originally posted to rec.games.miniatures.misc on January 10, 2000
Recently I placed an order with Bronze Age miniatures. I had liked what I saw in their 54mm figures and wanted a few samples of their 25mm line. First off, I'd like to say that their customer service is excellent. I bugged them with numerous emails, all of which were answered quickly and politely. They were even nice enough to send me a few photos from the 25mm line so I had an idea of what they looked like.
I saw a few figures that I was interested in, so I mailed them a check later that week. Turnaround was relatively quick, I received the miniatures less than 10 days after I sent in the check. I had ordered three figures, and was surprised to see that they had included a fourth as a bonus!
The figures arrived primed with a relatively fine coat of spray primer. I'm not sure if this is standard practice or if they just sent some of the display samples they had scanned for me earlier. It was difficult to tell if the miniatures had been cleaned or not. There were clear file marks on the bottom of the bases, but no visible marks elsewhere on the miniature.
First off, let me say that bronze is a very hard metal! This is probably not news to many of you but I've never worked with bronze before, so I didn't quite know what to expect. It would be almost impossible to make any modifications on these miniatures without the use of a dremel or a lot of work on a hand saw. On the upside, you're not going to get "prizefighter's nose" by dropping these figures.
For comparison, I decided to strip the paint from one of the figures to see what it looked like "nude" so to speak. If nothing else, these will really stick out in your parts box among all the lead and pewter...
I'm fairly pleased with the casting. There was no flash to speak of, and it was (relatively) easy to file off the faint mold line, in the few spots it mattered. It wasn't too difficult to file the few rough spots I discovered, but it was quite a challenge to cut off a bit of gunk that appeared between the feet of one of the figures. With a strong blade (I'd say preferably dull) and a lot of effort you can cut bronze, but it's not easy. Luckily that was the only real casting problem, and an easily ignorable one at that.
The sculpting of these pieces was very similar in style and quality to the Noir line by Lance and Laser. They are also quite similar in size (close to true 25mm) to that line. The sculpting varied quite a bit between pieces (it looked like two were older sculptings and two were more recent, at least judging by quality of sculpting and basing style) but was overall of moderate to good quality. The detail I can only describe as a bit "soft." I found that, even with the light coat of primer they had sprayed on, some of the fine detail was lost. Armed with that knowledge, I stripped two more of the figures, reprimed them (using thinned Ral Partha brush-on primer) and started painting.
Both of these figures were "inspired by" artwork on some old Battletech sourcebooks. It happens to be some of may favorite art, and I had been hoping to see similar miniatures sometime in my life. With that in mind, I approached these figures with mixed feelings, on the one hand glad to see somebody had sculpted them, on the other hand, worried that it wouldn't meet my expectations.
The first figure I worked on was the woman in the back with the RPG carried across her shoulders. This was the better of the two miniatures, and I'm almost certain it was sculpted much later than the other. This is the first place I saw some of the real problems with the primer. The folds in her shirt are very shallow, and were almost completely obscured by even the thin coat of primer they had applied.
In general, I was pleased with this figure. There was a good amount of detail, nice pose and she was well proportioned. The face is especially nice, though I didn't like the hair as much. The detail on the rocket launcher was fairly good (see below) I especially liked the meshwork on the sides of her skirt, though that was one place I really wanted to see crisper lines. Her sidearm and holster were kind of vague, probably the worst part of the model.
With that figure completed, I moved on to the second figure. This one was a bit more rough than the first. The arms and torso were sculpted with a lot more definition, which would make them easier to drybrush, but they look a bit too harsh in comparison. The face again was very nice, but the hair is just kind of boring. (I much preferred the hair on the original artwork) Perhaps the worst part of the figure was the equipment. The belt and pouches were vague at best, and the submachinegun was unfortunately very poorly detailed. (not nearly as nice as the rocket launcher on the first figure) I wasn't as happy with this figure as the first, but she still painted up better than I had expected.
In conclusion, I'm very happy with these figures. They're almost deceptive, as the quality doesn't really show until they're fully painted. I spent a very enjoyable vacation working on this mini-diorama and am very pleased with the results.
That said, the price ($5.00 US each) makes them a bit expensive to purchase in any quantity for gaming. I don't mind spending that much on some very specific figures (for dioramas and sometimes just because I like the figure) but I'd really love to see these cast in pewter (assuming that the price difference is based on the materials) and sold for somewhere in the $2-$3 range. In that price range, they would make a nice companion to some of the other smaller companies out there doing generic fantasy and science fiction 25mm figures.