Raging Heroes miniatures selection

I've been meaning to take a look at a few figures from Raging Heroes for some time now, especially as I was building a Slaanesh army for Warhammer 40K which has kind of dropped of my radar in recent years to be honest, but now and then the odd HR Giger influenced design pops up from time to time and piques my interest.

I'll be taking a look over a few of the figures from their Dark Elves range starting with Violet the Duchess and Arkiish.

Each figure came in a clear plastic blister pack with the figure itself in a ziplock bag wrapped in some bubble wrap. That's quite a bit of packaging and plastic to start of with and Arkiish felt pretty tight in the blister back too, but looks like nothing was affected which is a good thing.

The image you see on the front showing the figure contained is a double sided card. This has another image and the barcode on the reverse, so you get two of these cards too.

The bit I do really like though is the double sided slip of paper with some basic instructions for dealing with resin and preparing miniatures. Invaluable for people starting out which I feel often gets taken for granted.

On the the figures then. Firstly; Violet. This is the mascot for the Dark Elves and is pretty small in comparison to the rest, but highly detailed at the same time. Just €8.00 for around 20mm in height.

She does have a faint mold line (which for can seen in the right photo) but I found that easy to scrape off with a scalpel and finger nail. The excess from the beak clipped of without problem at all. Casting is good but details are a little soft which would help with better definition on a figure this size. I'll talk more about the resin in a moment.

Now for Arkiish, the Black Reaper. €15.00 for this one which feels about right for the size and parts.

As you can see, Arkiish comes with some extra excess resin. As in lots of it. This is something most companies remove and dispose of leaving just small amounts for you to clean up and dispose of. This amount is excessive personally and weight based postage could likely be reduced if that wasn't part of the package.

That's almost a second figure worth.

The design of the figure is great; especially with all the fine detail in the 3D render like the chainmail and hair. However; some of this has been lost between printing and resin casting and a long mould line added.

The keys and sockets are well placed and the parts cut in ways that cover joins, but two out of the three are slightly off. The sockets for the right arm and trophy pole on the back are smaller than they need to be.

As you can see they do look good when together. But that resin is a little odd. It cuts and scrapes well, though be careful as it's easy to remove more than intended. However it doesn't seem to like to stick together. That was using Loctite superglue which I've used to stick more things than I like to think about (fingers included). Even after being stuck for over 15 minutes I could easily take them apart. Maybe that's the mold release needing even more of a detergent based bath but it was frustrating to stick together.

The resin feels somewhat rubbery so I'm not sure if it's some kind of PVC mix but that could affect the superglue.

Now the Vestal Riders command set which will set you back €31.00 for the three miniatures.

I'll be honest. When I looked at all the excess resin I would have to remove, ball joints to be attached (odd decision as they often look quite bulky), and the fact that the figures have round pegs but are supplied with bases with long rectangular slots; I put them back in the box.

Don't get me wrong, the details look really good and having the riders legs as part of the mounts body always works better when making miniatures look like a complete design rather than one just glued to a generic mount. But that is quite a bit of prep.


So then. I'm kind of disappointed to be honest. The 3D renders you see are incredible which put my expectations quite high. But perhaps they're a little too detailed for the casters to really handle properly.

The curve of the excess resin from the Vestal Riders does make me think of the old round molds that companies would use for casting metal miniatures which make me wonder if that may be part of the reason for the drop in detail clarity.

Either way, they are interesting designs and have quite a variety ranging from pretty twisted to pin up, but I wouldn't want to have to assemble a whole army as I reckon pinning might have to be the way to go. I would be interested to see them in metal but I believe they have stopped using metal now.


If you would like to know more you can follow Raging Heroes on Facebook and the various links throughout this review.
Thank you for reading.