Review of Victrix Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers

After having painted all the Warlord Hoplites that I had, I got an order in for some more, but since I wanted something more than the rather simple one from Warlord, and I wanted some more variety I got myself a few different boxes from Victrix.

The first one I cracked open was the Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers, since I had a hard time finding any sort of information on them when I look into them at first, I thought that I would at least do a simple review of them if anyone else has the same problem.

So first things first, the box contains 56 miniatures and 48 of them are hoplites and 8 are archers. The hoplites comes on 6 identical sprues  each having 8 different bodies and a bunch of extra parts, heads, spears and shields. There is also a trumpet, some hands with swords and helmet crests to add to some of the heads, not all crests will fit all heads, and not all heads can even have one.

There is no separate building instructions for the minis in the kit, only what you can read on the back of the box, perhaps not the greatest thing ever created, but if it gives me a few more minis for my money then I'm fine with it

Overall the hoplites are all right, the details are mostly ok, and there are not to much flash. There are some lines running down all around the miniatures, and since they show quite a lot of flesh they are very prominent if they are not removed. Same goes for the spears and heads, but here they are better placed so does not present as much of a problem.
The plastic used is a bit strange, it glossier than any other Victrix kit I have handles before, and does not take as well to the plastic cement I used to put them together, perhaps I got an odd package or there have been a change in the plastic.

This presented a bit of a problem for me, since the spears are added on with the hand already on the spear and the connection point is therefor really small, and well, they have spears sticking out everywhere, so during painting of the first 12 I think I've broken of every single spear (and associated hand...) at least once. I think I'll need to pin the next batch... Not a prospect I look forward to.

Then we come to the quality of the details, they are good in most part, the cloth is a bit weird I think but the faces and everything else is top notch.

The archers are nice as well, they do have the problems with attaching the hands, but the bows are significantly smaller so should not pose the same problem with breaking of all the time. I also think the cloth is better sculpted.

All in all I give this kit a solid 3 out of 5, not the greatest thing I've handled, but good enough for a massed army and by far the best alternative that I know of for this kind of miniature.