First up for shield sprues (actually 2nd up but that's a secret!) are our Dark Age Round. These are the basic wood plank with leather wrap-around cover that can be used from Germanics in BCE through to the Viking age.
Now that we are starting to do these separate shield sprues - what else would you like to see for shield-only sprues? What can you use a lot of?
Kite shields would be good.
Also some variety on the sprue next time.
Perhaps classic Hoplons, Classical Celtic shields of various shapes, or maybe some age specific parade/adventurer shields.
These are nice, but having some distressed/damaged ones would be preferable
Kite and heater style, plus a plain wooden round style would be good.
Egyptian themed ones or coffin type would get a lot of mileage in plastic
Will WA be selling shield transfers to match the specific size of these?
Future shield sprues may benefit from the shields being more individualized and looking less Industrial Age mass produced.
Have you considered clear plastic contemporary/sci-fi law enforcement riot shields?
Or non-clear contemporary/sci-fi SWAT spec-ops ballistic shields?
Dwarven geometric shields? Something for the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings crowd but different enough not to step on GW’s IP? Fireforge just had a Kickstarter for Dwarves but the shields were underwhelming.
Something Elven enough for Tolkien but again not stepping on Games Workshop. Something more ornate than the North Star Oathmark Elves’ kite shields.
Excellent idea!!
We need more options too.
Norman type Kite shield,
Heater shield,
Egyptian shield,
Different round shields,
Oval shield,
Roman Scutum,
Simple wood or straw shields,
Fur shields,
Then we also need battle-damaged versions of them all!
Battle damage shields can easily be done with a razor blade/file/etc. And we will have transfers galore.
@Hudson Adams adargas. A sprue of adargas could make generic troops into Spanish ones for a nearly 600 year span.
Breacher shields to fit Horus Heresy space marines
@Hudson Adams trickier of you are looking to get the wood effect underneath - a dremel does a good job though
@Corwen Broch
Breacher shields for heavy sci-fi Infantry or Death Fields sci-fi Romans that would happen to incidentally fit Space Marines? ;)
@Grumpy Gnome
Good point on the shields being slightly different sizes. But that might potentially mess with the transfers. Might be a necessary sacrifice.
I'd love to see a mix of Bronze Age Mediterranean and Mesopotamian shields, especially Hittite,Canaanite, Agean, Lybian and Nubian.
@David Musgrave there already is wood detail. We've only shown the fronts. ;-)
Oval dark age cavalry shields would be great.
Another vote for Sci-fi riot shields here.
@Vane Dolenc to be honest, I think it's better to have them all the same. The exception would be if the shields are for a unit where variety is better, like goblins for example. Even then though, presumably these will be sold by the sprue, or go into boxes with other sprues (with bodies, heads and arms). In either case, shield sprues could be mixed for variety. Just my 2 cents.
Shield sprues are great, I would expect them to be rather inexpensive so no need to put different kinds on the same sprue.
I second the Idea of Sci Fi/Near Future riot shields
also kite shields and Pavise shields would be awesome.
I would like some more roman shields, more of the oval ones we have now as well as some scutum style ones to make earlier legionnaires.
@Hudson Adams
I am kind of tempted to ask for Warring States era tower shields to make Chinese Shield specialists troops. But since you guys are dead set on making Greeks, given one of the main difference between their troop types was their shields, I recommend making all the Greek shields separate and putting all the weapon and head options you can in the main Greek set so you only have to do one infantry set them, that way you don’t need to do a ton of Greek sets with different shields, etc. and can focus on other cultures not done yet like Egyptians and Chinese.
Too be honest the place you should have done this the most (outside of dark ages) might actually have been the conquistador set or even just sold the pike and long sword sprue separate (though admittedly the sheathed swords would have been missed).
A good fantasy shield set or two might be nice (maybe something with scales, wood planks and hides for barbarians type cultures like the lizardmen and goblins, maybe something more civilized for the others, maybe something in disrepair for undead).
Shields could also been done separately for Middle Ages subjects if you ever start doing that.
Also for a riot shields like the others suggest, I think that’s not a bad at all. I recommend a dead simple ballistic shield design for a sprue of them so you don’t have to do weird stuff with the plastic and because it would be a touch more versatile (ie, not only could you use it for modern and Sci-Fi, but you could also use it for various fantasy and Pulp/weird WW1/2 settings as well):
Metal Gear example is pretty good too: https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Ballistic_shield
And of course real life examples, basically a tower or Roman rectangle shield with a slit up top to see through:
.:
Excellent idea! Shields take up a lot of space and sometimes you are going to use different shields anyways.
-Elongated heather shield/ flattop kiteshield
The others I can think of have been mentioned already
