"Series Two - Wings of War - Not Impressed" Topic

Hi all,

I am a big fan of the Wings of War Miniatures 1/144th scale planes for use with Too Fat Lardies Algy 'rules'. I am no usual fan of pre-paints but these were really inspirational.

I received my WoW series two planes a few days ago and have to say I am very unimpressed, if not disappointed.

I had no problems with the finish of the first release. However, the series two planes have lots of finishing errors.

1) Several planes have decals lifting already (micro sol duly applied), or scratched, or badly applied decals which have shifted. A shame as it really spoils them.

2) Whose bright idea was it to put pilots in them? Fine if they look OK but they are awful. IMHO they completely spoil the look of them. It looks like they are 1/300th pilots in 1/144th planes. OK it was fiddly putting reviresco ones in but at least the planes looked really nice when it was done.

3) I really don't like the way the rear gun armament on the two seaters is moulded to the airframe. OK, I know it must have been a headache to manufacturer a decent alternative.

4) The tyres on the wheels are light grey. This means they immediately need a repaint. Series one planes were black. Again it spoils the look of them.

5) The 'Schafer' DVII needs its leading wing edge repainting as it is red and really looks naff. I know Derek Hodge has already repainted them and has them on his website (which escapes me).

My advice – don't buy unseen if you don't want to be disappointed.

All in all I'd give series one 9/10.

Series two….5/10.

I just hope they make a better job on any SE5's and Albatros III's that are rumoured to be series three releases.

Just my tuppence.

That is a bummer, we have been awaiting them here to use with a couple different rules sets. Will warn the FLGS owner to wait.

…Maybe I just had a few 'bad' planes.

Others may have different opinions which of course I'll respect.

After series one releases I felt really inspired. Series two left me feeling 'cold'. It all just feels a bit slapdash and I am feeling a little crestfallen.

I just thought that I'd like to have seen an honest review before I bought mine.

A pity indeed, as I'm collecting WoW (plus the F-Toys biplane collection models) for use with Air War 1918. I'm waiting for my Series 2 models to arrive just now, but based on the above I am starting to get a bit worried. Oh well, think positive – I'm sure they'll be fine with a bit of touching up.

5) The 'Schafer' DVII needs its leading wing edge repainting as it is red and really looks naff. I know Derek Hodge has already repainted them and has them on his website (which escapes me).

dmchodge.blogspot.com

I completely agree with all you say.

The good news is that with a wee bit of work with a paintbrush all the planes can be made to look really quite good. Except for the pilots which are misshapen undersized blobs and worse than nothing.

I particularly like the The 'Schafer' DVII which makes an excellent base for whole flights of Jasta 15 Fokkers.

Thanks for your views. I'm a big fan of not buying til I see an item first also.

That being said, I'll be picking up these aircraft anyway. I'll just have to use a brush to touch them up.

Series 3? I hadn't heard. A Se5 would be great! Early war would also be fun.

I guess a Gotha or Hadley Page would be too much to ask for.

Bummer, I ordered mine last night.

So looks like they will need a little work.

Are the Rivireso pilots (and aircraft) available from anywhere in the UK?

IIRC S3 will be

Nieuport 17 in French and Russian colours
French 2 seater

Albatross D111 – lets hope they do MvR or Allemroder (easy to repaint then as other J11 machines)
German 2 seater may be AEG again IIRC

The SE5 is going to in S4 but S3 is apparently due later this year.

Pain about the pilots though – it was a tricky exercise getting them into the camel but well worth it. I'd rather no figure than one that's next to useless.

I'll wait until I get mine (sadly not in today's post) before I decide what to do.

David

Rivireso pilots – there were some on ebay. I used N scale model railway people – they worked out fine for me and are spot on scale wise. They are easy to paint up in flying kit and look convincing.

Other makes of planes are Skytrex and SRAM.

Anybody made up any SRAM kits?

"4) The tyres on the wheels are light grey. This means they immediately need a repaint. Series one planes were black. Again it spoils the look of them."

The tyres of this time would have been grey not the black of modern tyres. Carbon was added in the 20s to improve strength and durability.

Tony

The tyres of this time would have been grey not the black of modern tyres.

That's as may be. But the grey on the WoW planes looks much, much lighter than what you can see on pictures from the period.

It just looks wrong.

I agree with Tony.

Griping about historically accurate paint jobs is . . .

The reason the aircraft in the pictures appear to have darker tires is because they got dirty.

mjc

Here's my impression of the new releases' pilots if the link thingy works:

picture

picture

Seriously though, they'd be easy enough to fix up, I put Reviresco pilots in my first series planes and being full length so you need to cut them to fit the various cockpits. This wave may be a little trickier, I'll probably drill the original out and swap a Rev guy in but if I didn't want to bother with finicky conversions in 1/144 I'd rather a blob than no pilot at all.

Timmo
I have made a few Sram kits.
Bottom line is they are not really war gaming pieces.

If you don't like fiddly kits then do not buy Sram. What you get is a resin fuselage, wings (lower wing sometimes in two pieces) tail plane and a small pack of resin bits. No struts or undercarriage, these you have to make yourself from wire. Also no pilot but you do get decals.

The finished result is very nice but very fragile and I don't often use them for gaming.

Besides which Timmo you need to get cracking with that TF !

LOL Sigwald…

…me too. Heh, heh.

The reason the aircraft in the pictures appear to have darker tires is because they got dirty.

They tyres on the WoW models may be the right colour for those on factory fresh planes (as opposed to the dirty ones on the planes photographed in real life) but they still look wrong.

"3) I really don't like the way the rear gun armament on the two seaters is moulded to the airframe. OK, I know it must have been a headache to manufacturer a decent alternative."

If enough of youse mugs would get after John McEwan at REVIRESCO, I'll bet he'll make his rear gunner figures (single and twin Lewis guns plus German Parabellum gunner) figures available separately in a packet of their own.

You can bedevil him directly through his website at:

tin-soldier.com

Sic 'em! And feel free to tell him I sent you…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

I ordered three planes from Stafford Games in the UK and the sent them to me in Portland, Oregon in record time and with that I like the planes I received.

I bought two of the Rolands and one DH4. I have not had any problems with the decals or other structural issues with the planes like I did on the first series. The first series planes the wheels broke off when removing them from the plastic. Anyway, I like what I've picked up, the wheels are black, the decals secure and the pilots are okay. I don't care either way if there are pilots or not.

Just my 2 cents.

I lost the wheels off my DH4 when taking it out of the box.

I've got mine now – full set. Overall disappointed to the point that I will probably return them, some are unacceptably bad.

My white DVII has a badly hand painted cross on wing top not a decal! How the hell did that get through quality control.

Figures are ok – not as bad as I thought.

None of the decals have been properly applied and will I suspect break off in time due to the air bubbles under them.

Not as good as S1.

Return all of them?

Some of them are fine. Need to use decalseal and touch up the paint in some places but I'm quite happy with the ones I've got.

But not as good as S1

Derek

Yup – none of them are quite right. All the decals have bubbles, the pink and black Roland is awful. None have been applied into the moulding properly – all will come off. Really mega disappointed to the point that I can't be bothered to spend ages trying to sort them out – that wasn't the point of buying pre-paints for me.

I've emailed the designer to see if he's aware of how poor S2 are compared to S1. The biggest issue is that they've done more with decals this time and less with printing which is why they aren't as good.

I don't think I'm going to bother with them anymore I'm that disappointed by them this time unless they can provide me with a decent set up to the standard of S1. Given that its £80.00 GBP or something to get a set they should be good and not require any work. Now I've got the postage cost of returning them and no planes…

Grrrrrrrrrrr

Timmo.

I wonder if there's different batches out there.

Derek

That's very possible I think there were with Series 1. My second lot of those I bought were made slightly differently to the very first ones and slightly better.

Honestly the White DV11 was awful with its one hand painted cross, what the hell were they thinking of? I can't quite believe any of them made it through quality control though – I've just got them returned in the post now.

Still I've got enough Series 1 and Series 1 repaints for a decent game. I may try to pick up a few of Series 2 in six months when they've done a second run/ batch as they may well iron out these production issues but only when I can see the actual model before buying it.

I've emailed the designer as he probably isn't aware that the quality is so poor or patchy. However the production was delayed by four months so I wonder if they had to shift production facility.

What I can't work out is why they've gone down a decal based route rather than the far better printing method they used in S1. Compare the Udet DVa to Schaffer DVII for example. Problem is with using decals for whole wing surfaces is they won't fit over all the ribs without leaving nasty bubbles everywhere.

Very, very disappointing having waited so long and now I've got to find something to put all those decals l I ordered from Dom on!

There must be batch differences. I've just got home and looked at mine. None of the problems you mention, though I did apply Humbrol DecalFix to them all as soon as I got them.

I did originally get one DH4 that hadn't been painted very well, but I swapped it for another.

I have three Schδfer D VIIs and there wasn't a bubble on any of them. I had to scrape the flying snakes off with a modelling knife. I have compared them with the Udet DVA and I'm hard put to notice any difference. I had no idea they'd used a different method for applying the lozenge pattern.

I guess it's a case of not buying these things sight unseen.

I read scattered reports about S1 planes having a decal here or their a bit out of whack, but most folks thought those looked great right out of the box. I bought a full set within a month or two of their release, and had no problems with any of the dozen planes.

I did snap off a set of landing gear, but tha was my fault. Pulled off a top wing too, again, my fault. I learned to be very, very careful removing them from the white inner shell.

However, I've been keeping an eye on the complaints for S2 and it does indeed look like they "changed" something. Either the factory or the process. Too many people are saying that some of the planes are bad to be a minor issue.

This has caused me to hold off on all S2 planes for now, which is a pity. If enough people do, then sales drop off enough to cause them to decide not to press on with S3, etc. But one must vote with their wallets when getting subpar models.

And since I order my planes online, it's not like I can see them for myself before buying.

Steve

Reviresco Pilots are available from tin-soldier.com for $7.50 USD for a bag of 30 mixed pilots and gunners.
Thanks John McEwan

In fact, Rob at TopGun Marketing will sell you just gunners or just pilots if you want. Look for him on other threads in this forum on E-bay.

As just said in the other WoW thread, i have just bought mine from teh Orc's nest and I am very pleased. My versions are very neat and tidy and match the seires one for quality and application throughout.

happy, happy, happy

Perhaps secret is to support your LFGS