Striking down from the North

This month sees the release of the new Northern Alliance models. These are available in the new army box, the new mega army box, as regiment boxes, and as a new Ambush starter set. Since I already had a demo army for the NA, I picked up the ambush starter to get the new hard plastic models. And just in time, as the Mantic Companion has just been updated with new rules for the Northern Alliance, including the profiles for the new Frostclaw Riders!

Like all the ambush boxes, it includes some diagrams for assembly

The frost claw riders help to show the correct order of assembly

The Ice Kin Hunters and Half Elf Berserkers

The Frost Claws comes in two 'half' sprues. Each pair includes the raven body, 2 heads, 2 pairs of wings, 2 rock plinths (to mount the ravens on) and 2 dwarf riders (with both spears and ice grenades).

With the assembly diagrams, these are pretty easy to assemble. However they are large, between 2 12" and 5" tall. My bins I use to transport my demo armies are only 3" deep - so these are NOT going to be able to be easily magnetized. The nice thing is being hard plastic, they are fairly resilient.

Rock Plinths. Of course, you don't have to use these to mount the models - however even without using these I wouldn't be able to fit the taller raven in my box

The raven models

Since each pair of sprues makes one raven but has all the options for both rider models, you can actually make variants holding both spears and ice bombs (if you decide NOT to take the upgrade). This also means you can have 2 extra dwarf models per regiment of frost claw riders - with a little conversion work you could then have dwarf clan warriors with the Northern Alliance theme (much like the great vanguard ones)

A single sprue makes any combination of 5 Ice Kin Hunters / Half-Elf Berserkers.

These are easy and basic to assemble. Simple match up each cape with the corresponding body (A through E). If you are making hunters, then you want to use the same quiver as these are made to fit with each body (and the cape 'flows' around it). All the heads are inter-changeable, as are all the berserker arms.

For the hunters, there are 5 bows, but only 3 arms holding arrows. However the you can use the arms holding arrows with multiple bows if you want to have all your models shooting (unless all you make are hunters, then some will have to be holding weapons in their right hands).

With the capes and the bows, the hunters are DEFINITELY a unit for multi-basing - each model simple takes up much more room than for a normal 20mm infantry model. Part of this is the dynamic running poses - it seems that it is nearly impossible for sculptors to created female models that all have both feet on the ground (but at least these are not wearing high heels, nor on their tip toes. Also, they seem to be a bit more stable due to the basing bits on the feet that ARE on the ground.

The Half-Elf Barbarians don't require any matching of arms. Also, there are 8 heads on the sprue, giving more variety.

One interesting bit is that most of the bow arms are pointing sideways from their body - so they are shooting off to the side from the direction they are running. The weapon arms, on the other hand, are oriented toward the front. As such, even when using the same body/cape and head, the orientation of the model makes it so they look very different.