I changed out the blade in my x-acto knife and went to work. A sharp blade is a necessity when working with plastic so don't skimp on this. I opted to build one sprue's worth of miniatures so for the Continental Militia that would be 10 models. The instructions are pretty good remembering that arms that share the same alpha numeric code go together and of course that alpha code will match the body (example there are two arms labeled E1, one left handed and one right handed and they fit to body E as a matched pair). First mistake of the evening, I cut all the bodies from the sprue so I could clean up the mold lines all at once (mold lines are typical for injected molded plastic and is easily removed with the edge of the blade with a scraping motion, avoid the use of files). Once I had all the bodies cut off and cleaned up I realized that I didn't really know which ones where which. I found myself referring to both the instructions and one of the other sprues to verify that I was working with the right body.
Just following the alpha numeric sequence will build up ten models pretty quickly. Now some of the arms are interchangeable, what I didn't check is if they matched the model's uniform or not. The hunting shirts aren't an issue but the civilian clothes might be. I would recommend building up one of the three sprues according to the directions as they are written.
Body A - Will accept arms labeled for A, B & D
Body B - Will accept arms labeled for A, B & D
Body C - Without more experimentation will only accept arms labeled for C
Body D - Will accept arms labeled for A, B & D
Body E - Will accept arms labeled for E, F & H
Body F - Will accept arms labeled for E, F & H
Body G - Without more experimentation will only accept arms labeled for G
Body H - Will accept arms labeled for E, F & H
Most of the arm variations simply are giving you a choice between giving the model a musket or a rifle.
You have a choice of heads wearing the round hat, the tricorn or the soft cap. They all have the same expression. While I understand why they did this I don't think it would have taken much effort to work in some facial expressions. I'm not fond of the tricorn simply because it looks a little odd when seen from above because of the way its molded.
The one issue I have is that the attachment point for the head is ill defined at best and because of the slope all of them will have a slightly head down look to them when looking straight ahead. When they are in a firing position it looks fine as it looks like the model is looking down their musket or rifle.
I would like to purchase some Fife and Drum miniatures and get a feel for how they will fit in with the Wargames Factory models. See if I can mix them or if they need to be in different units.
Here are some pictures of the results of the building process.
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| The box, although I really should have taken a picture of the back and not the front. |
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| The instruction sheet. I'm making notes on this as I go. |
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| Body F, kneeling and firing |
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| Body B, standing and firing. While I'm carefully cutting I did manage to break this gun barrel. It bothers me enough that I'll go in and replace the whole right arm. |
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| Body A, standing and firing. |
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| Body E, cocking. Note that the right arm in this case is not an "E" arm but an "H" arm. |
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| The first group as I work my way up the left side of the sprue |
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| Body G. Note the head down position created by the slope of the shoulders. |
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| Body H, there are two of these on the sprue, |
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| Body D, again there are two of these on the sprue. I went with the knit cap on the model on the right because I used all the round hat heads. |
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| Body C, again note the head down look. I tacked this one to a base since it wouldn't stand on its own. |
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| The second group as I worked my way up the right side of the sprue |
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| There are still a lot of pieces on there, lots of arms and heads. There are not a lot of accouterments options but that's okay with me. Fewer pieces to get broken or broken off. |
I built these pretty much straight from the instructions. I was a little frustrated with Body E because I was trying to build the version shown on the back of the package which you can't actually do with the "E" arms. That's when I figured out that the arms are more interchangeable than the instructions allude to although the box states that the arms are interchangeable. It was nice to learn that for a fact.
