First, a little history. The Etruscans emerged as a civilisation around the 9th century BCE in an area that roughly equates today to Tuscany, Umbria and northern Lazio in Italy. Like many other Iron Age societies, they were essentially a group of city states, and they became very prosperous thanks largely to the considerable mineral resources of the area, and to the trade that these attracted with the rest of the Mediterranean. While not widely known today, surely their greatest legacy was the enormous influence they had over one of their neighbours to the south, the small city state of Rome. As Rome grew and became more prosperous and powerful, it adopted many customs and skills from the Etruscans, and in the end the Roman Republic would completely absorb the Etruscans, who gradually lost any unique identity, mainly during the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE.

And now, a little more history. This set from HaT was first conceived in 2005, and on January 1st, 2006, the design drawings of the figures were published on their website. Two months later, photos of the sprue were also published, but then things went quiet, and HaT said that faults with the sprue meant that the set would not now be released. Fast forward twenty years, and in the summer of 2026 HaT suddenly announced that they were going to ‘re-release’ the set, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had never released it before. A little while later it duly arrived at retailers, and was exactly the sprue photographed twenty years earlier, so is by a very long way the set that people have had to wait for the longest. So, after two decades, was it worth the wait?

As was normal for HaT at the time, the set depicts a cross-section of all troop types that might be found in an Etruscan army. What, if any, differences there might have been between the militias of different cities have long been lost to history, but all would have been composed of a mixture of wealthy citizens providing the heavy infantry and cavalry, more lightly clad and equipped troops, and the poorest citizens, who would wear little or no protection, and could only bring a simple weapon such as a sling. Each of these groups is represented here with at least a couple of poses, although the separate weapons do allow for more variety than the static poses suggest.

Beginning with the heavy infantry, these are represented by the first five figures in our photos. Each is dressed and equipped in a different style, starting with the body armour. One man wears lamellar armour in the style of the Greek corselet, while two others have a solid metal ‘bell’ cuirass, and the remaining two just wear small pectorals on the chest and back. The man with the lamellar corselet has pteruges in two rows below the waist, and no less than three of these figures are wearing greaves on both legs. Every man has a crested helmet, which are of different styles, all of which match known examples, so all of these are accurately and reasonably done. Two of the poses are armed with a long spear which they hold over their shoulder, and the rest have ring or cupped hands to accept the separate weapons shown in our fourth row. These follow what was a common feature of HaT sets in the early 2000s, where each piece could be made into one of two weapons by simply cutting part of it away. Here we find three pieces, each of which could be a spear, or we can also have a double-headed axe, a very fat sword or an animal standard. All these men also carry a shield, either the large round Greek-style aspis shield, or the rectangular Italic form with rounded corners. The round, or occasionally oval, shield was the norm for Etruscans, though the rectangular scutum is also known.

The slightly less well-off troops are represented by the last two figures in our second row. Both hold an axe, and the first has pectoral plates whilst the second wears a lamellar cuirass. The headgear could be hats or possibly helmets, and one man wears boots while the other is bare-legged. One carries a shield, but the other prefers to use both his hands to wield his axe.

The third row gives us the lightest troops, showing a man holding what could be an axe or sword, another with some javelins, a third with a sling and a fourth with a bow. All have the ubiquitous tunic, and we also see a large brimmed hat and a much smaller cap, but no expensive armour.

By virtue of being able to own and maintain a horse, the cavalry were an elite. This set contains just two such poses, a light spearman who wears a simple helmet, and a heavier man with full lamellar cuirass, pteruges and a helmet with transverse crest. Both have a sword as a sidearm, and the heavier man is barefoot while the light one wears boots with open toes, an item for which we could find no corroborating evidence. The heavy cavalryman is meant to be able to take a weapon in a ring hand, but this has not been drilled out (perhaps this was the mistake that meant the sprue was originally rejected by HaT?). The two horses for these men are quite simply saddled and harnessed, but look authentic to us.

The figure next to the mounted men is described by HaT as a priest with firebrand and fistful of snakes. He wears an interesting hat with a tall central cone, which does resemble some original Etruscan images of priests, particularly Haruspices, who claimed to discern the will of the gods by inspecting animal livers. On his body he wears what looks like a sleeveless jacket over a long gown, and this is probably based on some renditions of Charun, an Etruscan death demon, most notably that on the fresco of Achilles sacrificing Trojan prisoners, painted around 330 BCE and now in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome. There, as usual, he is armed with a hammer, and is thought to be either a guide for the souls of the dead into the underworld, or else there to punish them. Either way, he seems a strange model for that of a priest! Why he holds a torch we have no idea, but at least the snakes make some sense as this demon was often depicted with them around his arms.

The style and quality of these figures is typical of the era when they were made, which was not a good one for HaT. The detail is quite poor and the definition is very soft throughout, making a very poor impression everywhere. The lamellar armour has few, very large scales, the faces are vague and even some of the shields are not a nice, regular and symmetrical shape. Surprisingly, the hands are quite well done, but the separate weapons fit into the ring hands quite loosely and will need to be glued, except of course for the mounted man who has no ring hand, which you will have to drill yourself. The separate standard does fit nicely into the cupped hand of the man in the second row, but again glue is essential to make it stay there. On the subject of glue, you will need more of that to make the riders sit on their horses, because they fit easily over the animal’s back, but won’t stay there without fixing. The animal standard particularly caught our eye because we could not decide what species was being modelled here. To be honest, it looks like an emaciated hippo to us, but it is probably meant to be something else! The fistful of snakes being grasped by the ‘priest’ looked to us like a rolled piece of cloth before we found out what it was, and once we did find out, it still looks nothing like snakes to us. What can be commended however is the quality of the mould, because there is just the slightest hint of flash in some places (and a few bits of obvious but easy to remove flash on a few of the bases), so for the most part these are pretty much good to go straight off the sprue.

The poor quality sculpting extends to the choice of poses, which are at best flat and awkward, and at worst quite bizarre. Both spearmen hold their weapon touching their cheek or helmet, so much too close to the body, but those that have a ring hand are much better as a result. The two axemen hold their weapon in a very unnatural manner, and although the lights are better, the slinger holds his sling against the top of his head, which is terrible and presumably done for production reasons, since no slinger ever looked like this in mid throw. This habit of touching your head with your weapon extends to the heavy cavalryman, making some really bad poses which are not so bad in concept, but really bad in execution. The two horse poses are, by contrast, not nearly as bad as many made in other sets. They have issues, certainly, but as walking poses they are not the worst we have seen.

So after such a long wait, was the set really worth it? Everyone needs to decide that for themselves of course, but for us there is very little here to make the set worth having, and it is only the bizarre priest/demon figure that sparked any great curiosity in us. The Etruscan period began with two centuries today called the Villanovan period, but there is virtually nothing here that speaks to that era. Instead, this set depicts the later classical period, when Greek influences greatly guided Etruscan society, and their warriors fought as hoplites in the Greek manner. This is in contrast to those sets of Etruscans released in recent years that focus on the early period, so this set does at least bring a new subject to the hobby. Aside from the ‘priest’, everything here looks to be pretty solid historically, which is something in its favour, but the poses and general style of production really drag it down. And finally, the box, which was also designed over 20 years ago, claims there are 96 pieces inside. In fact the numbers we give above are correct, but we could not work out how HaT imagined they could count 24 pieces on the sprue they produced, and anyway they only put 3 sprues in each box!