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).

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.

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.

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.