I don't see it being posted here, so just move this or delete it in case it has been posted.

Ex-GW sculptors Perry Brothers are releasing their War of the Roses Men-at-Arms plastic box set by the end of August. They're taking pre-orders now and they also have a special offer shown below:





Some other photos of the foot Knights/Men-at-Arms below:




I'm personally excited for this since they'll be swelling the ranks of my fantasy human army. That's a lot of armored infantry: 38 in a box for 20GBP is always a steal.

Amazing as always!

Also really digging the cover art, gives me a good old fashioned model kit vibe.

Very cool; if I played Fantasy these would be front and centre in my army.

Well, looks like my Empire will finally be getting some Greatswords.

38 for 20 Pounds? Oh yes, I think my Empire are getting a make over. What was that? A horde of Greatswords? Yessah!

I'm assuming these are closer to their GW LotR scale than Fantasy.

They look great regardless. Do they do their own Historical or Fantasy rulesets, or perhaps suggest ones?

Oh yeah. What I've been waiting for for ages now. And I've always loved those visored sallets!

Finally, Reiksguard on foot

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm assuming these are closer to their GW LotR scale than Fantasy.

They look great regardless. Do they do their own Historical or Fantasy rulesets, or perhaps suggest ones?

Perry 28's are definitely larger than LOTR but not as fat as Warhammer figs. In other words, they look fine when mixed in, unless you really really want your entire army to have hamfists and melonheads.

I personally use Hail Caesar and Kings of War for historicals (pre gunpowder). Both work wonderfully for huge huge battles.

I don't play historicals, but those are pretty!

 judgedoug wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm assuming these are closer to their GW LotR scale than Fantasy.

They look great regardless. Do they do their own Historical or Fantasy rulesets, or perhaps suggest ones?

Perry 28's are definitely larger than LOTR but not as fat as Warhammer figs. In other words, they look fine when mixed in, unless you really really want your entire army to have hamfists and melonheads.

I do not want that, so these look to be an excellent 'counts as' option - I can wait to get a whole bunch!

I can practically hear the "chunk, chunk" of a crossbow loading. Time to fire WotR back up...

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm assuming these are closer to their GW LotR scale than Fantasy.

They look great regardless. Do they do their own Historical or Fantasy rulesets, or perhaps suggest ones?

In terms of anatomy, yes. In terms of size, LotR is 25mm and these are 28mm. So they're a little it larger but not much.

Most historical manufacturers don't produce their own rules. There are a lot of rules floating around and you can switch to a new rulesset without changing models. That's how historicals roll.

For historicals there's Hail Caesar and Saga, to name a few. I mainly use Kings of War (the medieval version) and Kings of War (the official version, so I can pit them against undead and orcs). There's also no stopping you from using WHFB rules.

If you are looking for rules for Historicals there are two or three threads in the Historicals forum that survey the market and make recommendations.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/599284.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/572388.page

Right now I am purring like a walrus!

(Don't ask... but it is a happy sound. )

The Auld Grump

Too late to use with the new Saga expansion I suppose? Then again there was those smaller wars that took place after the major Crusades. In any case those are some nice models, and its good to see an improvement over the earlier lines the brothers made. Damn, some times you just see such nice models and want to buy them even though you'll probably never use them. I'm surprised that there's a need to have 38 armoured warriors in one game, though I'll put that down to my lack of knowledge of the period (what really, there was entire units of guys geared up like this fighting at one time. Put that down to the amount of cash being thrown about then I suppose).

I just bought a bunch of minatures for my empire.....looks like im going to have a MASSIVE empire infantry army now

Let the Game of Thrones projects continue!

Really wish these came with an option of HW&S

Hmmm.....wish they were 28mm/heroic scale. Would love to use them for Inquistor crusaders or even Empire. Would look horrible on the table next to Citadel mini's.

MultiDyls wrote:
Really wish these came with an option of HW&S

These are for a historical period where the shield was mostly obsolete due to thick plate armor overriding the need to add a heavy shield to an already heavy kit while only gaining a few inches of defensive capability.

Bleh to you and your historical accuracy!

Those figures do look damn nice though. If I were ever inclined to build an actual fantasy army that wasn't composed entirely of Gnolls, Wolfmen, or Undead, I'd be using these guys.

Now, if they could just branch out a bit and start doing funky Dark Souls style armored guys as well. Then I'd be truly set.

These are awesome, I will start a project just to use them, probably something game of thrones related.

Something like these, perhaps?




I will also be using these for my Lannister army. Right now it's extremely lacking in heavy infantry and these will fit just fine.

As for wanting to have shields on them, you can always get separate shields and damn historical accuracy. I believe Fireforge has extra Templar shields on them. If you're using them for Fantasy no one's gonna stop you (and a lot will even encourage you!) to mix and match from different products.

And I would prefer if they'd stay with the proportions they do right now instead of heroic proportions. Too much of that in the market already, and if you're aiming for realism (since they are still first and foremost historical models), heroic scale isn't really the way to go.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And no release dates for these yet, but for their WotR line Perry is planning on adding a light cavalry plastic box set:



And they're also making a box set for English infantry for their Agincourt to Orleans line. Perfect to mix and match with their WotR mercenary and Bows and Bills boxes, if you want your bowmen to look more peasant-y by having older fashioned gear, I guess? If these were released the number of archers in my army would swell pretty damn well (wow that rhymes!).

Damn. Is it wrong to want to be able to field an army corresponding to every possible year of (recorded) human history?

As long as you don't try to cover every culture or nation, that's actually doable. The key is to not get bogged down in minutia and pick miniatures that work for a wide array of times. Like for the dark ages you can have warriors with spear and round shields and simple clothes and helmets cover like 600 years. With only around 5000 years to cover, you could probably do less than a dozen armies. When you get to the 20th century, there's nothing stopping you from picking forces that didn't change their uniforms and weapons much. African militia with AK47s can span 40 years or more, for example.

An Old/Middle Kingdom Egyptian army covers about 3,000 to 1,500 B.C. for example. The only change was the spread of more metal to replace stone for weapons, not necessarily noticeable for mass infantry even at 28mm scale.

Add chariots, khopeshmen and Sherden to make it into a New Kingdom army and cover another 500 years.

Or if you play Fantasy, you can mix and match. Dark Age warriors can represent peasant levies which you can field alongside knights in full plate, for example.

Another thing to consider is that most Ancient and Mediaeval rules let you field armies from any time and location against each other.

Obviously it isn't realistic, but it usually works all right as a game and is pretty standard in competitions.

If you like the Perry WoTR figures, make an army and you can fight against Imperial Romans, Incas, Vikings, and so on.

General Hobbs wrote:


Hmmm.....wish they were 28mm/heroic scale. Would love to use them for Inquistor crusaders or even Empire. Would look horrible on the table next to Citadel mini's.

Is this really the case?

Because if it is, that's a bummer, and this guy here:

namiel wrote:I just bought a bunch of minatures for my empire.....looks like im going to have a MASSIVE empire infantry army now

might be pretty upset.

Unless he's using ONLY Perry Miniatures for his WFB Empire army?

But that seems hard to do, given all the 'wacky' things you'd also want in an Empire army...

This may finally to the miniatures to act as a stand in for WM/H Steelhead Halbs.

You can do an empire army out of the Wotr models by just using the wacky stuff from GW and the rest Perry. I think it works well enough:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/sets/72157629220636695/

I don't really need another box of Men-at-Arms but I'll ge them anyway, hopefully making way quickly for the light cavalry box.

 Alpharius wrote:

General Hobbs wrote:
Hmmm.....wish they were 28mm/heroic scale. Would love to use them for Inquistor crusaders or even Empire. Would look horrible on the table next to Citadel mini's.

Is this really the case?
Because if it is, that's a bummer, and this guy here:

namiel wrote:I just bought a bunch of minatures for my empire.....looks like im going to have a MASSIVE empire infantry army now

might be pretty upset.
Unless he's using ONLY Perry Miniatures for his WFB Empire army?
But that seems hard to do, given all the 'wacky' things you'd also want in an Empire army...

Nah, they mix just fine. Within the same unit, it would look slightly awkward, but within the same army, it looks totally fine. Well other than GW's Empire looks stupid as gak now, with barefoot monkey-faced soldiers, but that's just my personal opinion.

Actually Perry mixes perfectly with 4th/5th/6th edition Empire, because, well, they were sculpted by the Perry brothers as well.

Edit: as Saphos just proved!

Or if you buy those new kits, just remove the human figures involved and use Perry figures as replacement, I guess?

Saphos wrote:
You can do an empire army out of the Wotr models by just using the wacky stuff from GW and the rest Perry. I think it works well enough:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/sets/72157629220636695/

I don't really need another box of Men-at-Arms but I'll ge them anyway, hopefully making way quickly for the light cavalry box.

Thanks for those pics!

I think the Perry stuff will work quite well with the more 'fantastical' GW stuff - this is (no kidding)...great news!

Or you can play Kings of War if you're not really into that weird gak vehicles.

I do admit to really liking the new Karl on Griffon though - I love it!

I really like the two-headed version too!

 heartserenade wrote:
Or you can play Kings of War if you're not really into that weird gak vehicles.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

I do admit that some of the old and new Empire kits do tempt me. The Demigryph Knights are amazing and i've always been tempted to buy an Empire Free company and the plastic Wizard box. But knowing that they come in heroic proportions is an automatic turn off for me.

If Perry made a fantasy range in metal and plastic... I'd gak my pants out of joy.

 heartserenade wrote:
I do admit that some of the old and new Empire kits do tempt me. The Demigryph Knights are amazing and i've always been tempted to buy an Empire Free company and the plastic Wizard box. But knowing that they come in heroic proportions is an automatic turn off for me.

If Perry made a fantasy range in metal and plastic... I'd gak my pants out of joy.

The old plastic 5th/6th multipart Empire Soldiers are less heroic. Actually I've got about a hundred of them to sell if you're interested

 judgedoug wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:
I do admit that some of the old and new Empire kits do tempt me. The Demigryph Knights are amazing and i've always been tempted to buy an Empire Free company and the plastic Wizard box. But knowing that they come in heroic proportions is an automatic turn off for me.

If Perry made a fantasy range in metal and plastic... I'd gak my pants out of joy.

The old plastic 5th/6th multipart Empire Soldiers are less heroic. Actually I've got about a hundred of them to sell if you're interested

I might be too!

PM with details/pics if you've got them - thanks!

Nah I'm good, thanks. I like how Perry minis look for my infantry. i'm more interested with Wizards and heroes .

If I wan't already bogged down in other scales and time periods, I'd seriously consider doing some Westeros 28mm gaming using Perry Minis.

Kit looks great, but that's par for course with Perry Miniatures!

~iPaint

If you base up your models for the standard (non-GW Warhammer Historical) base dimensions, you will be able to use the same army for historical and fantasy rules.

Finally, some Mantic Basilean Men-at-arms that *don't* look hideous.

I will be buying 200 of these and trying to give or trade away the crappy ones I have.

You can always use those Basileans as casualties of war. Or mutilate them into zombies.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Finally, some Mantic Basilean Men-at-arms that *don't* look hideous.

I will be buying 200 of these and trying to give or trade away the crappy ones I have.

You should have gotten your money back from Mantic, mate...

Oh, I forgot to post this: the command sprue lets you make your own Richard III if you desire.

That is amazing..

Glad to see that these will finally be surfacing! And, looks like they won't disappoint. I already have a collection of Perry's metal Men-at-Arms and they are fantastic little miniatures, I'm sure these will complement those nicely.

If anyone wants to use these miniatures in a historical game and for their intended purpose, but isn't too sure where to start, I would thoroughly recommend Peter Pig's 'Bloody Barons', which is a set of rules for the War of the Roses. (Scroll down to number 23 on this page: http://www.peterpig.co.uk/rules.htm )

Wonderfully characterful rules, great fun, and not too complex. The rules are intended for 15mm, but there are notes in the book for 28mm use and it still works well at this scale.

Other rule sets I have had recommended to me are Terry Gore's Medievil Warfare, or of course Hail Caesar (although both of these are generic systems, so don't benefit from the focused aspect of Bloody Barons).

I'd actually recommend Kings of War: there's a fanmade medieval version available for free if you guys want to check it out.

http://www.hourofwolves.org/?view=articles&which=KingsOfWarHistoricalAncientCombat

 heartserenade wrote:
I'd actually recommend Kings of War: there's a fanmade medieval version available for free if you guys want to check it out.

http://www.hourofwolves.org/?view=articles&which=KingsOfWarHistoricalAncientCombat

Seconded, although if using the fall of rome rules adjust the legionary stats, they are too powerful in defensive stats.

 heartserenade wrote:
I'd actually recommend Kings of War: there's a fanmade medieval version available for free if you guys want to check it out.

http://www.hourofwolves.org/?view=articles&which=KingsOfWarHistoricalAncientCombat

Those look absolutely great. Wonderful that fans are making this kind of effort with the KoW ruleset, and good on Mantic for letting them go ahead with it. These rules look flexible for different periods in the way that something like Hail Caesar or Medievil Warfare would be.

KoW and Bloody Barons are very different games. The former is much faster (and flowing), larger game sizes etc. Bloody Barons is great for history nerds, involving the actual commanders who fought (and changed sides, haha) in the War of the Roses and who have the actual units that took part in the battles. So, I think it probably depends on what type of game you want to play.

If you really want to go full hog with historical detail and accuracy, there is a game (free to download) called Perfect Captain. One for those who have read numerous books on WoTR I think. I haven't tried it, but people playing the game in the AARs you read always seem to be having fun..
http://perfectcaptain.50megs.com/request.html

Anyway, hope all of this will be of use to people coming from the WFB stable who might want more of an option than "I can use those for Bretonnians" (who in my experience are probably closet historical players, and just don't know it yet! )

Actually for Brettonians I would recommend the Templar/Teutonic orders of Fireforge games: they have more cloth in their horses and knights to put family crests.

Just got my 'shipped' email for the plastic men-at-arms, very excited about these will post some pics and comments as and when they arrive!

Yep got my shipped aswell today, looking forward to getting the plastic goodness.

I wonder if they will update their WotR army deals to include them (as opposed to an add-on). Actually, did their Hosts used to be Post-free, because they aren't now (any more?) That's the only thing stopping me from ordering them direct - the antiquated "add 12/17/25% of the order cost" for postage that they still use. - If I order £200 worth of stuff, I'm not paying another £50 for shipping. Use some of that £40 pounds of VAT that you're charging and not paying to the government to pay for it.

Email them and ask if you can get a postage discount for larger orders, worst they Can say is no.

If I wasn't already making samurai for the Kings of War kingdoms of men list these would be my second choice.

Nah, I'll just order from Fireforge et al with a discount and free shipping. They're smart guys, they can figure it out themselves without me going heavy-handed on them. Warlord does free shipping for orders over 50 quid and are all GW-alumni with a history in historicals going way back, so it's not exactly rocket surgery...

Saying will you give me cheaper shipping is hardly heavy handed and if it allows you to get the minitures you want even better.

The fireforge models are very nice though. I have a few mounted teutonics my girlfriend is using for her basellian army.

 frozenwastes wrote:
As long as you don't try to cover every culture or nation, that's actually doable. The key is to not get bogged down in minutia and pick miniatures that work for a wide array of times. Like for the dark ages you can have warriors with spear and round shields and simple clothes and helmets cover like 600 years. With only around 5000 years to cover, you could probably do less than a dozen armies. When you get to the 20th century, there's nothing stopping you from picking forces that didn't change their uniforms and weapons much. African militia with AK47s can span 40 years or more, for example.

Heck a couple of naked guys with spears can cover pre history up to modern Brazil and Papua New Guinea

Got my men at arms this morning, stunning figures, great value. I'm really impressed with the quality of the sprues.

Dare I say these are what the mantic men at arms should have been

 Azazelx wrote:
I wonder if they will update their WotR army deals to include them (as opposed to an add-on). Actually, did their Hosts used to be Post-free, because they aren't now (any more?) That's the only thing stopping me from ordering them direct - the antiquated "add 12/17/25% of the order cost" for postage that they still use. - If I order £200 worth of stuff, I'm not paying another £50 for shipping. Use some of that £40 pounds of VAT that you're charging and not paying to the government to pay for it.

When I log in with my account (that is in the USA), the VAT is removed. Their hosts were never free shipping, their army deals are.
Checking... yeah, the ACW Union Army Deal, msrp 528.50, deal price 423, without VAT is 352.50 and free shipping.

If you're ordering from outside EU you shouldn't be paying VAT..

 edlowe wrote:
Got my men at arms this morning, stunning figures, great value. I'm really impressed with the quality of the sprues.

Dare I say these are what the mantic men at arms should have been

Mine haven't come yet

Damned vaguely rural location and slow horse-bound mail carriages!

 Pacific wrote:
If you're ordering from outside EU you shouldn't be paying VAT..

 edlowe wrote:
Got my men at arms this morning, stunning figures, great value. I'm really impressed with the quality of the sprues.

Dare I say these are what the mantic men at arms should have been

Mine haven't come yet

Damned vaguely rural location and slow horse-bound mail carriages!

I was surprised to get mine so soon, considering I'm out in the middle of nowhere, definitely going to get some of the other kits, really good quality, looks like they'll be a start of a kingdoms of men force for kow.

Reiksgard on foot? Yes please!

Mine arrived today, what lovely little miniatures and rather good value for money.

I will post pics and comments over the weekend if no-one else has already done so.

 Pacific wrote:
Mine arrived today, what lovely little miniatures and rather good value for money.

I will post pics and comments over the weekend if no-one else has already done so.

Please do so, and even if others have already done so!

 Pacific wrote:
If you're ordering from outside EU you shouldn't be paying VAT..

I know I shouldn't be paying VAT unfortunately most UK retailers don't remove it - which is fine when it's paired with "free" shipping (swings and roundabouts there) but less so when it isn't. I don't have a Perry account, so I was unaware that creating one and logging in removes it - thanks for that, Doug. If I can afford it, I might order a box or two next week.

And also very keen to see pics and reviews in the interim!

Here we go then guys, some pics and general comments of the box set.

Firstly, get this out of the way; I've got a fair amount of Perry stuff, and think this has to be one of the best plastic sets they have done. Actually, scratch that, this is probably one of the best plastic sets I have seen at this scale from any company. Absolutely stupendous amount of fine detail, and you can see a lot of thought has gone into the different types of armour plate, tabards, weapons etc. If you're an enthusiast of this period of history I think you will appreciate it.

First up, the box. A nice piece of art, what looks to be Richard III on his way to meet his Waterloo at the Battle of Bosworth. 1450-1500 covers a wide area, through the end of the Hundred Years War, Burgundy and War of the Roses.



38 miniatures in the box on 8 sprues, have trouble fitting into the box! Works out at just over 50p per miniature at RRP, which is very reasonable.



On to the miniatures, you get 6 of the Men-at-Arms sprues (each holding 6 varieties of leg/torso, and a greater variety of weapons and accessories, including 12 different head sculpts per sprue). Also a sprue of Renendra bases which come in various sizes.



You also get a command sprue for 2 miniatures. There is a painted example of what you can make with this in one of the pics further below. The armour and helmet (complete with crown) looks to be representative of Richard III as well as a standard bearer.



I've assembled a few of the minis. Very few mould-lines and generally excellent quality of cast, the detail on them is very sharp and the material is the hard plastic which looks to be the same as that used in Perry's other ranges. Certain combinations of arms and torsos suit each other in terms of style (such as tabarded arms), and there is a good range of different armour styles which would have been used across Europe. The instructions state that you can mix and match bits with other sets, such as the WoTR box, European Mercenaries and mounted Men-at-Arms. The visor on the one mini actually comes as a separate piece, which as you can see I've managed to get not quite straight..


You get some extra swords/scabbards etc. that you can add



One thing I love about Perry is that you always get little extras in the form of livery designs/colour schemes and suggested building instructions.





Finally, I know some people are going to want to use these for WFB or KoW, so here are some size/scale comparison shots which will hopefully be useful

Obviously scales perfectly with Perry's own WoTR archers (left) and metal Men-at-Arms (right)


Mantic Orc and GW Goblin



And while (hopefully) no-one will be using these miniatures alongside a Space Marine, everyone knows the size of those so hopefully this can be used to draw comparison to other ranges



+EDIT++ A close-up of one of the sprues. There is a higher res version of this in my picture gallery which you will be able to zoom in for a closer look at particular components

Thanks for the pics, the figures look marvellous, I'll certainly be picking up a box or two if the Warhammer Brettonian release has models/rules to my liking so thanks for the preview, much appreciated and what makes Dakka a cool place to visit!

(Also your spacemarine has a really nice paintjob )

Thanks for the comments Scrub!

I've now added a better close-up of the standard sprue. I'll upload one into my gallery as well which I think should be zoom-able if anyone wants a closer look at the components.

Maaaaan. My birthday is next week. I need to convince my friends/family/SO that I need this in my life and they should buy me multiple boxes of this for my birthday.

Thank you so much for the pictures Pacific!

Much appreciated, Pacific!

An excellent review.

I already own a 28 mm WoTR army using Essex Models or I would be all over these.

Gee, thanks for the pics, Pacific. Here I was trying to slim my minis collection down, and you had to go ahead and make me want to order them. THANKS

Thanks for the pics, Pacific!

These will do very nicely indeed to give my KoW Basilean army some proper men-at-arms.

Pacific - do you have any GW Empire figs to place next to the new Perry kit?

I'll add to that - any Brettonians, LotR figures, or even Warlord Games infantry would also be great.

Well at least with these ones it's easier to speedpaint them because they're mostly armor. Kinda like Necrons.

And Alph and Azazelx, this might help. Not the new Men-at-Arms per se but same scale (and line!) and 100% compatible with the new WotR box set:





And an LotR figure just for kicks:




My verdict: same size as GW minis, but the proportions are really different. Won't matter much if you're not too anal about that kind of thing, and it won't look weird if fielded en masse, but it definitely looks a bit off when it's just two models side by side. Cross compatibility is also iffy, could be pulled off but not 100%.

LotR are definitely a bit smaller but you can pass it off as shorter humans. Especially if you're just going to use a figure or two from LotR (or vice versa!).


Then again, if you really do care about that sort of thing and you still haven't started an Empire or Brettonian army, all the more reason to buy Perry Miniatures exclusively. Save tons of money without letting quality suffer!

Thanks, Heartserenade - are the pics in the lower photo with the LotR figure the Perry Mercenaries?

No they're not. They're from the Bows and Bills box. But that box has the same sculpt of the bodies and same heads on the non-command sprues. The arms would be different.

Ah, interesting. Looks like i need to add some Bows and Bills to my Perry-Purchase shopping list in that case...

You definitely should! It depends on what you want, though. Want billhooks and longbows: buy the bows and bills box (duh). I you want pikes, halberds, crossbows and handguns, go with the mercenaries.

With the bows and bills, you can make up to 30 archers max, 18 billhooks max (not including commander options). You get 40 bodies.
With the mercenaries, you get 12 handguns max, 12 crossbows max, 16 pikes max (12 can be turned into halberds), again not including commander options. You also get 40 bodies.
Both boxes have different commander options. Of course they are cross-compatible with each other. You get two commander sprues in each box.

And I just bought a box of Empire Greatswords (albeit at a discount)...

I am quite happy with my purchase, but damn, those knights look fine.

 Pacific wrote:
Here we go then guys, some pics and general comments of the box set….

Absolutely brilliant review. Great pics, comparisons and descriptions. I've already purchased metal figs (Essex and Old Glory) for my second KoW army, but if I hadn't I'd definitely be going Perry. Every kit they release seems great, and as you show, this one is clearly the best.

 heartserenade wrote:
You definitely should! It depends on what you want, though. Want billhooks and longbows: buy the bows and bills box (duh). I you want pikes, halberds, crossbows and handguns, go with the mercenaries.

With the bows and bills, you can make up to 30 archers max, 18 billhooks max (not including commander options). You get 40 bodies.
With the mercenaries, you get 12 handguns max, 12 crossbows max, 16 pikes max (12 can be turned into halberds), again not including commander options. You also get 40 bodies.
Both boxes have different commander options. Of course they are cross-compatible with each other. You get two commander sprues in each box.

I've got one set of the Mercenaries unbuilt (somewhere), so I'm thinking eventually get two of each set in total and take it from there.

Thanks for the pics - that helps a lot!

Thanks for the comments guys. Hopefully get some of these painted up and based fairly soon, once I have done so I will post a link. Have to say the more I look at them the better they get. The detail is just really well defined on them. I'm not really keen on comparing to them to other ranges in other eras or fantasy stuff etc. as they are satisfying a different itch (doens't matter how good these are if you wanted dark-age vikings for instance!), but I must say this is probably one of the best plastics box-sets I have seen.

 Azazelx wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:
You definitely should! It depends on what you want, though. Want billhooks and longbows: buy the bows and bills box (duh). I you want pikes, halberds, crossbows and handguns, go with the mercenaries.

With the bows and bills, you can make up to 30 archers max, 18 billhooks max (not including commander options). You get 40 bodies.
With the mercenaries, you get 12 handguns max, 12 crossbows max, 16 pikes max (12 can be turned into halberds), again not including commander options. You also get 40 bodies.
Both boxes have different commander options. Of course they are cross-compatible with each other. You get two commander sprues in each box.

I've got one set of the Mercenaries unbuilt (somewhere), so I'm thinking eventually get two of each set in total and take it from there.

That's my plan as well - really cool that there is some potential there for crossover of bits between kits.

I really hope Perry makes Dark Age Vikings/Normans/Saxons. The Gripping Beast and Warlord Games ones just isn't cutting it for me, I think I've been spoiled by Perry in terms of quality.

I think some of the Gripping Beast Dark-Age stuff is great! Got some of their Saxon Fyrd and Dark Age warriors, and they are great little minis. The latter are rather plain, but then it's difficult to do too much to peasant-folk wearing potato sacks and sandals (if you are lucky! )