Retroplastics! Is an ongoing retrospective series focusing on the history of some of the hobbies weird and wonderful historic miniatures.
In the last Retroplastics! we had a look at the wonderfully characterful Psychostyrene dwarfs from 1985, earlier that same year another set of plastic miniatures were released by citadel and produced for the Fighting Fantasy game system - Developed by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, two of the legendary founders of Games Workshop -
Advertisement (Full Colour) from Warlock issue 5
These aptly named Fighting Fantasy Heroes - and Monsters - were the first official range of plastic miniatures to be released by Citadel, beating out the previously mentioned Dwarf kits by a matter of months - although the dwarfs do get the honour of being the first 'multi-part' kit from citadel - These fighting fantasy kits came in at a whopping 60mm tall!
- Note:There were some variations in height such as the dwarfs and goblins coming in a little shorter, and the troll coming in at a humongous 80mm tall -
Unlike the Psychostyrene kits, which were produced from a hard styrene, these larger Fighting Fantasy miniatures were produced in a special high-detail polythene plastic, - a similar material as the famous green 'army men' -.
Image from a recent Ebay listing – one of these lads is going for a steep price of £110!
The miniatures were presented in a manner resembling that of an action figure, each kit contained a loose single piece body, on a ‘puddle’ base, sporting separate swappable heads or helmets, molded in grey, and an additional selectable weapons and accessories sprue, molded in a metallic finish, with sticker applications used for any included shield designs.
all the miniatures in the range shared a universal hand connection - a hole molded through the hand - allowing any accessory from one kit to be used on an other. - that's a neat play feature... now, where's that Orc club gone... oh no, not behind the sofa again... -
‘Who you looking at!?’ – Image from the small scale world blog, who have a great hands on write up on these miniatures – Link
This flexibility in being able to swap around heads, weapons and accessories allowed you to , in the words of rick priestly *, 'assemble a whole army with no two figures the same'
*Warlock issue 6 pg44 - FANTASY IN MINIATURE
'An army of them!? But Will... How do I play with them?'
Well, as their name suggests these miniatures were designed for the Fighting Fantasy setting - we'll touch on the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook and role playing game series later down the line - but in the case of these miniatures, Citadel produced a small companion rules leaflet, the Fighting Fantasy Battlegame, a complete set of rules for individual combat between adventurers and monsters, sold in a small pack alongside a set of multi-sided dice for the princely sum of £1.25.
Fighting Fantasy Battlegame and Dice set – Images taken by a potato… maybe?
Sadly I wasn't able to find many photos of the Battlegame rules, let alone clear scans so can't tell you much more than the small blurb and some of the rules text that I can make out on the image above:
"Welcome to the Fighting Fantasy Battlegame. Here you will find deadly opponents in the form of terrible monsters, Goblins, Orcs, Skeletons, Warriors of Chaos, and Ogres. Perhaps you would actually dare to fight alongside these evil creatures against the goodly Barbarians, Wizards, Dwarves and Knights that are your enemies. Whether a servant of the forces of Good or a Lord of the hordes of Evil, now is the moment to brace yourself for combat."
- if you know of anyone who has a copy that has somehow managed to survive the last 40 odd years, please reach out. -
I'd love to get a look through the full rules leaflet at some point, as there looks to be some really fun little snippets, including the use of:
Differently sided dice for the Attack characteristic of each character type - for example, Knights use D8s, Dwarfs use D10s and Skeletons use D6s - a mechanic that has been shared by many games since and likely before.
Bows, axes and spears - classed as ranged weapons within the game - are semi-randomly allocated to the players, using an alternating, I chose you chose, mechanic, fun!
I wonder what other mechanics are hidden away in the rest of the leaflet, possibly lost to time or perhaps only temporarily missing from the history books...
This isn't the last time you'll here of fighting fantasy on this blog, I'll be having a looking into the history of the gamebooks and roleplaying game as part of a future series called Past Imperfect, and I'll be having a go at sculpting an homage to one of my favourite miniatures from the range in our new Pushin' Putty series of posts.
If you have gotten this far, thank you for tagging along on my late night adventure into the fighting fantasy heroes series of miniatures.
Retroplastics! will be sticking with Citadel miniatures for the time being - the next post will focus on the miniatures released as part of the Fantasy Regiments boxed set. if they arrive in time, we will also be painting up some of the Dwarfs from that set for my Dwarfen army project.
I hope you've enjoyed, if you did, feel free to comment down below and let me know what you think.