Monday, July 6, 2009

Valiant WWII GI's on the cutting table

All in all i think Valiant have done pretty well, the company have now got four sets of these figures at the same scale specifically designed for Rapid Fire. Could the Russians be next?

The figures i've picked up from Wargames Illustrated have been mentioned in the internet press as being big for 1:72 or 20mm. In my opinion after seeing them they are more like "heroic" 1:72 or 25mm figures. The 16 figures per sprue are similar in height, being 25mm to the eye, to the Revell Panzergrenadiers set which are some of the tallest 1:72 figures i've used but the Valiant's are much bulkier.

The Garand rifles and heads seem to be oversized (for 1:72) while the other weapons seem pretty good apart from the BAR which is on the skinny side. The mortar and belt fed .30 cal MG are awesome sculpts with a wealth of fine detail. Minor complaints would be that some of the hands firing weapons aren't quite realised as well as they could have been and there seem to be too many SMG's and not enough crew figures (with pistol holsters or M1's) or arms carrying stuff. Not enough crouching firing figures either.

One thought I had was if they did another sprue to complement the set what could go on it? The current sprue has six spare heads but only one headless body. So you could put one to five headless bodies. What about pairs of arms, perhaps covering ears (mortar number 2), setting mortar fuse, carrying more ammo boxes, crates of grenades? throwing grenade? Some more crouching figures would be nice. A BAR fired from the shoulder (without the bipod) and a more realistic operator for the MG. He looks like he's on the firing range the way he's sitting with head sticking up. Trenchcoat or poncho equipped figures could be handy too. An 81 mm mortar?

No comments:

Post a Comment