King & Country's August dispatch is unusually varied — thirteen items across five distinct eras. WWII US at the front (a returning Sherman tank plus a complete infantry squad), a Crusader knight, a Napoleonic British commander, an Alamo-era Mexican general, and a Flying Tigers aircraft for the aviation shelf. Something for almost every collection.

The anchor is the return of Fury.

The Return of Fury and the American Patrol

K&C has brought back its Fury Sherman tank (DD279) — a late-war M4 with the recognizable name painted on the main gun. If the name sounds familiar, it's because the tank shares its identity with the 2014 David Ayer film starring Brad Pitt: the Sherman crew fighting through Germany in the final weeks of the war. The K&C model has the same look — stowage lashed to the hull, spare track links welded to the turret sides, the commander half-out of the turret hatch working the pintle-mounted .50 caliber machine gun. It is one of the more visually loaded single-tank pieces K&C has produced.

I sold my first Sherman ("Kraut Killer") last month, and I am willing to bring in another. Fury is that Sherman.

Along with the tank comes the "American Patrol" — a complete eight-figure U.S. infantry squad in late-war 2nd Infantry Division kit (the "Indianhead" patch is visible on the shoulder of the sergeant). Each figure fills a specific squad role, and together they form the full-strength patrol you would send with the tank:

• AP The Sergeant (DD398) — squad leader with Thompson submachine gun
• AP The Lieutenant (DD399) — platoon commander
• AP Advancing Rifleman (DD400) — standard M1 Garand-armed infantryman
• AP Radioman (DD401) — SCR-300 backpack radio, the squad's link to higher command
• AP BAR Gunner (DD402) — Browning Automatic Rifle, the squad's automatic support weapon
• AP The Sniper (DD403) — scoped rifle, designated marksman
• AP The Scout (DD404) — point man, ahead of the patrol
• AP Medic (DD405) — Red Cross armband, the corpsman

Ordering all eight. As a set they cover the roles a real WWII U.S. Army rifle squad would field — leadership, riflemen, automatic weapons, communications, medical, and scouts — and they pair naturally with the Fury tank in a Bulge-era or late-war Germany display.

A note on filming these together

One of the reasons I like tank-plus-infantry releases like this is that they film well. Toy soldier photography online tends to be static — figure on a plain background, product-shot style. Once you add a tank, a squad, and even a rough terrain base, the composition becomes a scene, and short-form video becomes a legitimate way to show what the figures actually look like as a display. Here's a Short of mine, filmed for the Breagans social channel, showing K&C's Battle of the Bulge tanks with their supporting infantry:

Fury with the American Patrol will get similar treatment when the shipment lands.

Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Leicester and Lancaster

The Edmund Crouchback figure (MK258) is a real historical Crusader and, at the time of his campaigns, one of the most powerful men in England. He was the second son of King Henry III, younger brother of the future Edward I, and one of the noblemen granted vast holdings after Simon de Montfort's defeat at Evesham in 1265. By his mid-twenties Edmund was Earl of Leicester and Earl of Lancaster — titles that would eventually give his descendants the claim to the English throne that ignited the Wars of the Roses two centuries later.

The nickname "Crouchback" is not what it sounds like. It comes from "cross-back" — Edmund wore the Crusader's cross sewn to the back of his surcoat after taking the cross in 1268 for what would become the Ninth Crusade. In 1271 he sailed with his brother Edward to the Holy Land, where the small Anglo-French force conducted operations from Acre under the last flickering weeks of European rule in the Levant. He returned in 1272 and never crusaded again, but the nickname stuck for the rest of his life and beyond.

If the mix of "medieval English lord" and "fighting Christian in armor" sounds familiar, we covered exactly this territory in our recent post on Did Medieval Priests Really Fight?. Crouchback is not a bishop and is not sculpted with the no-blood-shedding constraints those figures reflect — he was a lay noble, not clergy — but he belongs to the same broader chapter of medieval history the Fighting Priests post explores. Anyone building a Crusader display around the K&C fighting priests and bishops we covered there will want a Crouchback in it.

The Duke of Wellington

K&C's new Duke of Wellington (NA561) is Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, in the uniform he wore across his final campaigns. Born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish nobility in 1769 (the same year as Napoleon), Wellington fought his way through India, the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and finally to the field at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, where he and Marshal Blücher broke Napoleon's last army. He was later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice. Almost no other figure in nineteenth-century British history casts a longer shadow.

For collectors who want the classic gloss-tradition rendering of the same moment, K&C's Wellington pairs directly with the Tradition of London Wellington at Waterloo set — same subject, different visual language. The K&C figure gives you the modern 1/30 matte realist take; the Tradition of London set gives you the 54mm gloss heritage rendering. Together they anchor a shelf that shows two hundred years of how the toy soldier hobby has interpreted Wellington and Waterloo.

General Santa Anna (Standing)

The General Santa Anna Standing figure (RTA151) is K&C's new dismounted portrait of Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican general and multiple-time president who led the assault on the Alamo mission in February–March 1836. Standing pose, in his general officer's uniform.

For readers building an Alamo display, this figure gives you three Santa Anna options across two makers now available at Breagans:

• K&C General Santa Anna (Standing, RTA151) — the new release, on foot
• K&C General Santa Anna (Mounted) — the mounted version we've been carrying
• W. Britain General Santa Anna, 1836 — the W. Britain matte 1/30 rendering

All three depict the same man at effectively the same historical moment. The choice between them is really about which maker's style you want as the anchor of your Alamo command display, and whether the general needs to be mounted or on foot. Mixing makers is fine — as we've argued before, a serious display benefits from playing the makers off each other.

Also Released — Flying Tigers P40B Warhawk (Pre-Order)

K&C's August release also includes the Flying Tigers' Curtiss P40B Warhawk (AF058) — a P40B in the iconic shark-mouth paint scheme of Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group, the American pilots who flew for Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Air Force in 1941-42. The Flying Tigers destroyed hundreds of Japanese aircraft in the six months between Pearl Harbor and their dissolution into the U.S. Army Air Forces in July 1942.

I'm listing this figure as pre-order rather than stocking it. If you want one, I can have it delivered in about 10-12 working days. That approach lets me offer the piece without holding aircraft inventory that (as with the P-51B Mustang currently in stock) can be slower to move than the infantry-and-armor pieces most Breagans collectors are building around.

That's the August dispatch. Fury and the American Patrol are the anchor and my personal favorite of this month's releases, Crouchback continues the Crusader thread, Wellington adds a Napoleonic command anchor, and Santa Anna gives Alamo collectors a third option to work with.

If you want help pairing any of these figures into a specific display, or if there's something else in the K&C August catalog you're hunting for, write to me at daniel@breagans.com.

— Daniel