Wargames Atlantic Prepare Persian People In Plastic
June 17, 2019 by brennon
Wargames Atlantic have been preparing a new plastic kit for you Historical lot to get stuck into. Here is a look at some of the options that will be part of their Persian release.
This will be their first historical release (although Dark Age Irish will be a close second) which looks to give you the core of a good Persian fighting force on the tabletop. If you're getting stuck into games like Mortal Gods or maybe SPQR from Warlord Games this would be a good option.
There is no hard and fast release date for them yet but they will be arriving sometime in 2019. As you can see there is a plethora of different weapon and head options here giving you the chance to make blocks of infantry with hand weapons and bows.
I like that they've also worked a dead Persian into the mix here too. They make for great battlefield objectives!
What do you think of the kit from this early preview?
"I like that they've also worked a dead Persian into the mix here too..."
love them since I saw the first concept sketches, really nice that someone is finally working on different forces from the norm, if I see one more greek, celt or roman plastic set I’m likely to vomit blood. Carving out a sensible niche instead of retreading the same old ground clever move.
If they’re the quality of the initial sprues we’ve seen then these should be excellent indeed.
Indeed….
The amount of plastics that are available for Romans, Greeks and Celts by all the companies in 28mm beggars belief. Yet no-one has done plastics for any “horde” armies (where you do need the cheap option for buying loads of figures).
Looking at the renders for the parts, I DO think they would have been better doing all the bodies as unarmoured (ie no linen cuirass). Then that would give you more options for the bodies to use as Archers, Peltasts and even the “line” spears (the wicker shields would still be used). Then perhaps if it sold well (and I expect it will) they could then do a set of Persians with the linen cuirass.
The problem with multipart plastics is you usually only get 4 or 5 bodies on the sprue. Thus no matter what arms you put on them you still only have 4-5 pose variants (as you still need to place the arms so it doesn’t look silly, which means the arms are usually placed in the same way). With metal one piece casts you can get up to 10 unique poses for a troops type (look at Warlord’s metal infantry squad boxes for example).
But here we have a sprue that’s trying to do everything, which means you end up with a couple of poses for the Archers, a couple for the Spearmen and perhaps a pose for a Peltast/Skirmisher. It’s a really difficult thing to do (as we don’t have any other Persians in Plastic, so the company is going out on a limb (rather than doing the safe option of yet another sprue of Romans, Greeks or Celts). However the problem can be mitigated by just doing unarmoured body types that we could use to build the three main infantry types (it was only a minority of spears equipped with the Linen cuirass). Sometimes “simpler” is best 🙂
Actually the cuirass sells it for me as do the head options and fatality since I already have a ton WGF unarmored Plastic Persian peasants to play with (you can still get the two figure sprue on ebay) and little in the way of elite options for armor except kit-bashing with dark age warrior minis.
Probably, however if they do the sprue contents as above then 50% of your foot is going to be wearing Sparabara equipment (when it was at the most 30%). So if someone’s starting a new Persian Army using these figures then your going to have an overabundance of them.
But not sure if those bodies are for “officers” or not (as it’s going to be silly to have a standard with every six figures), but that’s the difficulty with doing a single sprue (you try to cover all the bases). It may be they are planning on doing a command sprue, and these linen Cuirass are for those figures, and a basic sprue of the unarmed bodies (but I don’t think so given how the arms look like they will work with the bodies).
It’s weird, as they have 2 “peltast”/light infantry style shields, and only 1 Sparabara style shield. So not sure how they intend to do this. The sprue seems to be trying to be the building block for the Sparabara formation. For the early Assyrian Army this was a rank of Shieldbearers protecting a rank of Archers. Yet for an Later Persian period, the ratio was more like 1 Shieldbearer for 9 Archers.
But again it’s a welcome addition no matter how they do things, as trying to build a Persian Army in 28mm costs a fortune (while Roman Players can buy the “few” number of figures for a comparable points cost in plastic for next to nothing).
I don’t think the casualty will be on the final sprue and it might only be 5 bodies from what I have read. But if they are the same sized box and sprue as the Skeletons it would mean 40 plastic fighty men.
Skeletons are very, very good especially for a new company and first kit!
I really like these. I’m very tempted to pick them up for Mortal Gods, especially if there’s a decent amount in the box.
Looks a good range of weapons on the sprue.
I don’t mind the poses but then I’m quite old school and my romans and Greeks have a single pose per unit mostly.
From a couple of feet away on the table you don’t really notice the similar poses anyway, plus it gives it a more regimented feel. The other advantage I find, quicker to build and paint – you know were the mould lines are, where to highlight etc and you get through them faster (or that is what I found especially with Mantic’s Dwarfs).
Not that excited about these, but am for the Irish especially if look ok with Footsore’s range.
yeah, I don’t need the irish, but I’ll be getting them. One box looks like 4 points for saga, 3 warriors and 1 hounds. I think I’ll have to start looking for what larger scale system I want to use as it will push me over 40 points for my Irish