Old stuff: 1/72 Centaurs!

Since I'm currently occupied with other projects, I've been thinking of posts I should feature until I have time to begin hobbying again. One idea is Old Stuff: cheap fantasy mini projects I completed before I started this blog, which I may have featured elsewhere but not here. And since the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale at Miniature Market means their already fantastic prices on Arcane Legions are even lower this weekend, I thought my centaurs would be a good place to start.

These guys are of course Arcane Legions figures. The archers and the spearman in the middle are Egyptian Boosters, while the other figures are Egyptian Cavalry. Apart from the sable centaur ("Achilles," apparently), these aren't the original heads, which wore Classical-style crested helmets, like these:

Photo credit to Men in Boxes.

Clever idea for a sculpt, but I decided I liked the wilder look of the more classic, uncivilized centaurs I remember reading about from Hercules and other legends. The solution was a bunch of head swaps with Esci/Italeri's out-of-production barbarian figures, complemented with a generous coiffure of fabulous Milliput-sculpted hair. I don't have many WIP photos of these, but this shot might give some idea of what the process was like:

Note the Milliput beard on the "wizard" centaur on the left. Apart from Achilles on the right, that's what all these minis' hair looked like before priming.

Finally, some lineup shots with Sven the comparison viking, looking somewhat out of place but nonetheless in scale with all the horse-dudes.

You can see how I was limited by the small number of poses available, but I think the shot at the top of the article shows how the headswaps combined with the variegated paintjobs lend more variety than one might expect.