Up next in our continuing series taking a look at the Kickstarter-funded Gothitropolis Ravens by the Four Horsemen, we have the cardinal and the vulture. We’ve already given you a look at the Flamingo and Minotaur the Duck courtesy of Veebee, and the black raven and owl and rooster by me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get all the birds, so there will be a few missing from our reviews, but I think you’ll get the general idea of what to expect.
I paired up these two birds for purely aesthetic reasons; the cardinal is one of the more beautiful birds, and the vulture is absolutely butt-ugly. But regardless of whether or not he’ll be making an appearance on People Magazine’s “most beautiful” list, that ugliness results in a cool looking toy that adds diversity to the set.
Let’s start with the cardinal. This bird features my favorite color scheme of all of them. Red is my favorite color, and the combo of red and black is probably my favorite of any color pairings. The addition of gold highlights with red and black completes my personal trifecta of color, so it’s like the Horsemen designed this bird with me in mind. But they didn’t, because the world doesn’t revolve around me. Yet.
There are a ton of cardinals where I live, so I see this bird a lot. They definitely nailed the look of a cardinal, and that bright and vibrant red is dead pretty dead on. It’s got a bit of an Imperial Guard quality to it, so maybe the cardinals can be guards if you managed to acquire more than one.
Like the others, these birds are built on a nicely articulated body with plenty of joints that only require a bit of heat if they happen to be stuck. Everything on these birds pops off easily with the addition of a little bit of heat, so if you want to mix and match your birds it shouldn’t be any problem at all. Maybe you want your cardinal to have black arms, or…something of that nature. You can make up your own weird color schemes and have a larger variety on the shelf. Go crazy with it.
The cardinal’s real name in the Gothitropolis mythology is Cardinus. Unfortunately, there’s no colorful etymology to that; the Horsemen went pretty straightforward for this pair. Cardinus as a name works perfectly, so that’s not a complaint.
I didn’t get a lot of extra wings, but I got a pair of red wings specifically to enhance the cardinal, and he looks great with them on. The red matches up just right, and they add spice to an already beautiful looking bird.
The second bird we’re looking at this time around is the vulture. Vultures are the types of birds that look exactly like what their diet consists of. These are the unhealthiest, ugliest and sickliest looking birds of them all, and the figure perfectly captures that quality. The vulture looks like the one the other birds don’t want to hang around with, because they know on the battlefield he’s going to be the one turning them into a post-wartime snack. That bastard.
The bird’s head is painted with that sickly, pallid color that vultures have, with unhealthy pink accents that makes them look like they’re nothing but raw skin.
The vulture’s real name is as simple as the real one for the cardinal: Vultus. It gets the job done. I bought a pair of the bone wings and bird skull, and they look pretty much at home on the vulture, like he’s the bird interpretation of the Angel of Death. The bird skull is of course a Raven skull, and can easily pop on to any figure you want to put it on. It looks great on the vulture figure since the feathers are essentially raven colored. The bone wings look great and have the same articulation as the standard wings. I think the vulture looks really cool with a set of bone wings, but an extra bird with both wings and skull would look great too.
We’ve got one more article coming up later in the week with the last two birds we’ll be covering this time around.
