Burn baby burn!

Recently, during the Masters Championship for Kings of War in Chicago, I was able to get some pictures of the new Greater Fire Elemental (it was one of the door prizes - as well as a Steel Behemoth - look for that review soon).  (Thanks to Kris Kapsner for running the event and allow me to get these pictures)



This is in the tradition of the new monsters, and comes with a 75 mm base.  As you can see from the picture, it is about three times the size of a Salamander.  However the base looks small enough that, if you wanted, you should be able to fit it on a 'normal' monster base at 50mm.


Inside the box is a base, and a bag with a whopping three parts to the model - the body and two arms.  However being resin, I would guess it would be fairly easy to do some minor conversions if you so choose.  There isn't much to bend or re-position, but if use hot water resin becomes somewhat soft and then very easy to cut.  The deep molded flames would also then be easy to match with green stuff after re-positioning the arms.

Some nice detail, with the rocks embedded in the flames.  It looks more molten lava based then pure fire, which is a nice change for fire elementals.  While it does have a bit of the very thin flash that is quite common with pure resin castings (and very easily removed with a sharp hobby knife), there did not appear to be any strong mold lines.

The embedded rocks allows for some color and texture variation on the model.  Elementals, much like ghost models, tend to often lend themselves to a simple paint job because there is nothing to really break up the surfaces.  Mantic has been doing a good job with theirs however, adding some interesting bits.  This is a great example with the rocks, but they also did this with their water elements - having fish breaking through the surface of the waves that I really, really like.


Assembly of this is trivial, with only two arms, and since they gave them thumbs it is trivial to identify the right and left arms.  I also like on this left arm, where there is a chunk of rock overlapping where the join actually is, so as to help cover it up (because while we all know we should ALWAYS wash EVERY model in warm soapy water first, carefully trim even the tiniest of mold lines, and green stuff over every joint to give a nice seamless surface - a lot of us don't do it - because we want to get the model on the table smashing face ASAP).


 The right arm is similar.  It has a little more vents on it because they vented it through the fingers instead of the elbow (like the left), but again this is just part of working with resin.



I'd like to show you the assembled model before painting, but this isn't mine so everything has to go back in the box for the door prize winner to put together and enjoy.  Now that this has been released, I hope to see a couple on the tabletop.  An easy to put together, high quality resin kit.  I almost wish I had a place to put one in one of my demo armies!

Because it is all fun and games . . .

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