This week we dive into the new plastic Peasant Levy (1100-1350) kit from Wargames Atlantic!
Disclaimer: This kit was provided to Goonhammer free of charge by WGA for review purposes.
At many points throughout history, organized, dedicated, professional military forces have sometimes been insufficient to accomplish military goals. When that happens, it has on occasion fallen to ordinary citizens to step up and fill the gap – often with little equipment and even less training. Whether it’s the Anglo-Saxon fyrd being raised to fend off marauding vikings or feudal levy supplementing defenders’ armies in the Hundred Years’ War, peasants have repeatedly been used to bulk out a medieval force.
With this new boxed set, Wargames Atlantic has given us medieval wargame enthusiasts the opportunity to do the same thing – bulk our own tabletop armies with inexpensive peasants!
“What’s in the Box?!?”
This kit contains enough parts to construct 30 miniatures. In the box are seven sprues, five of which are the basic levy sprue (each of which has 6 figures). The bodies are broken down into two parts – the legs up to the belt and the torso.
But the magic of this kit comes from the variety of heads (there are 12 per basic sprue) and weapon arms. Like most WGA kits, the arms come in associated pairs, clearly labeled on the sprue (e.g. arms C1 and C2 go together). As we have come to expect from these kinds of kits, the number of different weapon options is fantastic. There are sickles and grain-flails, pitchforks and pruning bills, axes and cudgels. It’s great!
There are also a good number of arms with bows and arrows in various states of ready/draw, and two pairs of sling arms round out your options for missile weapons. The inclusion of missile weapons is a nice touch, as it means this kit does double-duty in allowing you to create both melee and missile troops. If you play something like SAGA where your levy rabble can have different weapon options, this might save you from having to buy multiple different kits. This box would be a similar “one stop shop” for creating all of your levy, skirmishers, and missile troops for a Dux Britanniarum force as well.
The remaining two sprues in the box are “spear sprues,” with loads of paired arms holding either spears or glaives. Cleverly, this sprue is from Wargames Atlantic’s Foot Serjeants (1100-1320) kit, which is fully compatible with the peasant bodies. There are no heads or bodies on this sprue, and its only aim is to allow for more “professional” weapon options, as the basic sprue really only has farm implements for polearms. Some of the spears on this sprue are held one-handed in an overhand position, perfect for creating skirmishers armed with javelins. The folks at WGA really did cover all the bases here! One note about the arms on these two sprues; a good number of them have quilted armor or short upper sleeves of chainmail. Paired to unarmored torsos they give the impression of mail shirts worn under a surcoat. Depending on how flush with cash your feudal lord is, equipping peasants with mail might be a bit extravagant. But here too you have the option to give your peasants more of a “low-ranking men-at-arms” look, which is a nice touch.
In terms of quality, the sprues I got were extremely well cast – there is no flash and the mold lines on most of the pieces were so small as to be nearly invisible. The plastic is firm and takes to both cutting and filing well. It may be the case that these are still very new molds that have very little wear on them by this point, but the resulting cleanliness of cast was still pretty impressive.
Calling Forth the Fyrd (Assembling Your Levy)
Assembly of each figure is fairly straightforward, though as a comparison to some of the Victrix Dark Age kits (e.g. the Norman Infantry or Dark Age Archers), having each body come in two pieces adds an extra step to the assembly. While in theory this gives you more variability in the resulting models (as some of the torsos have cowls or no cowls, and one has a hood hanging down the back), in practice I’m not sure how much it buys you. For the most part, these peasants are wearing tunics and hose, so aside from very minor differences in the length of tunic or height of boot-tops, the presence or absence of a little material around the shoulders doesn’t really contribute much to a marked difference in look – though you can probably pump this difference up with your color choices when painting. It may also be the case that the decision to do the torsos as a separate piece hints at compatibility with potential kits to come – time will tell!
The variety of heads is nice – there are a few that are bare-headed and a few with cap helms (one of which is half-hidden under a hood – keep your eye out for it!) but most of the heads have some sort of hood, arming cap, or other skullcap. More than anything else the choice of headgear is what establishes the historical timeframe for this kit. While it’s still pretty broad (1100-1350) you won’t find any floppy chaperones or pointed tyroleans here.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the room – the arms. Each arm is separate, and while each pair of arms is well marked on the sprue with its corresponding mate, there were a couple of combinations that I had a devil of a time getting to line up properly. This led to some fiddling and filing and maybe a little cursing as I tried to get hands lined up with wrists lined up with shoulders. While I managed to make everything fit in the end, this was still a teensy bit frustrating. I’m kind of, uh, “detail oriented” when it comes to this stuff though, so your mileage may vary.
But this frustration was a small price to pay for the sheer variety available to you. I did my first batch of peasants as “levy of last resort” – out of 12 figures I used only 1 spear and 1 glaive. These dudes really look the part, like they just rolled out of the barn or the orchard with whatever was handy, ready to defend their home village against any marauders. They just ooze character!
In terms of size, they compare will with other medieval ranges. They are a hair slimmer than comparable Victrix miniatures, but no substantially so. They’re a little beefier than some of the Footsore metals, being both a hair taller and a little broader. In either case, mixing them with miniatures from other ranges – especially when massed up – should work well.
Painting
Given that these figures are in tunics and hose, there’s not a lot of greebly bits or details to paint. Belts (some of which are simple hunks of rope) and buckles are probably the smallest details. Though the clothing doesn’t have quite as much “flow” (creases and folds) as similar Victrix kits, I actually think these WGA peasants look more realistic as result. Though there are more flat surfaces, there are still plenty of rumples – especially in the cowls around their shoulders. There’s certainly enough to take washes or contrast paints well, so painting these guys up is pretty easy.
Much like the examples on the box, I chose to go with a very muted, earthy palette – browns, greens, greys, and yellows. An occasional splash of burgundy or orange gives some nice accents. I was going for poor dudes who couldn’t afford fancy dyes, but that’s purely a stylistic choice – the idea that the middle ages were drab and colorless is a common misconception, so don’t be afraid to go nuts and deck these guys out.
For these miniatures I used the “grid and shuffle” method I previously described for painting early war ACW Confederates. Though I was only painting 12 minis at a time, I used a 4×4 grid to get more color variation into the mix. As a household full of RPG players, I had a D20 close-at-hand to randomize which four grid cells would be empty at each step of the process. The end result is a unit that very much looks like a bunch of guys who were marched straight from the fields to the battle with whatever clothes they happened to be wearing (and farm implements they happened to be carrying!).
Final Thoughts
All told, I think this is a great kit. For $40 plus shipping you get 30 dudes, a fantastic value per figure. As mentioned, the number of weapon options is impressive and the inclusion of missile weapons is great. If you were playing SAGA, a single box would give you the ability to do two complete 12-man units of levy, all either armed with bows or melee weapons (or one of each if that’s what you need). And you’d still have 6 figures left over to pad out a unit of warriors. I’ll be fielding these for Dux Britanniarum, where this single box will give me enough to cover both the levy for a starting Roman-British force (3 groups of 6) as well as have 2 more groups available for reinforcements as my warlord’s warband grows.
The compatibility with other kits in WA’s “Age of Chivalry” range is also a winner. The inclusion of two sprues of polearm arms from the Foot Serjeants kit is fantastic, as it gives you the option to assemble your levy as less heavily armored men-at-arms. It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a kit that has as much flexibility as this box offers. Bravo, Wargames Atlantic!
If you’d like to pick up this kit and help out Goonhammer in the process, go ahead and use our handy affiliate link to raise a fyrd of your own!
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