The Suitability of Forgeworld, Victoria Miniatures, and Cadians... (REVIEW)

As many of you know I have been eyeing up the work of Victoria Lamb the last year.  Her Imperial Guard conversion kits and accessory sprues have looked great online and over the last 15 months or so she has turned out an impressive number of the bitz.  Last week I ordered my first stack of  parts and today I am going to look at them with you.

A couple of years ago I got the itch to do yet another Guard army and I went online and ordered a massive Tallarn Army from Forgeworld.  Forgeworld doesn't make a Tallarn army some of you might say...  Well you would be sort of right.  They made heavy weapons teams, weird camel cavalry, and sniper teams (who used the same rifles as the regular guardsmen).  I would guess that they had planned to do the whole army but decided not to at some point.  Most of the parts are there to do it.  It just needs to be done!  And that is where I step onto the stage (so to speak).  

I ordered the army and true to form for Forgeworld at the time (they have gotten much better since) the 120 or so guardsmen that I got from them had crazy flash lines and assorted miscastings.  This is not the worst of the problems... The lasrifles that the models come with are beautiful long barrelled lasguns.  The issues comes in here...  These lasrifles are a mess because they are so long and thin.  I have heard Death Korps of Krieg owners bitch for years about the state of their fragile, often miscast lasrifles.  I would say the Tallarn ones are worse...  The state of the basic rifle of the army is the single issue I have with actually doing this army that I am keen to get together at some point...  Which brings us back to the present.  I ordered a pile of Victoria Miniatures lasrifle arms specifically to use with my Tallarn troops.  Let's see how that works...

To start with I have to say that I was pleased with the prompt delivery of the Victorian parts.  I had them within a week from placing the order (more likely within days but to be fair I was out of town).  The parts came in a padded envelop within durable plastic bags much like forge world used to use.  The casting of these metal parts was pretty good.  There were a few large horrible most lines BUT they are in easy to reach spots and would be no problem to clean up.  The detail on the models was exactly as was advertised on the website.  All in all I am very happy with my purchase.

These parts were made to integrate fully with GW's Cadian line.  Here you can see a variety of parts on cadian models with a full plastic guardsmen thrown in for scale:

 As you can see the arms fit perfectly (please excuse the blue tac).  Everything is to scale and arms fit torsos with little to no gaps.

Now to the Tallarn problem.  Here is are a few of the Tallarn Rifles next to the Victorian rifles for scale.

 Now here is a Tallarn torso with the Victorian arms attached next to a Tallarn with the Tallarn arms attached (please note the crappy bent Tallarn Lasrifle in this photo).

What you might be able to tell from the photographs is a slight but noticeable size difference between the large arms and the smaller Tallarn Models.  It is not the fault of Victorian Miniatures that there is a size discrepancy.  Forgeworld Guard models (Kriegers, Drop Troops, AND Tallarns) have always been smaller than GW's over exaggerated "Heroic" scale.  By matching the Cadian models, Victorian Miniatures arms are a little too big for my true scale desert raiders...  Which is a pain in the nether region!  I had hoped that the VIC parts would solve my Tallarn problem.  They might but they do not solve it as cleanly as I would have hoped. 

Here you can kind of see the size difference of the GW and the Forgeworld guard models:

Would I recommend Victorian Miniatures to fellow guard players?  Yup, they get TWO big thumbs up from this guy.  Can I use them for this...  Sadly...  Probably not.  

Back to the drawing board!

Ideas anyone?