Box Opening: Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors

After getting my first box of Gripping Beast's plastic Dark Age Warriors, here is my review of this product.
Firstly, the box itself is fairly slim and is complete with a set of square plastic Renedra bases. A useful addition to the box. Second are some assembly guides.



The reverse of the box....

First up, there are eight identical sprues of parts, each with five warrior bodies. There are seven heads, giving some variation. One head has more of a fur hat look, better for vikings or Rus perhaps? There are five shields and enough spears/javelins to make up a complete block of 40 spear and shield armed troops. 

When it comes to variation, there are 16 hand weapons for all 40 troops, one horn/arm combo per 5 warriors and 32 slings. That's all the variation for this box. The parts are clearly spaced and were easy to clip from the sprue. Cleanup is straightforward with a craft knife. The detail of the heads is good, the bodies are a little non-descript, being unarmoured and suitable as either lightly armed warriors or as levies. The weapons are chunkier than the ones I have from Wargames Factory plastic Saxons and about the same as the ones from Conquest Games plastic Normans, making them much sturdier in use.

At an RRP of £20 per box, these work out at 50 pence per figure, about a third of the price of the GB metal figures. You can make a Saga 5 point Warrior faction from these if you add in a Warlord from somewhere else. This makes for a fantastic value army, suitable perhaps for Welsh, Irish, Scots and the like.

On the minus side, there are a lot more slings in this kit than I feel most people would probably want to field in Saga. A couple of bows instead of a couple of slings would be much preferable from my point of view and give them a greater flexibility.

It is possible this box set was designed to provide more of a levy base of javelins or slingers to Dark Age armies other than those used for Saga, if so, this set looks very promising indeed.

All in all, these troops are a great addition to GB's range and can be used along with their other plastics, Vikings and Saxons, to give more flexibility (head swaps and the like).