The Barons War – Fantasy Skirmish arrived

Earlier this year the Barons War range was extended by a fantasy range, crowd financed via Kickstarter. The duo of Andy Hobday and Paul Hicks cooperated on various projects in the past, some as direct parts of Footsore, and after some back and forth with various names, the Barons War range is a Warhost product, by HobdayandHicks.

The delivery was a bit behind schedule (really just slightly, it was intended to ship in November and now was 2-3 weeks later), which isn't a huge issue for me, but due to the changes in GPSR they had a bit of hurry to deliver the packages to send out the European packages before the mid of december. This isn't the first time I backed a Kickstarter campaign where the two were involved, as I participated with Gangs of Rome, Barons War and treated myself to a custom sculpt with Outremer.

For this campaign, they went for a new interesting packaging, with printed boxes and beautiful artwork by Peter Dennis (who we will discuss further below again) and that certainly upgrades the value of the set.

But beforehand a bit of confusion. For international shipping they often team up with Footsore or in this case Sarissa to fulfill the orders, do the customs preparation / IOSS and such, and usually the items are delivered by DHL in Germany. This time I got an email by Hermes, telling me I'll receive a parcel by Landmark without further detail, leaving me a bit puzzled. Googling the two names in combination isn't the best idea, as it brings up Trustpilot with a whooping 77% of 1-star ratings. Along with some editorial content on amazon fraud packages and such. Well, that wasn't really the information that helped me to identify what is in the mail nor putting my mind at ease.

Well, it arrived on thursday, and usually Hermes comes very late in the evening, and rings the bell long after 8 pm, because who cares about families with kids. And this time, they arrived early, around 1 pm, rang the ball like a kid that was very excited to get home (or had to pee very urgently) and before I could even reach the door, the driver drove off, marking the parcel as "delivered to the door". And that is not really the case, because as you can see from the picture, it was pouring outside and the Hermes postman didn't manage to place the parcel in the mailbox, or maybe ontop of it, nor on the chair that was partially covered by the canopy, but put it right there on the edge of the table in full reach of the rain. I really don't how you can stray that far from common sense.

I quickly disposed of the wet box (that smelled like cigarettes on top - you know the full Hermes experience) and let us get back to the good part.

The content was packed within the parcel in the box above, and had clever inlays, to hold the miniatures in place, which were bagged with bases individually.

I treated myself to these miniatures:

• Athicus the Chronicler
• Orc and Elf Heroes Vignette
• Dwarf Warrior
• Human Magus, mounted and on foot
• Elven Marines

The Elven Marines will make a nice warband themself. Look a bit more motley than the usual high elves, you come across out there on the market, and the Human Magus came with a sprue of three horses instead of metal sculpt, which was a bit of surprise for me.

The horse sprue is from Wargames Atlantic and repurposed from their generic horse box. Neat idea and good casting. Beside that, two more horses than I paid for and you know, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

The miniatures are mostly single casts, with added shield. Clean castings, here and there are the oval bases a bit warped, but nothing out of the ordinary. Very fine details, especially in the faces. Was interesting to see, that the Elf from the Vignette has a two part spear, as he comes with a brass rod, and has a (3d printed?) tipp for that.

They are around 30mm in scale, rather true scale than heroic as you can see from the proportions and weaponry. As such they will mix better with historical miniatures like the Barons War range or similar proportioned miniatures like Perrys, than for example Oathmark or even older Warhammer.

And I am very happy about Athicus, the Chronicler, as the sculpt / miniature is a tribute to Peter Dennis and was a huge incentive for me to pledge within the first 24 hours. For those of you who don't know Peter Dennis, he is an illustrator and is working for decades now within the industrie and did a lot of artwork and illustrations for companies like Osprey, Warlord Games and others, and even has his own range of paper models you can cut out and quickly put into battle.

Beyond that, another successful campaign by Andy and Paul. It will be interesting what the further expansion of the range will bring, as the design of the miniatures has their own style and it is not just another Tolkien or Warhammer substitute.