Why
After collecting many miniatures from Heroics and Ros for WW2 I decided to do a big step for me and to search for WW2 miniatures from other manufacturers, out of curiosity. It was then, after some searches that I found Scotia Grendel's 6mm range of miniatures and decided to also improve my WW2 collection with some of their miniatures. In this decision I was helped by other websites on which I have read articles or watched photos exemplifying how good is to mix the miniatures in so many aspects, that its shortcomings are simply to be omitted. Like for Heroics and Ros, some of the miniatures from Scotia Grendel do not have photos, so surprise, surprise, I set to myself a new task, of having a gallery of images to help me in organizing my collection and deciding the next steps in this long and complex enterprise. I ended up collecting more from Scotia Grendel and here's why, well, a little bit latter in the review section.
How
The miniatures are from
metal (white lead), they are 6mm in height and work great to 1:300 and 1:285, but be advised, as they are more on the 1:285 side (the site mentions they are 1:300). The
miniatures were cleaned, washed with liquid soap, primed with Black Vallejo
Primer and painted. One coat of paint was applied on the top and sides of the miniature,
one coat on the bottom of miniature and another on the top and sides of the
miniature again. Then the tracks were painted or wheels, if it was the case,
and details were painted, drybrushing, washing, inking, highlighting, correcting
mistakes, mix and match, or skip some steps, depending on each and everyone's tastes and recipes.
Super glue was required for some of the miniatures that come with two or more (rarely) parts, but often, is just a matter of gluing a turret to a hull of a tank and so on, so no worries, is not too complicated. It is not much waste material (flesh) to clean, but when doing it, you have to be
especially careful at what you do. I was not, and in some of the cases I ended up with not such a great result. Apply multiple thin layers of paint to get the most out of 6mm miniatures (to keep the details and not hide them under thick paint), and try to highlight the painted miniature with lighter shades of color, to surprise more good the details and to make the whole miniature more visible. In 6mm, this is important, but I found out later.
Rarely,
some of the miniatures had some casting problems or they
arrived with the barrel of the gun from a tank broken (to arrive with a
bent
gun is something, in general, understandable, at least at this scale - collect them, but watch out for the gun of T-60 and T-70 Russian tanks, for example, as other miniatures may have similar problems).
How can
you fix this? There are many methods presented on different sites. I
simply use
a part of the brush to elevate the gun, and carefully, with another one,
point
it in the desired/right direction, and this done after the painting was
finished, at least before some last minute highlights, to avoid to
repeat the
procedure and eventually broke it.
Results
So, as we have seen,
with good and bad parts, but with many fond memories and a tremendous work, I think an important collection of miniatures resulted. The miniatures were cataloged. There may be some
wrong identification of the miniatures, because of the site of Scotia Grendel that is not
showing pictures of all the miniatures. Your knowledge of WW2 may help you in this respect. Sometimes, in the research done to
identify some of them, not too many information and images were found. Other
times, because of the amount of time needed to collect the miniatures, things
started to blur, no matter how effort was put into organizing the collection. I have learned something from the mistakes made while collecting Heroics and Ros miniatures, but it seems still not enough. When looking at the results, you can understand how mistakes could have been made, because there is a lot of information and images.
To conclude this section, a general review about the WW2 6mm miniatures from Scotia Grendel and a gallery of images, plus a web
of links was assembled, but this just to ease the search for miniatures. Hope you like the results, as my
next thoughts, the actual review, comes in the next paragraphs.
Review
The miniatures from Scotia Grendel are from many nations that fought in WW2 (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, Russia, United Kingdom and United States) and from many types (infantry, cavalry, land vehicles - armored cars, tanks of all types, engineering vehicles, command vehicles, support vehicles, motorcycle, tricycle, aircraft, landing crafts or boats, buildings and many interesting accessories) - for some of the nations there are only miniatures representing aircrafts, like for Italy and Romania. I like very much the artillery guns in the firing postures (not towed), that are represented with a base and corresponding accessories already cast on the base. Excellent! The same can be said for the trucks, which some that are open and have barrels, boxes and so on, making the truck feel real. This is a big plus for Scotia Grendel, at least for me. Many miniatures have a nice range of details (about the precise representation of the real war equipment from WW2, please see my other review section for the Heroics and Ros miniatures), some not so much, quite flat (FT-17 tank for example). It is nice and fast to paint the miniatures, and not too many flesh parts need to be removed as mentioned already. I like that I can have access to Belgium vehicles and I also discovered many miniatures from Japan that I did not know about. Also the accessories are very interesting: mortars and other heavy weapons, motorbikes, rubber rafts, trailer, all in different configurations. To make this even more excellent you can modify the trucks with passengers, cargo, trailer canvas, again in different configurations. I have yet to try these last miniatures, but man I am excited! From one variant of miniature you can make at least 5. I also like the miniatures of the many softskins vehicles from Germany (the most developed range of miniatures) or the United States (especially half-tracks and jeeps) and vehicles from France (especially the trucks). I was disappointed by the small range of United Kingdom miniatures and the absence of land vehicles from Italy and other nations that fought the war (Romania, Hungary). The buildings, especially the ruins look very good, are made from resin and are affordable. As for other prices, most of the miniatures were 0.40 pounds, now 0.65 pounds (for other consideration on prices on the market of 6mm WW2 miniatures, please see my other review section for the Heroics and Ros miniatures).
Of course, I only mention general characteristics with only some of the special
cases or examples to sustain my findings and it is not a review miniature by
miniature (with hundreds cataloged you can understand the reasons and also by the
already lengthy review...).
With a big
collection come many problems – you may invest a lot, or you can do it step by
step at affordable rates. Here comes one of the problems of Scotia Grendel – the site
does not display images for all the miniatures, problem resolved here on
Paint. Play. Repeat! unpaid, not asked, but by my desire to better organize
the collection, to know what I buy and to decide what to buy based on the
miniature and its characteristics and to help other hobbyists with same problems. In this respect, Scotia Grendel is not the
only case, for WW2 we have Heroics and Ros for example, problem resolved also
here, like for 6mm sci-fi, with the same example of Scotia Grendel. Yes, also a range of miniatures from Scotia Grendel. And did I mentioned they also have a range of Modern Wars/Times miniatures? No? Oh, well, then you should have a look, as Scotia Grendel is doing a great job on all these (war) fronts/theaters. The images of miniatures from Scotia Grendel are represented here in this gallery along with an 8mm cube present in images
next to the painted example of the miniature to identify it, to help others in starting to paint and for comparison purposes with other similar miniatures (also helps when you want to mix with miniatures from other manufacturers). I also need help to identify correctly some
of the miniatures so, help, write me comments, and to improve my painting
skills (I started painting with H&R miniatures, now I have improved my
skills, but there is a lot to do better – also historical information about
WW2 needs to be improved and this for each and every war equipment that was present
in WW2, not a thing to resolve in a day or two).
The Scotia Grendel range of 6mm WW2 miniatures is great in so many aspects
that you have little time to mention its shortcomings. It is not as varied as Heroics and Ros range of miniatures, but there are enough miniatures so that you will only latter start to need more of them, and most of the miniatures are represented better, with good amount of details. If you paint in 6mm and WW2 is your main focus, you have enough reasons to start collecting and playing with miniatures from Scotia Grendel.
Feedback
Hope you like it, hope you share it with many friends and leave a comment or two!
Click on the links to access the
galleries of the ranges of miniatures, totaling 300+ miniatures and thousands of corresponding images.
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