Age of Sigmar Khorne Warriors Review

I decided that the chaos half of the Age of Sigmar boxset would make a nice addition to my chaos warriors army. Once the boxset arrived, I put together the warriors first. Cleaning the mould lines was quite time consuming, getting the knife blade round all those spikes....so many spikey bits! Assembly was straight forward for the most part, the instruction booklet is comprehensive. I would advise dry fitting every component before you apply glue, not just the ones suggested in the pamphlet. One or two of the assemblies are almost as challenging as Rubik's Cube.

I wanted to stick with square bases to fit in with my existing army, so was keen to see how they looked. In skirmish formation there's no problem whatsoever, but if you want them to rank up like this care should be exercised in how you fix them to the bases. These are temporarily attached as a test, to standard GW plastic bases (although no longer standard I guess). As you can see it is possible to have them in close formation, you might have to put a rock or two in place to make ranking easier.

Finally, how do the new figures compare with existing chaos warriors? This photo shows the newcomer among some of my collection, they match particularly well with the existing plastic chaos warriors. The red armoured warrior is raised slightly by a magnetic strip. The odd one out here is the figure on the right, that's an Avatars of War corrupter. He's a little smaller than the others (compounded by his shorter base), but I will happily mix all these into one army. Age of Sigmar Khorne Warriors Review

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Fireforge Infantry first impressions

I have been searching around for some time for figures to make a generic middle ages force for Lion Rampant. The idea is not to recreate one particular historical nation, but rather a stereotypical medieval force. There are lots of metal figures around but not many of them appeal to me - too many have a squat, chunky appearance that I dislike. Luckily, there are quite a few decent plastic sets around and there's a good range of choice at reasonable prices. When a gaming mate offered me these Fireforge infantry at a discounted price, I was happy to raid my battle chest.

The casting quality is excellent, matching that of the Perry plastics - hardly surprising as these are produced by Renedra. The detail is good, crisp without being too clunky. The sculpting is mostly very good, with good proportions and realistic folds in the garments. One minor problem I have is that many of the poses are very dynamic. Given that half of the box can be used to make up crossbow armed men, I would have thought that half of the poses being a bit more solid would have been appropriate. I am no expert on medieval weaponry but I would expect a solid stance is required to fire a weapon. It's not a big problem for me, I am building half as spear armed sergeants, half as hand weapon wielding troops, but worth bearing in mind if you want them for crossbow duty.

The figures required very little cleaning, with faint mould lines easy to scrape off with a knife. They are quick to assemble too, comprising just a body, two arms and head. They are probably the easiest plastic historicals I have assembled to date. This dozen I whipped up in a couple of hours or so, which included a bit of conversion work on weapon length, a couple of Perry head swaps and the like. In terms of scale they are a very close match to Perry Wars of the Roses figures, so you could easily get a box of each and mash them together if you wanted to make generic fantasy/medieval troops. All in all, highly recommended. Fireforge Infantry first impressions

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Gamers' Grass Review

I have been looking for some reasonably priced grass tufts for a while. There are plenty around to choose from, but some of them are extremely hard on the wallet. A tiny patch of static grass for five pounds?!? - no thanks. But recently I stumbled across Gamers' Grass by Great Escape Games. They are available in a variety of sizes and colours - here's the product page on their website. Suitably impressed by the range and the affordability, I put in an order for five different strips on Tuesday and my little parcel arrived on Thursday. Grass on speed! That's excellent service.

The tufts were sent in a small but strong carton and arrived in good shape. Each strip of paper is about 15 x 5 cm and holds a variable number of tufts, depending on which size you opted for. The wild grass option gives you fewer, larger more varied clumps. There's a nice variety of colours here, they cover all the seasons I would say, so you should be able to pick up the right tone for your basing scheme.

The tufts are self-adhesive. I just used fingers to pull them off and press them on to the bases. I have used them on a few different test bases, along with other basing materials, just to gain an idea of how they could look. You don't need many to add a little extra something to your figures. Smaller scale figures, such as the Perry historical and Lord of the Rings figures, probably need the smaller tufts. The larger tufts could be used on the more heroic scale of standard fantasy figures, or maybe on terrain projects. My test batch of five strips cost me £11 including UK postage. I have enough here to base several skirmish forces I would think, so I am a happy customer. Thoroughly recommended.

Gamers' Grass Review

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Timeline Miniatures Buildings Review Part 1

I recently stumbled across yet another producer of mdf terrain, Timeline Miniatures on ebay. I thought the product shots looked very promising so I bought a couple of items from the store - a Saxon house and hut to add to my growing dark ages collection. I ordered them on Wednesday evening, they arrived on Saturday, so just a couple of days to wait, which is excellent service.

The items arrived in a padded envelope. Each building is flat-packed in a plastic sleeve, with mdf components and teddy bear fur included - yes, teddy bear fur. Opening up a pack there are mdf parts for the walls and roof, doors and a base. There's also a set of  very simple instructions included, which explains the obvious bits - don't force out the parts from the frame, do a dry run first and use pva glue and acrylic paint. It would have been helpful to have some guidance on the more difficult bits - for example, some of these parts have to be removed from the "sprue", there's usually a corner that has not been completely laser cut and requires a final cut with a sharp blade for the bit to pop out of the frame. It's obvious to experienced builders but maybe not as much to newcomers to mdf materials.

Assembly is pretty simple for the most part. Four walls and two roof sections - how hard could it be? It's worth noting that there's an integral base which also helps guide you in deciding which way around walls fit. My other buildings are free standing and so I decided not to use the bases. This meant I had to cut away the tabs that slotted into the base. I used a sharp blade and a steel rule, scoring through the mdf tab several times until it came away cleanly. Without this (self-imposed) extra step I could have had the hut built in five minutes, it's that easy. I decided to part assemble mine, paint the walls and timber sections separately to hopefully make the painting a bit easier.

The final step is the application of the roof. This is where the teddy bear fur comes in. And this is the bit that I feel is missing from the instructions. The idea is to glue the fur on, trim to size, coat in dilute pva glue and allow to dry. The fur stiffens and can be painted, weathered, or could just be left as it is I suppose. I have a handful of buildings already thatched and will use the leftover fur on these buildings, to maintain consistency across all my roofs. The fur in these packs I will use in some other terrain project.

That's it for part 1 of the review. The buildings are well made and well packaged and go together quickly, though I do think that the instructions could be more informative on the roofing material. On the whole, they come highly recommended. In part 2 I will be looking at roofing, painting and comparing them with alternatives, hopefully some time next week. Timeline Miniatures Buildings Review Part 1

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Avatars of War Corrupters Review 2

Recently I reviewed the Avatars of War Corrupters with Great Weapons. I made three separate posts, one detailing the components and first thoughts, one to make a comparison with GW chaos warriors, and a third post to show an assembled unit and my final verdict. As part of this last post I mentioned that I would be buying a second box of Corrupters, with hand weapons and shields. This post is a review of this boxset, a comparison with the great weapon set, and further ramblings.

The packaging is, as before, a hard plastic video case containing several bags of components, bases and a brief set of instructions. I won't go into huge detail on the materials used, just quickly repeat what I said in previous reviews - the plastic is a bit harder than normal and slightly more difficult to clean, but you soon become accustomed to it and adapt your technique. The detail is very good and assembly is reasonably easy with super glue. More on this later.

The first thing I did was open up a bag of components to compare it with the great weapon set. As I expected, the torso, legs and arms are the same in both sets, the differences are in the weapons/shields (of course), the heads, of which there are ten, and the command bits. For convenience I have included pictures of both sets of components for comparison. They are interchangeable, so mixing and matching should ensure great variety in your units.

I expected assembly to be much easier than the great weapon set. Mostly this is true, there's none of the difficulty of trying to hold the torso, arms and weapons together as the glue cures. However, I did find that the arms are held out from the body, which makes it a bit more challenging to get the shield into a convincing position. Usually the shield arm rests on the chest or belly and the shield fits on top of this, but this pose only applies to one command model. The others hold their shield well away from the torso. It's a minor problem to overcome, but as usual worth a little planning and dry runs before you commit to final positions on bases. It's still possible to come up with some good poses, my favourite so far is this guy on the right.

That's it for this brief review, there's not much to add to the previous posts. In summary, the introductory set is excellent value for money, with good quality sculpts, good casts in a hard plastic that requires a little more work and planning than usual, but for me the results are worth the effort. I am already half way through building my second unit. And there's the metal character models too, I still have these to look forward to. Having part painted my first plastic regiment I can say that the paint and glazes go on to the harder plastic as normal, the underlying material is irrelevant when it comes to priming and painting. With the first unit almost painted and a second unit half built, I am well on the way to my first 500 points of corrupters. There's much more to come on this new project. Avatars of War Corrupters Review 2

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AOW Corrupters Final Thoughts

The first regiment of corrupters is fully assembled, ready to be based, primed and painted. Now that I have got to this stage I can fully appreciate how good these models are. Yes, they are hard plastic and a little more taxing to prepare than the softer plastic you are probably more familiar with. But with a decent set of clippers and a sharp blade they should not prove too difficult. Once you have solved the enigma of how to assemble warriors armed with double handed weapons, they go together nicely and you end up with a very dynamic looking unit. I certainly prefer these to my Khorne warriors, the poses are more natural and more adaptable.

Mixing in bits from GW warriors is possible, but the scale of these warriors is a little smaller than the plastic chaos warrior. If you look closely at the picture you will see that I have added a couple of flail armed warriors in the back rank, made from marauder bits. The unit champion has a metal head from a GW model. For my next regiment I will probably try to find more bare heads - maybe zombies or even standard human heads will be used. For this regiment I was happy to use the standard components from the box.

My final verdict is these models are easily equal to those offered by GW in terms of quality of sculpting and casting. The material used is a hard plastic that is a bit tricky at first, but soon becomes second nature. Assembly is difficult as they are armed with great weapons, but if you glue the arms to the torso first, then the weapon to the arms, then this sub-assembly to the legs, finally the head, you should find it less frustrating. I bought them on advance order and got 24 figures plus a metal exclusive for 35 euros, which is an absolute bargain price. So much so that I have tracked down a second set of corrupters on ebay, armed with hand weapons, and snapped them up before everybody else realises what a good buy they are. This set appears to have different heads, legs and torsos, so I can look forward to even more variety in my regiments.

I'm afraid that the main casualty of all this is my dwarf army - for a similar price I could get 24 highly poseable chaos warriors plus a limited edition champion, or a unit of 10 very similar posed dwarfs - it's just no contest for me. I would really love to add to my dwarf army, but not at that price. If Avatars of War do similar deals on dwarfs in future months, I will be very happy to take up the beard army once more. In the meantime, the forces of corruption are spreading. AOW Corrupters Final Thoughts

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Avatars of War Corrupters review

In this post, I will be taking a quick look at the Avatars of War Corrupters of  Apocalypse, recently released in plastic. It's been quite a wait for these figures - ordered in early October, expected end of December, arrived end of February. Not so much a late xmas present then, more of an early easter egg.

As I showed in this post, the packaging is a robust plastic case - a video cassette case in fact, if you are old enough to remember these things. Inside the case are a number of sealed bags containing the components, no sprues are involved. The components were obviously attached to some kind of frame/sprue as there are little remnants of these on most parts, some larger than others. Click on the photo for a closer look, I have kept the photos large so you can get a good close look at the bits.

The photo shows the contents of one bag - enough bits to make eight figures, including a command group. There are two each of four designs of legs and torso, plus a spare torso for a command figure. There are eight pairs of arms, which seem practically identical to me. There are also eight weapons being held by two hands, plus a couple of weapons held by one hand, a banner and a pointing hand, and a few other command bits. Finally, there are ten heads. Oh and there are square plastic bases included.

After cleaning and assembling one figure I can make a few observations. I am unsure if all torsos fit all legs, the first I grabbed at random did not fit together well, so I would make a dry run before you stick them together with glue. The instructions state you can use plastic glue. I tried my usual Revell Contacta but it did not stick the bits together. I have used it on GW, Perry Miniatures, Gripping Beast, Wargames Factory, all with the same results. So I would recommend super glue for this harder type of plastic.

The plastic is not the same as GW plastic. It's a fair bit harder, so it's more difficult to clean away mould lines and any extra bits. You will need clippers to remove the extra little tags, a knife will prove hard work. Some of the weapons are a little bent, but it's easy to straighten them out with a little gentle bending of the handle. I would say that the level of detail held in the plastic is good, maybe marginally less crisp than GW can achieve, so less sharp edges than you might be used to.

Assembly is fiddly, as it often is with great weapon armed figures. I would suggest glueing the arms, the weapons and torso first, then fix this sub assembly to the legs, then head last. Be prepared for some frustration, it took me about half an hour to get this one figure cleaned and assembled. If you are going to use them in a regiment, be aware that ranking up will be difficult, so assemble them as a whole unit and number your bases. The plastic is very hard, so conversions will be challenging, easier than metals, but not as easy as GW plastics. It should be possible to mix in GW bits - head and weapon swaps should prove reasonably simple.

That's all I can say at the moment, it will be a while before I get round to assembling any more figures and painting them. Hopefully the large pictures and my initial observations will prove useful if you are thinking about adding these to your collection. Avatars of War Corrupters review

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Belegar Ironhammer review

As a long time dwarf collector, but lapsed Warhammer player, I was fairly ambivalent about the dwarfs release. My army is pretty much complete as it is, and the recent drive to bigger, dumber looking models has not been to my taste. The first wave of releases is, by now, pretty much old news and opinions can be found all over the web - good, bad and indifferent. I like to see the models in the flesh before I make up my mind, so I selected what looked to be the best of the bunch, Belegar Ironhammer.

As you would expect, the detail is (mostly) quite superb. The metal scroll work, the carved runes on the oathstone, the embroidery on the cloak are all lovely and crisp and should paint up a treat. Click on the image for a decent sized view and see for yourself. You might notice that some detail is lacking - the teeth for example are not sculpted and as usual the hair of the moustache is just two or three giant strands. But this is nitpicking, overall it is a very solid sculpt and one that I would consider using in my army.

I have seen some criticism of the pose. A better battle-ready stance would be to hold the shield at the front to protect the body. The shield would be more visible, but of course most of the beard and face would be obscured. I reckon the decision on the pose is a good one, it allows the maximum detail to be easily seen and thus should be easier to paint. It's also possible, as the second photo shows, to exclude the oathstone and have a more traditional base. Leaving the back banner off is also a possibility, there is a little groove in the rear of the armour that could easily be filled, or overlooked if the player wants to swap the banner in and out between games.

As a big fan of dwarfs and Norse imagery, this sculpt is a winner for me. Now, to see how it paints up. Belegar Ironhammer review

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Tanatus Saxon Archers Review Part 1

When I first started playing Saga, I did so by buying two boxes of plastic figures for a Saxon warband. It allowed me to quickly assemble six points at relatively low cost. In fact, I could probably double the force with the bits I have left over from the plastics. I really wanted to make up a unit of bow armed levy troops, but they are not that convincing when assembled this way. What to do?

I started to look around at metals. There are some decent figures around, though I do find a lot of historical metal ranges to be far too chunky. I was beginning to think I would never find a suitable range, when I stumbled across Tanatus Miniatures. As you can see from the link, they are distributed by North Star Military figures. I thought they looked very well proportioned from the pictures, but balked a little at the price - a unit of 12 metal levy troops, the worst in the army, would cost the same as a whole box of hearthguard, the best in the force. Put another way, twenty pounds can buy you one point of metal mediocre troops, or ten points of plastic superior troops. It's easy to see why many stick with the plastics. For me, however, the aesthetics are as important as performance on the gaming table. Having spent so much time looking for decent figures, I decided to take the plunge. I have recently sold off some excess vikings on ebay, so the funds had been raised anyway. I ordered on Monday and they arrived on Thursday.

When you tip the figures out of their plastic bag, they look like this. The excess metal bits are easily clipped away and, after a couple of hours of tedious filing, I had removed the mould lines. The casting I would class as very good, with no obvious flaws to be seen. There are no bases included, but this is no problem as most historical gamers have their own preferred way of basing. For me, this means glueing them to pennies, then adding a sand/pva paste mix.

After a white primer and a thin guiding wash, they are ready to paint. You can see that they are quite finely detailed, with good proportions, not too clunky or chunky, which has been the main stumbling block with most historical metals I have experienced to date. I have a ten point Saga game planned for next week, hopefully they will be ready by then. I am playing my vikings, but I think a few Saxon slaves with bows being pressed into service is not an unreasonable thing to do. When the figures are fully painted, I will take a few comparison shots to show them alongside my other Saga troops. Tanatus Saxon Archers Review Part 1

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