Warlord Games Veteran Grenadiers review

Tonight I'm looking at Warlord games Veteran grenadier set. These figures have been available for a few months now, and I've finally gotten around to writing up the review!

The Figures
The set contains 10 metal figures, wearing a variety of uniform suitable for representing German soldiers from 1945 onwards. Although billed as Heer veterans they could at a pinch also be painted as Waffen SS. 
Each soldier is wearing very light fighting order, consisting of a bread bag, waterbottle, and ammunition pouches for the MP44 (StG44) assault riffle that he carries.  Some are also wearing Zeltbahn ponchos, that could also be buttoned together to make a tent. 
Uniforms are very accurate, and I really like the light order that they wear as this is the most frequently seen way of wearing field equipment seen in photos of the period. 

Each figure has a separate head, with 7 in helmets, and 3 in M43 forage caps.It's worth spending a bit of time matching heads to figures, as some of them work better with particular bodies. A couple of the faces I wasn't to keen on, however once they were on the figures and painted they have since grown on me. Some of the helmets also have molded on foliage as well, which further reinforces the 'in the field' look of the models.

Figures are clean and crisply moulded, and I found clean up to be very quick and hassle free. 

10 25mm MDF bases round out the sets contents.




Painting

I decided to paint these figures in Heer uniform, as I want to field them as Volksgrendiers alongside the new plastic set. 

As a base colour I use Vallejo's Russian uniform for my field grey. Reflective green is used for helmets, pouches and gaiters, whilst I use middle stone for the bread bags. 

For the splinter pattern camo I use a base coat of khaki, highlight and shade this, then use Vallejo either Flat Earth or Leather brown, (depending how dark I want to go), to do the bulk of the angular disrutpive pattern. Onto this I then paint smaller patches of reflective green.  Once the camoflage pattern is in place, I give the camo item a thin glaze of a mix of army painter soft tone and green inks, then do some highlights of the base colour mixed with increasing amounts of pale sand. Splinter camo is very time consuming, but can be striking! 

I wrote a guide that can be accessed on the Warlord Games site called Painting Ostfront Germans that has some more reference photos and also a list of Games Workshop alternative colours if you can't access Vallejo.

Basing

To texture my bases I use Vallejo Dark Earth texture paint, and layer this on fairly thickly. On top of this I 
Use PVA to attach clusters of course olive green flock, and Gale Force 9's dead grass. Once this had dried I decided to add some snow, so mixed Vallejo water effect with baking soda and painted this on as a thin paste into selected areas. I didn't want to give the effect of deep winter, going more for an early spring vibe. 
To add colour, I also added a few dead leaves. I've no idea where I got these from, so they are being carefully horded on my projects! To finish the figures off I also added some green leaves onto the foliage of the figures helmets.




Conclusion

A great and characterful set of figures. Retailing at £15 for the set this works out at £1.50 per figure, and also includes the base, unusually for historical figures, yet very welcome. The separate head system also allows for more variety so you could probably get a couple of boxes without getting excessive variety if you wanted too. 
The figures also fit perfectly in size with the rest of Warlords range, and could be used to increase the amount of assault rifles in your existing units as well if you wished.

Warlords figures can be purchased from all good games stores, and direct from their webpage here, 
As ever, more of my work can be viewed at Volley Fire Painting