Alpha Miniatures

54mm "Imperial Rome at War"

Kit Number ROM-13 & GLD-02

Reviewed By John Lester, #36807

Alpha Miniatures of Auckland, New Zealand, produce 54mm pewter figures for tabletop wargamers and collectors.  Their focus is on "Imperial Rome at War", and will cover Rome and all its major enemies and allies for the period 150BC to 150AD.  Available now or in the works are Romans, Gladiators, Germans, Celts, Dacians and Jews including soldiers, civilians, cavalry and chariots.  These figures range in price from $8-10 US; and accessories (bases, extra weapons, transfers, etc) are also available.  You can get them all through the Alpha Miniatures website: http://www.alphaminiatures.com.

The figures reviewed are the Auxiliary Archer Shooting and Scorpus the Retiarius (Imperial-era gladiator).

Each figure is packages in a small re-sealable plastic bag stabled to a card that depicts the finished piece in color.  There are no instructions or other painting information.  The white metal pieces are well cast, with little flash and mold seams that quickly succumb to the back of a hobby blade.  Fit of the parts is quite decent, with little or no filer required.

Each figure is reasonably well detailed.  The sculpts appear heavy-handed in comparison to Andrea or Warriors figures of the same size, but are considerably more refined than Valiant or Imrie.  They are decent enough under a coat of paint and don’t look cartoonish  (in the way that fantasy figures by GDW and Reaper do, for instance).  As far as I can determine, they are historically accurate for the time periods they are supposed to represent.

Clean-up and assembly were simple and quickly done.  My Archer was missing both his short sword and the arrow he is shown ready to fire; I made replacements from bits of scrap and a short length of wire.

I then primed each figure with Mr. Surfacer 1000 from a rattle-can.  After dealing with a few rough spots I’d missed, I began painting.  For figures like these I generally use Reaper “Pro Paint” acrylic paints (available via http://www.reapermini.com/) - they brush and spray well and come in an excellent range of colors.  I used the illustrations on the packaging as a guide.  After the acrylic had dried, I accentuated shadows and folds of clothing with an oil wash.  I use Marshall’s oil paints, which are meant for retouching photographs and available at camera and craft stores, thinned with odorless brush cleaning fluid/oil paint solvent.  They have extremely fine, dense pigment and really bring a model to life.  The wash was followed with dry-brushing of lighter shades of the base colors across the high parts. (I slavishly follow the advice in Shep Paine’s books for highlighting figures – if you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and get his “How to Build Dioramas” book.  It’s all in there).

I finished up by brushing some white glue on the base and sprinkling on some Woodland Scenics landscaping “stuff” (fine turf, static grass, that sort of thing, all mixed together).  The whole process took a weekend, with plenty of time spent letting paint dry.

The two figures were a treat to finish, and a good weekend project.  If you’re in the market for some relatively inexpensive Roman-era figures  (they’d make excellent chess pieces, for instance), I can readily recommend Alpha’s line.

Many thanks to Alpha Miniatures for the review samples.

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