Anti-Eternians - Anti-Teela

To complete (for now) the round of Anti-Eternian counterparts, Anti-Eternia Teela is as cruel as she is beautiful, in a cold, dark way. This one was a bit of a rush job and it doesn't take well to pictures as the black paint and highlights are slightly glossy. Having no clear example of what she should look like, I sort of made it up going by what I figured would look good. I also decided to change the bases on my Anti-Eternians (though you don't see it very well in the pictures) by adding red in the recesses between the tiles, which gives an impression of heat and fits well with the Anti-Eternian theme. This one was painted as part of He-Month 2 and will likely be my only entry this month.

The deadly Anti-Teela 

The complete set of Anti-Eternians (so far), with touched up bases:

My three versions of Teela so far: Anti-Teela, Teela and Snake Teela.

Anti-Eternians - Anti-Man-At-Arms

Another character from the German audio plays, Anti-Man-At-Arms is, as you will have guessed, the evil mirror identity of Man-At-Arms from the Anti-Eternia universe. Like Anti-He-Man, the main colours are black, red and grey. This one has no official figure, so there is some artistic freedom to represent him.

The figure is of course another copy of the Quest Miniatures Man-At-Arms figure, with custom base.

Eternians fighting their Anti-Eternian counterparts:

A side by side of good and evil Man-At-Arms (Men-At-Arms?):

The Anti-Eternians so far:

Anti-Eternians - Anti-He-Man

Hailing from the Antiverse, a mirror dimension in which good and evil have traded places, Anti-He-Man is the most ruthless tyrant that Anti-Eternia has ever known, and the arch-nemesis for the heroic Prince Keldor. The character was originally exclusive to a German audiobook story, though a popular character among collectors for custom action figures, given that he's a straight repaint. Eventually, his story came full circle when an official MOTU Classics figure was released by Mattel a few years ago, cementing his position in MOTU canon.

When Skeletor utilized the Elixir of Schneidor to open doorways into other dimensions, he inadvertently created a pathway to the Antiverse, allowing Anti-He-Man to cross over into Eternia. His evil powers unstoppable, He-Man and Skeletor had to unite to fight him. Since such an uneasy alliance can only end in betrayal, Skeletor sent both He-Men to the Antiverse. The story didn't end there of course and He-Man helped Prince Keldor overthrow Anti-He-Man in Castle Hellskull. He-Man was finally returned home by Gwildor and Zodak using the Cosmic Key.

Filmation fans should check out this gorgeous fanmade tribute by Grimbot that looks just like the real thing:

The model is of course the standard He-Man sculpt by Boris Woloszyn for Quest Miniatures, converted to remove the empty sword scabbard and with a custom base. The black skin didn't turn out the way I wanted, but it looks fine in person, so I'll leave it. I looked at a lot of images of Anti-He-Man art and customs for the best colour combination and pretty much ended up with the one from the fanmade video, which is appropriate since I'm trying to stick to a Filmation theme with these figures. Some versions online only use black and red, but I feel the grey bracers add a much needed flash of contrasting colour to keep the figure interesting. Unlike the video version, I did keep the glowing red eyes seen on most incarnations. Some people paint the sword black, which, while cool, can't beat the awesome vintage toy feel of a bright red version of the powersword.

Anti-Eternia He-Man in all his glory.

Duel of the He-Man:

Evil Warriors - Evil-Lyn

Evil-Lyn is the only female member of the Evil Warriors, at least in Filmation continuity, and she is an evil witch who aids Skeletor as his second-in-command with her powers of darkness. She is vastly more intelligent than Skeletor's other minions, and while she admits that she is not as powerful as Skeletor, she readily confesses that she hopes to seize her master's powers and lord it over Eternia herself one day. Her background has changed a bit depending which continuity you look at. In recent years she has been both said to have been Prince Keldor's lover, before he took the grievous wounds that made him turn to the dark magic that made him into the Skeletor he is today. Other stories claim she was a crew member of the same Earth spaceship that brought Queen Marlena to Eternia.

The figure is another Boris Woloszyn sculpt from Quest Miniatures and the last unique sculpt of the first wave. The pictures don't show her off to her best, but that doesn't detract from the fact that I somewhat botched the face on this one (redoing the eyes several times will do that). Otherwise, she is straight up with no conversions other than the homesculpted base.

An Evil Witch and her wand...

With Teela:

Though we come from the same mould, we are nothing alike!

The full complement of painted Heroic and Evil Warriors so far.

The Evil Warriors: Beastman, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn

The Heroic Warriors: Man-At-Arms, He-Man, The Goddess, Teela

 And a bonus picture of the completed first wave of Quest Miniatures MOTU miniatures:

Quest Miniatures Wave 1

The Snake Men - Snake Teela

Having painted a second, improved version of Teela, the earlier version became obsolete. I could of strip her, but most of the paintjob was perfectly serviceable and since I learned about there being a Snakemen version of Teela in the MOTU 200x continuity, I wanted to do a Snake Teela as she could have appeared if done in Filmation style. So I went about repainting her skin in a green tone, and her eyes yellow. That the earlier, flawed skintone had left some rough patches here and there didn't really matter, as it all worked with the Snakemen theme. I painted her sword green, after the 200X Snake Teela toy figure accessory, though I left the shield as it was. Her base was repainted in my Snakemen base colours. A relatively quick job that meant I could keep using the figure without having to repaint a complete figure. Result!

She-Hul... I mean, Snake Teela!

... in all her green glory

The concept is inspired by the MOTU 200x episode "Second Skin", where King Hiss used an artifact that could turn regular people into Snakemen. In the story, Man-At-Arms, Mekanek and Teela were temporarily turned into Snakemen and battled He-Man. They were returned back to their human selves after He-Man destroyed the Serpents Ring and the Ophidian Spire. There was a toy version made of Snake Teela after the cartoon that looked like this:

The 200x Teela design isn't quite the same as the Filmation Teela we know and love, so I tried to reimagine what Snake Teela would have looked like in a Filmation episode. With their love for reusing recoloured footage, just like the toys loved to reuse recoloured characters, a simple green repaint seemed a likely interpretation.

I will stop your evil, Remcor, I....... will....... join you!

You have to fight it, Teela! - I can't... and I don't want to!

Teela vs Snake Teela

Heroic Warriors - Teela

Not being happy with my first paintjob of this character, especially the face, I started a second version from scratch. The new one is still not quite where I would like her to be, the camera shows up some flaws I didn't notice on the model, but at least the face looks a lot more like the character from the cartoon and she looks fine at actual scale. Notable changes from my previous version is paler skin, a darker, more reddish shade for the hair, fine black lines around the eyes and a dark red lipstick.

Teela - Redux

A strong woman holding her own in a men's world...

A strong warrior, unspoken love interest of both He-Man and Prince Adam, adopted daughter of Man-At-Arms and real daughter/hairess of the Sorceress/Goddess, ... Teela has quite the elaborate back story. The model is another great sculpt by Boris Woloszyn for Quest Miniatures. Like the others, and my previous version of this character, I followed the Filmation colours for the painting and avoided all metallics. The flagstone was sculpted over a standard plastic lipped base as with the others.

Lightbox pictures, so there are no distractions in the background

Say, Teela, there's something different about you today. I don't know what it is, but I like it!

 

Just because I'm prettier now doesn't mean I can't do my share of fighting the baddies!

 Finally, a comparison side by side of the first version and the new one. I think the new one is more recognisable as the Teela from the Filmation cartoon:

Games & Rulesets - He-Man's Challenge boardgame

Part of wargaming MOTU requires a set of rules. I will explore the options for both tabletop and boardgames, both created specifically for MOTU or adapted from a generic game. There actually seem to have been at least 4 MOTU boardgames that I know of, not counting the infamous RPG that is reputedly unplayable (I'll still try to get it for completeness' sake), but, mostly being aimed at kids, not all of those are of the kind that lend themselves to a proper miniatures game.

To kick this off , I will start with an original MOTU-themed boardgame from 1984 that landed on my doorstep this week, courtesy of ebay and my wallet. To the best of my knowledge, "Le défi de Musclor" (He-Man's challenge), produced by Nathan, was only ever available to the French speaking market. At least, I couldn't see any English language equivalents.

Box cover

Backside

At first glance, the premise and game components immediately look very promising, giving it the appearance of a simplified version of a MOTU-themed dungeon crawler. Productionwise it looks good. The game features some not quite but close Filmation style art throughout and the Castle Grayskull screen looks very cool.

Opening the box. The instructions booklet looks neat.

The game plays on a tiled gameboard, consisting of two parts, divided by a cardboard screen of Castle Grayskull, meaning you play part of the game outside the walls and part of it inside. The inside section is raised, so it's about level with the gate opening.

First section of the board

The Castle Grayskull cardboard screen. This reminds me of the gamemaster screen in the old Hero Quest. This is one of my favourite items in this set.

Inside the Castle, with a spot for the deck of cards (top left) and Skeletor's throne room where the final fight will occur (top right).

When it's all set up, it's quite a big layout.

The game uses 2D6, weapon- and combatcounters outside the castle, eventcards with traps and random encounters inside the castle and cardboard cutouts in plastic stands of the main characters, so on paper, that makes it perfect to use with miniatures.

The square tokens are used outside the castle, the round ones are used in the final confrontation with Skeletor

Interestingly, it is the Heroic Warriors who start outside the walls and the objective of the game is to get inside and defeat Skeletor. The 4 player characters are He-Man, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Stratos. Skeletor is represented by a card instead of a cutout figure. Beastman and Merman are present in the weapon counters.

During the first part of the game, each tile is covered with one of the square tokens, face down, and players move across the board outside of the castle (using the dice) and can collect weapons that will increase their chances to make it to Skeletor once inside the Castle. They will also need either a Battlecat or a Wind Raider to cross into the Castle more easily (instead of trusting on a lucky roll of the dice). If they encounter Merman or Beastman, they will lose one of their weapons.

Inside the Castle, the player has to make his way to Skeletor's throne room and the shortest route will be the most treacherous. Different weapons will help against different monsters/traps.

The event cards are used within the Castle walls and include traps and random encounters. The cardback is another great image of Castle Grayskull.

The final battle against Skeletor is decided with the dice, where any remaining weapons the player has will count as a +1 modifier to his advantage. You have to win three times in order to win the battle. If Skeletor wins three times, you are defeated and thrown out of the castle. The game then goes on until one of the players makes it to Skeletor and defeats him.

One thing that is a bit lacking for the discerning wargamer is the combat phase which is overly simplified. I might tack on something a bit more interesting to resolve combat with Skeletor. Likewise, I think I would make it so that when Beastman and Merman are introduced, they are added to the board and could engage players in combat instead of just stealing their weapons.

All-in-all I'm still pretty pleased with this purchase as the board looks fantastic for something that's 34 years old and after some tweaks to the rules, I look forward to giving it a spin, using my proper miniatures of course.