Santa Wars
Reviewed by Steve Crofts
Wargames Supply Dump
Santa Wars
Reviewed by Steve Crofts
First Thoughts
Oh look it’s Santa…. And he’s got a gun? Interesting!
Snowmen…. Armed to the teeth!
What’s this about?
The answer is, they are some new minis on the market from W.S.D. and if you see them you won’t believe your eyes!
I was given a good assortment for review, Mr and Mrs Santa, the Christmas Fairy, Snowmen and Jack Frost.
What are they like ? well first inspection showed that the figures had painting potential, cut is good as is the detail on the minis the only thing I didn’t like were the eye recesses, as they had no real eye detail, and the fingers on some of the minis did look a little big, apart from that, the figures are pretty good.
Apart from the two observations above, the detail on the figures is of an acceptable standard, buttons, carrots, (yes I did say carrots!), pieces of coal, all are there…
The clothing is depicted well, from the hang of the cloth on Santa’s coat to wool on the Snowmen’s scarves. The detail on the scarves is very nicely done and even has the knot and tassels depicted.
Each of the characters have been, in my opinion, well thought out and a nice touch with posing has been put into the individual minis.
One of my favourite minis in this set has to be Mrs Claus, why? Well the mini has a really nice amount of character sculpted into it, her small round glasses, bushy dress and double barrelled shot gun give her the, “Home on the Range” type look and her saying something in a sweet but mean voice like…” I’ll git you yar peski Varmint!”… type of thing, excellent mini!
Jack Frost comes across as a cold and calculating type mini, his head slightly dipped and his finger pointing forwards to show his minions where he wants the attack to go in.
I’m quite impressed with these as you can probably tell!
Flash
Not a lot of cleanup is necessary, and only slight mould lines were visible, which were quite easily cleaned up.
Painting
Now all I can say is that the minis I selected for painting, were first of all different, and quite fun to paint I thought that the lack of detail in the eye socket may cause a little trouble but it didn’t, the eyes being able to be painted in and dotted.
I felt that due to the snowmen being mainly white I’d go for a garishly bright scarf to help break this up, and with the carrot nose and lumps of coal I think the overall effect of the paint job looks quite effective.
Jack being cold and calculating I thought I’d play around a little and give Mr nasty a blue skin, which with the Dark Blue suit and his white hair, I think I got the cold feeling over, added to this were a few white icicles around the hems of the jacket bottom, collar and cuffs just finished off the look.
Great fun!
Question time!
What gave you the idea for creating Santa Wars?
It sounds a bit sad really, but for years I've wanted a Santa with a gun! (I've since discovered that there others out there but at the time couldn't find one) I've always lived in three bed semi's so the only real time there's an excuse for the big dining room table to be up to it's full size (with out it being in the way and listening to constant moaning about it being in the way is, Christmas) so after Xmas dinner when the table was out and the (slightly gravy stained) white tablecloth was on it, while everyone else watched the queens speech I'd be sitting thinking "I should be playing a game on that", White cloth (see snow), Xmas in the air, it really grew out of that.
Santa was the first full figure I ever sculpted thinking that I'd just do him, but on taking him to my local club a few other people said they would like one as well, along with other suggestions for characters (some too sick to even consider I must say).
Are you intending to expand the range further and if so what are you thinking of releasing next?
There are another seven minis at the caster as we speak, and they should hopefully be out before "Salute" in April, these are four Elves (the short type with pointy hats, not Tolkiens version), two more snowmen and a "Snowbeast" (a Yeti type thing).
After that I'm not sure what'll come next but Reindeer and Sleigh's spring to mind.
Have you a set of rules for these minis?
The story behind this is that a chap in New Zealand http://www.taskforceproductions.com (Gordon Roach) ordered some of our Dick Garrison figures, then wrote to me with a view to doing a supplement for his "We can be heroes" set of rules to cover these figures, so I offered to send him some more figures for that and at the same time sent him some of the Santa stuff as well, he now has the supplement for the Santa figs up on his web-site as a free PDF file http://www.taskforceproductions.com/forum/index.php?s=03a3d5f8a7503602549936441ae3bd89&act=ST&f=85&t=1018&st=0 (the Dick Garrison one is still in development). We now stock these rules ourselves and usually carry a stock of the supplements with us at shows, I had planned to have a go at a set of rules myself but probably couldn't have done as good a job as Gordon has anyway.
Have you any ideas for a selection of scenarios for use with these figures and if so where will they be available?
There are a couple of scenarios in the supplement, but I do hope to do a couple of scenarios myself, and these will probably either be up on the web-site or in Raganrok (the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers journal) if they get published!, these will again be for the "We can be hero rules".
Have you any other, shall we say, “Alternative”, games in mind?
Ideas are not really a problem at the moment, money and time are! I want to get more of the Santa and Dick Garrison stuff out before I start anything else (I know as a gamer that there's nothing more annoying than buying figures and then finding that the company you got them off has lost interest in the range and gone off onto something new leaving you with half a range that you can't do anything with!).
Thanks for answering the questions Roger and I look forward to seeing more of this range.
Final Thoughts
A delightfully different set of minis, and what sounds to be a game that brightens up the Christmas festivities in a very fun way.
Check the range out at…
http://www.wargamessupplydump.co.uk/index.html
Please remember to mention Wargames Forum when contacting traders!
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