@JTam yes. Both kits are very nice and mix well with each other. The barbarians have very nice posing and the weapons are great. Punch daggers for right and left hands are awesome. There are a lot more head options on the mercs 2 frame, so if I had one complaint about the barbarians it would be the heads.
I haven't played around a ton with them, but I did make a cool unit champion using a Perry mercenaries head, some wa Conq arms and a frosty barb body.
overall it was a good purchase.
@William Redford Hi`ya Bill , nice to catch you, good to see you are still enjoying the girls. J-Tam sent for some goodies from Warlord Games. a Black Friday deal next thing theres some whooo`s and yells from EIleen and I`ve a secret X-mas gift nice!. I don`t know what is coming , but my main Sanity CLaaws present are rapidly disapearing the Ooh Rahs are now December /Jan in England, and the Harvesters ? .My Rubicon "Nam" delivery is now late December, so looks as if a phisical present might not arrive for christmas. and the last joke you Know the two GW machines. well to get them at 20% off, we must wait as they are out of stock too. Glad I got Eileens and all the pets stuff before November, this years stock levels are sttrange.
@Geoff Maybury
Warlord's had some really nice Black Friday through Cyber Monday deals this year.
Stock levels ARE strange this year. The grocery store shelves are looking pretty lean too.
@William Redford
Thank You for the write up.
@JTam yep. Got them all and they are really good kits. The barbarian ladies are well posed, sensible skins and furs (no chainmail bikinis) and a good selection of parts. I made up a character that was meant to be particularly brawny and had no issues using male barbarian arms to get that effect. The wild hair looks are going to be useful for modern and science fiction projects (Stargrave ones tend to be a bit conservative).
Mercenaries II is great, though I haven't done TOO much with it yet because I have a lot of WIPS to paint from previous releases. It does have the alien heads I used for my Saucer People leader and science officer though. Solid entry in the Stargrave line; there are useful belt bitz as usual, and as usual they have tended to add new designs rather than too much that's already on other sprues.
@JTam Do you know when that Escher special character is supposed to be released? I cant find her at Forgeworld or Games Workshop.
I did get the plastic Jain Zarr kit on the Saturday after black friday. One of the mega store here (Games N Stuff) had her at 40% off so ariund $24. I also got a Partworks dwarf at 50% off. So $7 ish vs $15.
I also ordered 2 custom minis from Eldritch Foundry. They were $5 off and came with a free scifi mini guy...
The Escher special character looks good. Was there any confirmation if she will be plastic?
@William Redford
She should be available soon. This posted 27 NOV:
It would seem it is a resin mini for better or worse.
Good deal on the Storm of Silence.
@JTam @William RedfordWell done guys on the"BF" sales, lots of raving about how good they are this year. Stange I`m not being sinicle but "Personally I`m not seeing it" I know my suprise is something old that the price dropped. But thing s like a spray compressor , or items like resin water, Rubicon or sprues for Fost Grave still remain the same and Hasslefree and studio only discounted the realy old figures with10%. Thing sare biteing .Finally figure this no heating no hot food to day Gas board as swithed of 4 houses to modernise the main pipes great time to chose"WINTER" they `ve watched to much "Game of Thrones". Love all.
@Geoff Maybury
There were some decent sales.
On the other hand an item being 25% off now means it costs what it did a year ago (at least in the USA).
The Warlord sale is still going. Check out:
https://wargamesatlantic.com/community/xenforum/topic/83866/black-friday-cyber-monday-hobby-treasure
@Geoff Maybury Yeah the sales arent like the old days, and as JTam said really just make the prices closer to last years.
I did buy 3 minis from Hasselfree's sale. They shipped about 20 days after purchase (which was what they stated the turnaaround time would be) and I have not received them yet. But the sale was on all the stock, not just the old stuff.
Miniature market has some good prices (when compared to contemporary prices) on ASOIAF minis. But I didnt pull the trigger. I really do want the new Lannister starter but I have ALL the units in it (just older sculpts) so it kind of wasnt a priority.
I collect Lannister, Neutral, Baratheon and sort if Stark. (Just the Mormont and Tully). I have like 90% of all Neutral, and like 95% of all Lannister stuff... Barathoen, I have the Starter, and 3 other boxes, so am missing quite a bit. I also have the Mother of Dragons box but not really a fan of the Dothraki stuff and the unsullied have been hard to get, so pretty much gave up on Targaryen.
I had a point... um... I guess it was "sales were not bad this year, but not great"? Yeah, we'll go with that...
I had a look at Warlord. There were some sprues at 50% that I'd have gotten, but their postage to Australia on small orders kills the discount over getting them from a local sprue reseller.
Victrix has a new set:
The female torso/miniature looks good:
Much better than those RGD ones
@JTam bought a set already. 😊
@Vitor Soares how many female torsos and heads do you get in a box?
@William Redford still waiting for it. But Victrix have pictures of the sprue on their website.
https://www.victrixlimited.com/en-pt/products/ancient-horse-archer?variant=40162608152675
From I can see, a total of four torsos, one per sprue, and two heads per sprue, total eight.
Personally, my favorite multipart female models to date were the old Panzerjagers from Dreamforge. Still haven't gotten the new ones (hoping soon) but if they're close to what the original plastics were like, they'll be a new fave. Given that I'm a dad with four daughters, I have to be careful what I get, and to be honest the over- we'll say "feminization"- of female models isn't something I can A) get away with anymore and B) don't want my girls seeing dad messing with. The Panzerjagers are women in armor. They look feminine, but not overly so. If you look at pictures of women in armor, they don't look super feminine- just female. Also, while level 47 bikini armor looks good and works within the game because "mechanics," reality is a different story.
@Battle Specter Frostgrave does this right. Stargrave too. And I've noticed that in general over the last decade or so that fantasy art has avoided the chainmail bikinis and boob armour. You'll still see curvaceous leathers and rarely any enclosed helmets though.
@Mark Dewis Exactly, either Frostgrave and Stargrave avoided too skimpy outfits, in Stargrave the female have an "Aliens" vibe with pratical outfits/armours. The only feminine armour I recently saw are in SW mandalorians, but these are justified by the necessity to evidence some characters from others. Now we'll see how the female soldiers boxed set will be.
@Mark Dewis I've noticed it too, but they're still out there. I'm not entirely opposed to it, I just find as I get older and (hopefully) wiser, I find realism trumps fantasy. But everynowanthen- I too like my fantasy stuff.
All power armour is fantasy. Try not to forget that.
As far as the pseudo medieval stuff goes, also a little hard to reality check, though at least you can touch base with the re-enactment community for the practicalities of women in armour. (TLDR on that - good armour needs to be sized to the wearer ANYWAY, so you're not coming up with any particular issues that are male or female, just designing for taller, shorter, skinnier or fatter.)
@Mark Dewis Generally, when I think of fantasy, I think of the stuff that hits more at an eye candy level than Scifi. The two can mix, obviously, but I don't see boob armor being a thing. Generally, i'd assume that powered armor would have some gel like substance inside it to keep the wearer from being beaten to death when hit by heavier weapons much like the padding on medeival plate. As such, a womans womanly bits aren't going to be showing through at all. Especially when you have water, ammo, and food stores inside the armor along with the mushy peson pieces. I figure a female in powered armor would look pretty much identical to a man in powered armor to anyone watching. You might figure it out if they talked to you directly- but even then the suit could just throw out a generic sounding voice so everyone sounds the same to those not in suit.
Boob armour has its place. And that place is basically alongside six-pack armour with moulded pecs and nipples. 😁
One thing that I like about the stargrave/frostgrave kits is how they have female variants of some stuff but they don't force excessive female traits into the bodies/armour.
For example, the Stargrave Troopers have a few female heads which are slightly narrower and have female traits, but since the bodies of the troopers have rigid armour plates, only one kit is required to represent both males and females.
Here are some of the ones I assembled from the Troopers kit:
As you can see males and females go well with each other because it is a moderately armoured kit and with anything heavier than this it would likely be difficult to distinguish males and females appart, which is the case with things like power armour in the fallout games.
I like the concept of most female stargrave and frostgrave kits with slightly feminine bodies for less armoured kits, but I do have a significant number of armoured female miniatures in my army that only have feminine heads. For example:
I still have to build my stargrave crew, frostgrave soldiers and frostgrave wizards (male and female), but I eagerly await for the release of similar kits as I will certainly use them for conversions and such.
Now NorthStar just made some female Stargrave's boxed sets, I'm waiting for the soldiers' one, female bodies normally are shorter than males, so these ,hopefully, will have more "realistic" proportions. The female heads in the soldiers set were useful to convert other female minis with unsatisfactory heads.
@Alessio De Carolis but 28mm is not a true scale like 1/56, so you'll have distortion anyway. In any case "average" height issues are obscured by variation between populations (average height Dutch women are taller than average height Afghan men for example), individual variation within a population, and considerations such as military pre-selecting for a particular height range (less women may qualify, but many will). In a science fiction environment, you may as well just go with similar heights, IMHO, to increase part compatibility.
GW has a new plastic female Cadian "Minka Lesk" NCO/LT kit.
Heads are a bit wonky but kind of a neat model.
Certainly captures these two poses well.
I read the first Minka Lesk book "Cadia Stands" and really enjoyed it.
So much so I immediately picked up the second book when it came out.
"Cadian Honour" was such a torturous read it took me three weeks to get through it and I consequently skipped the third book.
Finally I just saw this online:
LOL.
@JTam Just admiring the art work on the books covers, and relized the weapons are scaled lovley to the figure, the bolter, gun, and sword. Might actually have brought that figure, if the model was scaled the same way. She looks like a real person in the art. Cheers Geoff.
@Geoff Maybury
To be fair I had a female Soldier in the support company who had to be about 5 feet nothing. The support company still had M16A2s (aka "The Musket" at the time and I swear the weapon looked about as tall as she did. If we had WW1/WW2 sized rifles they undoubtedly would have been taller than she was.
@JTam It was that lovely "The last White Shield " cover that i fell for, the scale of that gun drawn by the artist. The barrel just below the holster on her belt, but on the WG figure the guns past her knee cap almost to her boot. Thats when you see the figures proportions are all out, "old style comic like mantics Walking dead" If Workshop built minis to artists rendations, I`d be a sorry mess, tempted to buy, but to broke for those prices. That artist to me draws his or her stuff natural and thats a grand talent to have. Love Geoff
@Battle Specter In the Legacy of Aldenata books, from John Ringo, the Earth Forces Power Armours had a sort of "Jelly" that avoided such a schock to the troopers inside and logically, when closed , was pratically impossible distinguish either male and woman soldiers.
@Alessio De Carolis If this old adlelded Brain remembers correctly .The first Hard back rules of Warhammer 4000. had the marines power armour with a "bio living gel" Its form sealing the naced "Marine " in his armour, and if said "Marime" was wounded, or lost a limb, became disabled it would seal the suit,, render the "Marine" asleap and ping a locator for retreval. The original was the best onnly one I ever owned (lost it at Alanwell Show) donkeys years ago. never replaced. Love Geoff.
Once we are in science fiction territory, issues such as "median height" and even gender itself tend to be more detail than problem. If it's important that a given soldier is tall and muscular, women can be tall and muscular. If it's important that another given soldier (or pilot or technician) be short and slim, men can be short and slim. You may still see more of one gender in a role than another, of course.
