Hinchcliffe Fantasy (FA) Range FA10 Armoured Centaur

And next up – another relic from the late 70’s/early 80’s. Hinchcliffe were only of the earliest figure manufacturers – pre-Asgard -  and went through several changes of ownership. I believe they’d owned by Hinds now. As with all of the very early manufacturers, the quality if the sculpts often left a lot of be desired – they were primarily designed for wargaming use, with intention that you had lots of units looking pretty much the same, and keeping them simple to paint. When D&D became popular, Hinchcliffe took the same approach with their Fantasy range – a lot of their figures were very crude and not very detailed. 

When this sculpt got extracted from the Lead Mountain, I was NOT enthused. I mean – look at the back legs – it looks more like a grasshopper’s legs! And the length of that sword arm – has the centaur been stretched on a rack?!?! Ah well, out with the brushes…

I have learnt that the trick with painting a lot of the early mini’s is to keep it simple. With that in mind – dark brown for the horse body, leather for much of the webbing and the basic armour, red for the cloak and plume, silver for the sword and helmet, followed by soft tone wash. So good, so far. It was only when I started to highlight the figure that a lot of detail really came out – I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out. The base is simply green flock.

I still have major issues with the figure though – I mean, LOOK at that tail! Shouldn’t that be dangling off the back of a werefox or something? I can’t see it getting too much table top time – I have other centaur figures more suitable (mostly as part of a HOTT Wood Elves army), but I am quite pleased with this one – I really didn’t think it would turn out as well as it did.