Friday, September 6, 2013

Wargames Factory: Female Apocalypse Survivors Reviewed!


This time we will take a look at one of the latest release from Wargames Factory, the Female Apocalypse Survivors! This box has been created to supplement the already released Male Apocalypse Survivors of which you can find a thorough review here on my blog. If I’m not mistaken these female survivor miniatures were released at the large American wargame convention called GenCon. As with the male survivor boxed set this is one of the best boxed sets released by Wargames Factory due to the mind blowing amount of weapons, the detail of the sculpts and used hard plastic. 

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 has become the excellent new standard of their packaging. 

The box with some great artwork and pictures of the painted miniatures on the back.

The Female Apocalypse Survivor boxed set contains three identical survivor sprues allowing you to assemble 30 multi-part miniatures. The detail on these miniatures is splendid and equals the quality of both sculpting and used material of Perry Miniatures and other plastic soldier manufacturers. The quality of the kit is equal to the previosuly released Male Survivor boxed set as it looks like that at least some of the bodies of the male boxed set have been changed into female bodies if not all. As mentionned this boxed set only contains female survivors dressed in variety of clothing and in 10 different poses as you can see in the pictures I have added. 

Overview of the survivor sprue

Close-up of five body types

Close-up of the other 5 body types

The survivor sprue also contains a nice variety of 15 different heads and also contains a load of different weapons such as machineguns (Uzi’s, Ak47, M16,…) hand weapons, handbow, RPG’s, Golf clubs, shotguns,... 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.


Close-up of the added weapons and heads of the survivor sprue

Close-up of the added weapons and heads on the survivor sprue

The Female 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. As said previously, this sprue also contains a load of different weapons as you can see in the pictures. I must note that the equipment sprue is different to that of the male survivors as a serious amount of common pistols, shotguns, rifles and sniper rifles has been added on the sprue. This to better represent the more common weapons you find at home in both Europe and the US.

Overview of the equipment sprue containg enough weapons to man an army!

Close-up of the new Uzi's and RPG's

Close-up of the hand weapons

Close-up of the machineguns

Close-up of the machineguns and the whole array of shotguns and rifles

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! As with the previous plastic boxed sets my only complaint 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 stumbled 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. My only significant problem with this kit is that you 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. Here are the pictures of the assembled miniatures using the letter labels on the sprue.

My three favorites

As you can see you can achieve quite a number of excellent poses but note the similarity between these and the male set

Notice the RPG armed woman who has a very similar body as the out of shape guy from the male set

Small but deadly, great addition to the boxed set although I would also have preferred her armed with some other weapons or even unarmed. I also prefer this head option above the head with helmet as it doesn't seems right to wear such a heavy helmet for a child

Scale comparison

To make sure they fit your miniatures I have included a scale comparison of the survivors with some miniatures of other manufacturers. 

Female survivor - male survivor - zombie vixen - Defiance Games marine

Female survivor - Kallistra gangster - EM4 rebel - GW catachan captain

Female survivor - The Assault Group bomber - Foundry street violence - Offensive Miniatures riot police

Painting

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


Conclusion

This Female Apocalypse Survivor set is one of the better plastic boxed sets 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 great 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 £16.20.


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