Monday, September 4, 2017

New Alliance minis! Trolls and demons and war machines

Via the 1/72 wall at VK.com. Red Box/Alliance keeps chugging along with the new fantasy releases. Check out these preview pics.







Disorganized thoughts: We've seen Alliance's blocky Peter-Jackson-style troll before with their first troll set. They actually paint up pretty nicely. Sets 2 and 4 here look a little too blocky; the Set 3 poses are a lot more dynamic and interesting.

Set 4 is possibly referencing the Orc Catapult set. I'm not really sure what's going on with the huge bases and limited number of figures and poses here. The Catapult itself looks like a lot of fun. Check out the one intrepid orc, apparently ready to take catapult-assisted flight!

The Fire Demons here are the long-promised "balrogs" (It's interesting to look at that post and see all that all the announced sets have now come to fruition. Good for Alliance!). The limited number of poses in interesting. They seem to be a bit larger than the trolls, but I'd also bet that the wings are separate pieces that take up space on the sprue. If the boxes are around $10-12, that puts the per-figure cost close to what Reaper charges for similar figures. True, they might be a bit bigger, but the sculpting also doesn't seem as good. I'd like to see them painted up before deciding for sure.

~Edit for 9/6/2017: I just realized that the box art here says that the Troll set 3 has only four figures total, while Troll set 4 and the two Fire Demon sets only have two figures each! Maybe that's a misprint, as it's a departure from the large troll sets Alliance has released already. But if it's right, then unless these will be much cheaper than Alliance's other sets, that makes the value proposition a little dicier. Even if they are as big as Reaper's larger trolls, let's say, if the boxes aren't cheaper than usual, the per-figure cost between Alliance and Reaper is about the same. And Reaper's figures are just better-looking.~

Still, it's great that Alliance remains committed to new fantasy releases. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with next!

9 comments:

  1. Some good, some not bad but its great to see a company taking a risk and pushing the boundries for fantasy in this scale. whatever you think of the minis you have to love red box for sheer balls!.

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  2. I've been out of the loop on 1/72 fantasy. I do like that they are making these sets.

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  3. The set with the two trolls and the big bases are for the catapult..like the trolls in the 3rd Hobbit film, the ones with the catapults on thier backs. I´m assuming they must then be quite big trolls compared to the rest.
    The 2nd troll set. The top two poses are, IMHO, pretty useless unless I build myself a black gate and Need trolls to push/pull it open. The other two can be added to any of 1/72nd scale catapults available.
    The fire demons..sorry, Balrogs. 4? Does anyone Need 4? ..maybe re-create some of the LotR´s pre-history like the battle of Dagor-nuin-Giliath ?

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  4. Some great news ! The fire Demons are interesting, not the best figures in the world but interesting nevertheless... I soon as I can get some, I will paint them as Major demons for my demons army (I bought some Battlelore minis thanks to your posts, they are great :))

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  5. They look great. Do we know when the are being released?

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    1. Good question. No way to know for sure, but recent Alliance sets have been available around a month after Red Box posts their preview pics.

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    2. Maybe War Trolls 3 has larger trolls than sets 1 and 2? This would explain why you only get 4 instead of 8.

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  6. Great news Il keep my eyes peeled

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  7. If I see them at my LHS, I'll surely buy them!

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