Wargames Factory: Male Apocalypse Survivors reviewed!

This time we will take a look at the latest release from Wargames Factory, the Male Apocalypse Survivors! And before we continue this boxed set must be my personal favorite due to the amount of bits and the detail of the sculpts and used hard plastic. These 28mm plastic survivor miniatures are extremely useful for a whole array of wargamers as they can be used as zombie survivors, rioters, gangsters, African militiamen and so on. These multipart plastic miniatures certainly fill a significant gap. Enough talking up to the content of the boxed set.

The box 

As always the miniatures came in a sturdy cartonboard box excellently packaged to withstand the rough crossing of the Atlantic. This boxed set has some nice artwork and lay-out which cannot be compared with their older boxed sets.

Excellent artwork and useful information can be found on the back of the box.

The Apocalypse Survivor set contains three identical survivor sprues allowing you to assemble 30 multi-part miniatures. The detail on these miniatures is superb and par with the detail of Perry Miniatures and other plastic soldier manufacturers and has been significantly improved since their latest zombie vixen release (of which a review can be found here) As mentionned previously this boxed set only contains male survivors dressed in variety of clothing and in 10 different poses as you can see in the pictures I have added. 

Survivor sprue overview, see the added plastic bases.

The bodies including a not so in shape body, a businessman body and a police uniform body

The bodies including the body of a mechanic, businessman body and a youngster body which is a nice touch.

The bodies including the body of a muscular men and a matrix style body with seperate legs

The bodies including the two bodies of men wearing casual clothing.

The survivor sprue also contains a nice variety of 15 different heads and also contains a load of different weapons such as machineguns (M16, Ak47, ...), hand weapons, crossbows, grenades, baseballbats, grenadelaunchers, crowbars, chainsaws, shotguns, sniper rifles, rifles, ... I have added pictures of some of the weapons included on the survivor sprue and as you can see most of them come attached to arms. Opting for this way Wargames Factory made more sturdier miniatures but also decreased the options of which miniatures can be equipped with certain weapons. But you can also convert the arms a bit using a trusty stanley knife and some greenstuff.

Here's a close-up of some of the heads and arms that are included on the survivor sprue

On this picture you can see some of the added weaponry suc as the baseball bat, shotgun, M16, AK47 and a part of the crossbow. Above the weapons you can aslo see the seperate arms to be used to support the weapons.

The Apocalypse Survivor boxed set also includes one equipment sprue containing a whole arsenal of weapons and equipment for your survivors. Even if you have no use for the miniatures and need weapons for your projects it's worthwile to buy this boxed set or wait untill these sprue come available seperatly (not sure if this will happen but you can always try as the weapons are great). As said previously, this sprue also contains a load of different weapons such as machineguns (M16, Ak47, ...), hand weapons, crossbows, grenades, baseballbats, grenadelaunchers, crowbars, chainsaws, shotguns, sniper rifles, rifles, ... I have added pictures of the weapon sprue, so you can see how many weapons of each type you recieve when buying this boxed set.

Overview of the weapon spru showing all the weapons and equipment

Close up of the weapons including the M16's, AK47's and the equipment

Close-up of the other weapons such as rifles, shotguns, .. it must be said that there are much more automatic weapons than regular weapons such as hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols. Which is a shame as almost nobody own AK47 or other heavy weaponry here in Europe. Not sure about the amount of assault weapons available in the US but I guess they are still fewer in numbers compared with hunting weaponry and pistols.

A close up of the pistols, knives, grenades and canteens

As previously said the boxed set also contains 30 hard plastic bases with a street texture finish which you only need to paint and drybrush to achieve a nice street base look! My only complaints is that the miniatures are sometimes hard to attach to the bases due to the lack of integral pins to glue them to the bases. But is a minor complaint as I have assembled some and haven't stumble upon to much problems when glueing them on their base.

The assembly

The assembly of these miniatures is quite straightforward as all parts are numbered and you can easily connect the bodies with the right arms. But when changing arms and bodies among each other you may need to vile and cut some bits to make them fit. Before you add glue always dry fit first to avoid problems with non fitting parts ( as I have encountered). My only significant problem with this kit is that yoy can only fit a certain amount of arms to a body, this decreasing the number of poses you can achieve but even with this problem you have still a large amount of variation possibilities. I have added a picture of some survivors i have assembled (Ignore the strange head pose of the middle figure as that was my mistake).

As you can see excellent miniatures with great facial expressions armed with a nice assortment of weapons

Scale comparison

To make sure they fit your miniatures I have included a scale comparison of the survivors with some miniatures of other manufacturers. The size of the survivor is identical to those of the zombie vixens so in some pictures you must look at the Vixen miniature instead.

Wargames Factory: Vixen - Survivor - Vixen

Defiance Games Marine - WF Vixen - The Assault Group bomber - Foundry street violence miniature

Kallistra gangster - WF Vixen - GW Catachan captain - EM4 rebel

Painting

Interested how they can look painted? Here's a picture I've taken from the Wargames Factory website more can be found here.

They look great and as you can see some miniatures can also easily be used as rioters, African Militia and regular policemen

Conclusion

This Apocalypse Survivor set is the best plastic boxed set ever released by Wargames Factory, learning from their previous sets they have managed to supply us with well-detailled and cheap miniatures ready to be used in your modern and zombie games! Interested in purchasing such a greta boxed set? The current retailprice is $21.95 directly from Wargames Factory for the Americans while European wargamers can buy these from Wayland Games for £15.75.

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