Wargames Atlantic Foot Knights

I bought the Foot Knights model kit by Wargames Atlantic for a drop-in painting workshop I ran, and I liked them so much I held a few back for my own fantasy miniature collection. This is a review of the model kit's sculpt quality, ease of building, and painting. The quick reivew is simple: If you're looking for some highquality generic knights in chainmail with a small variety of weapon loadouts, this is a great kit.

Intended as knights of 12th and 13th century Europe, the Foot Knights kit includes 24 bodies, with options to equip them with weapons including swords, axes, falchions, maces, spears, and shields. There aren't enough of any one weapon type to equip all your knights with the same gear, so if you're trying to build a completely uniform that won't be possible. There is a bare head or two on each sprue, so you can see a human face on a few models if you're into that. I'm normally not, but I did build a pose with a knight holdin ghis helmet under his arm, as if surveying the battlefield, just to see how that set of options fit together.

Sculpts and buidling the models

I say it in every review of Wargames Atlantic model kits: Building is the worst part of the experience. I guess I just need more practise or something, but I like instructions, and failing instructions I want clear 1:1 (or larger) photos of each option so I can match parts. Wargames Atlantic doesn't bother providing either. I tried my best to build these knights according to the numbers on the sprue, thinking that maybe they had meaning, and I think some do, but I still ended up feeling like I was just desperately sticking arms on and melting enough plastic to trick myself into believing the pieces were meant to fit together. Maybe I was right, because the models got built and they basically look fine, but my inner self-critic is convinced I cheated fate.

Luckily, the only thing you have to stick together are the arms, the head, and optionally a shield and maybe a sheathed sword. The legs and torso is a solid moulded object.

There is a puddle base, which makes them easy to glue to the base of your choicem but also is a puddle base.

The sculpts are good. You can't quite see every last ringlet of mail, but you can tell it's mail where it's supposed to be mail, solid metal where it's meant to be metal, and cloth where it's meant to be cloth. The shields are pretty unspectacular, being just a solid piece of undecorated and untextured plastic. I guess they're meant to be a blank slate for heraldry transfers (not included in this kit) or some freehand painting, but it feels a little strange to me that there would be no studs or rims or something. Not a deal breaker, just something to be aware of.

Painting

I bought the Foot Knight kit because, well, there are 24 of them in a kit, and also I figured they would be a nice all-purpose fantasy miniature for my workshop. I was spot on. In terms of painting, this is definitely one of those exemplary prime/base/layer models. You could easily prime it with Lead Belcher or a silver spray and let that be the base coat, layering over the cloth and leather for basically a 2-step process. I didn't do that because I wanted my students to get some practise and also to be able to choose between silver and gold for the armour (I used gold because I'm using them as support for some Stormforge models.)

The knights are mostly pretty uniform. Some have a few more leather straps than others, and there's the one or two bare-head options, and the weapons are likely to be different from model to model, but it's basically the same model 24 times over (and I mean that in a positive sense.) That makes them easy to paint in batches, but there's also enough cloth and shield surfaces that you can also exercise the option to make each one unique through colour and heraldry.

Another winner from Wargames Atlantic

I could see using these knights either as rank-and-file soldiers in a fantasy wargame, or as enemies or heroes or a city watch in a D&D game, or as support troops for a fantasy hero. The knights are in dynamic poses, swinging their weapons with reckless abandon or maybe enraged precision. It's a really good kit if you just need some medieval soldiers. Grab a box of these and paint a dozen in one colour and the other dozen in another colour, and you've practically got a skirmish medieval skirmish starter kit. Or grab this box and a box of the Goblin Warband and you've got a full-scale fantasy battle ready to go.