The crux of the matter is, I really want to love this game, or more accurately, I really want to love AA's Ratmen figures. But being what it is, it's impressive for any small miniatures company to last more than a few years, let a lone a few decades.Īdditionally, my criticisms are entirely of an aesthetic nature, which is not only subjective*, but comes from an understanding that I am not a sculptor of miniatures, I am certainly not a Golden Dragon-level painter of miniatures, and my opinions are based only on the limited visuals that I have been able to amass from online sources. Money is generally more or less a necessary evil standing in between hobbyists and what they want to do, and I think in a currency-free world we would see in the hobby an explosion of creativity and artistry. Primarily because this hobby is, by and large, a labour of love for all involved modern GW and Oldhammer ebay parasites aside, no one gets into wargaming with money as the primary motivation. I want to start with a caveat here that my sentiments might run a bit into the overly-negative, something I'm always a bit loathe to do in regards to anything about our hobby, especially when it comes to small independent companies. It seems the perfect storm of interest crafted specifically to appeal to yours truly, and yet I've kept my distance. On top of that, being of primarily Scottish descent, I have an inherent love of all things Caledonian, and in the world of Flintloque, the Scots are represented by the Ratmen of Joccia. So, for me, the combination of fantasy elements with Napoleonics pushes all the right buttons. Though I've yet to delve in wholeheartedly, I can see its potential as a future obsession. I've always had a bit of a distant fascination with Napoleonic wargaming. In 1999 AA came under the Alector Ltd parent company, but has more or less had continual operation up until the present day, and Flintloque has gathered a small but solid fanbase. One of their most popular lines focuses around the game of Flintloque, a character-based skirmish games set in a fantasy version of the Napoleonic Wars. Chaz Elliott's line featured the impressive Wererat Champion (5010).Īlternative Armies came on to the hobby scene in 1991, a Scottish company producing a wide range of 15mm and 28mm figures. The Fantasy Sculptor range contains, in my opinion, some of the best "Oldschool" style fantasy sculpts outside of Jes Goodwin's work for Citadel in the 1980s. The aforementioned caveat "sort of" is in reference to the difference between these two lines. In regards to fantasy, Heartbreaker had a main line, the Heartbreaker Fantasy Range featuring the standard parallels of the Warhammer factions, and then a prestige line highlighting the work of named sculpting talents Kev Adams, Chaz Elliott, Phil Lewis and Tim Prow. The story of Heartbreaker is a complex ringwallbilder, but it started quite strong, grabbing a number of (at the time) "prestigious" IP licences, including FASA's Earthdawn (a fantasy RPG set in the pre-history of the fantasy/cyberpunk blend Shadowrun) and Mutant Chronicles (once considered the main contender against 40K). There were a few hobby companies in the early 90s that aspired to capture the Warhammer audience, many of them started by ex-GW employees, but none of them managed to grab the sculpting talent sported by Heartbreaker.sort of. Senior Manager Bob Watts left Games Workshop after Bryan Ansel sold the company, starting Heartbreaker with a mind to compete with GW.
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