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In our notes on the first set of modern Amazons we asked what made them modern, and the same question is inescapable here. The style of the clothing and armour is fantastical, obviously, and while the style does not resemble any period in human history, it does not seem at all modern either. There is a great deal of bare flesh, and many exotic helmets with large plumes, horns or wings, so clearly these are people who pay a lot of attention to how they look. There is great variety in costume here, and the same is true of the weapons. There are many swords and also many other very interesting weapons, plus a couple of bows. Many of these weapons are extremely large and must be difficult to manage whilst mounted, and in particular the two-handed weapons seem far from ideal when on the back of an animal, as a good lunge would run some risk of falling off the animal (there are no stirrups or saddles here), or might accidentally decapitate that same animal anyway. However, this is fantasy, so we must put aside such real-world considerations and say that the figures do look great. The rider poses are again fairly standard given the type of weapon, but the Amazon with two swords outstretched must be well away from any of her friends, otherwise they are in danger of getting a nasty nick.

Every bit as great as the figures is the unusual range of mounts that they ride. You can see that these Amazons are going into battle on the backs of stags, some big cat (the box implies a tiger), lions, unicorns and something like a velociraptor (as seen in the movies, not as they actually appeared during the Cretaceous Period). That is a pretty impressive stable by any standards, but these animals look to have a very mixed set of attributes. The unicorn in particular looks to be a very heavy animal, much larger than the horses used for cavalry in the real world. Of course, the horn is a potential extra weapon for whoever is riding it, which helps to make the combination look impressive, and also impressive is the fact that none of these creatures requires any form of saddle or cover - all are being ridden bareback, and there are no reins either. We must say that all these creatures are magnificent, really nicely sculpted, and they actually have some real world uses. Well, maybe not the theropod dinosaur, and in some situations you may want to lose the unicorn's horn, but these are very fine sculpts, particularly the stag. The sculpting of the figures is very good too, but here the effect is greatly spoiled by a huge amount of flash on most of the seams. Although we did not take the trouble to clean off the flash between the legs, you will need to do this before they will sit properly on the animals, and if you do this then the fit looks to be reasonable. A splendid set in many ways, and if this is what modern Amazons wear and choose to ride then they must be an amazing sight to see.