Preface: I still love the detail of GW's miniatures, they have been and are still my favorite fantasy miniature range.
But in my ongoing saga of building several Warhammer armies en mass, I am receiving much nostalgic sentiment from some of these boxed regiments.
As the title suggests, GW had a way of designing some of their models with the intention of driving one to the brink of insanity, lol.
GW's Black Orcs, circa 2006 or so, on the border between Warhammer 6th and 7th Edition. Of all that I have assembled so far I have to say this boxed set was the worst by far in trying to rank up into a wargaming unit.
It seems that GW often times was trying to be cute and clever by making a boxed regiment for both the collector and the wargamer at the same time. As such, as you all well know they use very dynamic poses and have bits and often have things sticking far out beyond the borders of the models' bases.
If one is casually building these for a diorama or to just display as a group of miniatures where ranking is not a necessity that is totally fine. However…if one wants to make an actual regiment out of them, or several boxed sets to make more than one rank…ummmm…
There were times I actually began to laugh out loud when trying to make the Black Orcs rank up. When they would finally rank up side to side, they would not rank up one behind the other, or vice versa. I had to cut off many of the chains and other things hanging from weapons in order to make it all work in the end. In the end, every single model will have to be numbered because there is a serious limitation on interchangibility. Many models will rank up with ONLY one other specific model. The command group can only be deployed in ONE specific order.
And the HORNS on the HELMETS!!! Gaaaaaaaah! I have never come across a boxed regiment where, of all things, the HEADS prevent ranking up! On some of the Black Orcs GW decided to put obnoxiously long horns shooting out sideways from the helmet. Looks very cool, yes: But they also happen to prevent you from ranking it up with half the models in the kit.
This standard bearer, that's the helmet. GOD help you if you try to use that helmet on other models in the regiment.
The final nail in my coffin was that the printed instructions show components that, if assembled per the instructions, not only don't rank up, but are actually the wrong components that do not even fit together. Whomever used to be in charge of producing and editing their model instructions obviously would cut and paste in components without actually checking if those components were actually meant to be together.
This kit provided absolutely no forgiveness! God help you if you try to assemble these for the first time with super glue! Fair warning: Use plastic glue, you WILL be adjusting and re-positioning – A LOT!
I score the difficulty of this boxed set for the wargamer as brutal. Seriously.
An awesome-looking regiment when it's all done, but DANG.
These are some pictures of two boxed sets to make a regiment of 20 models with 3 command models:
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