You’re minding your own business in the middle of a Golden age of science, art, discovery, literature, medicine and bickering between city states when suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a ton of unwashed, illiterate and frankly barbaric Franks turn up, capture Jerusalem and proclaim that they’re staying now, actually. What are you going to do? Time to round up the levies and get to miniature battling, with the Victrix Islamic Infantry.
Before reviewing this kit, lets thank Victrix for sending it over, with the transfers too!
It’s getting hard to review Victrix kits, you know. I can’t think of one I’ve reviewed, or built for myself, that hasn’t been a wholehearted “smash that buy button immediately” since the French Dragoons, and that was only because they look longer to build than I usually like to spend on a human scale model. Victrix make fantastic kits, in high detail, at a great price, for all sorts of periods. The Islamic Infantry, the latest release in the growing Medieval range is just that – bloody lovely detail, hugely modular, absolutely fantastic. However, reviews should be a bit more than just “what a lovely kit” so I went and did my homework. Seriously. It’s not often that you like a kit enough to spend several weeks reading up on Islamic textiles in the 7th-13th centuries, but there we are. Let’s dive into the review.
What You Get
The Islamic Infantry bag comes with 48 highly detailed multi-part models suitable for Islamic, North African and Spanish forces from around 800 to the height of the Crusades. They’ll stretch to the early conquests of Islam on the earlier end of that scale and do for tribesmen and soldiers less up to date with their fashion choices on the top end. They’ve been designed to rack up against the Victrix Medieval range, so there are very much made with the Crusades in mind and they’re perfect for that with no adjustments or thought needed on which hats/helmets are period appropriate.
You get a solid eight models per sprue, with a vast range of options. Unlike some of Victrix’s other kits, here you’re getting your archers and spearmen/swordsmen in the same bag, and each frame contains arms for eight spearmen, eight sword/axemen and six bows. To round it up you then get two sets of musician arms (drummer and nafir player), so you can make all three armament choices for every single model as long as some of your archers play instruments too. There’s an astonishing 22 beautifully sculpted heads on each sprue, giving you loads of choice between helmets, turbans and long flowing hair, with turbans in several well researched styles, which I find particularly impressive.
If there’s one downside of the kit it’s that to make up the 48 models you’re getting the same sprue six times. With something this modular that shouldn’t be a problem in terms of producing visual variety, but if I was attempting to hammer through all 48 at once, I think it would get pretty repetitive!
Building
As you’d expect by now, the build process is pleasant and straightforward. Victrix have really upgraded their instructions with this kit, so even if you’re not adventurous with your posing and component choice you can follow clear and simple instructions for every model.
The Victrix website proudly proclaims that the spearmen can be made as archers and vice versa, with two bodies per sprue “for” archers. Liking to test this out, I immediately just chopped off some randomly chosen archer arms and stuck them on spearman bodies. They do work! I think I’ve created one or two pretty out there poses, but the arms certainly are interchangable, you might just want to put a little more thought into your choices when using archer arms on some of the “spearmen” bodies. Unlike some other Victrix kits though, you could probably blind build at least six of the bodies without paying attention – the only exception is the bare-chested model where there’s a unique arm joint.
Design
We’ll come back to that bare-chested guy in a minute, but first let’s talk general design. I tend to say “Victrix kits are pretty accurate”, but I’m helped there by the fact that I either know what things should look like, more or less (Napoleonics), or that picture evidence is readily available (the 12mm Soviets). Here, it was hard to assess these quickly. I expected robes, maybe a bit of quilting, lots of cloth – Victrix love their cloth folds these days – and that’s what I got. But digging deeper, I’m impressed with how accurate these seem to be to what might be termed “middle class” wear of the period – something city militia might be wearing, rather than Faris, Noblemen or Mamluks.
There’s some fantastic accurate detail – most of the tunics have bands around the arms clearly sculpted on, which you could fill with calligraphy, as in the examples here. Twill bands where the tunics draw together are present and correct, sashes and shawls show movement and light fabrics, not heavy european style wool, and pants, turbans and what you can see of undergarments all seems to be dead on. If you’d like to check up on that, there’s a lot of resources available – I found Richard Cullinan’s blog very useful. The sculpted fabric is often deeply creased and folded, something that I at first put down to a flex on the part of the sculptor, but actually it shows well that these are light and flexible fabrics of linen, cotton, silk and mulhan (silk and cotton blends) and makes Islamic fabric look markedly different to the stiffer Crusader cloth. It’s a lovely, lovely touch and was a real “Oh man wow” moment for me. It made painting a pleasure, and washes, contrasts and bright colours go on easily, with all that cloth providing a lovely surface to work on.
There’s one bare chested pants-only guy on each sprue, which I’ve heard a couple of mixed things about. From my reading, the Abbasid Caliphate was pretty big on men wearing something – a tunic, thawb or at least shawl – over their undergarments, so it seems a little odd to have this one guy without much on. He’ll stand out – six of them in a box – compared to the others, so in terms of the build it’s a little odd too. Having said that, the once-living legend that was Usama ibn Munqidh describes warriors going into battle bare chested, so there’s certainly a place for him.
Comparisons
I’ve ended up assembling a fairly massive Islamic army now from virtually everyone making Islamic figures, and can say with a fair degree of confidence that these will work well with just about any range. They’re on the larger end of 28mm, and if you’re concerned about that slice of the puddle bases to save yourself 2mm, but in terms of weapons, width and shields they’ll mix in well with Perry. They are noticably chunkier than Footsore though, so I wouldn’t recommend mixing both ranges in.
Having spent a lot of time these last few months getting examples of every Islamic range I can find, I do feel that it’s worth saying something about other plastic kits. The Gripping Beast Islamic infantry has been the old reliable go to for quite some time, but it has been showing its age for a while and now, well, it’s just completely superseded. There’s genuinely no point buying it – as much as I enjoyed building and painting mine – because the Victrix kit does exactly the same thing, better. There’ll still be a place for metals – Perry’s slightly worried looking sentries and Footsores’ careful, attentive archers still hold up, but for the majority of your Islamic miniature needs, this kit is all you need.
Transfers
Rounding the set out, as always, are an accompanying set of transfers and another of Banners from Little Big Men Studios, designed for the Victrix models. Have we ranted enough on Goonhammer about how you should pick these up alongside a Victrix kit? Let me do so again!
They’re impeccably designed, easy to apply and look great. Islamic banners and shields are incredibly complicated to freehand, particularly if you’re not up on your arabic calligraphy, so do yourselves a favour and pick up a set. Or two. Or three. They’re fantastic. The only problem is that I put one banner on the wrong way around.
Conclusion
If you’re getting Islamic miniatures for the Crusades – Saga, The Barons’ War Outremer, Soldiers of God, To the Strongest, Lion Rampant, absolutely anything you can think of – you should buy this kit. If you’re thinking of Saga Age of Crusades and want to play Moors, Saracens or Mutatawwi’a, you probably must. Simple as. It’s really nice, you get a ton for the price, it’s as accurate as anything else out there and someone clearly put a lot of love into sculpting it. It’s great! Can’t wait for the Islamic cavalry – if they’re anything like as good then it’ll be one hell of a kit.
There’s a final bit of good news for you Trench Crusade fans too – Victrix’ 28mm scaling, with a tiny little bit of help from a built up base – just about works for 32mm components. If you want a base to kitbash your Azebs, here it is!
If you’d like to pick up this kit and support Goonhammer while you’re at it,why not do it through our affiliate link?
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.
