Friends, romans, countrymen/women/otherwise. lend me your ears, for I am on a plane ride and have nothing better to do than yap on an esoteric wargaming forum about things few sane people care about. It is the new (gregorian) year, and thus an excellent time for reflection. in particular, reflection on the death fields range, the strengths it has so far, and what might be in store for the future.
To start with the existing kits, I've gotten my dirty little paws on many of the existing kits, and so I've noticed some general trends I'd like to talk about, and ask if others have had similar experiences. firstly, holy shit I need to start with the pricing. dear lord, a decent spaceman army will quite literally murder your model if you go for gw, and every other option has only one aesthetic or is 3d printed. maybe it's just me, but I feel like the general accessibility, price point, and variance of death fields kits have genuinely revolutionized space army guy models. even a couple years ago, every forum showing off their army would be Guardsmen. guardsmen in tanks, guardsmen with weird guns, guardsmen with silly hats. now? any sane person building an army for OPR, space weirdos, etc will build it with good ol' grognards and cannon fodder. guard players are happy, general wargamers are happy, and most importantly, IM happy, and does anything else really matter? you can build just about any kid of base space trooper with historicals and wga kits alone. I feel that aesthetics are a separate conversation, but it certainly doesn't hurt that wga kits have awesome designs. it's become much more possible to knock out a unit or two in an afternoon, since the kits are nicely paintable while still having great detail. I also greatly appreciate the model count: spacearmyguys tend to come in units of 5-10, so having 20+4 extra lets you have some corpses, commanders, etc without leaving a whole nine guys to rot.
however, with such extensive praise, I'd like to talk a bit about some general problems. firstly, age. many of the kits are quite early in wgas lifespan, and I think it shows. einhajar, for example, have pretty bad flash problems, and raumjager are starting to look pretty stumpy. there's somewhat of a divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots", sprue wise, leading to some kits having a massive selection of bits and detail (ooh rah), and others feeling pretty lacking (grognards having one pointing arm). this is more of a nitpick, but a lot of kits have their body weight shifting super heavily to the right, meaning you're stuck with these kind of awkward shoulder bash pose. could just be me, though. honestly though, I am known for being somewhat pose-picky, and maybe this is historically accurate recoil control or something. MOVING ON!
the last thing I'd like to discuss is forming a full army out of the range, and how it might be possible to expand the range to make that easier. you are spoiled for choice when it comes to elite/crummy infantry. I've been using grognards for the former and cannon fodder for the latter, and it's worked out great! heavy weapons only exist for les groggies, which is fine, since really anyone can man a gun. however, I still want to see more options. command is in a similar position, where I feel like they're easy enough to kitbash out of grunts. the main problems I've had are with vehicles and larger units. cool sci fi tanks are core to any classic spaceman army, and right now the options kind of suck ass. there's mantic games for sleeker halo-style models, 3d printing for Slightly Toxic and Fragile models, and gw if you hate yourself. this leaves kitbashing historical kits, which I'm currently attempting and kind of sucks. I imagine some kind of sci fi turret & sponson upgrade kit could help people out until we get full models, much like the existing infantry sprue. there's also the matter of Big Guns, which I love dearly despite their tendency to either be really dog water in games or completely shatter the balance. we're getting those with the damned, which is great! yippee! but those are very damned-adjacent and come with crew, making them tough to use if you don't want a post-apocalyptic army. I don't, meaning I need to make them out of trash, which is fun but also kind of a pain. then there the groups of units I like to call "weirdos": ogres, cavalry, and hounds. I don't think hounds are that tough to kitbash, but ogres and cav are. also, there's a secondary weird metric of "who would actually look good on a horse/Very Large?" (cannon fodder on a horse would be 🔥🔥🔥🔥). these aren't really questions I can answers, since I'm not WGA, but I would love to hear some thoughts.
also, as a brief aside, there are some really interesting and cool models on the digital side that kinda suck for us plastic-only shmucks. for crying out loud, the ooh rah heavy troops look better than the originals! I'd love to see somewhat of a push to bring the cooler kits to plastic (GIVE ME MY WHITE DEATH!!).
alright, I'm reaching 1000 words so I'm gonna wrap it up here. if you got this far, thank you for listening to this local woman screaming into the void, and please let me know your thoughts. I haven't been buying wga for very long, so Im double curious what some of the older members of the forum think on the range thus far. peace, love and happy 2026, timbus the thirteenth.
