Mantic Undead Revenant Cavalry review

Revenants are ancient heroes infused with a Necromancer’s power that rise to become deadly undead warriors. The Revenants form the armoured elite of a Necromancer’s army and when mounted on the unholy remains of their once revered war-charges, there are few living warriors with the strength or nerve to stand against them.

Mantic Games’ Undead Revenant Cavalry are made from a resin/plastic mix, the Undead Revenant Cavalry Regiment contains 10 miniatures & the Revenant Cavalry Horde contains 20 models, each box contains 1 champion, 1 standard bearer and 1 musician.

This is the first time I’ve worked with a resin/plastic kit and I was surprised to find that all the parts were loose in a couple of plastic bags, maybe naively I was expecting sprues.

Wanting to know more about resin/plastic I gave Mantic a call and was told that the revenant cavalry were a trial to see how well this new material performed and that if it goes well we can expect more of these types of miniatures from Mantic.

The reason behind trialling resin/plastic is that the moulds for plastic kits are very expensive to produce, so miniatures that are likely to sell in smaller volumes, think specialists and character models, cannot be economically manufactured in plastic. Traditionally this would mean miniatures would be cast in metal but metal prices have sky rocketed in recent years, these revenant cavalry boxed sets would have cost twice as much if the miniatures were cast in metal, so Mantic have turned to resin/plastic. Additionally metal miniatures are always difficult to work with, if trimming or bending heavy weight parts is required, another reason to try resin/plastic.

Why resin/plastic and not just resin? We’ll anyone that has worked with resin will know that while it produces great levels of detail it is much, much more fragile than plastic (or metal of course) and adding plastic to the mix strengthens the miniature. This is an advantage as miniatures can be bent and twisted into shape easily during construction and are less prone to damage during play.

Anyway, on opening the bags included in the Revenant Cavalry Regiment boxed set you are presented with 70 plastic/resin parts along with 10 plastic bases. 3 parts for each horse including a mounded base and 4 for each revenant rider, see image below:

From the parts provided it is possible to build 4 differently posed horses, 7 differently built lancers plus command, a nice level of customisation.

Preparing the miniatures too little time, there was some flash on the miniatures, especially on the horses backsides, but these parts were easily cleaned up.

Construction was pretty straightforward, a little trimming and filling is required to get the two halves of each horse to fit together perfectly but this doesn’t present too much of a problem, I also found a lump of green stuff was needed to create better contact between horse and rider. NOTE: Resin/plastic is glued with super glue.

The only real complication is that the small resin scenic base poses some modelling problems as it sits on top of the plastic bases supplied. Some blending in with green stuff or similar will be required, this could have been avoided if the kit included recessed bases like those supplied with Mantic’s infantry.

The sculpts themselves are pretty nice, the standard bearer especially looks fantastic when built. To my mind there is only one piece of the kit that lets it down and that is the torso with the abdomen exposed. It doesn’t sit too well on some of the legs provided and the shield arm seems to want to sit lower than the lance arm on this torso. Both these issues can be resolved by trimming off the fitting peg and gluing on in the position of your choice, this doesn’t pose any durability issues as the resin/plastic mix sticks very well, much better than metal. Finally I would have liked to have seen tails on the horses but I guess this is the first thing that drops off when a horse enters unlife….

With regard to cost, at first glance this kit seems expensive for a box of Mantic miniatures, Mantic being well known for their great value for money. But once you accept that this kit was not going to happen in plastic and that the only other option would have been metal you soon realise that you get a lot of miniatures for your £25 or £50 RRP outlay. Were you to purchase the approximate equivalent Games Workshop miniatures (Black Knights) the prices would be £77 and £154 accordingly.

So, all in all, there is little to fault this kit. The miniatures look great, are easy to build and represent good value for money…

Overall score: 9/10

Mantic Revenant Cavalry Regiment

Mantic Revenant Cavalry Horde

*Accurate as of 8th January 2011