Friday, March 25, 2016

Conquest Games Medieval Archers Review

Finally picked up a box of the Conquest Games Medieval Archers.  I've been waiting for this box set, so beware I'm sporting archers now for my armies.  They are 28mm scale plastic models like their other kits.  This is definitely their best effort thus far with the models, don't let their horrible box art fool you.  I do think they like hurt their sales greatly by using such terrible box art.  They would in my opinion be much better of not using any art and just have really well painted miniatures pictured on the box.

Lots of nice stuff here, lets go over the contents of the box.

You get 28 miniatures, which includes the command sprue shown below which is the same sprue form their infantry box.  It has two of their Norman infantry men and the cool casualty mini you see on the right.
You get 2 accessory sprues that have one body as pictured below.  Note that they have put longbows and short bows both on the sprues.
Below is one of the main frames.  As you can see the accessory sprue shows up once more in the lower half of the sprue.  In the kit there are 6 different bodies, 16 different heads for a total of a whopping 60 heads overall.  There are 36 longbows arms, 30 short self bows, 48 right arms (I really love the open hands), 6 left arms with pointing hand.
 Below is close up of the one corner.  Good detail on these, like I said this is their best kit yet.
One of the few things I did not like were the quivers, but I think I have been able to fix that a bit.  The sprue below shows the bodies and heads.  Lots of good heads, covering different looks.  I think you have some very good selections here.  I'm mainly looking for mine to play with my Saxons and Vikings and Dark Ages.
So how do they compare to other manufacturers, well you can see I pulled out a bunch of models.
 From Left to Right:  Above one of my Conquest Games plastic infantry, Conquest Games Archer, Gripping Beast Plastic Viking, Conquest Archer, Foundry Viking.  Below:  Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon, Conquest Archer, Gripping Beast Metal, and Perry Crusader.  One of the things you will note on the Conquest Archers like their infantry men are the very thick stands.  I'm basing on 20mm squares and they barely fit.
 Below:  GBP Viking - Conquest Games Archer
Below:  Perry Crusader - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  Conquest Games Infantry - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  Foundry Viking - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  GBP Metal Viking - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  GBP Viking - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  GBP Saxon - Conquest Games Archer
 Below:  Various poses of the Conquest Games Archers
Overall and A for the kit, and F for the box art.  These are going to jump to the front of my paint que.

6 comments:

  1. I had not thought to use those for my dark age viking and saxon armies but now am sold. Originally i thought of these for my crusades armies but you are right about the box art and the quality of the previous norman infantry, both had put me off purchasing these. Odd because i usually pick up anything released if it is in the era of my armies. No such thing as too many reinforcements. Thank you again for the well presented review.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words. I'll have some pics of my builds coming up. Tons of different heads in this kit. Their neck design is a little odd, but I have converted a couple with Gripping Beast Plastic heads.

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  2. They all look good,but I do like the GB plastic archer.

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  3. Thanks for the review. I'm looking for archers for my Feudal English and wasn't sure whether these guys would fit the bill. Having read this my order has just gone in for my first box. Will be using them with short and longbows!

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  4. Do You by chance have some WH Bretonnians to compare the scale to?

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    1. No I don't. But scales of anything in the historical lines will look small compared to GW's scale which is quite odd at times.

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