[Lantz's Corner] Blight Wheel Miniatures' Blight Wheel Brotherhood Review

After a short break I'm back on the reviewing circuit. This time around I've got the little-known Blight Wheel Miniatures. I stumbled upon this site from a link Matt had sent me last month and was immediately slapped in the face with several well-sculpted miniatures. While their product line is quite small, each model looked to be unique to a lot of models out there and well produced to boot. For my purchase I ended up going with the interesting looking Blight Wheel Brotherhood. So what came of this purchase? Let's find out.

First let's look at the website. While their product line is the definition of "dinky", that also creates a very clean feel. All the products are lined up in one page with pricing noted on each item. One thing this webstore excels at is showing off their product. Each item has several pictures of the model, most with pictures of the pieces to put together and some even with painted/finished products. The larger stores out there tend to avoid this time-consuming, yet extremely important step in selling their product. If they could push for some sort of size-comparison their picture lineup would be perfect.

I had the pleasure of working with their customer service at one point as I had some questions about their products. While their representatives don't seem to have English as their primary language, they're easily understood, very pleasant and really quick to respond to the simplest of questions.

After ordering my models I received them within six business days which is above par in my book for overseas shipping. The package was filled to the brim with packing peanuts, while the product took up very little space.

The models are nicely detailed and even the tiniest of parts are taken into account when sculpted. The price tag on this set seemed a bit steep to me, but after seeing these tiny, yet elegant details, the price is a bit more justified:

As you can tell, these things have very little cleanup and air bubbles are nowhere to be seen:

While package protection was superb, the models are so very fragile I don't think anything could have saved them from their trip through the postage service. With that said, there was only three broken off pieces out of all of these sprues, and one wasn't part of the model, just part of the sprue:

Even with only a few breaks from shipping, constructing these little things caused a few more snaps and breaks due to them being so fragile they can't withstand the aftershock of fingernail clippers removing them from the sprue. To counter this, I'd have them consider making the molds bigger or thickening up the smaller sections of the arms for these guys. The Brotherhood stand at almost exactly the same height as a Space Marine which was what I was hoping for. So let's get to the breakdown:

Pros

Beautifully crafted models

Superb customer service

Clean webstore

Well-protected shipping

Cons

Extremely fragile models

Conclusion

Overall I have little to complain about with this webstore. The models, the website, the customer service and shipping--everything is better than some of the bigger indie webstores out there. The only issue I really have with these guys is the limbs of these models being the most fragile of a resin mold I've ever seen. Transporting them is going to be a chore once constructed and there's no obvious way around this. Other than that, this shopping experience was a treat and I'd buy from them over and over again.

~Lantz aka Sinaura

(www.themagnetpro.blogspot.com)