Asgard (Viking Forge) Fantasy Monsters FM74 Water Elemental

This next sculpt is a bit of an oddity, in every sense of the word. Originally I thought it was an Asgard FM74 Water Elemental, but I’ve since found out that this is a re-issue by Viking Forge – with some extra bits added on. You see the original here, and then compare with the version I’ve painted up. As with many of the bigger Asgard sculpts (this figure is nearly 70cm tall!), it has terrific presence, and the pose is dynamic – it really suggests something lurching out of the water to surprise the unwary adventurers. Set against that are the usual complaints about Asgard figures – poor detail on the hands/claws, weird proportions (just look at the size of the tail compared to the rest of the figure) and a tiny base that means the figure topples over VERY easily. More on that later…

The first thing was to stabilise the figure by gluing it to a standard GW cavalry base, followed by the use of Milliput to suggest waves and water. After that, various shades of green for the body, cream for the shell breastplates and armour, and then pink for the conch helmet. This was followed by shading and then the usual dry brushing to pick out detail, whilst I also dry brushed the back fin, the scales and the tail with silver to suggest glistening water. The eyes were filled in with red to try and give it a vaguely threatening appearance. As for the water base – that is just a blue/green base, with various washes, and then a white dry brush to suggest foam.

It’s an OK paint job, but I am vaguely dissatisfied with the figure as a whole. IMHO I don’t think the additions made by Viking Forge are an improvement – the conch helmet is vaguely ridiculous, as is the shell breastplate. Where the Viking Forge sculpt really fails is on the spear and the net to catch unwary adventurers – the original Asgard sculpt had them as separate accessories, whilst Viking Forge has made them integral parts of the figure. And they are fragile – the spear in particular is incredibly thin, and the original spear head was so fragile that it fell off and refuses to stick back on, so it has been replaced with a GW plastic spear head. As for the net… the figure comes on a really small base, and as soon as it falls over – the net breaks off. I've had to use superglue to re-attach it at least five times. This is just really bad design IMHO, and probably accounts for why the figure didn’t (and presumably still doesn’t) sell well.

Can’t see it getting too much table time to be honest – it is such a weird sculpt for a water elemental, and there are far better figures to use in a dungeon party encounter. One for the Asgard completists only, methinks…