Review: Warprinter Thirty Years War 10mm

 

Today I would like to offer my thoughts on Warprinter's figures for the early to mid 17th century  figures for Western/Central Europe, or 'The Pike and Shot' period. 

Well, the latter part of it. But not the absolute end of it. But most of it. :-P

+++ Disclaimer: Warprinter contacted me about painting the figures for this Kickstarter and for their web store. I was paid for that, because that's what I do, right? So in a way there's an economic interest in that whole thing. Not as bad as 'free toys for review' I think, but still something worth mentioning. +++

Warprinter are a relatively young company from Germany who offer STL files for download, covering mostly files for smaller-scale figures for Ancient battles...

...and now add Pike&Shot sets to their product range. The range is available via their  Kickstarter campaign right now.

Overview

The range comes with 58 different codes, each one being a strip of 3 cavalry, 5 foot figures or 1 gun piece. 

The files don't require supports or - if they do - come pre-supported. They are suited for 6mm, 10mm and 15mm. 

As mentioned above, I worked with the 10mm versions (because that isn't only a great size for wargaming and because it is my thing.).

The Figures

General features

The printed figures arrived in little baggies and I was pretty impressed with what I saw. In the initial chats with the Warprinter guys I was told that pikes would be printed into the hands of figures, not the least because drilling/cutting or in any other way working with 3d printed figures is a bit of a pain. 

I was worried about the sturdiness of these printed-on pikes, but as it turned out, the resin used hit a very good spot between flexibility and hardness. 

The pikes are a bit thick of course, but I'm perfectly fine with that. If you prefer thinner ones, like broom bristles or wire - that'll be a problem, because converting a 3d printed figure is no fun and personally I wouldn't bother.

The material I got was almost comparative to hard plastic in terms of flexibility/hardness. Even rapiers on cavalry are printed on and very delicate, but sturdy enough.

And should they actually snap - well, that's stuff that can be replaced without much problem.

The figures are printed in strips of 3 or 5 figures. The clever thing is that these said strips are designed in such a way that snapping off single figures is really easy. Especially in the case of cavalry that's handy, since most will want to have them ride boot-to-boot rather than snout-to-tail. The width of a 5-figure infantry strip  will fit a 40mm wide base just nicely. The bases I used in the photos you can see are 40x20mm bases, just as on the rest of my collection.

As you can see, infantry are more single figures rather than a solid block or line of men, much like Pendraken or Lancer figures. This of course has advantages (handling, flexibility in terms of positioning and mixing units) and disadvantages (visually, the dudes in the formation just look too far apart). Again, not a problem for me personally. You can reduce the gap between pikemen especially  by snipping the figuers apart, removing a bit of the strip and gluing them to the base a bit closer to each other. 

There is one thing I do not like about these, and that is printed-on flags.

Sure, they look nice once they're done (lovingly, I might add :-P ), but I fail to see the point in cast-on or printed-on flags in general. Apart from the fact that they are eternally more work (and sometimes look too bulky), paper flags have one huge advantage, especially for this period: You can switch at an instant. For my own TYW collection I - after dutifully gluing the flags to the command stands on the earlier battalions - moved on to bending the paper flags (I get mine from Maverick Models) and gluing them together, but not gluing them to the flag pole. So I have a heap of extra flags I can just stick onto the flag pole. 

Not unlike many period biographies reflect, some of my infantry served Brandenburgian, Swedish, Hessian, Bohemian, Imperial and French paymasters. 

I understand why it's been done this way on these figures, but it's a design choice I'm not too happy with personally

As far as detailling goes - yeah, these figures are pretty glorious. The details are clearly defined, not too little, not too much detailling. Just right for the figure size.

They also have this slightly gome-ish physiognomy to them, which I very much prefer over "realistic proportions". These are made with smaller scales in mind rather than just scaled down big figures. A joy to paint.

Conclusion

This is a good range, which above all offers a huge variety right from the get-go. You get a staggering amount of different poses for cuirassiers (12 different figures for 'cuirassier rapier attack' alone!), pikemen standing, marching, defending, and so on, musketeers with or without mustket rests, standing, marching, dedicated Swedish cavalry figures, dedicated figures for English Civil War musketeers and cavalry, light, medium and heavy guns as well as artillery crew (really cool figures).

These will make for a very nice addition to your existing collection or will work a fully new one. I can't think of anything that isn't covered by this range. What I hope for now is 'eastern' looking troops to be added next, most of all of course Winged hussars, hussars, Croats (a must-have) and some eastern infantry would be cool. 

The figures will also work nicely alongside Pendraken, Old Glory, etc. figures. Again, Lancer figures might look a bit off next to them, but will work in separate units.

Maybe it's superfluous to say at this point, but the Thirty Years War is a fascinating period on all levels (and rather icky on most as well), and 10mm is just a great size to wargame battles in. 

It's really cool to see so many new figure ranges and rules sets appearing for the period these days. Warprinter's range is a great addition to this I think, especially due to its diversity (within the Western/Central European context) and getting it 'just right' in terms of details for small-scale figures.

The whole range is available for EUR 49,00 right now (until 26th February)Warprinter's Kickstarter Campaign or at a later date from Warprinter's website for roughly EUR 100,00.

I hope that you found this review interesting and informative!