Unboxing The Damned
Wargames Atlantic have fairly recently released their The Damned Army boxed set for The Death Fields Arena. We were given a box, so I thought that wargamers would like to peek inside and see the contents.
When I hear the name The Damned, I think of the Rock band...
While designed for Death Fields, the models make good generic sci-fi infantry for numerous settings, be it the Grimdark with Trench Crusade or Chaos cultists for 40K, Caesar's Legion for Fallout, or raiders for a post-apocalyptic 'Mad Max' setting. These miniatures would easily be useful for Stargrave, Xenos Rampant, or Five Parsecs from Home.
The box is of sturdy cardboard, good enough to deliver the contents intact, but I'm not sure it'd be ideal for long-term storage. Inside, there are three male infantry sprue frames, two female infantry sprue frames, a command frame, two brute frames, a heavy weapon frame, and an artillery frame, each with a crew frame. That's 52 models in total, making this an excellent value set.
Bases aren't provided as standard - the logic being that gamers can then base them for whatever system they like. I've used some spare bases, as the models do not stand up by themselves - they don't have integral 'puddle' bases.
The Damned infantry have a variety of weapons, including Kalashnikov-style assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, swords, and sniper rifles. There are also heavy weapons in the form of a grenade launcher, a flamethrower, a machine-gun and two energy weapons. Add in pouches, backpacks, grenades, and other accessories. There's plenty of variety to choose from.
The Damned soldiers are dressed in tatty military-style uniforms, with military jackets, combat boots, and chestplate body armour. The numerous heads included helmeted, gas-masked, and bare-headed options. The female bodies and arms are slightly slimmer than their male counterparts, but parts-wise, they look broadly compatible. Each part is numbered, so finding the correct opposite part is not a chore. A construction sheet for the heavy weapons and artillery is available online.
The Brutes are sci-fi ogres armed with a variety of hand weapons, large automatic guns, or flamethrowers. The parts look like they are compatible with the Atlantic Landsknecht Ogres, which could be used to add more variety.
The command sprue has four humans in greatcoats, plus a Brute in a greatcoat. They have a definite Soviet Commissar look to them. Numerous command options are provided, including a standard, a radio, and a medic.
The heavy weapons frame allows two weapons to be built from a choice of five different types. There's a magazine-fed autocannon, a belt-fed heavy machine gun, a mortar, an energy weapon, and a heavy missile launcher. The artillery set can build one set, etiher with a large single cannon or a multiple launcher. All the sets use the same common crew sprue.
The finished models look good and suitably Damned! I liked this kit a lot; as regular readers know, I love to kitbash, and this set is kitbash heaven! These are useful for several sci-fi projects, including the Death Files arena, of course.
Wargames Atlantic even provides a set of free STL files for the parts they missed off the production frames in the design stage, not that the modeller is short of existing options! Assembly was easy, with only the heavy weapon sets requiring a little patience. Size-wise, these should fit with most sci-fi ranges, notably the Stargrave plastics from North Star. I might try combining parts in a future blog to see how compatible they are.
