Fight For The Steppes With FireForge’s New Plastics
November 18, 2013 by brennon
FireForge are looking to mass infantry for the Golden Horde and their Steppe Infantry is well on the way to your tabletop. See what you think of these preview images below.
First up we have the artwork from Peter Dennis that will grace the front of the box. As you can see it's showing off some rather brutal and bloody Mongolian warriors ransacking a town.
Next we'll have a look at the actual sprues you will be getting from FireForge and these have been shown off in great depth over on their Facebook Page. It looks like you get a lot of options for swords, shields, bows and spears.
And to crown things off we have some of the models put together to show just how awesome they look. I think the FireForge plastic range as a whole is very good and they seem to do mighty armies very well. I think the models here are very cool looking and the poses look natural, and being plastic you can customise them however you like essentially.
The interesting thing about this set, for me at least, are those big tower shields they have. It's not something I would have thought the Mongolians would have used but maybe one of you can enlighten me as to their use. I know they would work well with a spear as a defensive shield though!
What do you think?
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Interesting to start off with infantry, I would have expected cavalry.
I think it’s because infantry are (probably) cheaper to cast and they have more use across a variety of different games so they can sell more…being cynical of course. Away from that, maybe they just liked the idea of doing the infantry first!
BoW Ben
I was going to do a kingdoms of men with the dues vult europeans. Think that may now have changed.
Nice. I can recommend Fireforge’s models. I have a box each of the previous Deus Vult sets and have found them all very good, both in terms of quality and price.
Cavalry horde, please!
I saw the 3 ups for the mounted troops earlier in the year so they are on their way. As for the shields Ben, yes we normally associate Mongols with circular ones and their other favourite the human shield. I have seen these large rectangular shields before only on the auxiliary spearmen. They look like good arrow stoppers.
Funny thing I have been looking at acquiring a Mongolian style Bow to shoot next year.
2014 definitely has an air of the steppe to it.
don’t forget huscarle, Mongols had a lot of exposure to the Islamic states of Iran, Afghanistan and so on – you got a lot of cultural exchange in the years the Mongols were knocking about. Can’t help but think you may be able to convert these into Turkish/Abbasid infantry too…
Sure a massive empire so would had a lot auxiliaries from the subjugated races. I’ll be digging around now trying to find out more about these shields. I like a mission.
I know that the Ming and the Qing dynasties both made use of auxiliaries with ratan shields as late as the early 17th century, and the archetypal image of the Persian infantryman has one, so to be honest, its representative of god knows how many little central Asian countries, even as late as the 13th and 14th centuries – if the Uighurs of China were still using them, sure a few others were…
Looking good and a good opponent for the European Knights maybe?
indeedy! for both the Teutonic and the Crusader States, just have to wait for the light and heavy cavalry now…
They’ve waited long enough their mounts must be really champing at the bit.
The rule book and knights have been out for a while with no apparent enemy in sight which I thought a bit odd.
Maybe it’s time to have a look. Has anyone had any experience with the rules ?
I’ve only been able to find a couple of articles that try to explain the rules. Seems interesting enough. Some comparisons to Hail Caesar, which from what I understand is a good thing among historicals. Have never played the game myself but I’ve glanced at it a couple of times.
The one thing I found interesting is that you can split your forces between Vanguard, line troops, and rearguard. And that the leaders of the regiments get a random assortment of Virtues and Vices.
Also, as I understand it, there are rules for a sort of “generic” western middle-ages army. Not sure how well it works or how much variety there is though.
I have wondered if it would work well enough to create a Game of Thrones army. Would be pretty cool if there was enough in there for someone to play House Stark, another Lannister, etc.
Ooh – I like those. Could be used as Khand in Middle-earth as well as playing themselves in historical games. Very handy!
hadn’t thought of that, awesome idea! I’ve seen people use Perry Wars of the Roses for the Gondorian fiefdoms, Gripping Beast vikings for Dunlandings, even Greeks and Romans for some of the forgotten kingdoms but never thought of Khand 🙂 be great to see hordes of Khandish cavalry fighting it out with the Dwarves or Rohirrim…
Those are rather nice. Fireforge is really starting to set themselves up for one of the best plastic historical minis on the market IMHO. Right now they are suffering the same issue that Gripping Beast does…not enough variety. i’ve got a couple of the GB plastics and they are great. Sadly unless you want to do Anglo-Danes/Saxons or Vikings you will find yourself a bit limited with what you could do. I also got some Wargames Factory but, to be honest, I don’t like them at all. They were cheap so I don’t feel like I lost too much money… Read more »
Wargames Factory is a mixed bag, mind you, knocked up some pretty good Tallarn Imperial Guard using their Persians range and some Cadian bits…
Problem with GBP is that the plastics range has always been there to supplement the metals range, whereas other manufacturers have it the other way round. Not a bad thing, but it stifles development of the plastics range which is a shame because they are really, really nice… gotta love vikings…
I understand what you mean. The combination of Dark Age Warriors and some Saxon bits for my Anglo-Danish Warriors, and kit-bashing the Saxons with the Vikings for the Hearthguard (only the Viking set has the nice double-handed axes) really works well. But since I don’t like slings I’m going to have to end up buying a set of their metal Levy archers. The Hammer of the Gods set from WF isn’t very inspiring. Strange poses, really small weapons (in comparison to GB) and overall “meh” detail. The shields are actually better than the GB plastics though so mixing some of… Read more »
I’d stick with Gripping Beast, but I do understand how much of a pain in the arse the lack of bows is, I’ve used bows from the Perry Bows and Bills set – they’re ok, but there’s always been something not quite right about them… do for now I suppose but if they were to ever produce plastic Welsh/Irish/Romano-British they really will have to address ranged weaponry a little better.
I’ve been eyeing up Wargames Factory stuff as well for my steppe horde: Persian bodies and weapons, but not sure what I would do for heads. Some of the Japanese ones look OK, but I think I would need to buy a lot of bits to get enough of the ones I want. Originally I was just going to use them in a fantasy adventure as a steppe people, but now that I’ve seen these, it may be worth the wait, and as someone already suggested, they can do double duty as themselves in a historical game. The tower shields… Read more »
Also, what is with the covert art? Stylistically it looks nothing like the rest of the series. I liked the dark brooding atmosphere of the previous box sets.
Big fan of the plastic samurai, its probably one of the only things Wargames Factory have produced that I really, really like – once saw someone make a really cool Empire army using samurai as greatswords and so on, looked great, especially the elector count/daimyo on dragon haha
ooh, before I forget, there are enough hats to give all the infantry one? peasant auxiliaries are one thing but it would be nice to do a unit of dismounted Mongols/Tatars with spears and bows on top of a siege tower, pushed by a small horde of pressed peasant infantry haha
Oooh Nice Daddy Wants, Buy the way that type of shield could have come from Korea / Manchuria . Remember the Mongols took that area to, for that’s where they attacked Japan from . Also Tibet, Russia, and India . Plus a ton of other places I can’t even spell. But to there credit, they used it all to win there wars, and then to rule the vast Empire, until they broke up into 4 separate empires. But Man they look cool and they are so different from the same old European armies we are use to (can anyone say… Read more »