Unboxing: Perry Miniatures Samurai

In order to round out my budding "Nippon" army, I've purchased a few models from Perry Miniatures.

Perry Miniatures are an independent company owned by the infamous "Perry Twins" - two of the creators of  many, many Citadel Miniatures. For anyone interested in what they look like (the twins, not the miniatures), their photo appears in the original "Warhammer Siege" rulebook.

Anyway.

I don't know if they're still working for Citadel/GW or not, but their own company "Perry Miniatures" is currently making historical models in both plastic and metal. The Samurai range is only available in metal.

Needing among other things, some Ninja, Monks and a Daimyo, I decided to order some of their products.

The ordering process itself was simple enough, communications were good and the goods arrived in a very "rattley" taped up cardboard box within a few days.

Slitting the tape and opening the box revealed: More boxes! And the reason for the rattle.

And that's how there were - totally loose in the box. No additional packaging. Now that's not actually a problem as far as it goes, as each of the individual cardboard boxes is well packaged in itself. Each is taped shut and contains a cotton-wool backing and the miniatures you've ordered:

I'll show each of these sets one-by-one below, but just a general point on packaging. I hate excessive packaging. It inflates postage costs, means my recycle bin fills up faster and there's obviously more waste. However, I think these guys have gone slightly too far the other way.

The lead these models are made from seems to be quite soft, and there were a greater amount of bent swords and whatnot than I was happy with here. A bit more room in the boxes would have helped, I think.

I ordered two sets of Monks with Naginata (halberds):

The Naginata are clearly separate and need gluing into place.

Two sets of Ninja:

Ninja - 5 standing and one lying down (crawling, I guess, or suspended from a wire, Tom-Cruise-style). 

One set of Mantlets:

The set contains 6 Mantlets - I've only shown three here. These are really intended just to add to my "Siege Equipment" roster so you'll probably see them painted up on another blog post soon.

One "Flaming Arrow" (that's the Army list name for the item - can't remember the Perry name for it.):

This set contains the cannon (1 piece), 4 crew and 2 large Mantlets (only 1 shown. These will also migrate to my Siege equipment posts soon).

And a Daimyo:

The Daimyo is mounted...

...and comes with 2 standard bearers and a Samurai.

You'll notice from these hasty camera-phone pics two things:

1. The models are on bases which are moulded as part of the models. The legs are quite slender so I'll probably just glue these on top of slottabases rather than removing them and trying to fit pins in. The moulded bases are thin enough to hide.
2. Flash! It's been a long time since I've seen metal models with this amount of flash and mould-lines. It's a real shame as the models themselves really do look lovely, but they will require a deal of clean-up which may in a few places cause a loss of details.

My only other niggle is with the Ninja sets. I have two sets of these both containing identical models. That means I have two Ninjas lying down. Not all that useful. I have thought about mounting them on 40mm bases and using them as couple of "unit fillers" representing 4 models, but the Nippon rules state that the Ninja unit can skirmish so that might play a little strangely. I'll give it some thought.

Minor issues aside, I'd still have to rate these models as good value for money - you end up paying (not including shipping) just over £1 per model which is extremely cheap for metal 28mm minis. It's way cheaper than GW plastics! 

All told, these are a good buy and I'd recommend them.