Hi everyone and thanks for the interest in the Egyptian Harem miniatures. I'm quite excited to get these figures out there and work on some future sets to round off the range. The eunuch figures sculpted by Kev Adams have quite a bit of heft to them. The design concept for them came from some guards in the 1964 Cleopatra film and the food-taster in the Asterix comics. I told Kev I was looking for some guards that were quite clearly NOT soldiers - A life of relative ease guarding the ladies of Pharaoh's court - not marching and campaigning under harsh conditions. I think he did a great job of conveying the fact that these fellows don't miss many meals
To be honest in a fantasy setting the eunuchs could easily make suitable guards for a corrupt tax-collecter, depraved satrap or some evil temple. I have commissioned Kev to do some variants of these - unfortunately this will have to wait until Kev's eye-sight is better. Another first for Kev in this range was sculpting human females - he was only able to do three before being injured - but its only a matter of time before he's back to sculpting them.
The Brother Vinni Egyptian ladies are based on a number of characters from a Role-playing campaign I ran which was set in Ptolemaic Egypt - the first set are based on actual depictions from Egyptian sculptures and tomb paintings. It was my intention to have them standing in static yet feminine poses - the reason for this was I found it nearly impossible to find figures to represent Egyptian females that did not have a cobra-staff in their hands or a basket on their heads and most 'concubine' type figures out there are reclining, laying down or seated. There is nothing wrong with this and I plan on doing some of these figures myself later but my intention was to have figures that could be used to represent characters and NPCs in table-top games. I have also asked BV to do two sets of entertainers (the first set with two dancers and harp player are available in this Indiegogo) the second set which comprises of a flute girl, lyre player and dancer will come later. Later sets will include Egyptian queens and attendants, slave/serving girls, concubines with weapons in more animated poses and even some Egyptian vampires. The size of the figures in this campaign is larger (28mm to the eye for most) than the set of Egyptian concubines by Aaron Brown that I offered in the first Indiegogo project (28mm to the top of the head). I had made the mistake of commissioning two different sculptors at the same time and imagining (in my head) that 28mm would be consistent between sculptors. In the end I decided to go with the larger and more common 28mm and now I always make a point of providing new sculptors to the range with figures for scale references - Lesson learned!
As far as what these figures might be used for - that's completely up to you. Sir Barnaby has offered some great suggestions - they fit in quite well for small scale adventure gaming and role-playing. A number of contributors have mentioned that they planned to use them in Stargate, Tekumel and Aegyptus games. For wargaming I think they would be suitable for camp followers or objectives - I plan on running two wargame scenarios: One in which a large war-band of Libyan warriors will attempt to 'recapture' a Libyan princess who is being escorted to a remote temple - the other involves a palace coup scenario in which Pharaoh has been poisoned and rivals try to seize control of his body.
So far the campaign has been going quite well - hopefully the momentum will continue. I have sent some of the figures off to be painted and will post these on the page when they're done. If you have any questions/suggestions about the campaign, the figures, the concepts or the perks just message me - Thanks for your interest!
07 October 2010, 11:58:13 PM