Review: Mantic Ghouls

As a sort of bonus add-on bit to the last review [link], here are some thoughts one of Mantic's other plastic undead - a bunch of ghastly Ghouls.

This is one of the promo sprues that were handed out by my LGS a few years ago when Kings of War launched around here. I have never seen anybody play it but I'm sure that people do it. I only looked through the rules so far. They look very fast and simplistic, but seem to work (big surprise there, as they were written by Alessio "chessmaster" Cavatore). 

Anyway, back to the models. The sprues have two Ghouls on them each, upper bodies and legs are seperate and connected by ball joint (or "bump joint really) which gives you some very nice posing options in the hip. They are also designed in a way so that they are 100% compatible with the Mantic zombies for that extra variety.There are three head options. The casting quality is top notch (all cast by Renedra) and the sculpting is very impressive, especially on the hands and faces.

Ghouls definately are not sane but they can be called sentient which is why there are some equipment options on there. A primitive looking dagger, possibly made of bone, a meat cleaver, a bag filled with human body parts and something I can only describe as a mix of a primitive power fist with fingers moved by ropes and a hedge trimmer glove.

Here we got two Ghouls fully built now. Very straightforward, there hardly is anything to get wrong with these models. A bit of mould lines but nothing too bad.

I gave the bone dagger to one of the guys just for variety. Attaching any of the weapons to the models require you to hack off one hands and replace it with the weapon hand. This may be uncommon but it definately is more convenient than having to bother with seperate hand bits.

In this picture you can see the only negative I noticed about the models - the hair on the one Ghoul head just stands off the head where it should go on and ends abruptly and in a very unnatural way. Now we all know that hong hair on very posable multi-part plastics is always a problem but I think that this could have been solved better. I suggest using this head for more hunched over Ghouls so the hair doesn't hang in the air in the back.

After a quick paintjob, they look like this:

Here we got four specimen painted. They were put on 25mm round bases so they'd go with my modern zombie horde. Again, one of them got the bone dagger and the one with the hair got the big glove.

On two of the heads I painted some additional hair. All the models have what looks like huge railroad nails driven through their limbs or chests. Not sure why that it but it's creepy and crazy so I left them on. If you don't like them, it's rather easy to clip them off.

Now for the size comparison:

Looking at the models side by side I realized that the zombies aren't all that much bigger but you can see that they are a bit taller and have larger heads and hands. 

I like those models a whole lot and I have to say again - the fingers look amazing. A welcome addition to my mob of undead (even though I think the Ghouls only tag along with the zombies for leftovers). The question that remains is: Are they better than the zombies models? When I ordered the Mantic zombies, I was thinking wether I should really get them or rather the Ghouls. Looking back, I think both kits are nice but I think I prefer the Ghouls. Their poses are a bit more monotonous but on the other hand, the poses on the zombies are a bit weird at times.

If you do units of models for your fantasy army I would definately suggest getting these over GW's Ghouls. I have no idea what they were thinking with the design of these models. If you're doing a loose horde of zombies/post-apocalyptic crazies/cultists (maybe for your 40k chaos army?) and want some variety in there I'd almost say get both. Mantic are offering a combined box of 10 zombies and 10 Ghouls (plus a sprue of gravestones) so you can mix and match parts as you please. That sounds like a good solution to me really.

Overall, I think I like those a bit better than the Mantic zombies, mostly for the proportions and scale look more proper. If you buy the Ghoul regiment, you get 20 Ghouls for £15.00. As always with Mantic, the models are rather inexpensive. With the Ghouls there isn't too much in the way of posability but the casting quality and sculpts make up for it, especially if you mix them with other models too.

This concludes my review of Mantic's Ghouls. For the next review we will return to  something historical/fantasy but there will be more undeadness in the future!

I hope that you enjoyed the review and found it useful or even entertaining. If you have any questions, maybe review requests, suggestions or ideas feel free to use the comments section below or just contact me via e-mail or Battle Brush Studios' Facebook page. The same goes of course for commission requests. See you soon! :-)