Wargames Atlantic - death fields Les grognards

Quite a while ago I answered an email to take part in a survey, related to miniture wargaming, although I can't remember who the survey was being run by. Anyway, as a result of the survey, I got a promo code for getting a one of a selection of promotional model sprues. There as a small diorama, some ancient warriors, second world war models or a set of sci-fi models. As you can imagine I went for the sci-fi option, mostly as I had hoped to use these figures as a sort of command unit, maybe make a supreme command detachment or something out of them.

The actual figures are from Wargames Atlantic and are part of there Death Fields sci-fi range. It's a very small range at the moment, consisting of options only two box sets, the Raumjager Infantry and the Les Gorgnards. I received a single sprue of the Les Gorgnards, consisting of 3 bodies and various weapons, the exact sprue I received can be seen below. If your interested in the boxes themselves, the link below will take you to the Wargames Atlantic site.

https://wargamesatlantic.com/collections/demo-collection/products/les-grognards?variant=31187238813794

So what exactly are the Les Grognards? Well there supposed to be french troops, inspired by the various periods of french military history, from Waterloo through to the various Indo-china wars, all mixed with a does of sci-fi weapons and tech.

Above and below are some of the pictures from the website, showing the various options available.

There looks some interesting options available, however I didn't receive the full line up, just one sprue, which has all of the weapon options on but is missing a lot of the head options, as it contains only three heads. I haven't yet tried to build the models, as I'm not entirely sure what I'm actually going to do with them as my initial idea won't work. This is because of the options available to me on the single sprue.

The sprue I received in the post.

As you can see from the sprue above, I received a selection of weapons, including 3 rifles, 4 special weapons (what could pass for a plasma gun, melta gun, flamer and grenade launcher), a pistol, a sword arm, a couple of grenade arms and a pointing arm. The thing is, both the pistol.and sword, plus one of the grenade arms are right arms, with the pointing arm and a grenade arm being left handed. All the other weapons are two handed, none of which really seem to be positioned on the models like there being held comfortably with just one hand. This is a bit of an error or oversight to me. Now, I know that these figures aren't built specifically for 40k and other systems may have different rules but not being able to equip a Sergeant or officer with a pistol and sword seems like an oversight. For me this setup on the sprues is also problematic, as I was hoping to be able to build 3 officers or even commissars, but I'm an arm short at the very least. I've been holding off building them for the moment until I have tried cadian arms on to the bodies or possibly some of the spare Dreamforge Eisenkern arms I have, which I think will probably fit better, although they may look a little bit odd. The special weapons also look slightly odd to me, namely the "plasma" gun. It just doesn't look right to me but it is quite hard as there are no images of it on the website. I can see the flamer and the grenade launcher but not the plasma or laser gun, which is annoying.

The additional sprue that comes with the main box

The second sprue, the heads sprue, which comes in the main box set contains 7 types of head, which with the other 3 means there are 8 types or 24 heads per 3 bodies and as you get 24 models per box, that's a staggering 192 heads per box. It would have been nice to get the extra heads but 8 can understand why they only sent the base frame out. To be honest, saying that there are 8 different types of head is a bit misleading, as really there are just 4 types but each head comes in two versions, with or without a gas mask. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice touch but it's not really 8 different types.

As I haven't built these guys yet, it hard to give a final judgment but from what I've seen I'm not overly impressed with the models. Some of that is down to personal taste, as I don't like the design of some of the weapons, namely the "plasma" gun and what I assume is the "melta" gun, which looks a bit like an eldar fusion gun. I also don't like the scale of the models, which is far more true scale than the heroic scale used by GW. It gives it a very flimsy look to it but that's just as I'm use to the GW way of doing things, if your more of a bolt action player, you'll probably not even notice. The plastic used also feels of a lower quality but I don't know if that's just as I've got a promotion copy or if it's the same on the retailed version. I will really need to put them together to give a definite answer but from touch and sight, I'm not impressed.

However, 25 pound for 24 models is a good deal even more so when you buy multiple packs, getting down as low as 19 pound a pack if you buy 10, although why you'd want 240 guardsmen is a mystery to me, well ok maybe not. Still, personally, I wouldn't buy these models as they just don't appeal to me.