Review of Victrix Greek Peltasts, Javelin Men and Slingers

This is the second box that I got from the Victrix line, I thought that this box would be perfekt to represent the skirmishers that I need for my little Hail Caesar army.
A big difference for this box is that there are som pictures on the Victrix homepage so that it's possible to get some inspiration on how to build them and then you could also pick up some of the excellent shield transfers that they have as well.

The box itself contains 56 miniatures, where 48 is for Peltasts/Javelin men and 8 slingers so for my purpose it's going to be more than what I need for this. The miniatures are spread out over 10 sprues, 6 of javelin men and 4 with slingers.

When you open the box you are met with a well filled box, lots of sprues, but no building instructions or other information other than what can be found on the box itself. There is not much need for it, and I prefer a lower price point to some leaflet, but I guess it could pose a problem for anyone that's all new to this miniature thing or the period as how to use them.

The sprue is more or less the same as the Unarmoured Hoplites, the thing they have done is replace about half the sprue where the hoplite shields, spears and heads is and changed the shields, replaced the spears with javelins and some heads with no helmets.
This then leds to the same problem I had with the hoplites, the connection that the hands has with the arms. The plastic is the same as before, and I had the same problem getting the hands to stick. But the problem was not quite as large here as the javelins are much shorter and not as prone to get stuck in every thing.
As much of the miniatures are the same, the statements I did about the hoplites still stand, the bodies are good, the clothing a bit odd in a some cases, and it's a nice assortment of parts that you get on each sprue. The unarmoured heads are nice though, there are som good variation here, and you get 9 heads a sprue, giving you some spare and there is nothing stopping you from using some of the helmeted heads. The new javelins are ok, they are on the thicker side of things, so they should hold up to gaming, but if you want more realistic sizes to things you should think of something to replace them.
One thing to note when you put these together, and that is the shields, they are supposed to have the flat side out, not the one with a rim, that's the inside. I knew of this and still got one of eight wrong, so keep this in mind. Especially if you get the Little Big Men transfers, I've heard that they will not fit at all if you do it the wrong way around.

The slingers comes 2 on each sprue with a choice of a few heads and sling arms. They are nice and looks good, and the left over heads could provide with a few more choices on the rest of the miniatures.

The kit then is good for what it is, a lot of miniatures for a cheep price, I give this set a 3 out of 5 javelins. You get what you need, and you get quite a lot of variety in poses and looks. But it's not the greatest thing you have ever handled.

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.

Warhammer Historical Waterloo - a quick glance

I've just received my package from Warhammer historicals crazy 50% off sale and the first book that really caught my eye was the Waterloo book.

So far I've only had a quick read though the basic rules, but I thought that I should write a few lines about what I've seen so far.

The book is very well presented, it's filled with drawings form the time and more newly produced (you can for example find some of the artwork  from the Perry boxes in there) mixed in with beautiful photos of well painted miniatures and terrain.

The game is written with 28mm miniatures in mind, but have some suggestions of how you could use other scales, but they do boil down to "do whatever suits you" and they are written to work on a 4'x6' table, so in comparison with games like Black Powder, they are kind of compact.

The rules then, well they do in part remind me of warhammer fantasy battles, you have fixed movement speeds (4" for infantry, 6" for heavy cavalry and 8" for light) you have complete control of your army, and you can't premeasure anything. Cannons and the like have guess range and round shot bounces. So far so good, but they have removed single figure casualty and instead based the whole idea around companies.

A company is one base of about 6 infantry miniatures and a unit or regiment, is normally made up of 3 to 8 companies. A company can then take a number of hits before it's removed from play, a infantry company can take 6 damage points and a cavalry company (or squadron) can take 2. But not only that, but each unit has a resilience value, and this is the number hits that it take to make a single damage on the company. This vary between the different types but normally a infantry unit only has a resilience of 1 and cavalry have 2. If a single volley only does 2 hits on a cavalry unit, then they will be discarded as it wasn't equal to it's resilience, quite nifty and reminds me a lot of how warmaster works.

When it comes to stats on units you only have a few to worry about, there is a Fighting skill, this is used to determine who fights first in a melee situation

Attacks, the number of dice rolled when fighting in melee

Resilience that I described above

Command that is used for morale checks, basically 2 dice plus you command, minus any modifiers > 10 and your OK

Tactical points used to determine how much you can do with the unit in a turn, all actions have a cost in tactical points, such as move, reform and fire.

Strategic points used by commanders to do special orders.

The turn then, this is  divided into 6 phases

1. Initiative

Both players roll off to see who gets the initiative and therefore selects who starts in every turn

2. Artillery fire

Here the players takes in turn to fire all of their artillery.

3. Movement

Any units that wants to be moved is moved here, the player with the initiative selects who moves first and that player moves his entire army before it's the next players turn.

4. Shooting

And basically the same here, initiative determine who fires with his units first, then the other player gets go shoot

5. Melee

All units that is in base contact fight it out, with the order determined by the player with the initiative.

6. End phase

Here you handle all effects that's remaining in play, see if any player has won, and everything else that's not included in the other faces

Quite simple, but nice that each player gets do to one phase at the time and not having one player sit around forever while the other gets to move, shoot, charge and everything else. I also like the idea that artillery fires first as guess ranges are used and you get to do all of them before any measurements is done at all.

When it comes to hurting units all weapons have a "to wound" roll, this is more or less the standard GW to hit and to wound rolls in one, after this the receiving may get a "save" roll, but normally there isn't one as most units don't have any type of effective armour, but a unit can be granted one if they take cover of some sort.

Army building follows a point based road, where a small army will amount to about 1000 points and will give a game of a few hours and a 2000 point battle will take you the better part of a day.

In a 1000 point you should get about 4-6 infantry units, 2-3 cavalry units, 1-2 artillery units and 2-3 independent officers, so from a Napoleonic gaming perspective it's not to bad, and you can get a decent game without painting hundreds and hundreds of miniatures.  

And that's about it, naturally the strategic points will get some flavor in you games, and I think they can be a game changer if used at the right time.

Other than this there is a bunch of scenarios in the book, I haven't read though them all, but they do look nice, they have also a campaign system in there, and a campaign over the waterloo battle with battles such as Hougoumont. But thats not all, there also is a brief history of the Napoleonic wars. All in all they have manage to get a fair amount of information into the pages.

And a verdict then? Well on a rating of 1 though 10 I'll give it a 7, it's a beautiful book, but it weights a ton and I got tired in my arms when I sat down to read it, I would not recommend dropping this thing on your foot. The rules feels a bit old, there are some new things in here, and while its not a one side does all kind of deal, I still miss some sort of Fog of War in there, you can always count on you unit to move and you can predict exactly when they will get from A to B. It is a bucked of dice kind of thing, you will roll lots od dice to determine the outcome of you actions, and while some will like this, other will not. It is a bit set in base sizes, while the game tries to give you free hands, they way some things are handled it's not really practical to have your nice 80mm round base with commanders on.

But overall I like it, I will have to get some miniatures together and try it.

Victrix British Foot Artillery

Got myself a pack of cannons for the British from Victrix and thought of at least showing a few pictures of what the pack contains.

The box contains 3 copies of the same sprue

Each sprue gives you 1 cannon that can be made as a 5.5 inch howitzer, a short or long 6 pounder or a 9 pounder gun, 5 crew and a limber

The quality of the plastic is really good, it's a little bit softer than the other set I've handled (British Peninsular Infantry Centre Companies) and all mold lines are really easy to scrape off, not that there are many to begin with.

I put one of the teams together to try out what's possible with them.
Of the 5 crew you got 4 gunners and 1 officer that can be made into a multitude of different poses. There are some instructions with the box on how Victrix thinks the minis should go together, and it could be a good idea to at least partially follow these as some combination can look really weird. Also, some of the arms are made to go in a set, but here it's quite easy to spot what goes where, something that was not really the case in the center company.

The crew can be made as Waterloo or Peninsular with Belgic or Stovepipe shako and short or long coattails for the officer.

The crew, one has been given a musket from Peninsular center company set

Gun with long 6 pounder

Limber

Overall I'm very satisfied with the guns, the guns and limber are a bit fiddly to put together with quite a lot of parts for each item. But the results are a great looking gun, and even though there are a lot of parts, there was no part that was really in itself a problem to get on. But i strongly suggest using plastic cement over super glue.

The plastic is really great to work with, so I hope they will use the same ones for all other sets made after this.

One thing I can't really gauge is it's historical accuracy as I don't have a clear idea how this kind of thing should look. But I like it and if I need more guns for my British troops, more sets will find it's way into my possession.

The only thing I miss in this set is some horses to pull the limber and gun. A 4 or 6 horse team with a rider or two would have made this set so much better, even if it meant adding a few pounds to the price and/or removed a gun. But hopefully this is something that Victrix will make in the future, perhaps after some guns for the French.

Overall I'd give this set 7/10, you get your moneys worth with this set.