Well, today is September 20th
down here in Australia and that marks the official release date of Bolt
Action. Now the excitement for me has
slightly diminished due to my having the BA rulebook for a month now but I have
to say it is nice, as a customer, to be able to communicate with the game
designers (Rick Priestly no less) on their rules forums AND to know how to
build a unit/ army prior to release date.
More on that later… For now I thought I
would write a quick and dirty review of the Warlord Games (makers of BA)
plastic late war Germans. As a long
time Warhammer player I can’t help but compare my experiences with the Warlord
minis to my years of working and playing with GW products… I would like to
begin with the most obvious comparison: Price.
I was about to get a box of 25 multi-pose German plastics with bitz to
make everything from minor officers to inexperienced foot soldiers. The box comes with pistols, rifles,
sub-machine guns, team machine guns, grenades, assault rifles and panzerfaust
anti-tank rockets. It also includes bitz
like binoculars, backpacks, ammo pouches to match the guns, and gear to attaché
to the webbing. Frankly I was astonished
to discover all the little bitz and bobs included on the sprues… You can see
them below:
Now when I first saw pictures of the models
I was not super excited but my local shop had an open box and I really fell in
love with the detail on these plastics.
It is top of the line (GW style maybe 5 years ago). They are easily as good as the plastic Cadians
currently on sale if not a little better.
They are true 28mm so they are a little smaller than what I am used to
which is fine BUT the guns are not heroic scale which leads to guys carrying
around weapons that look childishly small compared to their hands. If you look at pictures of people with the
real things though… It actually fits (I
still think that things look a little small though).
The models themselves have crisp clear
details that will easily lend themselves to detail painting later. The faces are a little bland expression wise
but The gear that attaches to the webbing is almost a little too busy and might
look messy if not properly detail painted. As I plan to have my guys mounted in half tracks I will probably skip the extra bits...
Now I have two boxes of guys that I have
been assembling and while most of the bodies are one or two pieces this process
has taken me forever. Part of that is my
own schedule being nuts but here lies my only gripe with the excellent stand of
the Warlord models… The mold lines… Now the models don’t really have any kind of
weird or extreme mold lines, in fact they are barely noticeable. The problem is that because the models are
one or two pieces and that they are so finely detailed the models end up with
line that run across clearly visible areas that need to be removed. Over the years GW has generally gotten much
better about hiding their lines along the creases of their kits. Warlord have yet to learn this lesson. That said they are easy to remove and I have
actually enjoyed the process. I feel
like I have a good handle of what the models look like now and I have actually
started planning in my mind exactly where my highlights might go once the paint
gets on these guys.
Another note with assembly. The Warlord plastic infantry kits come with a
double sided, colour, sprue and assembly guide.
Good stuff. It labels exactly
which arms match which gear/ weapons and gives you a guide to how what the
finished troops will look like.
As an aside I also like how Warlord already
has a series of spare variant heads on their website to further individualize
your models. True most of the heads are
for the Germans but I assume this will change over time (The German plastics
have been out the longest). I have a few
blisters of metal models at this point as well and while those models are one
piece their heads are separate (OK, I guess that makes them two pieces). This means that you can individualize your
artillery crew for example and as the plastic Germans come with loads of extra
heads… I have lots to choose from…
In short I am a huge fan of these guys. I highly recommend them if you are looking to
get into the 28mm WWII (Bolt) action…
