Ramschackle Games mininatures review

A couple of weeks ago I found out about Ramshackle Games through a thread over at Lead Adventure Forum. It was a store I had never heard about before, selling really cheap resin and metal miniatures. Actually they were so cheap I started to worry they might be 15mm but it said 28-32 so I ordered a two blisters and got one promotional model for free - in order to check out the quality of the castings and the service.

The P&P was below £2 as well for my small order, of "society of intrepid explorers", "mutie man slythe" and the freebee "Trixie" (which is still given away for free with each order as I write this). There was some other stuff I was interested in but I really wanted to see the size of the models  first so I could tell if they would go along well with my Strange Aeons stuff or other games that I have.

From placing my order to the miniatures arriving was 3 weeks, which is acceptable for a micro company. For international orders above £32 they recommend splitting the order to save on the shipping as apparently the Royal Mail goes greedy otherwise.

So anyway, the resin - I think it said somewhere it was a "cheap" version of the material. I'm not  a huge resin "connoisseur" so I'm mainly interested in the quality of the sculpts and details. I can say that the sculpts are well done, and have just enough detail to make them interesting. Though I'm a person that prefers less detail over cluttered miniatures covered in skulls, chains and spikes (you know which games I have in mind). So that was good, since it was rather hard to tell on their site as many models have a painting style that does not convey the crispness of the detail level.

The resin is the grey variety, but I think it is slightly different from that of Grendel and their like as this resin seem to be a lot more durable and not as heavy. I did two models twice by accident from about 1meter and thought they would shatter or chip but they remained unharmed. The models themselves come covered in the greasy mould release agent but even after you have scrubbed them with soap and water using a toothbrush they still appear to be somewhat stick (?) on the surface. If you use a file or a knife to scrape the surface you will get to the dry resin texture that we are all used to, but the immediate surface is a bit weird. Which led me to believe I had failed to wash of the mould release agent. Having washed them twice I gave them a black undercoat with a spray can to see if the paint would come off - but it didn't so I guess the mould release agent was washed off after all.

It should be noted that I used warm water during the cleaning, but  they remained a bit sticky even after having dried for an hour.

I took some pictures of the models before and after hitting them with the primer, and some pictures of a painted test model to let you guys see how they look during all 3 steps.

The scale seem to be a bit iffy, they are more 32mm than 28. So a bit to big for my 25mm West Wind collection that I use for Strange Aeons. Though they fit better with Secrets of the third Reich models and my Black Scorpion miniatures minis (32mm). On the other hand the little mutant man is tiny in comparison. It could be that the post apocalyptic range has one scale, and the steampunk range has another while the mutants are in their own scale. Hard to tell judging by these models only.

But in conclusion, the castings are good according to me, certainly nothing wrong with the level of detail. The models are interesting and have their own sculpting style. And they are pretty cheap, especially the vehicles which I saw went for £6-8 per resin model and those also seemed pretty big so I might order a few for Combat Zone and SoTR. I know my buddy Calle was interested in the vehicles in particular. So check out Ramshackle games, you could always order one or two blisters to see how they fit with whatever you want to use them for.

Oh, you also get those rounded edge bases with each model, and the models themselves have integral scenic bases. I'll post pictures of the other models as I paint them up.