the challenges of toy soldiers made for modellers and not gamers is the “too many chiefs” problem.
The Chintoys 54mm Mixtecs and Zapotecs featured on my last post have several high profile, high ranking priests, warlords and officer figures with battle flags in each bag of 8 figures, not the rank and file “lumpen proletariat” of the PBI (poor bloody infantry) that you actually want.
It’s like having a Wellington or Napoleon on every sprue of Napoleonic figures or a free Hitler or Stalin on every WW2 German or Russian infantry one.
The Chintoys Mixtecs and Zapotecs are closely modelled on Angus McBride’s colourful plates in the Osprey book of Aztecs, Mixtec and Zapotec Armies.
So the solution to three Oracular High Priests is to paint one like the colour plate, keep one spare for a Celtic or Native Shaman in future and promote the third to a Mixtec Queen.
This striking Queen figure is shown in the colour plate but sadly not included in the Chintoys set.
The priest face and mask is not very feminine, nor are the massive sinewy muscly arms and giant hands but this priestly left arm and hand is transcribed from her Queen pose to the Priest in the Chintoys figures.
Cheap architect / railway civilian figure in hard plastic became the head donor
The challenge to behead or deface required sprue cutters and scalpel. A square of the priest’s face and jaw mask was removed and kept for further statue / carved pillar use.
I removed the head of the female civilian railway passenger (not often you get to type that sentence) from this figure in hard plastic.
The challenge was to trim and shave in small slivers with a scalpel the back of the female head down to a squarish face plate to fit onto the faceless priest – and not slice your fingers off at the same time.
The priest needed to have the face platform further trimmed back into the head.
I decided to simplify the priestly robes with the white and red stripe tribal pattern.
Once I had the female face down to as thin as possible without damaging the front and the slot on the priest suitably trimmed back, I used a small hand drill to pin the new female face in place and superglued to secure it.
A colourful turban and hair was created to fill the edge gaps using kitchen towel and PVA glue.
The Princess / Queen figure had her arm in a different position holding an obsidian tipped spear rather than the blue stone club or war hammer in the Priests hand. I trimmed the arm off with sprue cutters, reangled with drill and pun and the shoulder gap filled with tissue paper / kitchen towel.
The muscly arm was slightly trimmed down to make it more feminine.
The war hammer was removed and the hand drilled to take a spear or staff. The obsidian blade tip was made with masking tape, the pompom was made from a shaved plastic flag or banner pompom section from another figure.
Her giant left hand still needs trimming or obscuring, possibly with bloodied cloth of a sacrifice?
Now with added Britain’s Zoo plastic Eagle …
A valuable and regal addition to my semi fictional ImagiNations ManoTINcas tribe.
Plate Notes
For further information on each figure in the Angus McBride illustration, here are the plate notes by John Pohl the author (below).
From this I took the idea of her painted face, although I did mine on copper, not yellow pigment.
The turban around the hair intwined with coloured cloth and the obsidian blade were two other features that I took from this description and painting.
An excellent Osprey book, well worth buying for the history by John Pohl and the striking illustrations by Angus McBride that complement these unusual Chintoys figures.
Blog posted by Mark ManofTIN on 28/29 November 2020
I’ve put down for a bag of 24 figures plus shipping . If all goes well, this time next year BMC should be shipping around the US and sending a pack off to me in the jolly old U.K.
Hoorah!
Blog posted by Mark, Man of TIN on 14 November 2019
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 