Disclaimer: This miniature set was sent to us for review by Wargames Atlantic.
Death Fields Arena by Wargames Atlantic is by far the best concept for a wargame: Aliens have kidnapped warriors/soldiers/fighters, basically anyone who battles, for centuries and pit them all against one another for sport. That sport is War and it is Death Fields Arena. This opens up the doors for literally any sort of battle and army. Anything from a group of halflings to modern day soldiers to alien hiveminds. Wargames Atlantic also mentions in one of their YouTube videos that there is a group of gorilla warrior STL files you can use, so you could even pit Dwarves against gorillas, which sounds like a blast. With the Les Grognards set, we are looking at French speaking soldiers from Napoleonic to modern times and even into the far future. These soldiers have been fighting against various threats and the one element uniting them is their language. It’s both disheartening and inspirational to see these soldiers banded together through nothing but French. Either way, these miniatures have one of the best back stories in Deaths Fields Arena and we had a chance to build and paint them.
Instructions: The box does not come with instructions but the models are easy to figure out. We all know where a right arm is supposed to go and how to place a head. My only complaint about assembly is that there are these tiny bandana-like pieces and I have no idea where they are supposed to go. They seemed too big to go around necks and too small to go on thighs/arms. I thought that perhaps they were to give the soldiers Victorian-era collars but they also do not fit upside-down. They just seem to not be able to fit anywhere. Please let me know what they’re for, or better yet, if you have any photos, I would love to see them.
Material Quality: These miniatures are made of hard, very durable plastic which I believe is High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS). The set comes with six gray sprues and enough parts to make 24 Les Grognard soldiers. I will also mention that each sprue has 32 heads. Yes, you read that correctly. There are 24 soldiers in the entire set, but 32 heads per sprue, which means that for your 24 man army, there are 192 heads to choose from. I personally think that is an absurd amount of heads but I gladly welcome it.
Assembly Complexity: Assembly is fairly straightforward. Each Les Grognard has a head, a body, and two arms for a “full” model. They are best assembled with plastic cement/plastic glue. They do not have any push pins for arms/body and each arm is fully moveable on a flat panel/body piece. You just add a drop of glue and find the spot you want to set it in, wait a few seconds and it’ll hold in place. You just need to wait a few hours for it to fully cure and you’re done. The hardest weapons to assemble are the bayonets. They come as two parts, with the right arm holding onto the main weapon/trigger with the left hand still attached. You’ll then have to attach the arm to the body, find a handless arm and place it in just the right spot to ensure the arm attaches to the hand. It sounds more complicated than it is, but it doesn’t take much time and you have a bit of time before the plastic cement hardens again, so don’t worry too much.
Cleaning/Prep: The models are fairly easy to clean, with mold lines that are easy to scrape off and aren’t extremely harsh. If you love to paint and need your models to be pristine, it’s not very difficult to accomplish. The hardest part is placing the little boots and that’s just because they’re so small and have such a tiny curve. Priming is a breeze as the models have exposure to your airbrush, brush, or can at pretty much all angles. If you’re finicky about your painting and need them to be perfectly painted, then you’ll definitely want to do sub assembly for any of the double-handed weapons, or really anything that isn’t a grenade or pistol. The models hold the weapons very close to the body and getting your paintbrush back in there is close to impossible on some models, particularly the particle cannon.
Pose Variety: The models are fairly easy to pose in a few ways and the main bodies have variety in their poses as well. Even if you have the same weapons on two models, the arms can be placed at different positions to easily distinguish between models of the same rank/type. The heads can also be placed in practically any orientation from left, right to upside-down if that’s what you’re into. There are pretty much no left-handed weapons besides a grenade however, so left-handed options are fairly limited to holding a grenade, empty handed, pointing or helping hold the weapon in the right hand.
Paint Accessibility: If you’re a stickler for pristine models that need to be painted meticulously, then you’ll want to do a sub assembly. But if you want something that just looks good enough to play, then it’s pretty easy to accomplish. The models have enough detail that you can do a little slap-chop, zenithal highlight and apply some SpeedPaint and you’ll be ready to play in no time. They take SpeedPaint well and they can also stand up to traditional painting methods. If you’re good with an airbrush and want to airbrush the whole model, you can do that as well. Just be aware that once the arms are on, you’re unlikely to be able to get paint in that gap.
Customization: These models are absurdly customizable in terms of their heads. There are 192 weapons with 4 hat types that either have gasmasks or do not have gas masks, so really there are 8 head types and multiples of each. So if you want all your models to have gasmasks and helmets, then you can. You want your entire army to have a feathery adorned hat without a mask? You can do that too. You want them to have a little of everything? Then by all means do that, they’ll still look like they’re on the same team and like they have different roles. The head types can also be used to distinguish different weapons on the field so you don’t have to keep track of which model has the flamethrower, just remember your flamethrower guys are the ones with the bearskins (those are the hats the royal guard wears that look like giant poofy balls of fur). The left-handed weapons variety is limited however, so if you want to be realistic and have 10% of your army be left handed, they’ll be limited to a grenade.
Durability: These little guys will last forever. They glue easily but make sure you get enough cement on there to cover the whole surface. I accidentally knocked an arm off after it was painted and I had the thought of having an amputee Les Grognard in the ranks. However, it was user error and it was an easy fix of adding a bit more glue and re-securing the arm properly.
Readability: Excellent. These little guys read very easily from far away and if you plan things out, you can make them even more readable by using the hats as a rank/weapon type. This was not something I did of course because I was focused on making them look cool at the moment and didn’t think about the larger picture. However, you can definitely use those 192 heads to your advantage for easy readability on multiple levels.
Basing: Les Grognards do not come with any bases. A standard 28mm base goes well with them, though it may be a bit small if you want to add some foliage and debris etc. This set is so well priced for the quantity you get that it’s still likely lower priced than buying a full single model from many others.
Price Per Mini: The Les Grognards retail for approximately $40 USD for 24 models which makes each model about $1.67, so this is an entire squad for less than half the price of others we’ve seen. The best part of this entire set is that for Death Fields Arena, a team consists of 10-12 models (ish), so for $40 you get two full teams. Death Fields Arena is also available for download for free here. All this to say, a high-quality full miniatures game for $40 is amazing, especially because we’ve seen sets twice this price without a game included.
Time to Table: Assembly took about one hour and painting about another two hours. Overall after details and basing, the whole time was about four hours. Not bad. Keep in mind that I want my models to look good for the tabletop and I’m in no way ever going to win a Golden Demon.
Genre Hopping: Use these models as stand-ins for any sci-fi army you want. These look great in 40K as Vostroyan Firstborns and if you leave the sci-fi weapons out, they look like generally realistic soldiers and would work well in a historical setting. They may look a little out of place but the basic aesthetic is there. We are definitely going to be using these models for a variety of games ourselves!
Sushiball Games 