Review of Warlord 28mm Resin WW2 Vehicles

On July 9, 2018July 12, 2018 By NuadaIn Review, WW2Leave a comment

PSA: This review has a number of pictures.

Note, this review is continued here: Review Pt2

In order to beef up the support for my FJs, I took advantage of Warlord’s 3 for 2 resin vehicle sale and bought:

Sdkfz 222
Pz II Luchs
Tiger II
Opel Blitz Truck
Sherman V
Humber Armoured Car

The allied armour is to support Lucius’ Paras and also to start to build up towards an Italian Campaign Canadian force.

These kits are resin and metal, and there is an important thing to note: resin, just like plastic injection miniatures, needs to be cleaned with mildly soapy water and then rinsed before doing anything. This is to remove the mould release agent that coats the model. Warlord did a great job with the leaflet in the Sherman V that described some of the reasons for the cleaning and trimming that is needed. Sadly, this only came with the boxed vehicle, and yes, only one of these six came with a box. That means, that if you ordered a non-boxed vehicle, you could be disappointed with the castings and have issues assembling and painting. Warlord should include the leaflet with every vehicle. Also note, that unlike the plastic kits, these vehicles do not come with damage markers or marking transfers. This is a really minor point, but the buyer should be sure to acquire necessary markings elsewhere.

After doing a bit of washing up, I laid out the kits to get my initial impression.

Sdkfz 222

This light vehicle kit is excellent. It came with very little trimming or clean-up required, and all pieces fit well.

Panzer II, Luchs (Lynx)

This light recce tank looks great. It comes in four main pieces: hull, left and right track assembly, and turret. There are of course the hatch, gun barrels, commander and some stowage.

This kit only goes together one way, but to ensure that there are no mistakes, the pieces are even labelled!

You can faintly make out “Luchs” and “Right” on the track assembly

The kit is very clean, but the turret, like many of the turrets for the other vehicles I bought, has really large pieces of resin left over. I’m surprised at their size, based on the size of the turret, but I’m not a resin caster.

The bottom of the turret needs to be trimmed and cleaned up

The only other issue with this kit is, unlike the other armoured vehicles, there is no pre-drilled hole for the main armament. I overcame this with a pin vise, but this is a simple fix and is a little disappointing considering the strength of this kit.

Tiger II

Having a Tiger just isn’t enough, so I purchased this beast. The model is excellent. The resin does a good job showing the zimmermit, and the casting is very clear. This is an excellent model overall.

The detail on this tank is great and the pieces fit together well. I am hoping to have 2 or 3 vehicles ready to be primed by tomorrow.

The detail on the hull, with clear attachment points (holes) for the exhaust

Opel Blitz Truck

In contrast with the great kits above, this one was a disappointment and I will purchase plastic versions of this in the future.

There was an excessive amount of trimming and cleaning to be done and when dry-fitting, it became clear that I would need to do some modifications to make the parts fit. Annoyingly, the back of the cab simply cannot fit. This is not a trimming aspect, but seems to be a mould problem. This vehicle will be assembled last, and hopefully my opinion on it will change.

The tabs of the can look like they fit, but sadly they do not fit over the frame below the large bump.

Sherman V

This model looks great. It is cleanly cast and all pieces fit together well. The detail is more than good enough for a wargame table, but perhaps not as crisp as the Luchs or Tiger II.

The tracks are in separate pieces, which can make painting easier for those that wish to paint the hull entirely before worrying about the tracks.

The Sherman V’s tracks need some fiddly cleaning but are well detailed

Humber Armoured Car

This kit is tiny but good. The detail is crisp and clean, but some instructions on to what goes in the various parts of the turret would have been great. I have had to do some digging around online to figure things out, which is a pain. I’m still trying to work out what goes in the space to the left of the main hatch as I cannot find anything that works. If I can’t figure it out soon, I’ll simply have to fill it in.

Overall Impressions

I have only begun to assemble these vehicles, but I am impressed with most of the kits. I have some resin terrain from a few manufacturers that comes with far less cleaning and trimming to do, which begs the question as to why Warlord’s products come less finished, but that can be looked past. The kits look good, fit together well, and should be fairly quick to get onto the table top (with the exception of the Opel).

Warlord should include the resin information leaflet with all the resin kits, and if instructions are too much to put in, having assembly information available on their website (much like Warbases does for their terrain) would alleviate some of the difficulty.

At this point, I think that five of the six kits above are worth the money and will be fun and easy to put together and paint. I will post an update as these vehicles move towards being ready for the tabletop.

Note, this review is continued here: Review Pt2

Dux Dalmor – AAR

On July 8, 2018 By NuadaIn AAR, Dux Dalmor, Fantasy1 Comment

So on Saturday night Nate and Matt came over for the first of hopefully many campaign nights. Matt decided to raid north into Tiv Ungalli, while Nate raided into Gron Toft. Meanwhile, some undead had raided into Tiv Ungalli as well, from the forest near the Woodmere, further reducing that province’s ability to defend itself.

Nate and Matt raid north, while some undead (presumably led by the Alfar) have raided Tiv Ungalli as well

The first raid was a bit of trial, with the intent of trying to game the system to see if we could break it. So, all the terrain was placed into a line across the table:

The terrain protecting the village from the raiding force

Then, Matt diced to determine where the village he was raiding would go… and naturally it was in the worst position possible. To add to the fun, Nate (playing the Rovians), would be entering from his left just before the obstacles. This seemed to be a theme for Matt. His dice rolls were, frankly, terrible. I think this may come back to an RPG session a while ago where he desecrated a shrine to a particular wolf god. In any event, Matt’s horsemen (seen here) advanced at a waddle while most of his forces remained off the table edge, with only his lord sitting at table edge trying to get as many advantageous Fate cards as he could. Matt’s rolling ensured that he had only two turns of free movement. There was much discussion about how much trouble this “Beggar’s Bowl” of loot was worth, and the image came forth of a scary beggar eliciting donations with a bundle of heads from those who were not forthcoming, thereby making this bowl full of coins, jewels, and possibly a few teeth.

Matt’s horse managed to race to unfortunately placed village (your rolls Matt, not mine!) and Nate’s forces begin to appear in force. The elite Rovian warriors and archers rushed to the village, while the warriors moved to push the pesky mercenary lord off the table. At this point, with a little prompting, Matt decided to bring on his whole force. Nate chased off the cavalry in the town, but was left without his best units facing a rapidly advancing mass formation.

Matt’s Iron Band form up and move towards the reduced defenders.

A unit of mercenaries charged in with three Fate cards in support and it merely rebounded from the line, which then surged forward and massacred the unfortunates taking no losses. The Rovians attempted to withdraw behind the forest, but based on the simulataneous raid that I had diced for earlier, the Rovian leader abandoned resistence and fled the field. Matt came off a fair bit wealthier and maybe a bit wiser about trusting his rolling.

The second short raid saw Nate’s forces push across a deep stream/river to raid a shrine. Nate only took three units with him and rolled amazingly well.

Nate’s forces rush towards the bridge in the distance

Before the defenders showed up, Nate had troops across the unpainted bridge (bearing the marks of where the airbrush failed). Matt mustered his Rovians and threw them forth. Nate was now cursed by the dice gods. He could not roll a 6 to save his life. So he abandoned his position, and rather than fight a slightly larger force, he ordered his troops off the nearby neutral edge, and promptly rolled two ‘6s’ for movement. The Rovian warriors and elites were closing fast, and Nate was unable to leave with his own elite troops and threw them into shieldwall, with two “shieldwall braced” cards to back them up. Matt’s forces just couldn’t kill the troops behind the shieldwall, and were forced backwards, giving Nate just enough time to finish looting the shrine before disappearing off the near edge. Nate lost 5 troops to thieves and bandits, but his raid was a success. It also showed how valuable shieldwall is (the Rovian forces cannot enter into that formation).

So, while each raid was short, it was a fun evening and the campaign rules continue to be refined. Hopefully next week we can fight two more encounters as well, seeing that we are getting much faster with the ruleset. I will be putting a post up later this week with some further updates to our game rules and you can look forward to seeing some more fantasy melee action next weekend with more pictures – (taken with a proper camera)!

Blog Update

On July 5, 2018 By NuadaIn BloggingLeave a comment

Please note that I am likely going to make some small changes to the blog this coming weekend. I’m thinking of moving to slightly different theme that will make it easier to see the posts that you are interested in. I’m intending to add some sharing buttons and I will also be updating the logo as my primitive attempts have had some people ask me if it is SPQV1 vice SPVQI. So please don’t be concerned if you check the blog and it looks a little different.

For those lucky few who follow by email, note that when I embed a file, you can’t see it in the post unless you actually come to the site itself. Sadly, the emailed version of the page isn’t as functional as the site itself.

Thank you to the small but loyal band of readers who have read this so far. This blog has been fun and useful, not just as a forcing function to get me to finish projects, but in and of itself.

Sarissa Precision Review

On July 5, 2018 By NuadaIn Review, Terrain, WIP, WW22 Comments

I bought some Sarissa Precision buildings for the upcoming Arnhem campaign that Lucius and I are going to be playing. I’ve managed to get my hands on some of the aerial reconnaissance photos and that, plus the Arnhem campaign in WSS 74 have made it easy to plan for the terrain we need.

In any event, here are the first three builds:

The small house, ruined house, and ruined farm house

These three buildings were fast, easy builds. I have left off the window and door treatments as I’m getting together bits of cast-off MDF to make some rubble piles etc before painting. I am very happy with my purchases of these, especially considering the postage (through Warlord) was free, which isn’t nothing considering Vancouver Island’s distance from most places.

The chateau though, well, had me calling it Sarissa Imprecision and using choice sailor-language (in my mind only, of course). I have built Warbases MDFbuildings (excellent), Terrains4Games MDF buildings (also excellent), and the above buildings. I guess I got spoiled as this kit is terrible.

Let’s start with the ground floor. I put on the door and window treatments (thank goodness) as I figured that they would possibly interact with the construction. The back doorframe prevents the attachment of a whole railing piece and needed to be cut down to size. Which was frustrating and an indication of things to come. When putting the ground floor on the base, the floor wouldn’t sit all the way down. I tried everything, including disassembling the whole thing, but the way it is, there is a small gap at the bottom. Not enough to cause a huge issue as I’m sure it will be covered with flock.

The middle floor was okay, though the walls don’t sit IN the floor (the other kits have two walls sitting in holes, with the others coming on as end pieces so they are much more solid), which makes their placement fiddly. The floor itself though, won’t match up with the walls of the ground floor. The 2mm MDF walls just aren’t true enough and the placement of the holes is off just enough. So I figured I’d have to trim the tabs (I’m calling them tabs/joining lugs for lack of better term) to make it sit flush. Not the end of the world.

Next the top floor with the pretty garbled windows. That is not a typo. I had to use sandpaper and a modelling knife to get the roof pieces fit over the frames. This wasn’t a small misalignment but a major oversight. Fixing it was quite fiddly work and really annoying. If I’m paying $40 USD for a product I expect it to actually do what it is supposed to. I finally convinced the roof to fit on, and used the widow’s walk floor to help keep things aligned. Incidentally, if you want to remove the top and place troops inside, well, bring a lever. I’m not sure how or if this is going to work once this is painted as the roof top is not easy to remove. It may involve me cutting tabs off to make this go.

From a distance, it looks good, but it will need the joining lugs cut on the walls, floors, roof supports. After finishing, I took a look for others with issues, and it turns out that I’m not alone, another blogger noticed the same railing issue. That was enough validation for me to tell me that there are more issues with this kit than with my modelling skills.

So, if you are looking for good MDF buildings, Sarissa’s smaller models are great, and worth the money, but avoid the chateau until they sort out of the problems.

Gaming on Vancouver Island

Month: July 2018

Review of Warlord 28mm Resin WW2 Vehicles

Dux Dalmor – AAR

Blog Update

Sarissa Precision Review