Northmen and Living Dead Recruited From Fireforge Games
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| Northmen and Living Dead Recruited From Fireforge Games |
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POST UPDATE
The Northmen and Living Dead plastic kits are now available for retail. Click here for where you can buy Northmen. And here for Living Dead.
Forgotten World Kickstarter
As I mentioned in A Tale of Two Witches I was a backer of a kickstarter called Forgotten World. This was a kickstarter for a new line of plastic models from Fireforge Games. I backed it mainly because I thought the models would be a good fit for my Tale of Two Witches project. They have just recently fulfilled my pledge so now my own project has a great influx of new recruits.
Review and Comparison with Games Workshop
I was so stoked by the delivery that I was inspired to review all the kits in a video posted to youtube. See the embedded video below. In it I show the sprues and check out how the models size up with GW equivalent models.
Seeing how models size up is of critical importance when mixing and matching from different manufactures. Any modellers wanting to run Fireforge Games models alongside Games Workshop models are recommended to watch it.
Uses for the Forgotten World Miniatures from Fireforge Games
The number one consideration when evaluating a line of models for use in a game system is if the scale fits. Okay compatible genre is a big deal too; Pegasus knights have no place in the Pike and Shotte.
Model Size Comparison
Manufacturers all too often have rather quirky interpretations of standard scales. Games Workshop may be the worst offender for warped and idiosyncratic interpretations of scale. Notably their “heroic” version of the 28mm scale is very divergent from the regular “truescale” 28mm.
Indeed their models seem to become more “heroic” with every release cycle. This results in their own minis being wrongly scaled even against each other.
Forgotten World are “Heroic” Scale
So when I look at the Forgotten World miniatures that is my first question: Will its size and proportions actually fit with the other models I am using?
As I found out in my video review embedded above, the Forgotten World minis fit very well with GW’s heroic scale. This makes them absolutely usable in Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Age of Sigmar or Mordheim alongside official GW miniatures.
Naturally they will also work against any other miniatures which are in line with GW’s heroic scale.
Northmen as Alternative Bretonnians
Clearly the Northmen line will make great alternative Bretonnians. Or at least they will be alternative Men-At-Arms, Peasant Bowmen and Yeoman. There is nothing in the line yet for making any Knights or Trebuchet.
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| Northmen and Living Dead Recruited From Fireforge Games |
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They have a close resemblance to the Stark soldiers in Game of Thrones so they might be interesting to people for any Game of Thrones RPGs or tabletop games out there.
I did get three character models for the Northmen as a bonus too but they are not such a good fit for Bretonnians except as alternative champions for the Men-at-Arms and Yeoman.
I missed them out of the video review because I did not think they would go to retail. They are limited runs in resin, though some of them look 3-D printed. The quality is not great on the 3D printed looking ones. They will likely emerge later in this series when I paint them up for unit champions.
Northmen Cavalry as Yeoman
I am looking at the Northmen Cavalry as alternative Yeoman. Good alternative yeoman models are hard to find and the original GW ones tend to go for crazy money on ebay. See just how crazy the prices are on ebay here.
There are plenty of historical models out there with the right look and armament for yeoman but they all have the major problem of having the wrong scale and proportions to fit with GW’s eccentric interpretation of 28mm scale.
This is where the Northmen Cavalry are great because both horse and rider have been designed to fit exactly with GW’s “heroic scale”.
WYSIWYG Fussing
They are not quite ideal for use as yeoman though. One shortcoming is that they lack any options to take bows. Natively the models can only take swords or spears. Potentially one could kitbash bow options though.
This lack of bows creates a WYSIWYG issue because bows in addition to spears are mandatory armaments for Yeoman in the 6th ed Bretonnia Army Book. Then again if one uses the unofficial 8th ed Bretonnia Army Book from the Warhammer Armies Project then bows are an optional armament.
Another mild WYSIWYG issue is that I think one would be hard pressed not to call those full length gambesons the riders are wearing “light armour”. Yeoman in the 6th edition book can take light armour as an upgrade but you do not really want to give it to them because it will make them lose the “fast cavalry” rule.
The Fast Cavalry rule is the one reason for taking them. This is a little unfair as light armour does not impact fast cavalry in other more recently updated faction army books. The unofficial 8th edition book fixes this also.
The last WYSIWYG issue is that their mounts have a kind of gambeson barding. Neither relevant Bretonnia army book has any option for barding the mounts of yeoman. Of course it is not really full barding so I suppose it is not a stretch to say it is does not count as barding by the game rules.
Northmen Warriors as Men-at-Arms
Northmen warriors will make excellent Men-at-Arms alternatives. There are no WYSIWIG issues at all and they are of course perfectly scaled. If I must find something to grumble about them; then they do not come with an option to arm them with halberds.
They do however have a two-handed grip option on a spear. One could quite easily be convert this part to a halberd by snipping off the spear tip and replacing it with an pole-axe or halberd tip, if one has those parts in one’s bitz box.
Northmen Bowmen as Peasant Bowmen
This kit is simply perfect for making alternative peasant bowmen. It even includes braziers which is an option that peasant bowmen can take to get flaming attacks.
The only gripe is of course that the full-length gambeson that they wear must surely count as light armour in terms of WYSIWYG. Peasant bowmen can take light armour as an option but you do not really want to give it them in order to keep their point cost down. That gambeson is most of the reason why the models look so nice though, so I can roll with that upgrade.
Living Dead as Vampire Counts
The Living Dead models will be raised for my Mousillon themed Vampire Counts army. There is less need to stray from the Games Workshop reservation in search of alternative Vampire Counts. At the time of writing almost all of the old Vampire Counts kits have survived the Age of Sigmar apocalypse with only a rebranding. The line has even picked up some new models.
That said these Living Dead models are either nicer or cheaper than a lot of the Games Workshop equivalent models. And it is nice to have some more variety, especially in the larger horde units.
Living Dead Peasants as Zombies
I will be using these Living Dead Peasants as alternative Zombies in my Vampire Counts army. They both a little less expensive and much better looking than GW’s zombie kit.
However the Peasants kit does not include any command options while the GW one does. It might do then to combine the Peasant kit with a GW zombie kit. I will be wanting at least two kits worth of models for a zombie horde anyway and the extra variety of parts will be good to have.
It might also do to throw in a zombie kit from Mantic, though I am not sure that Mantic’s kits are very “heroic” in their proportions.
Living Dead Warriors as Skeleton Warriors
Strictly speaking the Living Dead Warriors are not skeletons. They appear to be zombies very much like the Peasants except better armed and armoured.
It is the Warrior’s weapons and armour that to my mind make them suitable as Skeleton Warriors from the Vampire Counts book, even more so than GW’s skeleton warrior models. Light armour is mandatory equipment for Skeleton Warriors by the book but GW’s current line of skeletons predominantly lack this WYSIWYG.
It might be fun to kit bash the Fireforge and GW kits together to make the Fireforge more skeletal and the GW kit more armoured.
Living Dead Knights as Black Knights
I suppose using the Living Dead Knights as Black Knights is obvious. And they could be kit bashed together with the GW kit like the previous kits. The kitbashing could include horse swapping too.
Albion Knights as Bretonnian Knights of the Realm or Knights Errant
Although the Albion Knights kit from Fireforge Games is not a part of the Forgotten World kickstarter I did get a box as an addon. Naturally I hoped they would be a drop in replacement for Bretonnian knights which are now exceedingly hard to find. In this I was disappointed because while the kit was broadly a good one it had one fatal flaw for use alongside GW miniatures. The scale was off.
Albion Knights are NOT “Heroic” Scale
Unlike the Forgotten World miniatures the Albion Knights are scaled more in line with the version of 28mm scale found in historical miniature lines. Due to this they do look really small alongside GW minis.
Alternative Knights Errant
The best way I can see to use them with my GW minis in this project is as Knights Errant. Knights Errant are, by the book, young and impetuous knights eager to prove their valour for the first time. Maybe it would not so silly then to think of them as juvenile knights. The reason for their small size could be that they are just not yet full grown!
It is an open question whether the Warhammer world is grimdark enough for child soldiers. Although surely there is no better faction than Bretonnia for a children’s crusade.
Deus Vult!
Do you like the new Northmen and Living Dead kits? What would you use them for?
Share this article to my twitter @SolarCrossGames or my reddit community r/SolarCrossGames and let’s chat about it.
| A Tale of Two Witches - A Hobby Project |
| Northmen and Living Dead Recruited From Fireforge Games |
| Smallhammer Lists for a Tale of Two Witches |