RGD Gaming is getting ready to release their first hard plastic models - 28mm fauns (from their Kickstarter). The kickstarter not only funded the production of the faun sprue (you can see it here), but also a female sprue, and they hit the stretch goal that allowed them to make a centaur sprue as well.
They were kind enough to share a sprue with me (and thus with you). Having not been very happy with the metal centaurs I have made in the past, I was really looking forward to hard plastic centaurs.
If this looks similar to the sprue I reviewed the other day (halflings) it is because they are produced in conjunction with Wargames Atlantic.
I'm not sure if the centaurs will be packaged separately, but it looks like the sprue will be included in the faun warband box currently available for pre-order
The box looks like it will contain 4 of the male faun sprue (each makes 3), 4 of the female sprue (again each making 3) plus the bonus centaur sprue.
This hard plastic set includes enough to build 24 multi-piece fauns. Altogether there are 12 females and 12 males, and an optional 2 centaurs.
+bonus sprue
These are the same high quality hard plastic that we have seen before from Wargames Atlantic, and go together easily. A sharp hobby knife is required to trim off the sprue connections, but there is not a lot of flash on these.
The horse bodies come in two halves, and are interchangeable, so you can get 4 different horse bodies.
After the horse bodies, the upper torsos, heads and arms are all compatible with the make and female faun sprues - this gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility by mixing bodies and weapons between all the sprues.
There are a six varieties of pole-arms on the sprue - looking at it I started to feel like I was in the Order of the Stick version of the classic Monty Python sketch, which plays off the fact that the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook had a huge number of pole-arms listed.
They chose a very interesting way to do these. There is a left arm that had the bottom of the pole-arm on it and a bump on the top, then there is a right hand with a flat top and a slight divot that fits against the left hand. These actually fit together very well.
The top of the right hand is flat - and this is what I didn't care for. Because now you have to glue the shaft of whatever pole-arm head you want to it, trying to make sure that it is perfectly perpendicular to the flat spot on the hand, as well as in line with the bottom half of the pole. You will need to rotate this to make sure it lines up, as you can line up in one direction and be completely off in another.
It would have been nice to actually have another divot in the top of the right hand to form a socket for putting the weapon into - this could have made it much easier to assure that it is lined up the way it should be. I am expecting I will have to be drilling a hole in the right hand to fit these in and make them more stable.
In discussions in the kickstarter, they talked about a piece of leather/bark armor you could put in place to cover the join between the bodies. Nice to add a bit of armor, but the bodies seem to fit well enough that it isn't needed. Just make sure you clean off the flat spaces on the bottom of the body and top of the horse to allow these to connect flat (I saw some pictures on-line that were all gaps, but did not have any gaps on the two I put together).
Since these are designed to be compatible with the faun sprues, I figured it made sense to compare them, and they fit very well. The bodies are all proportionally the same - however this makes the horse bodies a little small - they are more centaur ponies.
I really noticed this when I put them against some Mantic metal centaurs (again I don't care much for these) - but the Mantic ones are significantly larger.
However, I don't think the fault is in the new plastic ones, I think that the metal miniatures are too large. Comparing a centaur to a Mantic druid mini, you can see how much larger the human parts of the model are than the druid - she seems to be almost ogre sized.
Comparing the plastic centaur to the same druid (and a faun), they are all nicely proportional. The horse body still seems a little small, but if you were to scale it up much then you have the ogre sized version. It is a catch-22 - and ultimately why these are mythical creatures that cannot truly exist :-)
I am really looking forward to getting my models from the kickstarter so I can start to assemble my Herd demo army for Kings of War (because I don't already have a huge backlog of things that need painted that I'm not working on already :-) ).
Because it is all fun and games . . .
They were kind enough to share a sprue with me (and thus with you). Having not been very happy with the metal centaurs I have made in the past, I was really looking forward to hard plastic centaurs.
If this looks similar to the sprue I reviewed the other day (halflings) it is because they are produced in conjunction with Wargames Atlantic.
I'm not sure if the centaurs will be packaged separately, but it looks like the sprue will be included in the faun warband box currently available for pre-order
The box looks like it will contain 4 of the male faun sprue (each makes 3), 4 of the female sprue (again each making 3) plus the bonus centaur sprue.
This hard plastic set includes enough to build 24 multi-piece fauns. Altogether there are 12 females and 12 males, and an optional 2 centaurs.
- x8 bows
- x8 quivers
- x16 cross compatible shields
- x16 2h weapons
- x32 spears in various bracing, overhand and at rest positions
- x24 hand weapons
- x8 Musical Horns
- x8 javelin racks
- x24 shoulder pads
- x48 heads
+bonus sprue
- Centaurs x2
- Non horned heads
- Heavy armor
- Dual wielding axes and hook swords
- Pole weapon
These are the same high quality hard plastic that we have seen before from Wargames Atlantic, and go together easily. A sharp hobby knife is required to trim off the sprue connections, but there is not a lot of flash on these.
The horse bodies come in two halves, and are interchangeable, so you can get 4 different horse bodies.
After the horse bodies, the upper torsos, heads and arms are all compatible with the make and female faun sprues - this gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility by mixing bodies and weapons between all the sprues.
There are a six varieties of pole-arms on the sprue - looking at it I started to feel like I was in the Order of the Stick version of the classic Monty Python sketch, which plays off the fact that the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook had a huge number of pole-arms listed.
They chose a very interesting way to do these. There is a left arm that had the bottom of the pole-arm on it and a bump on the top, then there is a right hand with a flat top and a slight divot that fits against the left hand. These actually fit together very well.
The top of the right hand is flat - and this is what I didn't care for. Because now you have to glue the shaft of whatever pole-arm head you want to it, trying to make sure that it is perfectly perpendicular to the flat spot on the hand, as well as in line with the bottom half of the pole. You will need to rotate this to make sure it lines up, as you can line up in one direction and be completely off in another.
It would have been nice to actually have another divot in the top of the right hand to form a socket for putting the weapon into - this could have made it much easier to assure that it is lined up the way it should be. I am expecting I will have to be drilling a hole in the right hand to fit these in and make them more stable.
In discussions in the kickstarter, they talked about a piece of leather/bark armor you could put in place to cover the join between the bodies. Nice to add a bit of armor, but the bodies seem to fit well enough that it isn't needed. Just make sure you clean off the flat spaces on the bottom of the body and top of the horse to allow these to connect flat (I saw some pictures on-line that were all gaps, but did not have any gaps on the two I put together).
Since these are designed to be compatible with the faun sprues, I figured it made sense to compare them, and they fit very well. The bodies are all proportionally the same - however this makes the horse bodies a little small - they are more centaur ponies.
I really noticed this when I put them against some Mantic metal centaurs (again I don't care much for these) - but the Mantic ones are significantly larger.
However, I don't think the fault is in the new plastic ones, I think that the metal miniatures are too large. Comparing a centaur to a Mantic druid mini, you can see how much larger the human parts of the model are than the druid - she seems to be almost ogre sized.
Comparing the plastic centaur to the same druid (and a faun), they are all nicely proportional. The horse body still seems a little small, but if you were to scale it up much then you have the ogre sized version. It is a catch-22 - and ultimately why these are mythical creatures that cannot truly exist :-)
I am really looking forward to getting my models from the kickstarter so I can start to assemble my Herd demo army for Kings of War (because I don't already have a huge backlog of things that need painted that I'm not working on already :-) ).
Because it is all fun and games . . .
Read your blog post in The 9th Scroll, excellent work, thanks for making such content.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this! I just bought some centaurs and couldn't figure out how they should go together -- I thought I was doing it wrong because of the "balance top half of polearm on hand" trick. I guess that's how it's supposed to be, but like you I'm not impressed with that design. I also thought they were small -- until I compared them to WA's new Irish box and found the heads were exactly the same size, which means I am going to have some Irish centaurs. I'd have liked them to be a little more impressive but as you point out, you can't have it both ways. Great review and a big help to me. Oh - have you figured out how to do the bows? I'm still struggling with those.
ReplyDeleteThanks. The bow arm is on the faun sprue - the trick there may be getting enough, but since the uppers and faun bodies are all compatible, you should be able to use those bows with no problems. If you haven't seen the faun sprue - https://blog.untilsomebodylosesaneye.net/2019/05/fauning-all-over-you.html .
DeleteI've yet to see the female faun sprue, so I'm not sure what is on it.