Goonhammer Historicals: Wargames Atlantic Dark Ages Army Builder Review

It’s no secret that Wargames Atlantic and Victrix seem to be battling it out for domination in the realm of “plastic minis that work across game systems.” In the end though, that just means the real winners will be us. By ‘us’ I mean people like me who are cheap, frugal, and want to play as many games with a low model count as possible, people who like to mix and match huge numbers of plastic bits and kits to create models that none of us have seen before, and everyone in-between.

Dark Ages can be a particularly saturated period when it comes to plastic kits, thanks to a slew of great game choices like SAGA, Pillage, Midgard, and others. I’m of the opinion that more options are always better, and I’m very happy to see the approach that each company takes to a kit and what they choose to emphasize or deemphasize. To that end, we’ll talk about what this kit is, what it isn’t, and what it could be. Thanks to Wargames Atlantic for providing this kit for review.

What It Is

The term “Dark Ages,” like so many in historiography, has no fully agreed upon start and end date. It’s one of those things that scholars, hobbyists, and popular culture will toss and turn over and over with no clear winner. Typically it refers to the period after the fall of Rome (a phrase which is itself shorthand for the loss of centralized control in the Western Roman Empire) around 476. The end is where things get fuzzier, with dates ranging from the 10th or 11th centuries (sometimes referred to as the Early Middle Ages) and as far forward as the Renaissance or Age of Enlightenment.

Credit: InquisitorMoloko

For the purposes of Wargames Atlantic’s Dark Ages Army Builder kit, they’re almost all correct! The bodies, in true WGA style, consist of torsos and legs. Some of the legs have wraps and some have plain trousers, which adds some visual interest without pushing you into a particular style or culture. The torsos are belted tunics, and while the collar style definitely points earlier rather than later I think with some creative color choices you could stretch their use far beyond the “Decline and Fall: Imperial Rome at War 284-476AD” that the boxes are branded with.

Six of the eight body sculpts include the left arm, with four of those almost certainly pushing you into shields and the other two being in more of a “could take or leave a shield” pose. I’m by no means an expert in Early Medieval material culture, but for my personal “good enough” standard that means that with the right head swaps and weapon arms this kit could serve as the base for models right up to the start of the the renaissance as long as you’re depicting peasants for the later end of the period.

Circa 1310. anonymous (Queen Mary Master), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

If you’re only using this kit as it comes to you in a single box, you’ll find that it has lots of great options for a somewhat narrow and generic range of weapons. All of the greatest hits are here: swords, knives, shortspears, and axes along with the typical round shield with a central boss. Loose knives (two per weapon sprue) and sheathed swords (four per weapon sprue) allow you to add some detail to the belts without them being completely covered in junk, which is something that I very much appreciate. Alternatively they can be used along with some of the extra shields (you get 15 more shields than bodies!) to build objective/fatigue markers or add details to your terrain.

Get it? Central boss…? Engelhardt 1863, pl. 8 and a picture of Tony Danza that I snipped from a lazy search.

This wouldn’t be a WGA review without talking about the massive number of head options in the kit. With 36 heads for every eight bodies (that’s 4.5 heads per body for all of us non-math folks), this box could easily supply a small gaming group with enough models and options to launch 4 players into Pillage! The bare heads range from “Angry Coffee Hipster” (topknots that the box refers to as perfect for Merovingian Franks) to “Whatcha Gonna Do, Brother” (handlebar mustaches and mullets). Plenty of shaggy-headed beardos round out the mix, keeping up with the running theme of this being a kit designed for maximum versatility.

Credit: Wargames Atlantic

There’s a fairly large proportion of Saxon “smurf caps” in this box. Phrygian caps on Saxons is another one of those hotly contested historical topics that gets battled across academic papers, keyboards, and pints alike. Personally, I don’t find the evidence for their use all that compelling, but if you’re the kind of person who wants your models to be representative rather than fully accurate (we could have a similar discussion about grenadier bearskins being worn in the field during the American Revolution), then this is a good way for you to give your models some cultural faction flavor to make them instantly recognizable on the tabletop.

The remainder of the headgear is split between Late Roman “ridge helmets” and banded helmets without nose guards. Using one or the other of those you can push the kit earlier or later, respectively, as needed.

Credit: Wargames Atlantic

What It Isn't

The similarity across some of the poses and all of the clothing means that while this is an excellent kit to bulk out your existing forces, I’m not sure that most people will be satisfied building a large force using only the contents of this box. Sure, you could absolutely build out a 48-model SAGA warband using just this box, but the lack of armored torsos to mix in means that most of the differentiation will be the heads and spear/ax/sword.

Also, you’ll notice that I didn’t mention anything about bows or slings in the box. There aren’t any ranged weapons to draw from, and this leads to an even more limited mix among your troops. Speaking of missing weapons, there aren’t any two-handed weapons either. No Dane axes or longspears here. In my opinion, this is actually a major plus for the kit. The most frustrating part of assembling the WGA Conquistadors was matching up the left and right arms on the halberd troops.

Credit: InquisitorMoloko

What It Could Be

Now we get to the real meat of why you should buy this kit: it’s not just about what comes in this box, it’s the way that WGA kits combine and interact with each other like some sort of wargaming Voltron. The box mentions combining bits with the existing Lorica Hamata and Goth Warriors kits, as well as an upcoming Lorica Squamata set. I’m planning to swap sprues with Variance Hammer Eric to add some additional Irish spice to the mix and stretch everything a bit further. If I’m really feeling crazy, I might even see if I can take another stab at making 16th century Spanish Javelineers using shortspears. Combining parts from the Conquistadors, Light Cav, and Heavy Cav kits was such a delight and I can’t wait to give it a shot with the Dark Ages and related kits!

Left to Right: Footsore metal, WGA Dark Ages Army Builder, Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors Credit: InquisitorMoloko

To wrap things up we can use my favorite schema for such things: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

The kit is every bit as versatile as WGA says it is. It’s both generic enough to cover lots of factions and time periods, while being easily upgraded by drawing from their ever-expanding catalog. The cloth textures are pronounced in a way that makes them easy to paint, either by using Contrast-style paints (like I have for these photos) or a more traditional painting style with highlighting and washes.

I mentioned that many of the poses are a tad samey (even though arms and head positioning won’t make them look identical the way metal sculpts might), but one of the things that I love about this kit is that they’ve included a more casual standing pose. This one is perfect for sentries or guards in narrative scenarios, NPCs for your favorite RPG, or peasant farmers tending their crops and flocks.

The Bad

I very much appreciate that the kit didn’t have knives and pouches all over the belts, but I would have loved a couple more options on the weapon sprue to glue on. It’s a very minor thing, but I do think it might help to break things up just a little bit more and provide opportunities for more visual interest on the models. With the inclusion of belt pouches and a sling arm or two, a completely melee-focussed kit could do double duty for ranged as well.

The Ugly

I’m a big fan of every Wargames Atlantic kit I’ve messed with. Generally the quality of the casts is extremely high. The connection points to the sprue are often in low-impact places that won’t be seen once the models are assembled or are extremely easy to clean up, and seams are minimal. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen flashing on a WGA model.

Having said that, the box I was sent had an issue where roughly half of the sprues had one or two models with small defects that look like bubbles had formed in the plastic. Tiny holes are in the crotch area of some of the deepest folds on the tunics of the affected models. It’s a small defect, and easily fixed with some green stuff if that’s the sort of thing that bothers you, but it’s definitely the kind of thing that some folks won’t appreciate having to fix themselves.

It's tough to see, but there's a small hole around the crotch on the spear arm side. Credit: InquisitorMoloko

Verdict

In summary, while I know that there’s a ton of competition in the space of Dark Ages plastics these days, I do think this kit is a worthy entry. It does feel like it fills a couple of niches well:

Players can split the box for the smallest model-count wargames like Pillage.
Players who want to bulk out their existing forces for large games can do so for a low price (roughly $40 for 48 minis) and fast assembly.
Players who are already invested or interested in WGA’s related kits will love the cross-compatibility that this box will provide to stretch their purchases even further.

If the Dark Ages Army Builder sounds like something you’re interested in buying, don’t forget about our Wargames Atlantic affiliate link here!

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Tags: historicals | dark ages | wargames atlantic