Oh no! We’re immobilised in plastic! Will our cut-price super powers save us now?
The same scene cartooned in Clip2Comic app as a tribute to comic artist Stan Lee 2018 RIP.
As my belated tribute to the late cartoon superhero creator and artist Stan Lee, I’m pleased to have finally tracked down a couple of sets of Poundland’s finest Superheroes.
Oh no! We’re trapped inside a box now. Is there no escape?Free at last! Free at last!
I missed buying these figures a year or so back and have kept an eye out in Poundland ever since. Today they were back in store at £1 a box so I bought a couple of packs as an investment.
To escape paying franchise fees to DC Marvel and Avengers, Poundland have invented some new cut-price super hero figures of their own.
They come in four different main colours – red, blue, yellow and green.
Red Rage – all Red muscly bodysuit and face mask
Arrowhead – in Blue and red with and an arrow design on his face mask
Centrum – in Yellow bodysuit with worrying target on his front for villains to aim at.
Green Force – Green and red body suit and green face mask.
Thankfully although the Poundland Superheroes (designed by the Anker Group KFIG-PL) are nominally named, they leave their individual superpowers to your imagination.
Centrum sounds like he should be part of some disappointing and dull global or privatised utility company who fails to turn up on time and doesn’t complete the job to your satisfaction. His secret base has no answerphone service or point of contact.
Maybe Green Force is a gardening or lawn repair service superhero, able to restore your patchy lawn in return for cash?
I quite like the range of expression from smiley face to angry or aghast. You can of course swop heads, legs and bodies around.
Quick conversion ideas. A few quick head swaps with female hair, a Lego cloak and Lego head and hat. Name these yourself.
Good to see some multiracial block figures as well. A couple of female figures might have been good – unless Red Arrowhead with the painted cinched in narrow waist Is supposed to be female?
Some female block hair might do a conversion job but they do have very odd block heads, unlike the Lego stud attached hair.
Lego heads swap onto the Poundland neck stud quite well and the hands carry Lego style accessories, tools or weapons well. They also stand up on Lego studs well enough.
Other cut price Superheroes are available …
I would have loved this varied set of figures as a 70s child … almost worth box framing. Lego hardly had any mini figures then and all were bright Simpsons smiley yellow.
Worth pointing out for pound store balance that UK high street budget retailer Wilko or Wilkinsoalso does their own “bootleggo” range called Blox with some attractive bulk packs of civilian and military figures, compatible with but a fraction of the price of Lego figures. There is a fun superhero girl or superhero fan with a Boom! t-shirt in the Wilko Blox set.
Some attractive Blox figures from the 50 figure set including a golden knight / robot and superhero (fan) or Cosplay girl.
Compatible with other leading brick brands, these Poundland figures are four superheroes for a £1, compared to £2 to £3 for the average Lego superhero mini figure blind bag.
At 25p each, there are no accessories, but you can easily make your own superhero capes out of paper from a Lego template using fabric or paper and a hole punch for the head hole.
25p Man anyone?
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN (no comment on his cut-price super powers either a softer metal version of the Man of Steel) on 17 November 2018.
And finally here is an interesting YouTube compilation of the many graphic novel picture tributes drawn as farewells to the much missed Stan Lee (1922-2018)
One of my favourite simple ideas chapters in Solo Wargaming by Don Featherstone is called “Wargaming In Bed”.
Transposed to the garden wargame, maybe this should be called “Wargaming in the Flower Bed”?
Here in this chapter, there are simple, mostly skirmish ideas, mostly for a few 54mm figures. There is an interesting short section on the “Lunge, Cut and Stop Thrust” duelling game invented by Gerard Du Gre of the MGC (Model General’s Club) in America.
(Lunge, Cut and Stop Thrust does sound like an odd bunch of solicitors or estate agents.)
What I like about this card system is that it can be played solo or two handed.
It is almost a card version of “scissors paper stone”, a gaming system used for thousands of years and harnessed for a great caveman / tribal game many years ago in Miniature Wargames. Must look this one out for my Homecast Prince August cavemen!
Playmobil Nun defeats a glow in the dark Dracula in this unusual duel.
A set of cards is prepared with one of the following actions on each.
Cut to Head
Parry and Lunge
Stop Thrust
I prepare a set of three cards for my hand, then a set of about thirty cards for my ‘opponent’ solo games.
Once you gave decided if you are attacker or defender (toss a coin for this), you can turn up the top card for your non-existent opponent’s choice of action at random. Return card to bottom of pile.
Alternatively, you can split the pack in half and play each figure as ‘random’, taking the top card blind from each pack for each figure.
Lunge Cut and Stop Thrust: Hit table from Gerard De Gre’s rules in John Curry’s reprint of Donald Featherstone’s Solo Wargaming.
Lunge, Cut and Stop Thrust – Combat Points
For each successful hit, remove 1 point / counter from the number given.
Featherstone / Du Gre gives 2 Combat Power points to light foot.
I usually give 5 points to each of these unarmoured swordsman to prolong the game.
Featherstone / Du Gre gives 2 Combat Power points to light foot. You can choose your own points table.
Light Foot – 2 points
Heavy Foot – 3 points
Mounted Knights 3 points plus 1 point for horse
Light Mounted (unarmoured) 2 points plus 1 point for horse.
In the case of Mounted men, the first hit is against their horse. When their horse is killed, the rider continues to fight on foot.
When all points have gone, this opponent is dead.
The winner can be given an additional point / counter.
If you both choose or draw the same card, consult the separate hit deck. The cards either say Both Hit or Both Missed.
To further randomise the opponents cards, I added in a couple of ducks and slips (either being hit or missed) as chance cards.
Captain Hook reached his last Combat Point and then draws this card – one dead Pirate captain.
This is the closest I think I will get to card activation.
Points are kept by scoring pointers – pebbles on the beach, sweets, coins or in the sandpit example, some spare Tiger store flamingo cocktail sticks in homage to the other Don Featherstone.
Playmobil Navy sailor versus the Kings Guard duelling in the sandpit over the cannon.
Duelling in Angria and the Bronte books?
There are lots of examples of the pistols or swords and six paces sort of thing in the Bronte juvenilia Imagi-Nations I have been following up on my Man of TIN blog. Most officer figures with many toy soldier sets had suitable swords.
This duelling card system an also be used to sort out Melee in an interesting way in Solo games and otherwise. Once troops are engaged, time stops whilst an individual skirmish is played out. Morale, Retreat or disengage cards could be added for variety.
Fantasy Gladiator type skirmishes are possible.
The addition of life or hit points means that you can give a combat / defence / life points value to anything from a dinosaur to a mounted knight. Or even in the Heroscape box, a Mounted knight on a dinosaur …
Pound Store plastics knights suitable for duelling and gladiator games.
Quick Samurai version?
Heroscape Samurai figures against Heroscape hex tiles on my portable play board that can be taken out into the garden.
I am slightly jealous of the attractive cherry blossom in the new Samurai Game Test of Honour featured in Tony’s Tin Soldiering On blog,
although i think its mainly the cherry blossom and not the rules system. I remembered I had some ‘free’ Samurai swordsmen in the couple of Heroscape starter sets which I bought for the hex tiles.
This works equally well in the garden with appropriate Japanese plants like this lovely Acer (Japanese Maple).
And the equivalent of Featherstone’s swoppet knights that as a convalescing invalid he hopes to “Bribe a nurse or browbeat your wife into bringing to your bedside a couple of those plastic 54mm Swoppet armoured knights and position them at either end of the Bed table.”
Lego Ninjago duelling Ninja Samurai type figures with suitable Lego shrine.
Maybe suitable figures can be found in their modern equivalent Lego mini figures or Wilko bootleggo mini figures, or pound store bags of knights or pirates.
A wide range of periods and genres amongst these duelling Lego mini figures – musketeers, clansmen, gladiators, pirates and knights.
Interchangeable weapons, heads , legs – Lego type minifigures are the modern version of Britain’s / Herald or Timpo type Swoppets.
I even found Lego minifigure fencing figures and do by chance or blind bag luck own two fencers, but could only find one for the photograph.
Somewhere I have Lego Star Wars and also metal figures of duelling Jedi figures with their lightsaber laser swords – these rules would also work well for this!
Featherstone mentions that “Minor actions can be fought: half a dozen Airfix men can try to capture a Bellona pillbox manned by a German machine gun team”. Well, having seen handmade trench raid weapons in museums and visited trenches like Dixmuide the Trench of Death on the Yser in Belgium, I can see that a World War trench raid is about as close to medieval foot combat as you can get, especially in the dark.
Not sure, having researched my village war memorial, if a trench raid is a bit too close historically to have the gloss or romance of history and fiction that makes pirate sword fighting or duelling an enjoyable card activated game though …
Airfix OO/HO sets like Robin Hodd / Sheriff also feature lots of swordsmen or men with quarterstaffs suitable for the Lunge Cut and Stop Thrust card game.
Pound store or seaside store pirates have useful duelling 54mm pirate swords men. These proved good fun to try out these rules in a recent family visit to the beach, though the cards get as soggy at the edges as you can see in the sandpit. Sandcastles have to be built and defended!
More elaborate and attractive laminated /sticky back plastic game cards could be made that would last longer in the garden or on the beach.
Jousting rules are also included in this chapter “Wargaming In Bed” in Solo Wargaming by Donald Featherstone but that’s one for another blogpost.
And finally … who was Gerard De Gre of the Model Generals Club who invented these Lunge Cut and Stop Thrust rules?
It appears that he was born in 1915 and he died in 1987.
Crossing the millienia – when the Royal Navy fought Romans! Duelling lady pirates Early stages of setting up the garden sand pit (sand Table!) with seaside castle above the harbour. Coins as combat point counters were quickly replaced by pink flamingo cocktail sticks, easier to find in the sand!
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 