Maidenhead Miniatures are an Australian company producing a line of figures called 'The Babes That Time Forgot.'

Their range at the moment consists of a an Amazon army, and the new (and still growing) Feral Elves army, but they plan on adding further armies and different miniatures later. Here's what Maidenhead's Kym Pennell has to say about the company: Click Here

And so: On to the miniatures!

Feral Elves

First Impressions

I liked Maidenhead's Amazon range, but I'd have to admit some of the sculpting was just a little crude, and skimped a little on the details. These miniatures, however, seem to have taken the same creativity that went into the Amazons, and combined it with a more refined sculpting style, with the end result being much more finely detailed gaming miniatures.

The basic idea is simple, and I guess nothing particularly new: Scantily-clad, large-breasted female elves. But here's where it veers a little off the beaten track. These aren't your average tree-hugging, scrawny humanoids. Instead, Maidenhead have gone for a more bestial form for their Feral Elves, with slight evolutionary differences marking the separate castes. The basic troopers tend to wear the least clothing, have cloven hooves and small horns, and have a definite air of savagery about them. The nobles tend to wear more clothing, and are a little more human looking. And then there are the Centyr, Elf-goat hybrids which make an interesting variation on the normal Centaur theme.

Here's a quick look at the bare metal, (pics courtesy of Maidenhead, as I forgot to grab some photos before undercoating).

Just click on the thumbnails, and the larger picture will pop up in a separate window.

Cleaning Up

The miniatures are cast in white metal, with very little flash. Mould-lines are likewise minimal, and the surface of the metal is smooth, with the detail being nice and crisp.The two main problem areas on the Amazons, the faces and hands, seem to have received a little more attention on these girls, with the faces being symmetrical and well-formed, and the hands having fully-defined fingers.

The level of detail on each model is good, with sufficient clothing, weaponry or decoration to add a bit of colour, and large expanses of bare skin just screaming out for a little free-hand tattoo work. There are no appreciable 'filled' spots (plugs of detail-less metal that serve simply to make moulding a little easier) as is often the case with single-piece models. The poses are dynamic and characterful, the detail is great, and these girls are just generally screaming out for paint.

Painting

After 12 years of painting wargaming miniatures, I'm finally losing my general phobia of painting skin... which is a good thing, because there is an awful lot of it on these girls.

I went for a fairly consistent look to all of these, with auburn hair, slightly pinkish skin, and green stylised tattoos to break up some of those vast expanses of exposed flesh. I kept right away form metallics, as I wanted to keep them looking fairly primitive. Stone and bone seems much more in keeping with the Feral theme. I simply can't see bestial elves running a smithy.

Despite my slight remaining qualms about skin, these girls practically painted themselves. The crisp detail made it nice and easy to see what went where, and the limited palette I used served to tie everybody together into a cohesive group, despite the range of different equipment.

I used round bases rather than the square ones they come with as I will probably wind up using them as Daemonettes in my Warhammer 40K Chaos army, for now. If I can convince Ophelia to let me buy a few more, they would also make superb Chaos Mutants for a Lost and the Damned army...

Final Word

These are characterful, well sculpted miniatures and were a lot of fun to paint. They are also a step up from Maidenhead's previous offering, which was already above average compared to the smaller miniature companies I've seen. If this is any indication of what to expect in the future, it will be interesting indeed to see what else they can come up with.