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The new Wargames Factory Chariots finally arrived at my FLGS yesterday and I decided to put my money where my mouth was and buy them. My first impression is one of relative price at my FLGS the 3 Chariots were £17 Sterling before discounts thats £6 each, whereas the GW Corpse Cart is £15 and I don't know how much the TK chariots come to. This is a big bonus for Wargames Factory. The aim with these is to convert them into Beastmen Chariots and in this first post I'll deal with contents and comparison shots.

The entire box set contains these sprues.

Three Sprues are these that make the basic Chariot

2 Sprues Provide the Ponies

You also get an extra Shield sprue as well as this Command Sprue


Looking at this two things strike me the first is that you get a lot of the bodies, you get 14 whereas you need 6, this gives a lot of spares for your Bitz Box of something which is very difficult to get hold of usually. Unfortunately 3 are the Warrior Queen which sadly is in an extravagant heroic pose and as the shield is moulded into her leg this is hard to change. A lot of the Wargames Factory heads aren't that great but most will do however you do get 4 or 5 very distinct styles with several different expressions which is great for variety and theming units. Unfortunately several of these have the constipated look favoured by the Catachan sculpts with over 30 heads avoiding these with those provided on the sprue isn't a big chore. These will be mainly replaced with GW heads to get Beastmen by me however. The parts aren't quite to the standard of GW however this is more than offset by the price.

The scale comparisons are quite odd and definitely emphasise the difference between "Heroic" and "True" scale.
The bodies look very much the same size

The Heads are comparative and should mix fine

While the arms look the same size the GW one's hand is much larger

The Weapons however do not come close, the GW weapons are much larger as you can see by the Throwing Spears and the Swords. This amy cause problems for people planning to use Wargames Factorys forthcoming weapons sprues on GW models. The Wargames Factory Weapons are also quite fragile and less detailed due to the relative size. They are however much more realistic. I also plan to replace these with GW weapons on my models to combine with the rest of the army better.
url=http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/33208-Spear%20Comparison.html][/url]

All in all I'm really quite happy with this set and am really looking forward to working with this, my favourite component is this reproduction of the Battersea Shield a beautiful historically accurate reproduction of one of the major prehistoric artefacts in British History. This is also the only photo that shows the level of detail at all well.

Please note that the models details are sharper in real life my Camera is an old poor quality one and my photography is not up to par to show the level of detail (as should be apparent by the comparison GW parts).

The next instalment shall deal with assembling and another one will deal with how the model undercoats, with a later one on how well it accepts paints.

There is a link to the manufacturer in my sig.
I have no relation other than a customer and user of the league with the company, however i want them to succeed as GW needs the competition.

I assembled the first of these today and there lovely kits you can literally throw together, if I wasn't converting them to join my Beastman I could have assembled one in quarter of an hour easily (the dry assembly took less). Theres no problem with flash on these kits and the standard of that is better than a lot of GW stuff. They also glue well with Polystyrene cement. They went together beautifully and were simplicity itself to assemble which was a great bonus to say the least. A lot easier than a metal chariot would be.

This is a dry assembly of the Basic Chariot.


As you can see I have converted it to a Beastman chariot using a basic head and arm swap which looks nice and effective. Oddly these work better with the GW Beastmen sprues than a lot of GW ones (especially the Ghouls they look great but there the devil to kitbash as they have a totally different set of joints to the Zombies or Beastmen). The arm looks oversize but I reckon Chaos Beastmen shiould look mishappen so thats fine. I actually spent more time milliputting the base together than assembling the chariot.




I feel no guilt about claiming that the ponies are S5 on the charge as everybody knows Ponies are vicious and you should never mess with Ponies!

Pink Ponies are especially fierce!

Yes the horror the horror those poor men they did not know what evil they faced.

Just a quick note the new Zulus are out and I reckon the comparison shots will be useful for people!

Well I've been playing a bit with the Warrior Queen model and I've decided to make use of the fact I've got three of them to convert them into a Shaman on foot and one mounted on the chariot (I'll just call her a Bestigor when I'm not using her as a shaman). I'm fairly happy with the result although the GW book refused to co-operte with a Zombie Arm. It also gives me an extra Battersea Shield! (I also may well be seeing the real one on Friday). I'm not particularly happy with the Skaven Arm but any others would look worse with the outsize hand on the book (Even compared with normal GW parts!)





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Decided that arm jarred too much for me and decided to fiddle with the model some more. Of came here scabbard and that book and on went a braystaff. Personally I feel this is much better. What about the rest of you?

I apologise for the delay.

I've decided not to do the Warrior Queen mounted on Chariot conversion. To have a chariot mounted shaman you've got to take a Great Shaman and I've got my eye on the Wyrd Miniatures Pandora model for that.....I will however mount up my Beastlord on my original chariot converted from a Corpse Cart giving him a larger more impressive mount.

I've also finished off the other two these went to gether quickly and simply (the basing was arguably the most problematic bit.) I've only got one minor gripe the seated models legs aren't wide enough to straddle the yoke but thats a tiny problem.
Heres the pictures in real life the models have much better detail and are nowhere near as shiny.

:O really cool! damn i wish i didnt decide not to do beastmen >< all these conversions are amazing! i really like the shamen in particular.

Thanks a lot Ghosty although there are very few major conversions here indeed these are pretty much stock models with head and weapon swaps. Plastic models make this type of thing really simple, the only requirement is to consider the component selection for each model carefully, a willingness to forget the instructions and a comprehensive bits box. For most of these I spent more time selecting the bits than actually assembling them !

Heres a few group shots of the chariots. This is £18 from Wargames Factory;






This is approximately £20 from GW (Corpse Cart at £15 & 2 Marauder Horses at £2.40 each)



Odd that eh?

Suddenly had a thought about straddling the yoke, if you hit a rock, ouch, thats the family jewels gone! Obviously the sculptor was thinking far more about that than I was. I've been painting one f the chariots and the Warrior Queen and I've had no real problems there really nice and fun to work although some of the details especially the necklace and bra on the warrior queen and the harnesses on the ponies would be easier if they were crisper. However I'm relatively happy with my job and a less cackhanded painter would do far better!

Heres the Warrior Queen (close ups aren't that flattering if your a poor painter!)




This is the chariot



The rest will turn up here eventually!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just realised I hadn't discussed some stuff I said I would originally, the models all accepted the spray undercoat well and the paints went on fine.