Greatcoats have arrived!

The first box of Wargames Factory greatcoat troops arrived from the States this morning; they were sat on my chair in the living room when I got in from work a few minutes ago. This is written from the point of view of a 40k player who wants to use them to bulk out his Imperial Guard; I will be using GW Cadians for Veterans, and the WF Shock Troops as basic infantry, as they're about half the price.

First impressions. Nice mouldings, very compatible 'size wise' with their GW compatriots. The basic gun and grenade launcher are closely comparable in length and bulk to the GW equivalents. The heads are nicely moulded, and there are plenty of choices. On the downside, the flamer is very weedy; however, there are three extra lasgun variants that could be easily cut-and-shut into a plasma gun or a bulkier flamer using the spares from my Cadians.

The basic box comes with 18 figures for US$20, which feels about right. You can get them for £14.50 from Wayland Games; I have a pre-order of another 3 boxes coming at a fairly decent discount which will give me a total of 72 guys which is plenty for a couple of troops choices. They don't have heavy weapons (yet) which is the only downside, but they are in the advanced planning stage.

One final comment, and this is more cosmetic than anything. You know how you open a GW box, and it feels as though it's been packed with goodness? Well, these feel the opposite. The sprues are small, the box is tall, and you could very easily have fitted another two, maybe even four, sprues into the box. No reflection on the quality of the product, but it feels like it could have used a slimmer box and thus saved packaging cost, transport volume, and felt like better value too.

I will hopefully build some this week; pictures to come.