Arcane Legions: Centaurs

Earlier I mentioned that I got some Centaurs, from the Egyptian Cavalry set. Officially these are known as Centaur Chargers. I bought 2 packs of this Cavalry set, which gave me some 10 Centaur Chargers. That is 5 in each box. I also got an Extra from a Arcane Legions, League Booster Pack. This one prepainted (or factory painted, if you like to call it that.)

Yesterday I got a few more Centaurs, this time Centaur Archers, as they are officially known, in the Arcane Legions Booster Brick. You get 6 of those, in each Booster Brick, all prepainted.

This is how they look. As you can see, the paintjob is not half bad, not good, but definately passable, if you do not want to paint them, and you do not have a different colorscheme in mind, and can live with the fact that all the horse bodies are the same colors (I cannot).

You also get the hero Achilles from the Booster Brick. He is a "rare" figure. You get 1 rare figure, and 2 units of Uncommon figures in each Booster Pack. Achilles if you remember the greek fables correctly is a Human, not a Centaur, but the card that comes with him explains, that he is the reincarnated hero, or claims to be. Here are a few pictures of him.

 First picture is from the side. Again it shows him in the same, to me, not very common horse color, of the Centaur Archers.

From this angle you can see that he is blond as well, despite having a black tail. In my world, those two would have to be the same color. So he too will recieve a paint job.

The third picture shows off his nice shield. And I must admit that It looks good. These figures are painted much better than the centaur charger, that I got that was prepainted.

~Claus

Arcane Legions: Egyptian Booster Brick

One thing I realized when browsing the web for pictures and information about what I would actually get if I bought the Egyptian Booster Brick, for Arcane Legions, was the lack of information and decent pictures of the figures I would get.

So I thought, why not publish my findings on the blog. Beats having the information out there but being very hard to find. Originally all the figures could be found on the Arcane Legions website. But like the game, that too is closed down.

So here is a list of what you get from the Egyptian Booster Brick:

1 x  Cleopatra VII
1 x Decidius Saxa
1 x Amenhotep III
1 x Darius of Pontus
1 x Achilles
1 x Masika, Hand of Isis
3 x Hand of Isis
3 x Hand of Osiris
3 x Anubian Guard
5 x Sta, with 1x Egyptian Beast Handler
3 x Criosphinx, with 1x Egyptian Beast Handler
2 x Protosphinx
6 x Centaur Archers
4 x Lionrider of Bast
6 x Undead Golem



In addition to these, Egyptian forces you get the following mercenaries

1 x Warlord Khudu
1 x Gülüg
2 x Kör Tiger Rider
4 x Kör Sniper

A total of 8 Boxes of figures, all prepainted, mostly quite well in fact. I got an additional 2 Egyptian boosters. I wanted to get some Centaur Archers, if possible, extra. I did not get them. In addition to the figures, you get alot of formation cards, and some sortie cards, that are meant to be used with the figures.

~Claus

More Ancient Greek Centaurs

Usually I try and do something different for each post. But... I had these centaurs on my painting desk simply screaming for my attention. I had hoped that I had finished off some other unit too, and I would have shown that unit and then this unit of centaurs.

However as luck would have it, a package arrived, from Germany (took 9 days to get here, which is pretty long), and it contained some prepainted cavalry figures from the Arcane Legions booster pack. Among these 4 cavalry figures, was 1 prepainted (factory painted) centaur, in the pose I had made my previous unit in.

So here it is, along with some I have painted myself. Can you guess which one is the factory painted one?

It should be obvious, but in case it is not... Here is a picture of the pose from the other side.

Right, still need a clue? The figure in the middle has a different base color... and skin color for that matter, and no, I was not going to do a centaur with that pale skin. In fact it should be very obvious which one is factory painted. Just 4 colors on it, painted on black plastic. I usually don´t rant on about how bad somebody elses painting skills are, cause I do not consider myself very good. But It seems I am better than the factory painter...

Now on to the unit I made.

Here it is from the side. The shields are a design I found on the web, and after double checking that figures had actually been produced with a shield with a spartan symbol, on a centaur, I went ahead and painted it. Incidently, not many Centaurs out there with shields... alot of them have bows though.

Here they are from the other side. I like the unit I painted before this one better. Somehow the colors fit better together. If that makes sense.

And here you can see the 5 figures from the front. I plan on eventually painting the prepainted one like these, and then I will have 6 centaurs in this unit.

For a parting picture, here are two of those I have painted, each presented with a different side to the camera.

I ordered the Booster Brick for the Egyptian side of the game, along with a Roman Booster Brick. So I will get some more centaurs, but these will have bows. I really hope they arrive soon. I have been waiting more than a week now, and it seems they are scheduled to arrive Monday. What to paint until then?

~Claus

Ancient Greek Centaurs

Well, this is really unlike me, but I have been smitten by some ancient greek Centaurs. They may not be the prettiest figures, but they have their charm none the less.

Here is a picture of the unit from the side.

Sizewise these are comparable to 1/72 figures, although they are officially listed as 25mm. They are from the defunct game Arcane Legions, which is made by the Wells Expedition. The plastic is comparable to the one used by Caesar Miniatures. It is sort of a bendy plastic, but not quite as bendy as the Caesar one.

The shields come prepainted. The motif is a centaur wielding a spear. I could not quite duplicate the color, and since one side is not painted, I decided to repaint all the figures.

They come unassembled. But that is not too much of a problem. I glued them with regular plastic glue and it is holding up very well. I wanted to glue the shields on with Superglue, but the glue had dried up and caused a blockage in the tube. So I tried to use regular glue, and it held up pretty well.

Historically of course, there was no such thing as Centaurs. so this is a forray into fantasy. It is not too off topic for me, though. So you will have to live with it. Here is finally a picture of two of the Centaurs placed up against each other, so you can get a good look at the pose.

They were fun to paint, which to me is more important than many other things. The sculpting I read elsewhere is so-so, some even call it bad. I can mention a couple of miniature manufacturers that would be proud of these figures. They are from the Egyptian booster pack, of Cavalry. They are sold along with 2 different poses of "mongol" or "steppe" warriors that are also horsemen.

~Claus