I won’t be so vain as to think it’s all my fault – but Raging Heroes, that charming little french company DID listen to people like me: the finalized Witch Elves Blood Vestals will come in 28 mm – and definitely with exposed… assets…
The ten miniatures – designed by Benoit Guerville and sculpted by Benoit Guerville and Jean-Romain Barrau – do a fine job in portraying a frenzied mob of drug-imbued elfin witches. At least in my humble opinion. Even though I would say it’s a risk nowadays to produce a unit completely in pewter, where multi-poseable plastics or resin would be the way most companies would go in such cases.
Raging Heroes clearly has the benefit of being first, here. Games Workshop only has their own old ten sculpts of Witch Elves to offer, which don’t look well, even if compared with weaker miniatures (though so far they haven’t produced any female uglier than Morathi – and she’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful creatures in the Warhammer World…). There have been CADs sighted for new plastic Witch Elves from GW, but most people “in the know” agree that we won’t see them until at least 2013…
Avatars of War, on the other hand, have more or less confirmed that they are working on a plastic Witch Elfin set – and when I think about their Slayers Berserkers, I do have reason to believe that those would outshine both Raging Heroes and Games Workshop. But there have been a lot of quietness on that project lately, as they concentrate on their Warriors of Apocalypse stuff (which is cool, but just not my cup of tea…)… I guess it’s because those witches are, by definition, more or less naked Elfins with big knifes. With multipart plastics, it’s difficult to create a naked body, I believe, all those gaps and connection points look better with clothed miniatures than they do with bare skin…
This is all good for the Raging Heroes’ Blood Vestals. As long as no serious plastic set is published, I am sure they will sell superbly well..
The Command Group does a good job on portraying the leaders of the gang… the only weak sculpt here (at least to my opinion) is the musician. She does look a bit as if the Carnyx she holds had been added long after the sculpt itself had been finished (which actually has been the case). It doesn’t correspond well to the rest of the miniature, a bit like some of Warlord Games’ or Mantic’s musicians where you put the instruments into clamp-shaped hands and it never actually looks as if they were playing them…
The standard is a bit too… simple, too but it’s all right to my taste.
All in all I like the normal Troops better – which is fine as you will need at least three boxes to create a regiment worth that name… They are sculpted to get the maximum out of just five monoposed miniatures. With some paint, some different positioning and perhaps some raised bases, I do think it is possible to create a fairly varied regiment of those.
To me, these Blood Vestals do offer the best way to portray Witch Elfs so far. And unless something better (read: plastic and poseable) comes around, I am sure I will end up with some 20-30 of those. Still I don’t think I will preorder them… my Dark Elves are still deep in their resurrection process – as I haven’t played them for almost a decade, my collection consists mainly of old and very old badly painted miniatures. I need some new painting scheme first and some better painted core troops, before I should consider those…
After all, there’s the price tag to consider, too. As I will surely miss the limited offer of 16,95 / 18,95 €, it might well be that those miniatures will cost 4-6 € per pewter Elfin… that’s not too expensive for such miniatures, but it is nothing I can buy without thinking or planning…
Still – good job, Raging Heroes!
And with this, I am off for a holiday. Expect my next posting around April 12th – have a great time until then!
