All your base are belong to... swine?

I was not much impressed by the scenic bases GW had released before christmas, but the hero bases recently released piqued my interest. As my FLGS was out of the 40k one I bought the Fantasy version to review.

(Note: the sprues are really the same size, some sort of trickery with the photographs have ensued.)

The first sprue. Some interesting stuff, lots of skulls.

Second sprue. The giant sarcophagus lid on the right was what drew my eye originally.

Some of the bases have extra parts to assemble, some are just a single base or a base with a single extra part. The smallest bases are 32 mm wide, so they are bigger than they seemed at first. The rest are all 40 mm wide except for the large oval one with the sarcophagus.

Not bad detailing on this. The hammer is a little bit soft at the edges, but not too much. The skulls are crisply cast.

Not being an "Age of  You ruined my childhood Sigmar!"-player I'm not sure what to use the bases for. I mean, I do play other fantasy games but they have more sensibly posed and scaled miniatures which doesn't need big bases like these. Sure, these are for showcase models, but I'm severly lacking in that area too.

This large skull-shaped altar comes in four parts, rather clever to give i a more 3D look.

The ruined pillar consists of a rather whopping five parts.

Some of the bases require assembly. There are no instructions, but the parts belonging together has the same number with different letter suffix, so it's easy to figure out. It would be easy even without the numbering, but might take a little bit longer to sort the pieces out.

Both of them assembled. Their bases are both 40mm in diameter, so they are quite large.

I decided not to glue the pillar to the base, in case I want to use it in a ruin or bigger diorama.

Again, some detailing on one of the bases is really soft, compared both to other bases and other areas on the same base.

One use for these bases are as objective markers or perhaps treasure markers in various scenarios or games that require the players to loot the battlefield in some way. That skull altar for example would make an excellent spawning point for undead in a Frostgrave Scenario.

Three more. I feel the centre base would make an excellent objective marker too.

Some bases are obviously meant to display a figure, like the broken staircarse for example. These I think will work as simple scatter terrain. I have no idea what that comet thingy is supposed to be: it has some gocs and wheels and the comet attaches itself to one of the cogwheels. So has it been a doomsday clock, or some sort of wheather forecasting machine? "Cloudy, with a chance of Comets and Skull Showers in the afternoon." I left the comet off to make it a little bit more nondescript.

We get four bases that are a single piece, including two identical skull bases. Note also the soft detail on the top right base.

Of the last ones the large cogwheel could be an objective marker, while the skull bases could both fit as treasure markers with the addition of a single weapon or a magic tome on the base.

To top if off you get a selection of skulls to add to the bases, if you should feel there aren't enough already.

Overall the sculpting is top notch as we have come to expect from GW, however the castings are a bit soft here and there. I suspect this has to do with this product being "Designed in the UK, manufactured in China" as it says on the box.

Oink oink oink!

I'll finish with a trio of vicious boars I got from a friend. Not sure which game they are from, Malifaux perhaps. But they are beautifully sculpted and full of character.

Happy gaming!