Saturday, April 20, 2013

Lousy Roman Cavalry

Checking my lead pile I found a baggie of loose Roman cavalry I picked up off of eBay or TMP a few years ago.  My Romans are starting to get outnumbered by Carthaginians and Gauls so I figured it was high time to give the legions s a few reinforcements.

I spent last evening prepping and cleaning them, looking forward to getting to the actual painting over the coming week. I tackled the horses first and was surprised at the amount of flash they had, and some of the poor sculpting on them.

Horses


First take a look at these horses. I know horses are difficult to sculpt, but these are really quite terrible.
These look more like mules to me rather than powerful steeds.

And look how narrow! 
The horse bases were also warped and took a lot of bending just to make them stand up at all. The riders were just as bad. Check them out after the jump.


Riders

The proportions on these figures are way off, the poses are strange, and they are full of flash and miscastings.
What is this guy doing with his left arm? His hand is cupped near his face... a hand that should be holding a shield.

This guy could scratch his ankle without beding over.

I'm sure the enormous paddle hand is distracting, but be sure not to miss the amputated right foot.
I found several figures identically miscast. 
Frustrated with the poor quality of these figures I gave up trying to fix and clean them but I'm not quite sure what to do with them. Perhaps I can turn them into casualty figures, but they really deserve to be melted down and recast as something better.

One peculiar thing about these figures: the hands holding weapons would need to be drilled out to accept spears. Does anyone know who produced these figures? I'd like to steer clear of the manufacturer in the future.

6 comments:

  1. Yikes, those figures do look very iffy. I had a similar experience with a group of 24 Roman infantry I purchased from Black Tree Designs during their 50% off sale last December. The figures just aren't usable.

    I may try to save them by using them as part of a testudo formation where their shields hide the awful sculpting.

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  2. Oh, those are really bad. A good paintjob can hide many flaws but these look like something best suited for cubists to paint.

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  3. those look like Old Glory Horses to me.

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  4. Yes, these are Old Glory CWG-21 (Caesar's Gallic Wars Roman Heavy Cavalry).

    On mine, I cut the arms off and replaced them with plastic arms from the various Victrix, Wargames Factory and Warlord sets. It made them look a HECK of a lot better!!!

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    1. Thanks Dr. John, new arms would be quite helpful. Maybe I'll give them another shot one of these days. Thanks for finally pinning down the actual manufacturer and pack. Mystery solved!

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