Fighting Fantasy Battlegame Toys

Some might be aware that GW published a set of rules for fighting small engagements with large-scale plastic toys based on the Fighting Fantasy series. Well, they did. They also prototyped a polystyrene dungeon in the style of the Mighty Fortress for use with it. Although this never saw full production there are some examples of it kicking around. Well, at least I know of one that is...

As you can see, the plastic figures produced for the game were extremely high quality... (images from www.fightingfantasycollector.co.uk). As a result they sold extremely well and are very common and easy to get hold of. No, wait, I'm thinking of something else. let's face it, they aren't the finest example of plastics production, but I guess we can forgive GW as the technology was new (to them) and they were finding their feet.

 

 

A rumour abounds that BOYL 2020 might see some games of this ancient and lofty ruleset being played, but given how rare (and therefore expensive) the actual figures are... I mean, would you pay good money for them? Not when there are cheap alternatives of just as good quality to be found on the modern market.

Enter the True Legends bucket of fantasy figures! At our weekly gaming session last Friday Chris brought out this beuatiful collection of toys for us to admire. Just marvel at the workmanship:

Needless to say I begged him for a chance to paint one of each of these mighty heroes. Well, except the crazy, stunted witch lady with no hips. That model is just too nasty for me to want to paint even out of silliness! The rest though cut straight through the painting queue onto the desk and by Wednesday evening they were done. 

Here's Legolas, Gimli and Conan tooled up and spoiling for a fight!

And here are some less certain characters that I decided to paint as a rogue/ninja type, an Indian princess/sorceress type and (what I presume to be meant as an orc) a 1980s He-Man type furry demon man.

Yes, they're gawky, but they were actually pretty fun to paint up and apart from some wierdnesses of proportion and design (what does Legolas have on his feet?) they don't look too bad. Especially given a 1980s heavy metal animation theme (which makes things like the more modern attire of the rogue/ninja less incongruous). So now I want to build on the 54mm cartoon miniatures collection, especially get some more bad guys for the heroes to face. My attention has thus been drawn by this:

Should be some fun things to try out in there...