Saturday, April 16, 2011

Warlord Games: Plastic Napoleonic Russians!

Wow, where did this one come from......

From their announcement:
We are delighted to announce a forthcoming plastic kit - the Napoleonic Russians!




Based on uniforms worn in warmer months, these are ideal for battles such as Borodino.

In classic march-attack pose, these 28mm plastic miniatures have separate backpack, swords and ammo pouches, as well as separate heads.

All of the following head variants will be included.

Musketeer with short shako
Musketeer with earlier pattern tall shako
Musketeers with leather covered shako
Grenadiers with short shako
Grenadiers with earlier pattern tall shako (with outrageous plumage!)
Three different body sculpts and a wealth of accoutrements will lend itself beautifully to customization.

As you can see from the photos here, these models will be easy to assemble, allow for a great number of options within the regiment, and look splendid on the table

As we get nearer to confirming a release date, more information will follow - along with photos!

Now this one is a jaw dropping moment, Perry's stuff was good but not exactly earth shocking, you could see the writing on the wall once they announced the Prussians but this one is a major surprise.

I was only thinking this week, was the Prussian Landwehr 'it' for WG Napoleonic's?

Well here is the answer, no way, and these do look lovely!!

What's more it seems WG have listened to our views after last years release of the Landwehr even though we want easy to assemble wargame friendly figures we want more flexibility than can be achieved if you just make the figure as one piece. I commented at the time that we at least need the head separate and we have it here, this makes this set worth looking at, otherwise I would say it can't compete with Perry. Like with the Landwehr WG will offer fewer body sculpts than we would expect from a Perry set, in fact Perry will have two sets to cover what WG will do with one. So I can see this either suiting the guy who finds even Perry too much work to assemble or for the rest of us, the opportunity to do a bit of mix and matching between the sets.

No mention of release dates but in the past WG have tended to only show something when they are quite close to being ready, maybe 3-4 months out, sorry just pure speculation, but I hope so lol.

Having just said there isn't room for two plastic sets targeting the same subject what can I say about this, when not only does it go head to head with Perry but it also is the same style as Perry i.e. aimed at the wargamer rather than modeler. Well first thing is that WG economics are very different from Victrix, WG aren't dependent on Napoelonic's in the way Victrix are, if this set is a success or not it is not going to change things at WG. That said in some respects the fact it is so close to the Perry set make it possibly to succeed, gamers wan't to buy a lot of figures, but they don't want to spend days assembling them as you do with Victrix, however we do like to add some variety if we can, by mix and matching when compatible and I can see people taking a box of Perry and a box of WG, after all the Russian army is large lol. Whilst you might say the same applies to Victrix to be honest you buy one box from Victrix and you have had enough with assembling plastic's to last you a lifetime.

We know the Perry's and WG are close and there was a degree of cooperation with the Landwehr set so we will have to see how this pans out, are the two sets really identical or somehow will they dovetail.

I must say this set has me excited, I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Kudos to WG and lets hope we see more Napoleonics!

2 comments:

Rob Edgar said...

Subsequent comments by Paul Sawyer seem to confirm these will indeed be available in the next 3-4 months.

He is off on holiday at the moment so we will need to wait until next week at the earliest before we can get any further details.

Actually he seemed to suggest there were 6 other new WIP sets announced at Salute I assume none of these were Napoleonic but so far I have not seen anything about any other WG figures.

Rob Edgar said...

Not much to add at this point, WG's latest announcement mentions this set is away being tooled, which still suggests 3-4 months out is about right.

WG will provide more details 'soon' but that looks like being a few weeks away now.