Thank you to Wargames Atlantic for providing a box of their Classic Fantasy: Villagers for review. If you’d like to pick up this kit and support Goonhammer while you’re at it, get it through our affiliate link.
When I heard Wargames Atlantic had released a kit of Villagers for the new skirmish game Guards of Traitor’s Toll, I assumed that it would be a kind of medieval version of their Citizens of Rome kit, good mainly for building large mobs or gangs of similar-looking, but still unique, characters. Instead this is a kit overflowing with character, designed to let you build a diverse array of villagers engaged in their daily activities. It’s also the single most creatively fulfilling sprue I’ve ever built.
What’s in the Box?
This kit comes with four identical sprues that allow you to build six models each, for a total of 24 models. They’re split evenly by gender, but also by wealth, with each gender having a lower, middle, and upper class body. Each body is highly distinctive, with clothes ranging from a poor man’s rags to travelling clothes to a merchant’s finery. There’s also a couple of different aprons and shawls on each sprue that can be used to add some difference and character to a set of bodies that would otherwise run the risk of looking a bit too repetitive once you start to reuse them.
Each of the 29 different heads in this kit have their own unique quirks, and likewise range in wealth and class, with a few fantasy elements mixed in as well. They’re roughly evenly split along gender lines, and most have some kind of unique headwear or otherwise distinct appearance. While this makes it easy to create characterful models from just this sprue, the distinctiveness of these heads does mean you’ll need to look elsewhere if you want characters who look a bit more conventional or generic. For example, there are exactly two male heads that don’t have headgear, eyewear or pointed ears, and both of them are bald.
Each head is also distinctive enough that it’s usually quite obvious when you’ve used the same head twice, but this isn’t too much of a problem as there’s still more than enough heads for each model in the box to have its own, and it’s very easy to combine these with spare heads from other kits. The variety of characterful heads here makes this a good source of heads to spice up other models in your collection as well, particularly Wargames Atlantic kits with a similar join between the head and torso. In addition, you can often find ways to reuse heads in interesting ways within the same kit. For example, the head wearing a crown works on a well-dressed body as a king or royal official, but combine it with a lower class body and a hand puppet or theatrical mask and you end up with a model that looks more like a pantomime actor.
The arms come in a variety of poses, with about half holding a tool or object and the other half empty. In terms of weapons, each sprue has a held knife, axe, and spiked club, and if you’re willing to use a lot of tools as improvised weapons you can just about equip every model in the kit for battle. That’s obviously not the intention of the sprue however, and most of it is dedicated to civilian items, some held in hand but most separate so that they can be glued to belts, tables or empty hands as desired.
The civilian bits in this kit are many and varied, and are what really make the kit so compelling. There’s such a wide variety of parts I never knew I needed, and too many to list them all. Even looking at a single row there’s a saucepan, a hand puppet, a cane, some wine bottles, a satchel, a bucket, a necklace, a ladle, and an owl. Other highlights include a pipe being smoked, an arm holding a fan, an open book, and a kettle. Even just looking at these bits alone, the sprue has so much unique content to offer that makes it an ideal purchase for anyone looking to expand their bits box.
Assembly
Assembly for this kit is pretty simple, and is similar to most other Wargames Atlantic kits, making it very easy to kitbash these with similar kits. The bodies come in a single piece with the neck and legs attached to the torso, and heads and arms can easily be glued onto the flat joints. The main body comes with a puddle base, which can make it a little difficult to base the models consistently, but I used Wargames Atlantic’s own dual use bases (which we reviewed here) to good effect. You could also cut away the puddle base from the model itself if you’re not a fan of that style, but the number of models with bare feet make it a difficult task.
The simplicity of this kit means that, as with other Wargames Atlantic kits, this box doesn’t come with any instructions. For the most part instructions are unnecessary, and their absence encourages you to experiment with combinations of parts in ways you might not have done otherwise, but there are a few points where they would have been helpful. Some arms seem obviously intended to be used in a pair, but aren’t labelled, such as an arm holding a flute that has an intended partner that took me a little while to find. The arms also vary in size slightly, and some seem intended for either male or female bodies alone, but lack any way of easily identifying them as such. If you’re not careful when building, you could conceivably end up with a model with two arms of different sizes.
Painting
These models paint up quickly; there’s generally enough detail to keep things interesting but not so much that it slows you down. The optional aprons and shawls can be a bit of a problem if used, as it can be quite difficult to paint underneath them, but I didn’t find it too bad. You could paint them separately, and assemble afterwards, but if you do so you’d also need to paint the head separately as well, as the apron/shawl will usually need to be glued on first.
I primed the models with Games Workshop Wraithbone and then used a mix of contrasts and base paints, plus a wash, depending on what paints I had on hand in the colours I wanted to use. The models took both contrasts and base paints well, and I didn’t really have any issues painting them. For basing I used Wargames Atlantic’s 25mm dual use bases, filled in with Stirland Mud texture paint, washed with Agrax Earthshade and dry brushed with Mournfang Brown.
Using the Models
There’s understandably not a lot of call for civilian miniatures in wargames, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find good uses for this kit. It was designed alongside the Wargames Atlantic Guards kit (which we also reviewed here) for the game Guards of Traitor’s Toll and while I haven’t played the game to be able to say how useful this kit is for it, its use is by no means restricted to that game.
For fantasy and historical wargaming these models work great as part of objective markers, scenery, or dioramas, but they can also work well as special characters. A model from this kit could work very well as a priest for SAGA for example, and the handful of fantasy and magical elements on the sprue make it extremely easy to build a witch or wizard for a game like Frostgrave. If you’re looking to use the miniatures in a historical context, I think it’s worth noting that the clothes and options in this kit don’t really correspond to a single place or period in history, so it might take a little bit of kitbashing or a carefully chosen paint scheme to make the kit work for your preferred period or setting.
However, I think their best use is as miniatures for roleplaying games, and the variety of parts in the kit means it feels perfect for non-player characters in Dungeons and Dragons. You can easily fill out a whole town’s worth of unique NPCs using this kit, from the mundane butcher or bartender to an elderly mystic or mysterious stranger. While there’s not any armour or any real weaponry included, it still feels like a good kit for a lot of player character models and adventurers as well. You can easily build a wide variety of bards, druids, and wizards with this kit and it can also work well for specific cleric, rogue, or monk builds, or really any poorly-equipped adventurer.
When you mix in other kits as well (particularly Wargames Atlantic kits that are similarly designed), the possibilities skyrocket. Add in some guns or other weapons and you get a ragtag village militia, or combine it with your favourite historicals kit to get villagers more tuned to a particular time and place. A lot of the bits on this sprue can serve as a great way of adding some extra character to other models as well, even those outside of a traditional fantasy or historical setting. I know I’ll certainly be using these bits for some Necromunda Hangers-On down the line.
Final Thoughts
All in all, this is quite possibly my favourite kit I’ve ever put together, and definitely the one I’ve found most creatively fulfilling. It’s great for creating interesting non-player characters for roleplaying games or wargames alike, and the models can serve as good background elements of a diorama or custom objective marker.
The Wargames Atlantic Villagers kit might seem like a fairly niche product at first glance (after all it’s not the kind of kit you buy multiple boxes of to fill out an army), but it has a surprising amount of versatility and its enjoyable to build even as just a hobby project. Add in its incredible utility has a source of bits for kitbashing and it becomes something that I think everyone can manage to get some use out of regardless of what game, setting, or genre you prefer.
This kit makes it so easy to create characterful models that tell you a story just by looking at them, and I had so much fun just building the models and figuring out their stories. If there’s a single kit out there that I think every wargamer should buy a copy of, it’s this one. I really can’t speak highly of it enough.
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