Mad Maximilian

My friends at Eureka Miniatures recently sent me a few photos of models from their upcoming range “Mad Maximilian” – a 1930s post-apocalyptic world where anarchistic gangs use hotted-up roadsters to battle across the harsh outback of Australia. Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. The photos were of two vintage racing cars, with spiffy paint jobs and both mounting twin machine guns (see below). Apparently, there’s a game in development to go with the figures and it kind-of ties in with the Australian Civil War setting “A Right Bloody Mess” that is just about due for release (I’ve already reserved my copy from Eureka Miniatures).

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After drooling over the photos, I managed to wrangle three cars, drivers, gunners, and even Max himself, plus his dog. (It probably helps that I maintain the AB website and the Eureka newsletter)

The quality of the figure sculpting is extraordinary. I think Eureka are using a different sculptor for this range, and (my personal opinion here) he has lifted the bar a fair bit with these figures (quite a difficult thing to do). The poses of the drivers capture the sense of speed and desperation wonderfully. There are two men and a woman to choose from, each comes with a separate steering wheel that fits easily onto the arms. The gunners are in three different poses, and each have separate arms with a Lewis gun in each hand – designed to fit onto a pintle mount in the back of a car.

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Currently there are three car bodies, the two shown above and a third with a much longer engine housing. The resin casting is flawless – not an air bubble to be seen and no mould lines to be tidied up at all. There was a bit of clean-up to be done on the underside, but it just required shaving off some excess resin from the pouring process.

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Along with each car comes a bag full of white metal bits and pieces: spoked wheels, axles, exhaust pipes, machine guns, headlights, running boards, and more – all sorts of things that you can use to customise your vehicle how you want to.

Some of the bits, I haven’t quite worked out yet, but the rest are fairly straightforward. I’ve started construction of one vehicle to more-or-less match the blue one shown above, but will experiment with the other two I think.

So here are a couple of shots to show you how the construction of the basic components go on this vehicle. I’ll add in more in my next post.

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