Our friends over at RGD Gaming are going a bit beyond a simple gaming mail order company, and throwing their hat into the hard plastic modelling business. Their first foray is going to be new multipiece hard plastic Fauns.
They actually sent me a sprue to share with everyone.
This is a nice, high quality sprue. Mold lines are almost non-existent - I had to do some serious searching to find one! There is a LOT of stuff on these as well. One non-model thing I like about them is the corners - they are designed to be easily stack-able with each other (I first saw this with Ex-Illis and it makes these much easier to store (if you need to keep the sprues for some reason)).
Each sprue has three legs in two poses, and three torsos, also in two poses. This strikes me as a little odd, and I wonder how hard it might have been to reverse the leg poses (basically mirror them) on the pair with the left foot (hoof?) forward to make three unique legs. The torsos really aren't that much different anyway. However you still get 4 combinations.
There are six heads on the sprue - so this then makes 24 unique combinations BEFORE any of the weapon options, and there are 10 different right hands with weapons (but no lefties (being right-handed myself I don't tend to notice most of the time though)). For the left hands, there are two empty hands (which can hold the shields), two arms without hands (for the two double handed weapons), and one with a horn and another with a bow. So they aren't adding that much variety - however it is safe to say that this single sprue has the potential to make over 240 variations - you could easily have a full army of these with no 2 models exactly alike, and that is even before the other sprues they hope to fund in their kickstarter!
Of the right hands, there are two spears and two javelins. Two holding the double handed weapons and three holding hand weapons. The last one is holding an arrow for the archer.
I did have a little confusion on some of the hand weapons, but that is more to my lack of historical weaponry.
These are intended to be similar Thracian weapons - a falx or rhomphaia. No, I honestly didn't know what they were either, but the hooked end is intended to be able to catch shields and hack rather than slice like a sword or ax. So it kind of makes them even better to be more historically based (see boys and girls, you can even learn something playing games once in a while).
The bits clipped off the sprues easily, with a bit of flash as expected, that was easily trimmed off with a knife. None of the pieces were in attached in bad or awkward places, and most of them were attached in spots that will get covered up anyway (i.e. bottom of the hoofs and where the torso and legs meet) They assembled quite easily with polystyrene cement (i.e. plastic glue). This is nice for things like the 2 handed weapons, as it gives you some time to actually get them in the right position (I so hate doing that with resin and metal models when you need to hold 3 or 4 pieces all together at just the right angle).
There is quite a bit of detail in these, but it is not overdone. There are some models that end up with belts, straps, pouches and all sorts of little details that can be pretty cool for a single display model, but tend to just add time and effort when painting up a ranked unit or an entire army. These seem to have a nice balance, with some good texture that should allow even beginning painters to do a really good job with them.
How do they scale with other models you ask. And I answer, putting one next to a Mantic salamander and human druid (because I just happen to have a Nature warband on my desk waiting for the centaurs to show up).
They match very well height wise, and are a little on the thin side - but that is a good thing since they aren't intended to be bulky and aren't wearing clothes. Since they are not overly large, they should also rank up quite easily, and I don't see any issues if you actually wanted to go full model count with them on a multi-base (What?!? Does anybody even do that anymore? That is just crazy talk!!)
There are simply so many options left on the sprue - I wish I had more than one to see just how more of them look. I really look forward to getting in a bunch of these and putting together some units for Kings of War (I plan to use these for my 1000 pt Herd demo army).
This being a kickstarter though, one of the fun parts are the stretch goals. Now after backing so many Mantic and other kickstarters, the goals for this seem really small to me, so I hope they are all easily achieved and we blow on to more and better ones! What are some of the goals?
Well first is to get funded, then to add a full female sprue - which would more than double the options available. They hope to then fund an accessory sprue that is only torsos, arms and weapons, to just keep adding more and more options. Then add in command models - banners and leaders with more armor on them.
In addition, the kickstarter will also include some support models as well, such as metal shamans (male and female) and metal minotaurs. However what really excites me is the big goal (so far) they are talking about - which would be to make horse bodies compatible with the torsos to make centaurs - and these would then have ALL the options that the fauns already have! These would include a front armor piece to cover up the connection (or use green stuff if you prefer naked centaurs).
I know that I've been excited about this for quite some time, and now after getting my hands on these I'm even more eager to build this army. My plans now are for a regiment of Spirit Walkers, a regiment of Tribal Spears, two troops of Tribal Hunters, a regiment of Guardian Brutes, a regiment of Centaur Longmanes, a troop of Centaur Bray-Hunters and a Shaman. So we need those stretch goals for the centaurs!!!! The nice thing is that if it hits them, then I should be able to build everything from their "Army in a Box" option!
You can find more information on the kickstarter on Facebook:
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter group
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter Facebook page
and I'll update this post with the actual link to the kickstarter after it goes live.
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter
Because it is all faun and games . . .
They actually sent me a sprue to share with everyone.
This is a nice, high quality sprue. Mold lines are almost non-existent - I had to do some serious searching to find one! There is a LOT of stuff on these as well. One non-model thing I like about them is the corners - they are designed to be easily stack-able with each other (I first saw this with Ex-Illis and it makes these much easier to store (if you need to keep the sprues for some reason)).
Each sprue has three legs in two poses, and three torsos, also in two poses. This strikes me as a little odd, and I wonder how hard it might have been to reverse the leg poses (basically mirror them) on the pair with the left foot (hoof?) forward to make three unique legs. The torsos really aren't that much different anyway. However you still get 4 combinations.
There are six heads on the sprue - so this then makes 24 unique combinations BEFORE any of the weapon options, and there are 10 different right hands with weapons (but no lefties (being right-handed myself I don't tend to notice most of the time though)). For the left hands, there are two empty hands (which can hold the shields), two arms without hands (for the two double handed weapons), and one with a horn and another with a bow. So they aren't adding that much variety - however it is safe to say that this single sprue has the potential to make over 240 variations - you could easily have a full army of these with no 2 models exactly alike, and that is even before the other sprues they hope to fund in their kickstarter!
Of the right hands, there are two spears and two javelins. Two holding the double handed weapons and three holding hand weapons. The last one is holding an arrow for the archer.
I did have a little confusion on some of the hand weapons, but that is more to my lack of historical weaponry.
These are intended to be similar Thracian weapons - a falx or rhomphaia. No, I honestly didn't know what they were either, but the hooked end is intended to be able to catch shields and hack rather than slice like a sword or ax. So it kind of makes them even better to be more historically based (see boys and girls, you can even learn something playing games once in a while).
The bits clipped off the sprues easily, with a bit of flash as expected, that was easily trimmed off with a knife. None of the pieces were in attached in bad or awkward places, and most of them were attached in spots that will get covered up anyway (i.e. bottom of the hoofs and where the torso and legs meet) They assembled quite easily with polystyrene cement (i.e. plastic glue). This is nice for things like the 2 handed weapons, as it gives you some time to actually get them in the right position (I so hate doing that with resin and metal models when you need to hold 3 or 4 pieces all together at just the right angle).
There is quite a bit of detail in these, but it is not overdone. There are some models that end up with belts, straps, pouches and all sorts of little details that can be pretty cool for a single display model, but tend to just add time and effort when painting up a ranked unit or an entire army. These seem to have a nice balance, with some good texture that should allow even beginning painters to do a really good job with them.
They match very well height wise, and are a little on the thin side - but that is a good thing since they aren't intended to be bulky and aren't wearing clothes. Since they are not overly large, they should also rank up quite easily, and I don't see any issues if you actually wanted to go full model count with them on a multi-base (What?!? Does anybody even do that anymore? That is just crazy talk!!)
There are simply so many options left on the sprue - I wish I had more than one to see just how more of them look. I really look forward to getting in a bunch of these and putting together some units for Kings of War (I plan to use these for my 1000 pt Herd demo army).
This being a kickstarter though, one of the fun parts are the stretch goals. Now after backing so many Mantic and other kickstarters, the goals for this seem really small to me, so I hope they are all easily achieved and we blow on to more and better ones! What are some of the goals?
Well first is to get funded, then to add a full female sprue - which would more than double the options available. They hope to then fund an accessory sprue that is only torsos, arms and weapons, to just keep adding more and more options. Then add in command models - banners and leaders with more armor on them.
In addition, the kickstarter will also include some support models as well, such as metal shamans (male and female) and metal minotaurs. However what really excites me is the big goal (so far) they are talking about - which would be to make horse bodies compatible with the torsos to make centaurs - and these would then have ALL the options that the fauns already have! These would include a front armor piece to cover up the connection (or use green stuff if you prefer naked centaurs).
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| Computer Renders |
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| Resin Prototypes |
You can find more information on the kickstarter on Facebook:
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter group
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter Facebook page
and I'll update this post with the actual link to the kickstarter after it goes live.
Injection Molded Fauns Kickstarter
Because it is all faun and games . . .
Faun and games? So, this is your fauntasy army?
ReplyDeleteA fauntastic premise :)
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