Masters of the Universe, Fully Painted!

Bonus He-Man with BattleCat!

Oh boy was this more fun than I thought it was gonna be. I bought this starter set on a whim at Colours and it did not disappoint. (As my previous review post can attest.) There is a definite warm glow of nostalgia when it comes to these characters that wasn't even cooled off when recently I watched the old series again when they were added to Netflix. (I would also recommend the recent new animated series also on Netflix, Revelation, very good. Avoid the other one where Adam is a kid, not so good.) Yes the animation is ropey, including some sequences repeated multiple times to save money, but that is part of the charm. Even the blatant way the cartoon is there to serve the sale of toys as admitted by the people that made them in the excellent Netflix documentary The Toys That Made Us. There is something primal about a Hero that solves all issues by the application of a well placed punch towards the camera. (It's amazing how little he actually did with his sword.)

Everyones favourite moral learning Wizard, Orko

 

I have always thought that I have enjoyed painting fantasy/sci-fi more than historical as I had a choice of pallettes, but when I made the decision to paint these models strictly to their original colour schemes, I still really enjoyed it. I chose to go for a different style of shading/highlighting than normal, going for more distinct crisp lines and obvious highlights. This was really fun and I feel work well given the subject matter.

 

 

Ram-Man

The bases need a clear indicator of their front facing for the rules and so have a notch mark that I have painted white to make it really easy to spot.

He-Man and Skeletor facing off

 

Some colours I had to pallette mix to get a reasonable match to the original toys, although interestingly as they are toys, they would have re-used colours, so there are duplications.

 

Cyclops

 

 On the subject of repetition, I never noticed before but He-Man, Man-At-Arms and Cyclops all have the same waist and legs. Why waste a well sculpted waist?

 

 

Lockjaw

 

The sculpts from Archon Studios (that are different however) have just the right amount of detail to make the models not too difficult to paint, but also still look great. I sadly don't have a collection of the original toys to make a comparison myself (I did have an idea at one point of making a participation game for a wargame show of a skirmish involving the original models stuck to bases fighting over an original Castle Greyskull until I worked out how much it would set me back to Ebay them all) but I would hazard a guess that the level of detail has been raised a bit higher than the source material without straying too far.

 

Mer-man

 

It took me some time to get the Evil Lyn yellow right, especially important as basically she is just blue and yellow.

 

 

Evil Lyn

 

The models seem to have a mix of basing styles, some have rocks, some metallic, then for some reason just Orko has cobblestones. (I like painting cobblestones though, all those highlights and crack lines.)

 

Stratos

 

 Painting the characters was fun and simple, I am really pleased with how they all turned out.

 

Man-At-Arms

 

I then had to attack the job that was the large amount of terrain pieces that came in the box. I couldn't very well have these models fighting in front of plain grey plastic walls could I? So, after a lot of drybrushing I got all this done.

 

The mountain of terrain

Of course now I just need to get a game played. I'm looking forward immensely to it, the system looks good and as it has a hex board to play on I can definitely fit the game on the dining table. I'm looking forward to painting some more of the characters from this range when I get them. These include Teela, The Sorceress, Beastman and Scareglow. (I might need to investigate some glow in the dark paint.) If the range does expand into the She-Ra characters I think a winged unicorn or a sentient broom is definitely worth a go.