Victrix Update - Austrians

An update from Victrix on the Austrians and interesting news it is!

First the box cover art, we haven't seen the Landwehr and the 1806-1815 Infantry boxes before, they look good, especially like the Landwehr!



From their announcement:

We now have some of the first plastic test shots of the infantry frame wearing helmets. The majority of positions are for marching figures but if you wish you can make some other poses such as firing and advancing etc... You can see a few of those poses illustrated below.Andrew Taylor and Darren from Gripping Beast are painting a few up for us at the moment so we will have some painted samples to show next week. Also we are eagerly expecting to get test sprues of the command frame later this week. We will show you those as soon as they come in.



Once we have tests of all the 4 sets we will be putting them on pre-order, so not long to wait now!

Each box contains 56 figures. 48 infantry, 2 officers, 2 drummers, 2 standard bearers and 2 lovely mounted colonels. The infantry can all be in marching poses but we do have some arms to enable you to make some figures, firing, loading and advancing with levelled musket or at porte. Most of the figures are easy to assemble so you can get your units built quickly, however we have added a few extras to add some individuality and character to your miniatures so they don’t look like production line robots!

Also, our metal British Light and Heavy Dragoon packs are with Nick at North Star at present as he does the casting. We should have some castings to show of these fabulous figures in the next couple of weeks. There are command packs, and the trooper packs have arm options to give you more variety. These have been sculpted by the ever-busy Paul Hicks. Paul is currently working on the Russian Dragoons, and firing line for the Russian line infantry and Grenadiers.

There is always some apprehension about how the beautifully sculpted and detailed '3Ups' will really look when the are scaled down in size and adapted for the mold but from these test shots at least there is nothing to worry about, they are superb!

Victrix had promised easier to assemble figures this time, i.e. fewer parts, which is a good thing but the downside to that is the placement of the figure within the mold is more of a compromise and there is a greater chance of loss of detail but you wouldn't know it from these shots, they seemed to have translated very well, notice the very nicely detailed hands, does anyone recall the boxing gloves of the WG Prussian Landwehr?

You can always argue about whether the Perry's produce more practical gaming figures than Victrix or that it takes them an awful long time for them to get a set out the door but you can't argue about the quality, figure for figure I think they are better than the Perry's. I thought the Victrix Grenadiers were the best set ever produced in 28mm but these look every bit as good.

From what I understand they are waiting on the command frame test later this week, followed by the Grenadier, Shako and Landwehr test frames. So it shouldn't be too much longer before these are ready to go and they look well worth the wait!

Interesting to hear news of the metals, actually I am very interested to see their Heavy Dragoons, I have been thinking for a while of trading in my current OG cavalry for some new 28mm, so the timing is just right to do a head to head with the Perry's.