Tuesday, February 24, 2009

In search of a spiritual moment

I've been looking for a missionary. I thought it would be a great addition and add a lot of character to my colonial games. Missionaries can contribute a lot to the morale of the troops, but they seem particularly suitable to spring interesting situations: you need to escort them to long-lost missions around the world -- clearly in enemy's territory; you need to keep them supplied; you need to keep open the communication routes to their missions. And, last but not least, you need to protect them from hostile actions.
Thus, the question is: where do I recruit suitable missionaries/monks/friars/priests?
My first stop was Peter Pig's Wild West range, which offers at #69 a "priest with donkey." To tell the truth, I was not much impressed in the first place, and the bag ended up lost in my closet (I suspect the cats have something to do with the mysterious disappearance, but so far they have not confessed yet.)
Fortunately, there are a few other options to explore.
In the Mexican-American range, Minifigs includes "priests and padres. Alas, no pic available.
Essex provides "assorted praying monks" in its Crusade/Medieval range. You get even better luck if you are looking for Warrior Monks, whom Essex offers both in stationary and advancing poses.
Old Glory 15mm has a bag of monks under the "Pilgrim" category in the Crusades range. According to comments posted on TMP, "one is carrying a cross but others are armed with clubs or rocks."
Museum Miniatures gives you the choice between two "religious pack": praying monks and praying nuns, presumably also from the Medieval range. Caveat emptor: the website is a nightmare to navigate. Nevertheless, if you prefer your nuns, well, not praying, but fighting, you can go back to Peter Pig and pick their feisty ones from the WW2 range -- too bad the pic seems to have been dropped by the site, because these club-swinging nuns were something, I tell you - almost like the nuns in charge of my kindergarten back in the days.
I have not searched further, maybe going upscale looking for a pope or at least a cardinal, who would look great in my Risorgimento games.
Further recommendations would be very welcome. Ite in pace.

2 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

You might want to look at some of the Fantasy ranges . . . particularly the more modern ones (Pulp, Gothic, etc.).


-- Jeff

johnpreece said...

Difficult in 15mm. Makes you realise how spoilt we 25mm gamers really are.

The nearest I can think of are Pegasus plastic set Mission Indians which has everything you could need but the figures are about 23mm high.

Which is no use at all is it.

I'll get my coat.

John