22 years in the making to put that set on the shelf and I'm totally geeking out tonight. That set is the Cybergames.com subsidiary Emperors Choice produced Legends Eternal complete set of 8 miniature boxes numbered EMC4000 through EMC4007. When lined up on the bookshelf they produce the image of a holy warrior.
History of the collection: I picked up my first boxed set in early 2002 because I painted Anna Streetshadow in May 2002. Over the years I managed to pick up another box and then another off ebay with my last purchase being box 5 in 2019 according to my ebay purchase history; until today... A set of boxes 1-6 was offered on ebay and while I only needed box 3 and box 6 to complete the collection, I arranged to purchase these at a price point that fit my budget. Here's the really cool part about them - they are mint in their original wrapping and were found in the basement of an old house as a stockpile of miniatures that was the inventory from a closed game store. I'm literally the first person to own these as a buyer from a game store that was shut down decades ago. The old house was scheduled to be torn down so these have been saved from destruction!
History of the miniatures: these miniatures are super cool in true 25mm size - they were sculpted by the incredible Julie Guthrie for Grenadier Miniatures in the late-80's. When you look at these compared to other miniatures of the time it was amazing how far ahead Julie was (and continues to be with Reaper Miniatures) in composing really tight and dynamic sculpts. The Fantasy Personalities had 99 miniatures according to this website posting which had photocopies of two great posters showing all of them in what looks to be the original studio painted sculpts. According to the post, there was a second set of 162 personalities. We know, and the post acknowledges, that when Grenadier closed its doors Emperors Choice picked up the molds. They originally sold these under the Arduin brand and you can find these individual blisters on ebay. Then Emperors Choice was sold to Cybergames.com in late 2000 - it appears that the individual blisters were then bundled into these boxed sets of 10. There must have been plans for more because on the back of the box it says "Set 1" and we know they had the molds for more Guthrie personalities. It was short lived as Cybergames.com closed due to financial problems according to this bulgarian rpg website that's focused on the Wildblades rpg (use google to translate).
The Wildblades rpg is an interesting story and tie-in to the boxed sets. Each box set gave character names to all the models and there's a theme with a short story - for example, box 1 is "The Shadow of Death" and the short story on the back is ""Divinely inspired, Palavos the Proud led a bedraggled band of misfit heroes into the dark tomb of Urzagel the Liche, seeking to end his reign of dark terror. What happened next was the stuff of Legends..." Indeed the boxed set had a miniature named Palavos the Proud along with his companions and the liche named Urzagel, Lord of Death. This was really unique as Grenadier sold them as female thief or male warrior. Each boxed set also came with a piece of paper directing the buyer to download a free rpg called Wildblades and to download free character sheets for each of the miniatures (I'd love to get my hands on those if anyone has a pdf copy).
While Cybergames.com is no longer, it does appear that Emperors Choice is still alive and kicking to support the Arduin campaign world and adventure modules. Unfortunately they no longer have the Guthrie molds - it appears those have moved between a couple different companies and I wasn't able to track down who has them now.
Maybe I need to do a Sunday night with Julie paint session?
