Introduction
Until recently I had not had the chance to work with Confrontation miniatures, but when a friend of mien commissioned me to paint a slew of them for out fantasy skirmish gaming I got a full blast of Rackham’s miniature lines. A few other painters I know have always talked up a good game on how swell the Confrontation line is, so with miniatures in hand to paint and good word of mouth I set forth on this part of my friend’s commission.
Out of the box…or
popping the blister pack
For this review I got 9 large sized wolfen, a pack of gnomes and six swordsmen. Unlike other manufacturers, Rackham has used the some assembly required design to their figures. The plus for this is a very three dimensional figure, that once assembled looks very deep and fluid. The problem there in is that much of the assembly is a hassle. Firstly there are no instructions for the assembly, which could have been done on a snippet of paper. It would have been easy to do as there is already game cards for the miniature in the blister pack or box. Of the slew of miniatures, it was really only the wolfen that this was an issue as they typically had four to six pieces.
Another problem with assembly was that some of the sculpting was very tricky to get assembled and bonded with CA glue. Some of this was just oddly fitting joints. Other aspects were the very mediocre to bad casting of the miniatures. I literally had to use a hobby knife to carve out enough space to fit the torso and lower body together. Hardly an assembly process that could be considered ideal.
Related to the issue of casting was that there were plenty of casting lines on the figures. While this is a fact of life for miniatures, it is also a degree of how many. On a three or four dollar Reaper miniature I can suffer through the prep work and not begrudge them much. For a figure that costs nearly double or more, bad casting seems almost unforgivable.
The proportions of the figures are generally good. I would say in general the heads of the humans are a little small in relation to the size of the body. Not a huge deal, but when getting to the painting stage it is a hassle for doing the eyes and such.
Painting
Once the hurdles are overcome from Rackham’s haphazard casting and sometimes wonky ideas on assembly you wind up with a nice looking miniature to paint. The detailing on the miniatures is fantastic. Only a few of the swordsmen had items that were perhaps to small to be of worth, but the other ones made up for this by having some really awesome fiddly bits on the figures.
Even if you do not play Confrontation, the figure cards included in each set is a boon. Each card gives a good example of the official paint scheme for a figure and it is very well done. My only beef with the examples is that Rackham decided to have it’s painters use the non-metal metal technique for their painting. This (for those who do not know…or used different nomenclature) is using regular colors to simulate metallic colors. Thus grays are used for silver, yellow for gold, etc. While I admit this is a very tough scheme to paint, it also comes off as very cartoony.
Synopsis
If I did not have to prep Rackham’s Confrontation miniatures or assemble them I probably would like them more. Added to this is the very high cost for the miniatures, which irritates me that the casting was not better in regards to fitting joints together and having to dig out the ball half of joinings. These two issues aside, you wind up with some very spectacular miniatures that look spectacular on the game table. As a whole many might be too spendy to justify the expense, but others spoof this and are too cool not to have.
