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?

Forgeworld Tallarn Review

Well... It is amazing how quickly Forgeworld sends toys when you spend enough money. Less than a week from making my purchase I had over a hundred Tallarn guardsmen. Lets get stuck right in shall we?

Where to start..? Well lets just say I am in LOVE!

Welll.... They are slightly smaller than regular GW models (much like the Kriegers), so true 28mil. They are not heroic scale. The models have a realistic scale to their bodies especially the hands and feet.


Model wise I was very pleased with the sheer amount of gear each model comes with. Pouches, knives, shoulder pads, holsters, backpacks. Every model has gear. I feel a little silly for buying two packs of extra Tallarn gear. The only extra gear I really needed that I got out of those packs were two demo charges and a couple of extra las-pistols. The longlas variant rifles look great in person. Those rifles especially give the models a unique profile that I really like.

On the downside, those rifles while looking good are made of resin. And are cast by Forgeworld. Don;t get me wrong. I love FW BUT I have had some miscast crap from them over the years. The rifles will be the death of me. Mark my words. Out of the 120ish rifles I got in order... Maybe 20 are straight. I will be breaking those barrels for years to come even after completing the army.

I was worried that when I bought 20 packs of the snipers to use as las gunners that I would be painting myself into a corner pose wise BUT this was not the case. Out of the 3 in each pack, 1 is 1 piece, 1 is 2 piece (legs and the rest), and 1 is 3 piece (arms/gun, legs, head/torso). These pieces are completely compatible with the heavy weapon troupers who are all multipart and variable.


Mold lines wise the models are pretty good. A few packs are ugly but I've had worse with regular plastics. We'll have to see how bad it will be to clean them up with a knife as I am not fooling with resin and a file.


I like how every heavy weapon team comes with a heavy weapons sprue. I now have 15 of every heavy weapon... Cool side bonus to spending so much cash I guess. Too bad I don't have a single special weapon. (Thankfully I have heaps from other projects)... I also got a huge pile of sandbags... Who would have thought. Some of the detail those are cool too. I really like the heavy bolter bags that have a pile of grenades on them.

I have sprinkled some quick dirty photos in my writing to give you an idea of what has come. 8 days to finish my Tyranids... Back to painting. Before that though, I am not regretting my Tallarn purchase (yet) and I look forward to getting stuck into them soon.

Until next time gang!

B

P.S. I could have mentioned the downside of the price. They are more expensive than the Krieg or the Elysians by a fair margin. But I suppose that price goes without saying when you are buying an FW infantry guard army. OUCH!

Arcanicon 2011 (Yup I already bought my army)

Arcanicon is the largest 40K tourney in the Southern Hemisphere. It takes place in Melbourne every year (the last weekend in January). I was an Arc regular for a number of years but have been taking a break the last couple of years. After my disappointing time at Cancon (in Canberra last year on the same weekend) I thought I would save myself a bundle of money on travel expenses and stay near to home (and go to a much better tourney environment). Don't get me wrong Cancon 40K was run well but I just did not enjoy myself in quite a few of the games that I played. There seemed to be an air of desperation to win running through a majority of the games. This is not to say that Arc is not competitive because it is. It is just a much more fun atmosphere which is important with that many players. Mark Morrison and his WATT crew go to great lengths to ensure a fun weekend on many levels.

Anyway, I took an infantry based guard army to Arc all those years ago (when it was my first time). I think that since this will be my return to Arc I will bring something out of the old list. I sold my Mordian's years ago and while I love my stormtrooper/ swat guard... I want to do something new.

I have been toying for literally a few years with the idea of doing a Forge World Tallarn Army. What's that you might say? FW Tallarn? They don't make an army of those guys... Well they do make a sniper team and heavy weapon crews. I have a feeling that they were making more of an effort here and had to stop to work on something else. The snipers use rifles that are identical to the regular las rifles. There is enough differentiation in the heavy weapon troopers to convert the rest of the army IMO. It is an expensive proposition (costs more than the FW Krieg models by a fair margin) but that has never stopped me before.

Last night I ordered over 100 of these bad boys...

The las-gunners:



Assorted Heavy weapon guys:





In the meantime I continue to paint bugs... Let see how long FW takes this time. Months last time...