Thursday 7 January 2016

VSF Artillery & Wheels from 'Victoria Miniatures'

Here’s Captain Darling with some of his Royal Artillery buddies playing with their new VSF auto loading artillery piece and a very nice looking bit of equipment it is too:


Well with some of my Christmas money I thought I’d increase the size of "little armies" so I placed an order with Trenchworx and another with a company I found only recently called Victoria Miniatures. I liked the looks of the ‘heavy guns’ and ‘wheels’ on their site. Now I can make guns myself but theirs looked good and I can’t make wheels very (well in large numbers anyway) so I thought I’d take advantage of their pre-Christmas discounts on the items I was interested in and their standard policy of free shipping on orders over $50.
I ordered:
1 x Auto Cannon (25% off)
2 x Heavy Twin Stubber (25% off)
2 x Heavy Bolter (25% off)
1 x Ammo Crates

Now I was surprised when only a few days my order arrived! I thought that was some super delivery and then to my surprise I noticed on the package label this is an Australian company and to make it more interesting they are only 10-15 minutes drive from my front door! I was surprised by this as nothing on their website flags them as Australian (unless I missed something!), the prices are in USD, it’s a .com website with a .net email address. Anyway I’ve contacted them again and any future orders I’ll just pick up!
Regarding Victoria Miniatures VSF products, they have a great looking range of heavy and light weapons and modular figures where you can buy complete figures sets (in cases mixing and matching what you want) or just lots of parts i.e. sets of heads, sets of arms etc. I would love some bearskin clad heads but this is one option they don’t currently have so will have to go elsewhere for them! I love the look of many of the figures and may get some of their Tannenburg Fusiliers.
Now as to the quality of the products I can only comment on the heavy artillery and wheels I have on hand and here's what I thought:

Great looking designs they look fantastic on the the gaming table
The detail was sharp and crisp and the casting sreflected it well
There was not one air bubble in any piece
There was flash in places (but easily scrapped off)
There are mould seam lines
Here’s a picture of a sample of what greeted me when I unpacked the parcel:


Here’s the guns all assembled and painted (to a war game standard):


The only issue I had with the sets I got from Victoria Miniatures were the mould seam lines, they are pronounced and if you are after building a high quality looking model rather than 'just' a gaming piece you will have to spend some time on them. I simple dragged my scalpel over the worst of them a couple of times so they would less noticable and now they make very presentable artillery pieces on my VSF gaming table.
I’ll definitely do a bulk order for some Victoria Miniatures wheels for future VSF Vehicles/Landships and I have saved a lot of man hours building their good looking artillery pieces for my armies. Whether their items are value for money is a decision each individual has to make up their own mind on.
Here's the link to their website:
Oh and just so everyone knows I have no financial or product interests in Victoria

Miniatures…
Righty'O Next Post will definitely be an AAR, hold on maybe it will definitely be Building the USLS Lexington hmmm well it will definitely "be something"...

2 comments:

  1. Nice one Captain - I'll check them out!
    Always good to find another Aussie company

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  2. Some nice pieces in their ranges, thanks for posting. I can definately find some uses for them.
    Cheers
    Stu

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