Mantic Ghouls Model Review Pt 2.

So heres some more of the mantic models, this time fully made up. First up heres a couple of pics of the units fully made up just so you have some idea of how the units really look rather dynamic when all ranked up, I was impressed how much they look like they're surging forward looking for walking lunchables. I'll get some appropriate sized movement trays for them when i get around to painting them up.

Next up heres a rank of vanilla models with no weapon arms. I've also thrown in the ghast command model torso as he's really cool> He's waving around a spine and wearing a (?)skin cloak of sorts. He should really stick out at the front of your units and add that extra bit of character.

Heres three chaps with the weapon options included: Knives, a meat cleaver and a claw thing. I don't really like the claw thing, but the other two are grand, particularly the meat cleaver, fresh meat (I loved diablo)!

Next up here are some alternate weapons from the empire militia boxed set. The warhammer hands are by enlarge slightly too big for the models with chunkier fingers etc. but some of the slightly older models go well enough. As it happens these are conveniently also the three different head options provided.

Lastly heres some head swaps. Again most warhammer heads are a bit big, such as the knight helmet! However I thought it was fun to add some diversity to the unit.

I hope you all agree these are a great and very cheap substitute for the GW ghouls, If your a die hard tourney player these probably wont be of much use to you with the whole GW only rules, however if your a casual gamer who wants to save a few quid/bucks then I'd highly recommend these as an easy and quick way to make up alot of guys fast. This is especially relevant at the moment for those die hard Undead players who want to suddenly have huge regiments of ghouls the old army book didn't often reward you for playing as skeletons and zombies are not exactly top notch choices until the new rules come out.

Given changes in fear rules and the recent tomb kings chatter from GW about 'legions of undead' I fully expect serious skeleton points costs, but until that happens there are going to be alot of ghouls running about the empire!

I hope this helps a few people who wonder what mantic models and sprues look like, sometime in the future I'll look at how to paint up lots of these guys really quick. I think coloured sprays are likely, you may notice in pics 1&2 I've already started testing the red on my blood angels, I'll post up how thats going soon.

Mantic Ghouls Model Review Pt 1.

I impulse bought some mantic mini's while they were doing some 15% off sale thing awhile back. I hate the GW ghouls with a passion. They look like some sort of cartoon igor meets quazimodo and not the least bit frightening. So I went and purchased a ghoul formation from mantic containing two ghould hoardes. A total of 80 ghouls including two ghast command torsoes.

I was surprised to find there are only two ghoul scultps on the sprues (no i didn't carefully read the site, I impulse bought with 15 seconds to spare before the deal ran out at midnight!) although these have alot of different options between them. Heres some sprue pics:

The two torsoes and bodies are interchangable and have ball and socket joints to allow a massive variety of poses. Unlike GW mini's the legs come attached to a round flat piece that sticks in the base (put glue on the model not the base or air will trap and be a pain) which allows you to stick the guy to the base later, giving more pose direction and allowing the slightly tricky models to rank up better without having to waste time pre planning what every guy looks like. There are three heads, one of them particularly cool, the other two not so much to my taste. Different hands with weapons can be used to replace the hands on the model by clipping them off, this is a bit of a pain but saves alot of time not sticking tiny hands on if you want most of yor guys without a weapon. The scale is not as herioc as warhammer, but some heads and hands I found were compatable. I'll whack up some pics of some stuck models soon when the light is a bit better tomorrow! I might try to do some kind of crazy entire undead army in a single weekend paintathon for fun sometime as I really don't have any other vampire counts models.

If anyone in the UK wants my 8 mantic points drop me an email with your address and I'll pop them in the post to you, I'm going to lose the stickers before I ever collect 20!

Forgeworld Space Marine Crusade, Iron and Heresy Armour comments

So I went a bit crazy recently and hold me a hold of some forgeworld goodies. I've already posted up the Librarian and now heres some comments on the armour types:

First up, heres the crusade armour:

All of the models torsoes are attached to the sprue by their base. This is a little bit of a pain to remove and get smooth to fit on the leg pieces. All sets of arms have one pose that doesn't like to change angle around very much, a little green stuff will help the connection if you want to move them around. Similarly for all armour variants the heads seem not to want to sit up or move around too much, a little greenstuff as a spacer will sort this. I really didn't like the arms on these guys, the elbow pad just didn't look right to me, I think for gloved hands you'd do better to use chaos arms and file of any star points. I used some blood angel arms, which for die hards might seem a shame, but I like the end product!

Iron armour:

These are probably my favorite sculpt. However I did have two reservations: first a minor one, you have to be extra careful removing the flashing from the torsoes with these, they have a long thin front plate that could snap if your not careful. Second a more important problem is that with the way the arm sets line up, normal bolters/melta's/etc. don't fit. I just trimmed my guns down to fit I imagine you could trim and greenstuff the arms to fit better but I got lazy as I'd already stuck them. The inverse of the other sets you get three of the running leg scultps and only two standing in this set, which for my angry BA's was just great!

Heresy Armour:

These guys look delightfully angry! Their right shoulder pads are completely blank. While this isn't wrong it is a tad boring. I used a blood angel pad to tie them into my army instead of the blank pad. Their arms have some nice details but on the right arm this is largely covered by the pad. Alot of the legs had bubbles at the back by the ribbed section. If this is common to this sculpt its an easy enough fix with some greenstuff, I've heard this is common with resin in general, but this is my first experience of it. The Stationary legs seem to be positioned to lean back, I stood them on slate etc. to hide this a little as I felt it looked a bit odd.

I hope none of this puts people off these fantastic sculpts, if your toying with the idea of getting a few definately go for it, just be forewarned they take a little more thought and effort than your average kit to put together. Its a great way to add a little something to your army! Hey an entire army made up of just one of any of these variants would be great, if a wee bit pricey(okay alot pricey!)!