Review: Victoria Miniatures Heavy Weapons, PART ONE

Victoria Miniatures recently sent us a set of the new Heavy Artillery sets as well as a set of the Penal Legion Heavy Weapons Crew for review. Rather than just slap a few parts together and taking a few shots then calling it a review; we decided to each take a heavy weapon kit and assemble and paint it with crew in a different styles to showcase the kits. So expect THREE post, all this week, with all three of us looking at these kits in a different light.

For my part of the project I assembled the autocannon kit and took a few heads and arms from the Penal Legion sprue to blend into a less heretical gun crew.

Some of the bits from the Penal Legion Heavy Weapon Crew

Overall the resin and casting is of high quality. The above picture is out of box & even without any cleaning you can see the care that has gone into the casting. The pieces are not deformed, it's clear that there has been some thought into placing the vents so cleanup is easy once separated from the sprue. The casting has been performed by skilled hands, places with flash are tissue-thin and fall away with a light scraping revealing minimal mould lines.

Great personality on the head sculpts.

The Autocannon fits together nicely, and including not only an extra clip but two different styles is a nice touch. The crew sprue offers a generous helping of options, most of which you won't find on other companies sprues so you can really spice up the monotony of your army.

The kit isn't without some small flaws: while minimal, you will have to clean up some mould lines. There were a few tiny casting errors on the parts I used, I had a little bit of flooding on one of the lenses the googles of one of the heads I used, and there was a few miscast bolts on the guncarriage feet. However these are millimeter-sized errors, I probably wouldn't have noticed them had I not been scrutinizing the parts for the review.

Some great options for weapon arms are included in the crew set.

Before moving on from the resin and casting quality topic, the other thing that is immediately noticeable on unboxing is that the pieces are straight and not a warped mess of resin. Something that seems to be accepted among some resin junkies is that due to international shipping and temperature changes your pieces will arrive as a tangled mess. But as this little box from Australia to the US illustrates, it doesn't have to be the case. While some of the aforementioned factors can cause warping during shipping, the real culprit is the resin casters rushing the process and removing the resin from the mould prematurely to save time and maximize profit. Seeing thin long bits like the rifles arrive without the need for correction speaks volumes towards the skilled casting and good quality control of Victoria Miniatures.

For my assembly I was immediately drawn to the smoking head (complete with zippo arm) and the gruff bald head with cyber-eye. I used GW Cadian bodies and torsos, with some of the arms from the Victoria set.

 There's a ton of personality in the sculpts, and the heads alone evoked a story when I saw them. I imagined the smoker as the crew officer, with a hint of a smirk he's a great contrast to the gruff loader who's obviously had a harder time manning this gun.

Stay Tuned! On wednesday we will post Part 2 of the Victoria Mini review, this coming Friday the third and final part.

-Mike M (cornumortem)