Well that was fast!
Artizan Designs sent me an email on the 18th letting me know these figures had been dispatched and they arrived last night. That’s less than a week in transit which is half the time I expected. Typically it takes around two weeks for anything I ship from New Zealand to reach the UK.
The three baggies of figures look very good. They’re all well proportioned and sculpted with plenty of detail like canteens, ammo pouches and knapsacks that makes them look suitably field-worn. Their rifles and sub-machineguns look good too although several of them were bent in transit.
Their faces all look suitably Germanic although I notice they all look fairly similar. I suspect they’ve been sculpted around a couple of common heads. While that’s mitigated by the fact several of the figures I chose are wearing desert goggles or are cloth wrapped it would be nicer to have seen a little more variety in expression. Mind you they do all look like stoic Teutonic soldiers. A bit of stubble here and there and different hair and flesh tones should make each man a little more individual.
The casting is top notch although they seem to have a fair amount of flash on them, as you may be able to tell from the photos, but that’s easily cleaned off. Several of them had flash posts between weapons and limbs which is a little annoying but is certainly better than getting miscast figures!
I only spotted one figure of the twelve with a really bad mold line that will require some serious filing to remove which is a fine ratio for any metal figure manufacturer.
Probably the only irksome aspect of the figures is they come with oval metal bases cast onto them. Most of the cast on bases will also require filing to get flat.
I would clip them off their bases but as there’s several figures where that’s problematic I’ll probably just end up gluing them to round GW base and building up some detail to hide the original basing.
After years of dealing with Games Workshop’s metals I must say I much prefer a slotta tab solution to molded bases. Then I can chose how I want to base my figures rather than having to rely on the manufacturer.
All in all though I’ve very pleased with these fellows and Artizan Designs are going into my links list right now for future reference.