Day 292

Day 292 October 19^th

“Old Dad the Cooper”

            This is such a great looking minimate, right down to the peg/spiked leg!  It looks more like the tip of a harpoon has been attached to the end of the leg of Cooper here and the details look amazing!  The chest cap has a nice looking vest and bandoleers strapped around it.  This piece is removable to reveal a muscular chest below.  There are tattoos on the arms and on the head too, as well as earrings which is somewhat a signature of the pirate mythos.  On his left hand he has a clawed weapon strapped on it, which looks very cool and is very well done!  His blunderbuss looks awesome but due to the nature of minimates is more decorative than usable as a weapon.  One of the neat extras to the figure is the fact that the headpiece is a slip on mask, when removed it reveals a bare skull!!  Awesomeness right there!  One of the other highlights to this entire line has been the amount of work DST has done with the back story, taking these characters out of some of the fact they were based on and really creating a solid story of their own with them, great work!!

Day 291

Day 291 October 18^th

Charles Vanes

            The main villain in the Pirates line, Vanes is an undead pirate monster and DST has really done a great job with him.  The hat and grizzly facial hair is all sculpted to his head and he has some really crazy sculpted hands, and there are even rings on the hands too!  His coat looks awesome, all tattered and such – huge props again for the details here, and under it we have a tattered shirt with details of a withered body under.  At the top of the shirt it is open exposing a bony rib cage and a necklace/charm, great little extra detail there!  Vanes’ sword is a great curvy, spikey looking thing that I would hate to try and wield, let alone fight against at all!

Day 290

Day 290 October 17^th

Robert Deal

            Another great addition to the Calico Jack Pirates line and our first non undead villain, it is the dastardly looking Robert Deal.  I love the huge hat on Deal, it smacks of the all the pomp and bluster of a good villain ala Hector Barbosa in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Again huge amounts of details when into his hat, jacket and even the face with various facial hair details and the most intense eye!  Under the coat is a great looking shirt detailing so he can be used either way.  I love his octopus styled sword and the axe headed gun looks wickedly evil too!

Day 289

Day 289 October 16^th

Sundays with my Son

            M.A.X. vs. Hydra and Loki! This is what I call a setup!  First a robbery then a fight and I don’t know who won and who didn’t. I was just playing around and testing my new camera. Time to get my ideas brewing for next round of pictures! Hey anyone have M.A.X. water rescue and the search and rescue team sets?

Day 288

Day 288 October 15^th

Nicholas Vanhoorn

            Nicholas Vanhoorn is one creepy looking minimate!  The design team at DST really knocked this one dead, literally, as he is one wicked looking undead pirate!  The tattered and torn clothes, the open mouth with broken and missing teeth, the dried up skin and of course the one red glaring eye and the other vacant eye socket really bring this minimate to a top floor detail level.  Taking off the tattered chest piece more deathly details are found with the skin sunken in around the ribs, giving the very gory impression of there being no vital organs in the body cavity.  Even his weapons are nicely detailed and slightly spooky, one being a dolphin shaped sword and the other being a seahorse-esque gun.  A great minimate for a great line, if DST keeps this up this pirate raiders line is going to be amazing!

Day 287

Day 287 October 14^th

Nukpana

            Nukpana is a Native American member of Jonathan Barnets crew to show that the feud against the pirates has even affected the New Colonies of the Americas.  DST did some great work with the body paint/tattoos on Nukpana.  The waist piece looks very much like something from the proper time and place as does the hair piece.  I actually really dig the hairpiece.  I love the detail on the boots and wrist guard as well as the blade hand.  The gun hand is a bit more off the wall but it adds some great play factors to the minimate!

Day 286

Day 286 October 13^th

Tom Brown

            Tom is ally and friend to Jack and is the weaponeer of his crew.  DST did some nice work with all the detail on Tom but I find the huge shoulder armour piece to be overly large and kind of in the way of his arm movement.  The big bulky body piece it is attached to seems too big and kind of throws the look and feel of this minimate off for me.  Unlike the other minimates so far there is nothing on the chest block underneath so he cannot be used with out it even.  I do like the pike and musket with axe head he is armed with while the sword seems a bit too ornate.  For a bigger type character I would have thought he would have had a bigger style sword.  As a whole another great addition to the pirates line though!

Day 285

Day 285 October 12^th

Jonathan Barnet

            Barnet is a British captain and looks every bit of the proper Englishman pirate hunter.  The detail of the stuffy and puffy coat piece with the big shoulder decorations and the big hat with feather are awesome.  He is armed with a flintlock and cutlass for man on man skirmishes.  Again DST added a great bit of chest detail under the coat so he can be used with or without the coat.  The only thing I would have liked for this minimate would have been an extra hairpiece so he could also be used without the big hat on as well.

Day 284

Day 284 October 11^th

Calico Jack

            This is an absolutely brilliant idea on the part of DST!  An in house line of pirate minimates which look absolutely amazing!  Calico Jack is a great looking minimate full of detail.  He is main character of the line and is every bit the center piece look, his has a rugged yet not too far gone look, the long sweeping coat and his black bandana and shaggy blond hair look great.  He comes armed with a double barreled flintlock and a wicked looking short sword which is serrated along the back side.  Remove his coat and there is a good looking chest tampo which is a great touch so you can play with/display him either way.  I have a feeling this line is going to add some great depth to the minimate brand!

Day 283

Day 283 October 10^th

Advanced Hybrid

            This is a pretty crazy looking creature and the minimate is kind of fun to have as a generic monster type creature.  The design is pretty intense, loads of extra sculpted details and almost all of them work very well.  The head cap piece seems a bit sloppy and doesn’t fit really well on mine, kind of throws the look of the head off a bit.  The other part that I had some issues with was the back where the heat sinks are.  These seem to be pretty flimsy and in the first couple minutes out of the package I had one fall off.  Aside from those two things I do like the overall look of this minimate.

Day 282

Day 282 October 9^th

Sundays with my Son

            Team Captain America and the M.A.X. police force better watch out because Loki, the Destroyer and Hydra have their own warthog too!

Day 281

Day 281 October 8^th

Nathan Hale

            For some reason this set, based of the game Resistance, was the one set of Playstation minimates I wanted right off the bat.  Looking at the prototypes I figured that Nathan would make a good addition to any group of military minimates and that is always a welcome thing.  I do enjoy how DST has changed up how they do the bigger boots as this way still conveys the size without the bulky, clunky feel the older ones had.  Nathan makes a very nice addition to any group of military based minimates without a doubt!