In what has now become a mini-series, we continue along talking about our very favourite kits to have painted. These are not necessarily our best painted models but instead are the ones that we had the most fun with!
When it comes to historical miniatures, gamers are blessed with a massive number of sources for every historical period. There is no intellectual property for the Revolutionary War, and there is no single source of branded miniatures for the Napoleonic Wars. There are plastic kits, metal kits, PVC kits, STLs, and all kinds of other kits out there – here’s the kits we believe are the most fun to paint!
Bair
This is my series so I’m starting this one too. That’s the only pro here, the con has been getting to herd the cats that is the Goonhammer Writers and boy did I con myself there.
Historicals is an area that I’m still very new too, having started just after turning 30 last year. Now, being an old man, I needed to decide if I got into this or smoking meats and my small flat in London doesn’t really work well for that.
Easily the most fun I’ve had with any historical kit is the Victrix Viking bag. It’s a hell of a bag. Spend your £40ish on 60 models that are just shockingly good. Insane. You’re supposed to build some certain ways but with a bit of skill with cutters, a knife, and some plastic glue you can do a lot with it. This was my start into historicals and it couldn’t have been a better one!
They’re simple but they’re just great. I got to learn that Vikings had very vibrant and colourful dyes and that they, as a people, were equally vibrant and colourful when it came to all parts of their culture. Much more so than the show Vikings, or any Hollywood adaptation of their culture would have you think.
Using an array of contrast paints over a nice light basecoat let me get all 60 of them done in under two weeks, too! I honestly cannot recommend a bag of Victrix Vikings enough. You will not regret a bag of Victrix Vikings, ever.
I also love that in my (now massive) collection of nearly 100 Vikings there are no two duplicate shields, banners, or miniatures even. The shields are all Little Big Men Studio transfers (recently gone in house with Victrix now) and I still have a couple dozen I haven’t used yet: all completely unique from each other. Freehand terrifies me. I’m a fast painter, not a competition painter, and getting to add those pops of colour and design to the horde of angry sea-faring warriors just makes them look so good.
Just so much fun painting a point (for Saga) of these guys in just a few hours each night over the course of a week or so. So good. I’ve got some Rus waiting for paint now…
Ilor
It’s OK, I can cop to it: I’m a degenerate who enjoys painting cavalry. That’s why for me, one of the kits I’ve had the most fun working on recently was the Norman Cavalry set from Victrix Miniatures.
What makes this set so much fun to work with? Well, it starts with the assembly – the horses themselves go together really smoothly with no weird gaps or joins. Also, unlike some other manufacturers’ horses, the tails (or for the gods’ sakes the ears) aren’t a separate piece. This makes cleaning and assembly a snap. Similarly, the riders go together cleanly and like any Victrix kit give you a metric boatload of options. Whether you’re charging across the fields of Hastings or cracking Andalusian heads during the Reconquista, or carving out a new Norman kingdom in Sicily, this set has you covered.
But beyond just the kit’s flexibility and ease of assembly, the sculpts are just really evocative. The poses of the horses in particular have a dynamism to them that captures a sense of motion that miniature mounts often lack. This carries through to the riders as well, with some having just that perfect level of “leaning into the saddle to cut down a fleeing peasant” feel to them.
When it comes to painting, both the horses and their riders have plenty of detail that’s deep enough to take washes, contrasts, or dry-brushing (depending on your tastes) very well. They painted up remarkably quickly and (especially with the Little Big Men shield transfers) look great on the tabletop!
Lenoon
I really agonised over this and then changed my mind reading Ilor’s stuff above because he’s absolutely right. To an extent, anyway. Though I’m not as passionate about the cavalry, Victrix’s Normans are absolutely fantastic and great fun to paint.
Specifically, I’m putting up the armoured, mailed, Norman Infantry as my favourite historicals kit to paint. The mail has a delightful and deep texture, making Drybrush painting easy, there’s enough cloth, face and leather to let you break out a lot of different colours, and the kit is adaptable enough that you can paint a couple of hundred without repeating a pose if you wish.
Overall it’s a kit built for simple, neat, clear painting. Very relaxing!
Michael O “Mugginns”
I’m a major weirdo – I’ve been playing wargames for almost 30 years, starting with historicals way back then – and I have a lot of nostalgia built up. While some things are left behind due to pure progress, there are some kits that still stand the test of time based on the nostalgia factor.
If you’re coming from the Warhamsphere into historicals, chances are you’re used to having an entirely plastic, sprue built army that you could customize and put together easily. Most are CAD designed, with realistic proportions and tons of detail built in. That’s great, I love my GSC, Cities of Sigmar, and Emperor’s Children. I have entire armies for WW2 and other periods built in plastic – they’re sweet.
This is where I’m going to drop my controversial opinion – one that I know some disagree with – about Middle Age minis, specifically the Age of Vikings, for SAGA. I love full metal SAGA. I think it’s likely because when I first started playing SAGA, almost all that was available were pewter minis back then. You had to source minis and have them shipped from England from a family owned company. They’re all hand-sculpted, with the details and proportions you’d expect from hand-sculpted minis. Many pewter minis have bigger hands, heads, and weapons because it’s easier to sculpt and paint that way.
I could name quite a few lines here that speak to me in my daydreams – Bad Squiddo, Wargames Foundry, Black Tree Design, and Footsore Miniatures to name a few – but the one that I chose for this article is the Norse Gael line of miniatures from Gripping Beast.
GB miniatures are a little older, a little chunkier, a little more mold-liney but I absolutely love them. The character that each model comes with – the hair, beards, open screaming mouths, and action poses just hit me right in the nostalgia bone. For $80 you can get a full six point warband with Warlord in super-characterful poses. The poses especially, but sometimes clothing too, you cannot get with plastic. I love it.
May
It’s gotta be this Cromwell from Victrix, their stuff is all great but this is just the perfect type of thing for my brain.
It’s tiny so it takes no time at all to do, and that makes it a great canvas to play with mud and damage. No need to worry about mistakes since they’ll be hard to notice after a layer of muck, but the things you want to emphasize still stick out.
It’s also got a great shape for the work you do on it to be the focus, it’s comparatively simple without being boring. The build is pretty nice too, while as a whole the Victrix vehicles are great, a few have some awkward details but nothing to complain about here!
Oh and it’s a tiny tank, I just love tiny tanks they’re just the best.
Zac
Lets face it, for a lot of us knights are the reason we got into miniatures in the first place. Even settings like 40k and infinity have knightly imagery (not so) subtly sprinkled throughout the range.
So for me, a box of Perry Miniatures 1415 knights, whether mounted or on foot, are absolutely great fun to paint. They’ve got some great spaces to add heraldry, but also have some models in full “white harness” so you can get a good lot of them painted with just a couple of spray cans and some details. The combination of heraldry making the unit colourful and knightly, and the speed at which you can paint up the box really makes it great for a fun dopamine hit.
The fact that they are also full of nostalgia, being sculpted by the Perry Twins who sculpted some of the first minis I ever painted is just icing on the cake!
Our Favorite Little Guys
While we have a lot of Victrix in here (guess what, we review a lot of Victrix kits here) there are definitely a ton of other manufacturers and kits out there – let us know what your favorites are in the comments!
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