Warlord Games Plastics!

Well, contrary to my earlier thoughts I have gone and bought a box each of the Warlord Games Romans and Celts. I realise that they won't be compatible with my existing metal figures but have been won over by Warlord's determination to produce full ranges and actually start to deliver on this by already producing alternative metal command, auxiliaries, slingers, archers etc. The fact that they are now promising Dacians has convinced me that they are worth investing in. The recent news that they are producing officially licensed characters from Simon Scarrow's books has added weight to my decision to go plastic.

I have looked at the site today and they have got greens of high command, marching Romans carrying their equipment and female Celts up. Added to that they have a scorpion out. This is excellent, they are really delivering. I may have to take the box of Romans with me on holiday and see if I can get it painted. I may even go for red tunics (all of my Romans have white tunics) as the fashion seems to have gone back from white to red.

I haven't had a chance to look at them in detail yet as I only got them from Orc's Nest yesterday afternoon but I will try to make some up soon.

There are problems with the figures, such as not all the Romans have pila and not all the Celts have shields but they have answered the latter criticism by offering some metal accessories: it's nice to find a firm that is so responsive to customers views. The lack of shields issue caused a right stink on their forum. Whether a plastic figure with a metal shield will stand up or not remains to be seen!

My existing Romans are the large Steve Saleh ones for Foundry. It was supposed to be the start of a full range but he left (along with everyone else) before the range really got going leaving only a few poses. I thought my units looked alright all in the same pose, given the regimentation of the Romans, but the massed units produced from the Warlord boxed sets do look nice, in a Warhammery way. No doubt the influence of Paul Sawyer, the former editor of White Dwarf, and one of the people behind Warlord, explains this approach to mass units rather than an individual focus (just as it explains the annoying, relentlessly blokey communication style of the firm).

The individual metal figures are superb too and I think I will buying a lot of them over the next few months!

I've got a game of Romans v Celts in ten days time at Guildford and I have discovered I only have 700 points of Celts when I need 1000 but I will just bung some Ancient Germans in to make up the numbers! I don't think I will be able to build and paint 30 Celts in time!