Evil Horde - Hordak

Hordak is the evil tyrant ruling Etheria and main villain opposing She-Ra with his Evil Horde. Skeletor's erstwhile mentor, they are now bitter enemies and while temporary alliances are not unheard off, they invariably end in betrayal on one end or the other, usually both. He has the ability to transform his arms into a variety of mechanical weapons, the most famous being a cannon arm.

The model is a resin figure part of a limited release private commission and sculpted by the talented Boris Woloszyn. The pictures make the colours out to be slightly more dull than reality. The action shot with Slime Monster He-Man and Skeletor is a closer representation of the colours. The base texture was sculpted in putty over a plastic lipped base and painted in red as my default colour for Horde characters.

Hordak sending off a slime possessed He-Man to take out Skeletor once and for all...:

A closer look at the head:

Anti-Eternians - Anti-Man-At-Arms in Windraider

One of the elements in the original Anti-Eternia audioplay is that Anti-Man-At-Arms comes flying in in a windraider. Now I had converted a Quest Miniatures Man-At-Arms to fit into the old Grenadier windraider, but I didn't feel like doing yet another flying Man-At-Arms so soon after the skysled version. So in an unexpected turn of event, I ended up painting an Anti-Eternia windraider before doing a regular one. The Grenadier model is based on the toy version, so it's a one-person aircraft, unlike the Filmation cartoon 4-seater. All in all, the Quest Miniatures models work well enough with the much older model. I cut off about 3/4 of the legs for this one. There is no official colour design for the Anti-Eternia windraider, so I went with what seemed to make sense to carry on the theme.

Anti-Eternia Windraider

With the foot version of the same character

He-Man tries to use his shield to deflect Anti-Man-At-Arms' laserbeam

Death from above! Castle Grayskull under attack. Man-At-Arms takes to the skies in his skysled.

Men-At-Arms's battling in  the sky!

Heroic Warriors - Gender-swapped He-Man on Battlecat

A while ago I converted a Hasslefree Daphne figure into a gender-swapped version of He-Man. The idea being that He-Man (or Prince Adam) was temporarily turned into a young girl through some ancient artefact or magic spell (possibly one of Orko's spells gone wrong). This is the mounted version of that character. I'll leave it up to you to imagine whether Battlecat also had a sex change or not if you're into that kind of thing.

Mounted and Unmounted version

I used the same base figure for the mounted version, with reposed legs and the addition of fur panties and boots and a swap for another spare Quest Miniatures power sword. Battlecat is yet another of the Grenadier OOP Battlecats, which I've collected over the years. The base is a blank lipped base from Fenris (the closest match I could find to the large Battlecat mini), with added tile texture with putty.

Fighting Skeletor's minions

All my (good) He-Man versions so far...

Battlecat(s)

Heroic Warriors - He-Man on Battlecat

As if He-Man and Battlecat weren't impressive enough on their own, the sight of He-Man riding on Battlecat's back is enough to strike terror in the hearts of the denizens of evil. The riding he-Man is a conversion of the Quest Miniatures He-Man, I cut off and reposed one leg and bent the other one slightly, some putty to cover the gap. Battlecat is of course another copy of the OOP Grenadier model. The base is a lipped base blank by Fenris Games and the tile texture was added with putty.

Foot and mounted version together

Evil Warriors - Hover Robots

The Hover Robots are Skeletor's disposable minions, well...., most disposable minions. They are mindless automatons, which might be an early design for Hordak's horde troopers, as there is some resemblance. They are relatively small in stature, but can fly, shoot lasers and have whirling blades for hands. The figures are part of a private commission with a small run and they are spot on in my opinion.

I somewhat rushed the paintjob on these, not taking as much time as I should, but then I plan do plenty more of these, so some speed is of the essence. With hindsight, using dark grey instead of black for the recesses might have been better, but it still works OK. Some of the highlights look a bit stark in the pictures, but they are not as extreme in the flesh. I also think I waited too long removing the masking tape from the flying stands as some of the glue stuck to them and removing them left a somewhat matte finish. Still, they remain usable and I may try at some point to add a coat of gloss varnish to see if that resolves the issue.

Skeletor and his Hover Robots

He-Man is battling one of the Hover Robots and is unaware of the ambush coming from above...

Skeletor is urging on his minions... from a safe distance...

And finally, a look at the original inspiration:

Heroes of Sagar - Blackstar

Like Queen Marlena, John Blackstar is an astronaut from Earth, stranded on the planet Sagar after being swept in his spacecraft through a black hole that took him to an ancient alien universe. On Sagar, John makes allies with the Trobbits, the shape-changing Klone, the dragon Warlock, and Mara the Enchantress. Armed with the Star Sword, which forms one half of the Powerstar, Blackstar and his allies oppose the evil Overlord who seeks to rule Sagar. While his ethnicity is never clarified, Blackstar is presumed to be of Native American decent.

The model was a private commission with a limited number of copies made. Aside from using too much black to outline the eyes, I think he came out rather well.

Blackstar was produced in 1981 by Filmation, who would go on, shortly after, to produce the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon. Both shows share a lot of similarities, both in used concepts and the general look and feel of the setting. Some monsters and animation sequences from Blackstar were later used in the MOTU cartoon, though the one thing that, above all of these, firmly puts the planet Sagar in the MOTU universe is the appearance of a Blackstar statue holding up the Starsword in a MOTU episode:

Blackstar statue to the left

Blackstar as he appears in the Blackstar show

Masters of the universe

Your magic wand is no use against my Star Sword, witch!

Who are you, one of the denizens of the Overlord?

Evil Horde - Slime Monsters

Both the Filmation cartoon and the mini-comics featured Slime Monsters. While their affiliation could vary, I decided to give mine the colour for my Horde bases, on account that since Hordak has a Slime Pit, it made the most sense. The models are Otherworld Miniatures mud monsters, which were perfect for the part.

With Slime Monster He-Man:

Get back, you slimy freaks!

Anti-Eternians - Anti-Battlecat

Now that He-Man received his trusty companion, we couldn't very well let Anti-He-Man be at a disadvantage when facing them. Like when Prince Adam calls on the power of Grayskull, Anti-He-Man draws from the power of Castle Hellskull to infuse himself and his pet with great power. Anti-Battlecat is every bit as strong as the regular Battlecat, but twice as vicious!

Anti He-Man and his Anti-Battlecat

The model is of course another Grenadier Miniatures Battlecat, with a blank lipped base from Fenris Games, to which I added the flagstone texture. I went back and forth a long time on the colours on this one. Most action figure customs for this creature use black armour and black body, with red stripes. I wanted a bit more contrast than that. Initially I planned to do red armour and light grey stripes, but the light grey on black didn't seem to offer enough contrast, so instead I went with red stipes and grey armour, but since I didn't want the light grey to dominate the model, I just used the shading colour and then washed it a couple times with thinned black, for a darker grey, leatherlike finish. Finally, I decided to paint the teeth red and the tongue grey, in keeping with the reversed colour palette these have going.

Battlecat's face off:

A side by side comparison of the two variant colour schemes:

Man-At-Arms is clever enough to keep a safe distance while battling these foes:

Heroic Warriors - Man-At-Arms on Sky-Sled

One of the Heroic Warriors' preferred means of transportation is the Sky-Sled, the detachable front half of the Battleram vehicle. The Evil Warriors had their own version of course, but more on that some other time. Seen here is Man-At-Arms flying one of the flyers in stylish Filmation colours.

The model is a conversion of one of the old 1980's Grenadier Battleram models. I cut off the front half and added some detail that was missing from the back. For the rider, I removed the tab from a Quest Miniatures Man-At-Arms figure and the pose was practically a perfect fit. Some minor bending of the ankles to adjust it and a spare plastic hand from the same Fireforge soldier box previous bits were sourced from made it complete.

Man-At-Arms, foot and flying. I tried to make the eyes a bit smaller on this second version, but that doesn't seem to have been an improvement.

Now, now, using that laser in your wrist to shoot from above is a bit unsporting, old chap.