The first of my recent Pulp orders arrived earlier this week: African wildlife from Obelisk Miniatures. Each large blister pack contained six metal figures with round plastic slotta bases.
The first impression is good, they’re nicely sculpted figure with plenty of variety in the poses. There is a moderate amount of flash on several figures that will require some careful cleaning up. Many of the figures have small rods running between the bases and their raised limbs which will require clipping away. The Baboons also have some large metal venting tabs on the end of each of their tails which will be a little troublesome to clean off.
I’ve quickly poked a couple of raw figures into their slotta bases and shot them next to a couple of Copplestone Castings 28mm Pulp Heroes for scale comparison. They scale well against the human miniatures, for example compare them to this interesting set of photos from ShowStudio I stumbled across via a Google image search.
The figures themselves are well sculpted, particuarly when you consider how limiting animal sculpts can be. The Hyenas while all unique are all quite similar figures, really only differing in the positioning of the legs, although there is one in a nice head down growling pose. The Baboons show a lot more variety and are posed in a mixture of knuckle-walking and howling, with my favorite being the beast baring his fangs and angrily throwing his arms into the air.
I was quite surprised to find each animal is unique – clearly somebody likes sculpting Baboons and Hyenas! Having a mixture of figures like this means you can happily use all six to represent a pack without having to worry about painting duplicates differently to hide the repeated poses. It’s a small thing I guess, but very handy for the gamer.
In summary these are two great little packs of animals for any Pulp 28mm gamer using an African or Middle Eastern setting. I can imagine several .45 Adventure scenarios where a pack of wild Hyenas or angry Baboons could be the main challenge to the players.