Xena - Warrior Princess from Imar Models

As soon as I read in Drone that Ian Marchant had produced a Xena figure, I immediately shot off a cheque and very shortly thereafter received one white metal Xena. The kit consists of five parts, body, arms, sword and base. A very nice A4 instruction sheet accompanies the kit and is considerably more detailed than some I have seen with kits costing four times as much. Ian includes an illustrated painting guide and some construction tips. I removed the moulding plugs and mould lines with the trusty scalpel and my set of mini files. The biggest problem was the plug at the top of the head which required some reconstruction of the hair after removal. The likeness to Lucy Lawless is pretty good considering the scale and is miles ahead of the current crop of action figures which look like something out of Baywatch.

A couple of quick squirts of gap filling superglue to attach the arms and the figure was ready for priming with my favourite grey primer ( I left the sword off to paint separately). This revealed some gaps and a couple of mould lines I had missed. Easily corrected with a touch of Milliput and some attention with the files. I also thinned the edges of the chakram (round killing thing) somewhat, as it is rather thick. A touch up with primer and drying time and she’s ready to paint.

At this point I had a bit of a happy accident. I was working on another figure and had some Humbrol leather paint open so I mixed it with some black and satin brown to make a pretty dark mixture which I liberally painted on the armour, intending to use it as a initial dark base to run into all the recesses. In fact it dried such a good shade that I decided to content myself with a little highlighting and the leather bits of the armour were done. I picked out the various metal details with darkened silver for the studs on her skirt and a mixture of bronze, antique bronze and black for the rest. Her hair was first painted in matt black and then drybrushed with brown and a touch of antique bronze. The flesh was the tanned version of my standard 25mm flesh mix. The most difficult bit to paint was the chakram which has a fairly complex design in gold with pieces of abalone set into it. After a basic coat of silver had thoroughly dried I put the pattern in with satin gold and then dotted in the gems with metallic blue.

I mixed up leather and dark green roughly and used a large brush to paint the base to give a graduation of earthy colour and painted the edge in black.

As I always like to make at least a minor customisation to any kit I do, rather than put the sword in Xena’s left hand I cut the blade off and stuck the hilt in the scabbard. All that remained was to superglue the figure to the base and the metal base to a small wooden one. It’s a nice figure which will not break the bank or take up huge amounts of shelf space. 

I bumped into Ian Marchant at a recent Grundy Park memorabilia fair and he thought that the right upper arm could do with a bit of thinning down. I had a look and if I do another figure I may give it a try. He also revealed that he is working on a companion Callisto (Xena’s mortal enemy) piece. I will have to get one and possibly a another Xena to create a diorama. I hope he produces a Gabrielle soon.

Gary Stratmann

Since this was originally written Callisto, Gabrielle and Ares are all available from Imar.

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