Review: Wargames Atlantic Partisans(1): French Resistance

 

Time for a miniatures review again! This time I'll take a closer look at the plastic French Resistance fighters by Wargames Atlantic.

Wargames Atlantic have been releasing 28mm wargaming figures in hard plastic for just 2 years I think? Already they got a wide variety of plastics set on offer, covering anything from lasergun-wielding giant spiders over WW1 infantry to lizard folk and Bavarians. So pretty out-there stuff. ;-) 

I think the way they manage to get out so much product is efficiency in their design and production process (and a bunch of outsourcing). The boxed set of French Resistance fighters I got here to review may help get an insight into how they do that.

Wargames Atlantic's promo shot about how to do things.
 I went in a slightly different direction.

Disclaimer: As usual, I did not get this box sent for free. I bought it. If I get free review copies of anything I'll clearly state it.

The Box

The box itself is made of the usual cardboard, kept shut by wide sticky tape. Wargames Atlantic (WA) got a lot of boxes out by now, and they keep a common design throughout, no matter the genre. A very wise move, since WA hop between genres a lot.

The front is rather appealing and combines all the elements I like to see in box design: A little illustration in the left, photos of painted figures in the right.

The back of the box gives us some bits to explain what the figures are and lists the components included. And more photos of the figures themselves.

This is the first Wargames Atlantic set I ever worked with, so I'm keen on getting a bit more info. All of which can be found on the side of the box: Sarissa Precision do the EU/UK distribution, which I found interesting. Since there was a distinct rattling sound when I had the box in hand I was even inclined to think that this might include MDF bases by Sarissa. Turned out to be a misconception, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Mr. Peter Dennis did the illustration; nothing wrong with that in my book. Then I noticed another familiar name: The box design was done by none other than Mr. Henry Hyde! Excellent.

The figures are made in China, "designed on both sides of the pond". Which is interesting. Certainly nothing too complicated nowadays (times of day notwithstanding).

What I enjoyed seeing is that the painter gets a credit on the box as well as the designer. These figures were digitally designed by Thieu Duong, who I think does most of WA's figures.

Box Contents

Within the box you'll find a bunch of half-sized sprues, no bases, and no building instructions.

The rattling I'd heard earlier was a buch of heads which had fallen off their sprues.

A closer look at the sprues reveals that they're all identical.

Anyway, on to the sprues themselves. Each of them contains enough parts to build 4 figures (for a total of 32 per box). There are plenty of weapon options, a lots of heads, and a small amount of extras.

Let's get into details about what you get on each sprue:

.) 4x bodies (torso and legs, all one piece, all in 'advancing' poses and slightly hunched over)

.) 14x heads: 4x bare, 2x with army caps, 4x with berets, 2x with 30s style caps, 1x bowler hat, 1x fefora hat; the latter two of course being highlights of the set.

.) Weapons: 1x Grease Gun, 2x Sten Guns, 2x MP38/40, 2x Rifles, 3x pistols (revolver, automatic, Mauser c96), 1x Bren Gun. If you like Bren Guns, this is the set for you. There's 8 of the things in there.

.) Grenades: 2x stick grenade, 1x Pineapple grenade

.) Extras: 1x Shawl, 1x MP38/40 ammunition pouch, 1x sheathed knife, 1x empty pistol holster, 1x pistol holster. Careful with those – only one out of the four bodies doesn't come in an overcoat. Thus, those pouches, holsters, etc. will only work on this body really.

All guns/grenades come with hands sculpted on. On guns held with both hands even the second hand is sculpted on.

The casting is perfectly nice, the plastic is hard (hence some of the heads came off within the box), mold lines are present, but really light.

Assembly

Instructions would have been helpful at pairing up some of the arms. In general though there are no problems or great confusion about which parts go together. Not the least because some of the guns got the second hand sculpted on, some don't.

This actually was a let-down to me. What I saw when the box was announced was an incredible range of options for 20^th /early 21^st century armed civilians. I hoped they would be compatible with Wargames Factory's excellent Apocalypse Survivors and Military Types (I forgot the official name. I think WGF never released those; they only hit the market after Warlord Games picked up the figures). 

Or even for use with sci-fi bits from other WA sets or North Star's Stargrave sets. Add to this Great Escape Games' upcoming plastic cowboys set and you got an array of options that'll make your head spin! Gangsters, various violent civil unrest/civil wars of the inter-war period, all sorts of partisans of course, late Cowboy stuff, down-trotten space detectives, Untouchables, and so on. The clothes will work up to the 1950s, and up to nowadays.

In that regard I probably had too high hopes or wrong expectations for these figures. Still, I tried a little kit-bashing. Using Wargames Factory (or Project Z, if you came late to the party but still were lucky enough to grab these figures) arms works great, just see that you use the ones with long sleeves. Some weapon swaps will also work.

As you can see, I painted them in a more varied and modern fashion.
These'll work as apocalypse survivors, as weird citizen militia,
or as participants in a Battle Royale.

Head swaps are a bit trickier, as the bodies in this box come with necks. Shame, because I like the Wargames Factory heads; possibly a bit better than the WA ones which come with this set. Speaking of which, they aren't very expressive; the differences all really stem from the different hats and hairdos.

The grenade-wielding arms are a bit problematic, I think. Some of the guns (pistols, one of the rifles, one of the Sten guns) are held in just one hand. For these you'll need another arm doing something else, right? The problem is that there's just one such arm not holding a grenade – a left arm with the hand pointing forward. I'd like o have seen one left and one right arm doing just nothing.

There's a right arm held up, waving. That's pretty cool, but as far as I saw it goes with just ONE other arm (carrying a rifle). Imagine they'd included such a left arm as well, and we'd be able to model any surrendering figure with long sleeves! I guess I'm getting too specific there. This set really gets your creativity going.

However, for my purposes of assembling these figures in a way that's not quite intended they prove strong in the compatibility department. I used some arms (plus two heads) and guns from the Wargames Factory Modern Military and Male Survivors figures as well as guns and arms from Warlord Games' Late German WW2 Infantry. All go together seamlessly with the arms and bodies in this set. Actually, the Wargames Factory arms seemingly fit a little more seamlessly, as WA's own arms leave a little bit of a gap on the shoulder. Maybe that's just me being picky and/or clumsy at putting together plastic figures. Either way, I patched up gaps on all the shoulder joints. I'll do that on most plastic figures, since the shoulders are a pretty prominent part of the figure of course.

Since the parts from either the old WGF kits or Warlord kits fit so well with these figures it goes without saying that in terms of overall size/height these WA figures go well with either too. I haven't tried Perrys figures, but in terms of height they go well with those as well. The main reason Perrys and Warlord plastics (for instance) don't go well together is that the Warlord ones are just so much thicker. Size is overall the same.

Closing Thoughts

I like this kit. The fact that it's just four different bodies is way less of a problem than I thought initially, and the kit proved to be as compatible with all sorts of other multi-part plastics sets as I thought.

Seeing how Wargames Atlantic operate is rather interesting, and I'm inclined to draw some parallels to Wargames Factory, because WA do similar things, but probably even more efficient. Also, WA of course seem to have gotten the rights to produce WGF's old Eisenkern range (hoping they'll re-release more of these sets down the line). 

The lack of bases, instructions, ad leaflets, and so on probably is part of the reason how WA manage to release such quantities of different boxes of plastics. I'm okay with that though. Bare-bones stuff just means there's less stuff to throw in the bin, right? 

We're in for the figures, and the figures here are solid and very, very versatile. I'll give this one a thumbs up, and the little "(1)" in the title gives us hope for more. What we need now is female partisans and Eastern European Partisans. Ooh, or 20th century Far Eastern partisans! Think of the possibilities.

This set costs USD 35.00 / EUR 30,00 / GBP 25.00 on Wargames Atlantic's website. They offer free shipping world-wide on orders from USD50/GBP35. So two boxes, basically. I think I got my box a few Euros cheaper than that, so have a look at what your local gaming store's got on offer or can order for you.

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! :-)