Dirt Cheap: Em4 plastic orcs

I have bunch of really cheap miniatures in my collection. So for all of you that come across these cheap minis while surfing the web and wonder if miniatures that cheap really are worth your time and money I am starting a series of reviews called “Dirt Cheap”.

I am starting with the cheapest of the cheap. Em-4’s fantasy plastics. The range consists of six different miniatures, three orcs and three dwarves. They are sold in bags of 50 for £7.7 (!), which works out at rougly £0.16 per miniature! They can also be bought loose for £0.21 per miniature. As you can see this is mindboggingly cheap, and when I put in an order for some other stuff I couldn’t resist adding a few to my order.

First a bit of background on these minis. They were first released in 1990 as a part of the Fantasy Warriors box set, a game produced by Grenadier Models. They seem to have been sculpted by Mark Copplestone but imitating the style of Nick Lund.

As you can see from the pictures they are produced in a grey plastic and unlike other plastic miniatures they do not come on a sprue.

The orcs have one of the classic old school monopose poses, the weapon to the side and the hand close to the hip. Not very three dimensional, but very much standard for the time they were released, so no problem there.

The details are very soft, and these miniatures are not very detailed to begin with.

On the back of the miniatures, there are these weird round pegs sticking out. This is probably where the plastic was injected. These were quite easy to remove though if you are a reasonably experienced hobbyist since the plastic is quite soft and easy to cut.

The mouldlines are very heavy, but since these guys doesn’t really have any fine details, removing them was easy.

After a quick paintjob they do look quite good. The swordsman also turned out to have slightly better defined details in the face. Things like is hard to notice until you paint the miniature. I do like the look on the face of the left one.

It is hard to review miniatures that are as cheap as these because you are not expecting anything from them. Compared to other plastic miniatures from the early 90’s these orcs look fine. And that is probably the only standard you can hold them against without being unfair.  At this price, it is hard to say anything else than that they are anything but good value. But if you expect to them to be anything like a modern plastic miniature, you will be disappointed.

I don’t see myself getting more of these. They need some work to look good, and I simply don’t have the need for loads of cheap plastic old school orcs. But if you do, they are indeed very cheap, and EM4 is a very nice company with excellent service.

Links and further reading:

They can be bought from: http://em4miniatures.com/. A company that also sell a lot of very nice ex-Grenadier metal miniatures at very good prices.

In this thread at the Lead Adventure Forum, there is a very impressive project, where an entire army of orcs are made from EM4-plastics. Three monopose orcs into 147 unique ones!

 

 

 

Saving the Panther Lancers Part 1: Review and parts breakdown

Image from manticgames.com.

In my 2013 Mantic crazybox I got six Basilean Panter Lancers, and thus they became the most awkward miniatures in my collection. They are a odd bunch, some parts are well sculpted, others not. Some parts are well proportioned, others way off. It almost as if the parts were made separately and then added up to make the model. There are also some design choices I don’t agree with, but this is a separate issue from the problems with execution of the design. I will come back to both as I go through the parts of the miniature.

The plan is to try and “save” these miniatures, making them look good without completely remaking them.

Looking just at these they seem fine. Questionable cup size though.

The heads are a mixed bag. the faces are ok. Top left, is that a braid or an anaconda. Hooded ones boring. The necks are way to long, the heads doesn’t fit on the bodies. I really don’t know what is going on with does forearms, did they use Photoshop Disasters as an anatomy reference while sculpting? The hands are also very big. I also don’t like how the the left arm is empty, it think it is supposed to look like it is holding reins, but it just looks odd.Saddles, wont use these. Looks heavy and awkward for riders that are supposed to look light and nimble. The feet wont even rest properly in the weird platform stirrups.

The panthers are ok, but the leaping one is a bit questionable in a unit.

So to sum it up, this is what needs to be done.

• Shorten neck, fit.
• Shorten forearms.
• Reposition arms so the pose is better.
• Sculpt some kind of more reasonable saddle.
• Add a shield or something to the left arm.

This might sound negative, but they are cheap if you get them from Mantic and it will probably be fun to fix them.

Forge Father Stormrage Veterans – Thoughts and Review

Mantic probably knew what they were doing when they invented the Forge Fathers. 20 years after Games Workshop removed the Squats from 40k, there seem to be a lot of people out there who want them back even though they were a bit silly, and certainly (at least how they were depicted) wouldn’t fit in with 40k’s over the top grimness.

Mantic seem to be a lot more tolerant to humour in their Warpath sci-fi setting, even though neither their Orx (space orks) nor their Forge Fathers (space dwarfs) act as comic relief. With their strategy of staying close, but not too close, to many of the concepts found in Games Workshop’s games, The Forge Fathers is a smart move. Forge Fathers is at least a much better name than squats.

In the yearly Mantic Crazy box (basically a once a year deal where you get a lot of random Mantic miniatures for little money) I got in January there was a squad of Forge Father Stormrage Veterans. Which supposedly are some of the toughest guys in the Forge Father armies.

There is five miniatures in the pack, all in Mantic’s “Plastic Resin”, which to my understanding is just some kind of PVC. They come with the option to equip the lead with either a big sledgehammer or a pointing finger. I chose the hammer. Obviously.

This is the leader of the crew. The guy who is either pointing or wielding a big hammer. I wonder if anyone actually assembles him without the hammer? Anyhow, he is a charming little fellow. The arms are maybe a bit long though.

This guy is wielding a heat cannon. This was also the only that was a bit more challenging to put together since the fuel line didn’t want to match up exactly. I think that there is something slightly off with how he is holding the weapon though, holding it eith tht arm that extended makes it seems quite light weight. Nitpicking aside, it is not a bad miniature.

This is my favorite of the bunch, simply because of the beady eye lenses. Giving some Forge Fathers helmets with face masks was a good decision by Mantic. It makes them a lot more mysterious and therefore more interesting. The Forge Fathers without masks are a lot more boring. The way he holds his weapon is also the weakness with this miniature, the side grip combined with the round magazine makes it look a bit awkward. The weapon is also a bit to long to fit with the compact forge fathers.

All in all I do like these miniatures, they have a lot of character and are of good technical quality. After reading lots of horror stories and complaints about the material I was pleasantly surprised with the ease they came together and how easy they were to clean. Mantic’s miniatures are often very likeable and they are a likeable company. However, I often get the feeling that the design would benefit of another round of concept design. This is also the case with these guys.