More nostalgia. While I was digging out my old RuneQuest miniatures I found another box of vintage goodies from the 1980's; Golden Heroes.
In 1984 Games Workshop published their superhero role-playing game, Golden Heroes and Citadel Miniatures released two boxed sets of miniatures to tie in with the game. At the time I really wanted to play some table-top superhero games but there was nothing really designed for that purpose so I picked up Golden Heroes, hoping to adapt it. Of course, I bought the miniatures too.
As a gaming project it was a bit of a failure. The role-playing rules were good and full of inspirational ideas, but not really adaptable to a free-flowing wargame. I never got used to the name either. A minor quibble, but I always thought it sounded like a breakfast cereal. The miniature boxed sets didn't help much either. Unlike the RuneQuest boxed sets with their nice foam inserts, Golden Heroes miniature boxes had flimsy vac-formed plastic inserts. They just felt inferior and offered zero protection to painted miniatures. The miniatures themselves were a bit of a disappointment too. Perhaps I'd previously been a bit spoiled by the quality of Citadel's RuneQuest miniatures, many of which were sculpted by the Perry twins. The Golden Heroes miniatures are sadly not in the same league. I'm not sure who the sculptors were, but surely not the Perrys. I painted up the miniatures that I considered most tolerable and left the rest. The paint-jobs are my original efforts (Humbrol enamels again) with minimal repainting and a bit of tidying up to repair chipped areas here and there. Some of the miniatures are anatomically odd and rather stiffly posed - a bit cartoonish, but I guess that fits the subject matter. Looking at them now I like them a lot better than I first did. Maybe that's the nostalgia kicking in again. Anyway, you can judge for yourself from the photos.
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| Galactigirl, The Phantom Stalker and Bluebottle |
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| Paragon vs. El Maestro |
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Brainchild vs. The Atom
(No, don't ask me how Brainchild got his hands through his sleeves) |
Now a confession. I lied a bit about none of them being Perry sculpts. 'The Phantom Stalker' in the pictures above is a bit of an interloper. He wasn't part of the Golden Heroes boxed sets at all. In fact he is of an even earlier vintage, circa 1979 to 1982 and part of Citadel Miniatures original Fiend Factory range,
FF5 - Phantom Stalker to be exact. And the sculptor? Michael Perry. I discovered that I had adapted the miniature a bit by sculpting on trunks and a pair of gloves (sorry Michael!), though I have no recollection of doing so. It does go to show the lengths I went to at the time to get suitable miniatures for superhero games.
Paragon's flight stand is a new addition. The original was one of those 'classic' clear plastic 1 inch hex-and-post flight stands, but I wanted something taller and pose-able. The answer was a homemade flight stand made from a clear acrylic round base and a length of 3mm diameter clear acrylic rod. The ball joint attached to the miniature was originally meant for radio-controlled plane linkages. The rod is topped with a short length of rubber fuel hose, again from radio-controlled plane supplies. I slipped the hose over some brass rod temporarily so I could poke it into a pencil sharpener. A few turns and it produced a nice tapered finish to the top of the hose. The ball joint pops into the top of the hose and is held firmly, but allows for rotation. It actually works better than neodymium magnets which suffer from a tendency to 'windmill'. It's nice and simple to produce and I think this will be my standard flight stand solution in future.
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| Is it a bird... |
It wasn't until 2002 that I revisited the idea of superhero games, this time thanks to SuperSystem by Scott R. Pyle of Four Color Studios. This was what I had been waiting for; a dedicated set of rules for Superhero slugfests. Inspired by the rules, I added to my superhero miniature collection, mostly from Westwind Productions SuperFigs line, with a few other conversions from various sources.
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| Lone Star |
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| Black Ice vs. X-Ray |
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| Dreadnought and Blaze |
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| Overlord |
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Rampage
("yeah, no one will recognise me in this mask") |
SuperSystem served my superhero gaming needs well, but it's been a long time since I last gave it a spin. The rules have been through several editions since I bought my copy, but I never felt the need to upgrade to the latest version as the original edition did pretty much everything I needed it to. None-the-less, I was curious to see what was out there now and discovered that Scott Pyle had produced a new set; Super Mission Force, already in it's second edition so I have rather fallen behind with developments in the superhero gaming genre. There were enough glowing reviews, game reports and enthusiastic comments on the web to pique my interest, so I ordered a copy. They look good to me. The SuperSystem DNA is clearly evident, though the whole thing appears to be more streamlined. I've not tried them out yet, but - well, we'll see. If nothing else, they may nudge me to open up the box of unpainted SuperFigs that I know are buried somewhere in the cupboard.
