So heading over to Outremer sounds interesting, doesn’t it? You’ll need miniatures though if you’re going to fight skirmishes in the complex, shifting and compelling world of the Crusades-era Levant. Luckily, along with the Barons’ War Outremer supplement, Footsore have a significant range of Frankish and Islamic miniatures to help out.
The Footsore models in this article were provided to Goonhammer for the purposes of review.
Footsore launched the models and rules for Outremer via Kickstarter in 2022 – a phenomenally successful campaign that led to numerous (fulfilled!) stretch goals. The success of the Kickstarter allowed for the Outremer supplement to include additional lists, siege rules and dramatis personae, and for a miniatures range that ended up significantly larger than originally planned! That’s all to the good – while there are a lot of manufacturers making Crusading Franks (and Crusade-appropriate Feudal Europeans), there is a real dearth of high quality Islamic miniatures in 28mm, and that’s exactly what you get here in the Footsore range.
Overall
For the purposes of this review we’ll treat the range as one collection, as it is on Footsore’s website, but mainly focusing in on the Islamic models for their variety and relative rarity. I haven’t seen every model in the Outremer range – just a representative sample – so please do let me know if there’s a model I don’t show a picture of that particularly slaps (or sucks). Overall, Footsore sculpts are high quality, highly detailed and well proportioned. Hands, faces, weapons, armour and clothing textures are all crisp and well put together, with very minimal cleanup required. There’s the occasional mold line in a difficult place like over the fingers of the hand or along the face, but compared to other metal ranges these are few and far between.
Detail is really great, the very top end of metal historicals sculpting, making these a real pleasure to paint. Armour textures are done very well, whether leather, lamellar, mail or quilted, and the numerous flowing robes, turbans, head wraps, surcoats and other cloth textures are a lovely contrast to the hard edges of weapons and armour. They’ve clearly been sculpted with a lot of attention to clothing from the period and with careful reference to example images – some identifiably from relevant Osprey guides!
Facial detail really cranks up the quality of the sculpts, and you can see a clear improvement even from slightly older Footsore models. Every model really is a character here, with excellently craggy faces, head wrappings and facial hair. They look great, but all that raised detail also makes them really fun to paint, and I managed to get good looking results out of even the simplest highlights.
Scale and Comparisons
Crusaders
The Crusader range is bolstered and complemented by the general Barons’ War range, so all the knights, sergeants and bowmen will work in both. There’s a lot of 11th-14th century models out there, and I would say that Footsore compares favourably to everything I’ve picked up to compare. There’s clear comparisons to be made with the Footsore and Wargames Atlantic Foot Knights as part of the range – the metals are generally a little taller, thinner and the detail is finer, though mixing metals and plastics won’t be noticeable at tabletop distance.
The dynamism of the Knights, Sergeants and Pilgrims really stands out compared to older plastic and metal ranges, and they’re far preferable to kits like the Fireforge Sergeants. If you have plastic (or metal) equivalents from other ranges though, don’t despair – these will fit in well.
Mounted Knights suffer a little in comparison to the stellar Victrix Mounted Knight kit, though with smaller proportions and even more realistic scaling, if you’re after mounted Knights that fit in with true 28mm and 25mm ranges, the Footsore ones are well worth picking up. Even if you’re drowning in Victrix Knights, the Crusader range offers a lot of character – I really like my Knights of St Lazarus, with their understated but obvious leprosy.
Forces of Islam
There’s substantially fewer Islamic miniatures out there and those that are around are often ancient sculpts, so the Outremer range represents a massive expansion of possibilities. The most likely kits you’ll come across are the Gripping Beast plastics, where the detail and character of the Footsore range is a straight upgrade for infantry and cavalry.
I am aware that these scale photos don’t start at zero – apologies! I realised far too late to take new shots!
The difference is greatest in the Heavy cavalry, where the mounted Mamluks from Footsore are among the best metals I’ve seen in a while. Light Cavalry, being a little less adorned, will fit in well with other ranges.
The most direct comparison in metal is in the Perry Miniatures Crusades range. I don’t think there’s a lot of manufacturers who can go toe to toe with the Perrys but I think Footsore edge out the infantry and match the cavalry at least. The ranges scale well together and complement each other – would definitely advise mixing these up!
The last major comparison is with the Fireforge plastics where the Bedouin infantry form a core component of many miniature Islamic armies. This is a sidegrade and a different style – the Bedouin will look phenomenal ranked up, but individually they’re quite oddly proportioned and very “heroic”. Your taste may vary but mixing both ranges together looks a bit strange to me.
One notably absent range here for comparison is the Gripping Beast metals – unfortunately I have no Saracens from them in my collection, but Footsore tend to be longer, lankier and overall finer scaled than Gripping Beast metals generally.
Let’s Talk Horses
There’s a lot of mounted models in the range, so it’s good to know that the horses are generally well modelled. With a restricted range of poses in metal, they’re all well done – every horse at a realistic trot, with excellent facial, tack and saddlecloths (saddles are integrated into the model) and well-sculpted tails and manes. I think if you went for full 8-12 strong Saga units you’d start to notice the repetition in poses (two for heavy Islamic cavalry, wider selections for light), but they are generally good horses.
The caveat is that the cleanup process on horses is occasionally difficult, and a couple of mine arrived with a fair bit of flash. I’d guess because the horses are shared over several kits the molds are being used more and wear out quicker. Theyre not flashed to a dealbreaking extent, but it’s worth spending time cleaning up each one. There’s one horse (with the Crusader Knights) where it looks like the flash has completely consumed one leg – if you get that one, don’t worry, it hasn’t – the hoof is partially under the caparison. Amusingly, when the Footsore customer services pointed this out to me when I emailed in, the accompanying picture was called “that horse.jpg” – clearly a known issue!
Spear Hands
Personally I’m a fan of metal models in my historicals, so the usual downsides of metals (single pose minis, etc) don’t really count for me when I’m looking at a metal range. However, there is one key issue with some of the models – particularly on the Islamic side of things – that does come down to making them out of metal: spear hands. Hands holding spears in the Outremer range, whether mounted or foot, require drilling out the hands in order to mount separate spears. That’s not such a big issue – a sharp drill bit and some patience and you’re sorted. I messed up a few of mine, drilling through the side of the hands – because I had neither. Unfortunately what does become an issue is the spears provided with the models. As mentioned above, these are on the slightly softer end of metal casts, and the realistically thin spears suffer for it. Even carefully packed in their plastic bags and cushioned well in the delivery, every single supplied spear arrived with me significantly bent if not broken. I attempted to straighten several out, and broke more in the process. I wish they’d been supplied with brass rod instead, and you can see the slightly odd results of me using what I had lying around to fix the problem below:
In a couple of places I simply removed the hands and replaced them with spare era-appropriate spear holding hands from plastic kits. This was only a minutes’ extra work for each model, but it was a bit of a disappointment. If you’re buying spear-armed models (and you should, the mamluks in particular are stunning), be prepared to supply your own spear hands.
Price
The standard price for Barons’ War Outremer models is £9-10 for two Cavalry or four infantry. At that they’re quite competitive with other high quality metal ranges (such as the Perry Islamic armies), albeit on the higher end. While the available plastics are of course cheaper, at present your options are fairly limited, so you’re paying more for significantly higher sculpt quality and wider variety.
Building for Barons War Outremer is still economical – especially if you go down the heavily armoured and bristling with weapons Mamluk cavalry route where your points will really start to add up. Two packs of Mamluks, a Commander and some infantry is a small but viable force for Barons War, and as you play and pick up the rules you’ll be able to specialise in whichever way the hugely varied Outremer list interests you.
A four point SAGA force will be relatively expensive if you go entirely down this route. Footsore does have a great deal on a four point Saracen force using their older Armies of the Caliphate range (at time of writing on for £57) though, so that’s definitely a good option. I think if you want to pick these up for Saga you’re best off getting your hearthguards here and picking up cheaper, much less nice, Gripping Beast plastics for your horde of horse mounted warriors. A unit of Hearthguard made from Military Order knights (for Crusaders and Milites Christie) or Mamluks (for Saracens) and one of the many Commander options, along with metal warriors units is a solid chunk of high quality metal you can anchor the rest of your force around.
Hitting the Table
Some very small issues aside, I think it’s fair to say the Footsore Islamics are currently the best available option for the period. The Crusaders are lovely – well scaled, dynamic and highly detailed. Islamic armies are thinner on the ground, and a high quality, complete range for them is a fantastic resource. Whether you go all in on a full metal army or mix in cool looking packs into plastic, picking some up for Outremer campaigns in any game system is a solid recommend.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
