WELL SHARPE

◗ wargamesatlantic.com ◗ £25

Wargames Atlantic sent me two boxes of figures to review this month and this is the first: and pretty splendid they are too.

The famous Riflemen of the British Army fought from Spain to the final shots of La Haye Sainte on the field of Waterloo. Fighting in pairs and able to accurately aim and fire up to two shots per minute, Wellington’s Rifles were an instrumental factor in Napoleon’s defeat. The boxed set – with some excellent artwork by Peter Dennis – has eight identical, hard plastic sprues, each allowing a build of four figures which – simple maths will reveal – means the gamer can build up 32 Riflemen from a box.

There’s lots of figure options with two standing, armless and headless torsos and a kneeling version of same. The fourth body on every sprue has separate legs and two alternate body styles, so there’s some very useful variety featured for officers and so forth. For the most part the arms are fitted with the obligatory Baker rifles but there are other options including sabres, bugles and a multi barrelled Nock gun! They can be modelled advancing, firing, loading, and with a variety of heads (ten on each sprue) including bare and bandana-wearing for more variety.

Sculpting and proportion is very good with enough detail to be picked up with whatever choice of painting technique you regularly employ including washes, drybrushing or Army Painter style dips: they’ll all work. No bases are supplied beyond the small ovals they come sculpted on and – price wise – they are £25 a box with reductions for bulk purchase. If you wanted ten boxes (for example) that’d save you sixty quid. Highly recommended.