Hot Lead
by Leland Erickson
Next comes a selection of resin vehicles and figures manufactured by Grendel Miniatures of Scotland and distributed in the U.S. by Heartbreaker. The Raptor Assault Biped is an all resin-cast model. Refer to Inquisitor #8 for my previous comments on these walkers. The Advanced Tactical Assault carrier is a high tech looking APC with a gatling gun in a remote turret and a smaller minigun in a front ball mount. It's a nice looking vehicle with an annoying vehicle design flaw common to SF model designs: external stowage is located on racks between the front and rear wheels. Since there are no mudguards between the stowage and the wheels, just a few minutes running cross-country will guarantee that your stowage will be covered in goo before the next stop! I realize I'm probably being a grumpy old historical wargamer about this, but whether you're reenacting Kursk in 1943 AD or the Space Wolves Crusade against the Orks on Kursk III in 40,943 AD, a tank is a tank and it's going to get dirty! Grendel most certainly is not the first SF manufacturer to commit this error (and I'm not ready to have any of the Grendel design team burned for heresy), but it is something to think about... Finally, there's the boxed set of resin Predator Marines with heavy weapons. A boxed set of ten resin powered armor suited mondo nasties which have been sculpted by veteran designer Bob Olley. They're a tough looking bunch of dudes with a variety of nasty weapons worthy of any Marine chapter. There were some mold alignment problems the on legs of some of these early versions of the figures. Hopefully, these will be remedied in later versions. Hot Lead Rating *** for the Grendel resin and **** for the top notch metal from Heartbreaker Hobbies. Other Reviews
Fortress Figures: Bogies Heartbreaker Hobbies: Mutant Chronicles Grendel Miniatures: Vehicles, Predator Marines Grenadier: Future Warriors Pewtercraft: Galactik Spaceships Geo-Hex: Spaceships Back to Table of Contents -- Inquisitor #14 © Copyright 1996 by Tim DuPertuis. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. |