"Wargames Factory Vikings-How Fragile?" Topic

The earlier WF Romans and Celts had pretty stout weapons that seem to hold up well on the gaming table. These newer figures, while much more detailed and nicely proportioned, seem (from the photos, anyway) to have fairly fragile looking weapons. For anyone who has received and/or built their Vikings, how fragile are the weapons? Do they look like they will hold up to handling?

Thanks.

Mine have held up fine since I assembled them and painted them in July.

They are solid. (Assembled 50 or so so far.)

Has anyone tried brushing on a PVA glue mixture, as many do with soft plastics? Would this give some added strength to the spearshafts, swords, standards, etc.?

I just assembled my first sample pack.

The spear shafts are noticebly thinner than say the pila of the Romans, but they seem to work just fine – I managed to get them off the sprue and into the hands of my warband without breakage or even any bendage.

JMW

I regularly bounce our figures off the cement floor at Triangle and I've never had one break. I've had a glued piece pop off – but haven't broken anything yet.

HIPS (high impact polystyrene) is a very forgiving material in that it's great to cut/carve/etc – but has enough "give" that it doesn't snap very easily.

Hope that helps!

Tony

Tony Reidy
Wargames Factory
wargamesfactory.com

Steve @ ageofglory – I wouldn't bother. Assemble, paint, gloss varnish, matte varnish and you're good to go.

I think Howard can tell some stories of dropping whole boxes of assembled figures with the net loss of a couple shields popping off. (I think I dropped a box of his painted figures once too)

Yes – there's a lot of dropage going on at Wargames Factory!

Maybe at Cold Wars we can do the Scott Perry/Pictors Studio challenge and drop plastic and metal figures from the balcony of the dealer hall to see how they do against one another! ;-)

I'll say this much: I also haven't had any breakage on any of the WF minis I have. Having said that, if you are concerned about the plastic spears, they are easily replaced with metal ones, and the cost is still less than metal minis.

respects,

Especially if you're nostalgic for that good old telephone pole look! ;-)

Sorry -had to say it.

The separate brass spears people use are quite nice.

Indeed, I decided to see what would happen if I put a box of figures on someone else's car roof at Fall In while I was finishing rummaging through my other boxes.

A brilliant move. It's as if I had never heard of gravity.

When I'd picked up all the pieces from the tarmac I had one actually broken figure, which I had stepped on. I had maybe a dozen whose shields had popped off, or who shield arm had come away. Two heads as well.

As I said, brilliant move.

But I took them inside the Allstar, sorted them out and glued 'em all back together in 20 minutes. No problems. One figure needs a lick of paint on the break. Everything else looks OK.

The only actual, unfixable break was a sword. I expect the tip of the weapon is still in the parking lot. I couldn't find it.

I had a shelf collapse. Boxes all fell about 5 feet onto concrete floor.

WF and WG Plastic figures – shields popped, couple of arms off. Took 30 minutes and a lot of cursing and they were OK

Metal figures – I still have a pile of horses, riders and spears with peeled paint waiting for paint stripper and super-glue.

One of the reasons I like plastics.

I've not had any figures break, but I dont seem to drop them as often as some others :) Using the liquid plastic glues, I havent even had any parts fall off as this stuff actually melts the plastic parts and then fuses them together.

Dean