Thank you to Wargames Atlantic for providing a box of their Classic Fantasy: Guards for review. If you’d like to pick up this kit and support Goonhammer while you’re at it, get it through our affiliate link.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do since I was little was to have a nice, stacked cabinet of terrains and miniatures. A trove I could pluck out entire villages and their inhabitants from, or encounters on the road. Something to help me realise the images in my head to (28mm scaled) reality.
Working abroad for several years put that goal on hold (travelling with miniatures is bad enough when you’ve only got a few) but now that I’m home I’m finally making progress on a promise a littler me made to himself, and it all starts with this kit here.
The Kit
You’ve got a DM’s dream here – four repeating sprues of six bodies on each for a total of twenty-four guards with enough variety in head and equipment that you would struggle to make exact copies of each unless you were trying too. Each sprue has a split body that comes with a cloak so you can section off squads with sergeants or captains, or use them as a base to make your own character.
You won’t find anything too crazy on these sprues – no firearms, nothing whacky or wizardly. (aside a loose goose on each sprue and a chest that might be a mimic) Everything here is meant to fall squarely into a more medieval or historical fantasy setting. You’ve got polearms, swords, maces and axes that come in ready for action poses or at-rest poses for guards walking around on patrol.
What you will find are extra bitz galore to decorate each model with to make sure each model feels individual. There’s a quiver for the two ranged weapons you get per sprue, coin pouches for your tollmen, shields for your women-at-arms, and chain-whips and manacles (and their keys!) for your man-catchers.
Body-types are nice and varied, with some bodies that are chunkier than others and some that are much slimmer – the box hints that these are for the female heads but I just found heads fit mostly on where I put them. You can represent some real diversity this way.
Scale-wise, they’re reasonably chunky but still well-proportioned for painting. These are 28mm scale models that should fit in at any table alongside other miniatures you might be using for your players from other manufacturers working in the same scale.
One thing to note, as it’s something I’ve not really encountered much before, is that every model comes attached to a ‘puddle base’ which makes some basing options quite fiddly and annoying without chopping them off. You could buy Wargame Atlantic’s own bases (and before you do I recommend reading Goonhammer’s review on them!) and be fine, but I envisioned my guards walking on a cobblestone road around their city and it didn’t work unless I cut them off. It’s not a hard process but it is certainly annoying, and some of my poor guards have had impromptu amputations at the foot I’ve had to hide or just live with.
As a kit to represent generic flavours of armed, organised people in a fantasy setting these do the job exactly how you would want them too. I tried to steer one or two models in a more sinister direction, picturing a highwayman or a cut-throat, but I think they look a bit too well organised and clean to come across as brigands without kitbashing them. You might look into crossing them with the villager kit to create a real hodgepodge, irregular force.
Construction
This is a dead simple kit that doesn’t need instructions. Which is good because it doesn’t come with any! With a single exception, every body comes with two flat joints for the arms and one for the head.
That one exception is the fancier body that comes with the cloak – it comes split at the waist so you need to affix its legs. This is most likely going to be the model that will look the most ‘samey’ unless you source another set of legs from another kit as otherwise there’s only a single pair. It was my least favourite too because I could never get the seam to sit flush which created a rather glaring gap until I properly sanded it, and even then it’s still noticeable.
Some of these pieces are thin but not terrifyingly so. I never snapped anything just by clipping it off the sprue and when I did it was only the manacles. Mould lines weren’t a massive issue for me either – they’re pronounced enough to find and you’d struggle to break anything while scraping them off, and some just weren’t worth me caring about like on the inside-leg.
If you were just using these as gaming pieces to fill a table for your campaigns you could really just focus on getting rid of the lines on the head and arms and you’d be fine. You can construct ten of these in about a half-hour if you were going assembly line style, and I think that’s a really important quality all on its own.
Most weapons will fit onto their shoulders with only a slim gap you could easily fill if you wanted too. My most major struggle was getting the shield onto a models’ arm in a ready-position, as well as some of the other accessory bits like the coin purse. In the end, I just sanded down certain parts of the model to create a wider area for glue. I think this is probably the intention but I can really see how this would be frustrating for someone who hasn’t got the experience (or maybe the confidence) to consider that an option.
My most major gripe with these models is that they seemed to have intended equipment sets with them. One of the models has this glaring, pin-prick hole in the back you’d clearly cover up with the quiver or something and I just chose not to because it didn’t fit the equipment I already gave him. I just intend to use these models to fill out scenes, so their backs looking as good as the front isn’t of major importance to me but it still is a let down.
Painting
Speed paints was the name of the game for me here. I want these guards to fill out the backgrounds for photos of miniatures I want to take centrestage. Each sculpt is characterful and well worth effort but I went for punchy, effective, and most importantly quick approaches starting from a black prime, an airbrush zenithal of white ink, and speed paints on top of it.
You’ll notice that some of these have some really ugly black patches randomly scattered throughout, and that’s all to do with me. For some reason my ink just never cured, even after a day, and got constantly reactivated by my paints. The advice after a zenithal with ink is to varnish but of all my years doing the technique the way I do, I’ve never had too until now. A lesson learned, either way.
Luckily, these models still look fantastic with just some contrast and some bits of detail picked out. I based them with some cobblestones I made up out of Milliput, similar to what I do for my Age Of Sigmar armies (i just love the idea of fantasy battles taking place in cities sue me), which are super easy to make and easier to paint with some washes mixed right on the base. I mixed some with some mud texture to create a worn vibe as well.
Overall, I’m super happy with how these models look for the time investment I put into them and I can see anyone achieving a similar result. (Just varnish your ink or use a stronger paint for a zenithal if you go that way.)
To Arms!
This is a solid kit with a solid, not overbearing, amount of detail that you can quickly deploy onto a table to fill out your cities, towns, and villages for your D&D, Pathfinder, or equivalent medieval fantasy game. You’re going to get a lot of use from this kit alone but combine and bash it together with the Villagers kit and you’ll stretch it much further.
If you’re a DM, you won’t regret this purchase for how reusable they are. If you’re a player, you’re going to love pilfering weapons to represent your more martial characters and with the flat joints you’re not going to struggle to magnetise some arms for different gear sets.
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.
