Wargames Atlantic Peasant Levy 1100-1350 a figure review

 

Wargames Atlantic have a prolific output of plastic figures all of a high-quality multipart design that lends itself well to conversion and kit-bashing! Latest of these are the Peasant Levy and they are excellent

There are seven frames in the box, five with the six different bodies and various arms heads and weapons and two frames which consist of arms with various long weapons, mostly Bills and Spears.

These long weapons are interesting in that the arms are of three types, unarmoured sleeves, gambeson or jack sleeves and mail.  

  The bills appear to be quite crude and I immediately thought that combined with Perry Agincourt English or French figures these would make perfect Jacqueries!

The set has the kind of farming implements and tools you would expect to find with an armed rabble as well as a few more standard weapons. It’s nice to see a sling in there.

  And I love some of the details, the notched sword, the casually held long bow, a perfect match for the raised two finger saluting hand.

Various single-handed weapons such as axes and knives will be perfect for archers “armed for combat” a la Ruckus!

  There are a few sheaved knives to hang from belts as well as bunches of arrows for your peasant archers and Outlaw types.

As always with a multipart kit, its the implications for kitbashing that are the most intriguing

There are a couple of flails, excellent for Hussites and some nice cudgels for your thugs and Henchmen.

  The bodies consist of torso and lower body with legs and there are four different types of each to a total of six bodies. Some of these have rudimentary buckled leathers belts and some have ropes as belts.

There are thirteen different heads.

These are nicely varied, one has a gaping mouth, one has an eye patch.

They perfectly match the bodies in style, low relief, light detail and perfectly proportioned. These figures are anatomical rather than heroically proportioned and make a nice fit with the Perry Miniatures range.

I would say that they are much nicer sculpts and more realistic than the only other similar plastic multipart peasant levy figures available, the Fireforge Northmen Folk Rabble, who have rather stark, staring faces and gigantic hands.

The various different weapons and tools offer a massive range of possibilities for these figures and I would love to have built the lot of them however I have many projects on the go and not enough time so I contented myself with creating the four quarterstaff armed Outlaws that I need for my Outlaw band

I simply cut the head off the spear to create a useful quarterstaff.

  I used Citadel Greens triads. Caliban, Warpstone and Moot Green for the bright “Apple” green that I used on the hoods and cowls

   This I suppose was my attempt to create a Lincoln Green although, there are so many varied accounts of what colour Lincoln Green actually is that it is hard to know which is right.

I figured as long as I have one distinctive green that they all wear …

The paler of the other two greens consists of the Citadel Death World Forest, Elysian and Ogryn greens. 

The rope belt is Citadel again, Zandri Dust, Ushbati Bone, Screaming skull washed  with Sepia ink…

The leather bits, including the eye patch, are done with Valejo Chocolate, Flat Earth, and highlighted with Dark Sand and washed with Smoke, sounds like some Deep Velvet lyrics…

The dull darker green is another Citadel triad, Castellan, Loren Forest and Straken Greens

   The quarterstaffs are yet another Citadel Triad, I am trying to use up all my Citadel so I can buy a set of Army Painter Fanatics, this time its Dryad Bark, Gorthor and Baneblade Brown

The boots are Wargames Foundry Dusky Flesh another triad

Overall, the figures went together well. Its not always obvious which arms fit with which weapon on what torso and they are rather fiddly to get right, a small dab of plastic glue to tack them and then fiddle about while it dries seemed to be the best tactic.

The figures are well proportioned and look realistic however the light relief and low detail mean that they are quite tricky to paint well. 

How do they compare?

Left to right WA, Perry Plastic, WA, Fireforge, WA, Frostgrave, WA, Perry metal

WA Peasant Levy 1100-1350 £30 for thirty figures…