Men at Arms

Recently I have been returning to my Heroquest collection to add a few more figures. As you'll likely know, the metal prototypes from Heroquest are my particular holy grail quest. Many months ago a fellow collector and Heroquest fanatic messaged me to say he'd found a spare casting of the prototype Man at Arms from Wizards of Morcar/Advanced Quest (Dark Company), also released with Frozen Horror in the USA. Only one problem...

At some point the plume had been cut off for conversion purposes. Here you can see the complete figure with the butchered 'spare' next to it. No problem, I reckoned I could fix that.

Searching through the Empire pages of the 1992 catalogue I located a plume that looked the closest. I then took a silicone mould of just the head of the donor model and cast a resin copy. I used modelling putty to fill in the curve a bit more to match the intact prototype plume, cut it from the resin head and pinned it onto the prototype model. Job done.

As you can see the prototype model (second from right) takes the same plug-in weapons as the released Ersatzsolder and Helblitzen models. The tabs on these figures say 1991, Advanced Quest came out in 1992 and Wizards of Morcar in 1993 so it's likely the plug-in weapon concept was already in place for Warhammer and adopted into the Heroquest release. The prototype figure is just a different head on the same body as the Helblitzen figure to the left of him in the picture above.

Having painted so many matching uniforms for my Empire army I couldn't face another batch painting session. Since these are mercenaries and their attire is very different (supposed to represent Tilea, Estalia and regions of the Empire itself I presume) it was a fun opportunity to go to town with bright colours and patterns.

The regular released soldiers in these pictures have been made up with the different weapons permanently attached, just painted to match. Perhaps each player's own mercenaries will be colour coded? Of course I only had the one of the prototype figure so a system for swapping the weapon was required. The pin into the body serves as a locator but not much else on these metal models, unlike the plastic ones where it holds enough to easily swap the weapons in and out. 

Fortunately there's enough flat space on the ends of the models arms for them to be drilled and some small magnets to be inserted, with the reverse on the weapon options. I don't feel too bad about drilling into a rare prototype figure as he'd already required fixing with the plume transplant. Besides, it allows the model to actually be used and is invisible once the weapon is attached.

So here's what the weapon options look like side by side. I take it this chap is meant to be a Tilean. He certainly looks it to me. Sad that you couldn't buy packs of just the one body type since the uniforms are so different a mixed unit doesn't look nearly as good as one with just the single type in.

The heavily armoured Helblitzen, always my favourite of the four released.

This guy looks Nuln-y to me, but that's based on a very limited knowledge of the Empire since I never really cared much for official Warhammer fluff. 

An Estalian?

And here's what a full set of the prototype models would look like.

I've got another prototype on the painting table at the moment, and scouts on the lookout for more, so further Heroquesting developments very soon!