Mississinewa Miniatures is a little-known miniatures company from Indiana. Specializing in Zombie-themed figures, they have an impressive selection, if not a broad range – yet. Mississinewa sent Flames Rising a generous selection of figures to review. Sadly, I can’t do justice to them all so I’m going to concentrate on what they do best: Zombies!

The zombie line is reasonably well- fleshed out; 18 different models shamble their way to your gaming table, and while the variety isn’t truly spectacular, it’s solid. The first six are all naked zombies. Before you get too excited, let me first point out that there are no naughty bits in evidence; they’re more like zombie mannequins than anything else.

The next six are all generic-looking, joe-average zombies, sporting slacks, bib overalls, T-shirts, and none of them wearing shoes. One looks like either a hermit or a very old surfer dude, sporting a huge beard and board shorts. The last six available at press time are a little more detailed; they mostly resemble office workers, wearing business-style attire of suits and skirts and yes, the line’s first clearly female zombie is in this group, as well as the first kid zombie to appear in the line – a little girl with a huge bow on her dress. Each figure is available separately, and several different multi-packs are available at a discounted price.

These somehow make me think of Twilight Creation’s Zombies!!! game; they certainly would work well in place of the plastic zombies if that’s your idea of a good time. Painting them would be fun but time-consuming; you’d need a lot of zombie figures to cover for the army of plastics in the Zombies!!! box.

Complimenting the Zombies are the Zombie Fighters and Cops lines. The Zombie Fighters consist of seven different models in combat-ready poses; the girl with the field hockey stick and the girl in the karate gi are particularly dynamic sculpts. Sadly, the karate girl is not included in this groups’ multi-pack. For the Cops there are only six sculpts, and most of them seem to be fairly wooden poses. With the exception of one detective, all are outfitted as regular-duty patrol officers. The Zombie Fighters and Cops are a bit more expensive per figure than the zombies, though again, the multi-packs bring the average price down a good bit.

As an overview, these figures are decent sculpts. They are not spectacular – the hands tend to be a bit large, but I’m given to understand that hands are tough to get right anyway. However, what seem to me to be later figures show better imagination in terms of poses and details, and the line looks to be improving dramatically. The figures are all sculpted to be compatible with slotted-style bases, a variant of which is included with each figure as well as being available separately.

Among the other products available from Mississinewa Miniatures is a terrific line of gravestones to spruce up the scenery. These are cast to utilize the same slotted-style bases, though that’s easily altered if undesirable. Sold in two different multi-packs, they are also available individually.

Mississinewa Miniatures shows great promise; most of the existing line is decent, and newer products look to be improving on an already solid quality foundation. I would love to have given the sculptor(s) some well-deserved credit here, but for now they prefer to remain unknown. For fans of the zombie genre or other modern miniatures settings, Mississinewa Miniatures are well worth checking out.

Review by Bill Bodden

Tags | little nightmares, minis, zombies