Prize Draw Winners; Review: Conquest Games Norman Skirmishers

Just after midnight I took the names of all those who had entered the prize draw, bunged them in a spreadsheet and was flabbergasted to see that there were exactly 36 names. Good heavens - that would make doing the draw dead easy. Just roll 2D6 of different colours and Robert's the brother of one of your parents.

However, all good plans must surely falter on first contact with the enemy. In this case the enemy was a prolonged bout of sneezing, after which I'd forgotten which colour dice was for which column on the spreadsheet. 

That left me in a quandary - was the winner A or B? Do I reroll the dice? I did reroll the dice and amazingly got exactly the same result - a 6 and a 2. Clearly fate was telling me something. I soon figured it out - the prize draw was to celebrate my blog's birthday and having reached 300 followers. The solution was obvious - there would be two prizes and 2 winners.

Checking the spreadsheet revealed the lucky pair to be:

Donogh McCarthy

and

Urban Bunny aka Slim

Please contact me to discuss what you want me to paint for you.

Review: Conquest Games Norman Skirmishers

You may recall from my post on Sunday that I'd placed an order that evening for some sprues and figures from Conquest Games. Well, they arrived this morning. 

The two packs I'm reviewing here are the archers and the crossbowmen. These are 28mm metal figures - I don't know if Conquest are planning to release plastic Norman skirmishers. I don't think they will as the demand for them is probably too small for it to be worthwhile. However, I think it would be useful if they could do a skirmish weapons sprue with bows, crossbows, quivers and appropriate arms.

Pack Details:

Archers - 6 different figures, £10.50

Crossbowmen - 8 different figures, £14.00 

The figures come in blister packs.

Casting Quality:

Figures are 28mm foot to eye, 31-32mm foot to top of (bare) head. The casts are crisp and clean with no mould lines. The only flash I found was a tiny amount on the crossbowmen.

Four of the crossbowmen come with the crossbows as part of the sculpt; the other 4 are in firing stance and have open hands to accept the separate crossbows.

Detail and posing looks good, although I am concerned that the hair texture may be too "soft" and will be obscured once primed and painted.

Pictures:

After giving the figures a quick wash in warm soapy water and drying them, they were glued onto 25mm metal washers. Once the glue had set, they were given a black wash to bring out detail before I took pictures.

Archers:

Crossbowmen:

Overall View:

These are nice figures, well sculpted and excellently cast. At about £1.75 a figure, they're not as cheap as plastics but for Saga you only need a few of them. Delivery was very quick, which is always good, and my order was well packed.

My views above are based on the unpainted figures - once I've painted them up, I'll give a final verdict.