A Bit of a Review: Scibor Conversion Bitz

Firstly, you may have noticed the blog has had a slight facelift. Apologies for those that may have suffered while I was messing around with it. Doing the technical stuff on my fiancee's blog has given me a better idea of how to do certain things, so the blog now looks a little closer to how I originally wanted it. I should also add the disclaimer that the choice of flags is in no way meant to be jingoistic, be a call for the revival of the Empire and neither the separation of Newfoundland from Canada &c &c.... Anyhoo, on to the business of the day.

After reeling from the collaborative fluff I put together with Scipio the other day (read my part here, and Scipio's here), I decided to go back to being selfish and looking at some of my own stuff.

After watching British 70s classic, Children of the Stones, and listening to this superb Radio 4 documentary about the show by Stewart Lee, I decided to share a bit of Mawdryn related ramblings.

I've been going on about a colossal order of "bitz" for the past week, some of which includes some excellent parts for my Spears of Mawdryn Space Marines (Druid alert), as well as a major helping of bitz for my fledling Imperial Navy Landing Party... my holidays are well and truly sorted. As these have been dispatched to another address, rather than my current one, I'm eagerly looking forward to unwrapping them like a kid at Christmas. For once, this saying is quite timely.


Anyhoo, a couple of months back, I was browsing the various conversion and components sites out there and stumbled across these great resin pieces by Scibor Miniatures. I had been looking for some suitably Celtic shields, and these seemed just  right. A good size to boot. I also found these great Celtic decoration plates that I thought could be pressed into service on my "Barrow-Raised Dreadnoughts" and add a little flavour to the few vehicles used by the Chapter. Failing that, they would be great for any building scenery I put together for them.


From left to right, the packs are (4x) Celtic Decorated Plates #2 (€5.40), (2x) Celtic Decorated Plates #4 (€4.60), and (8x) Dwarves Shields (€5.40). For what you get in the packs, the cost is pretty reasonable. Postage was a rather odd €6.06 to the UK, but they arrived pretty quickly from Poland.

Pretty intricate knotwork on pieces so relatively small
Nice detailing on the reverse side too, more typically fantasy, but more than suitable for Mawdryn
Assault Marine hastily pressed into service for illustrative purposes...
As the name implies, these are meant to be Dwarf shields of the Fantasy variety, but they certainly aren't limited to just that. The shields are going to be used for my Honour Guard and/or Veterans, and the shields have a nice variety of design and two have the triskelion spiral device that I was looking for. As the image above shows, they scale nicely on the Space Marines, being near-enough perfectly sized.


The "Decorated Plates" are similarly a good size, but the larger ones above may be a little difficult to fit onto a vehicle without trimming. However, I'm sure I may be able to, and if not they won't go to waste



This is supposed to be a review however, and there is a slight flaw with all of these pieces. As intricately beautiful as the knotwork designs are, I'm guessing the moulds are rather shallow and this means that details can be lost on corners and curves in particular. This isn't the end of the world, but worth noting.

Close to the centre on the middle shield, and on the edges of the left-hand shield the detailing has a tendency to fade
Similarly, on the corners of these plates it appears that detailing has rubbed away.
All in all, despite a couple of flaws, I'd recommend these products (I'm not aware of anyone doing anything similar) and Scibor in general. Much of Scibor's stuff is not not to my persoanl taste, and looks like it's going beyond Heroic scale creep, and is a little flashy for me - but this seems to be the general direction of GW in general to be fair (more on this next post). However, I like their smaller bitz, and even with the larger, flashier stuff, whilst it might not be my cup of tea - technically they look sound and I'd certainly recommend them if that's what you're after.

Comments

  1. I've seen Scibor a few times. However, the stuff they produce just never interests me. *le shrug*

    Can't wait to see more "Spears of Mawdryn" in future ^_^

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    1. Likewise, as I said generally it's not my cup of tea, but these pieces happened to be the exception.

      Hopefully I shan't dissapoint with the Mawdryn stuff, they're supposed to draw on Celtic/Romano-British elements with a focus on the historical rather than "pseudo-celtic" wishy-washiness

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  2. I am rather surprised by these and must check the company out.

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  3. I think these bits will help give your marines even more character. Good choices one and all.

    Will there be a Gwenhwyfar in all this? :)

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    1. Thanks Dai. Got loads more planned for the final versions of the models than I've perhaps mentioned here previously, these were a nice quick and easy way to have slightly fancier shields for the more elite troops - in contrast to the ones I've been making myself for the lower end assault troops :)

      No Gwenhwyfar in this I'm afraid, but I've plagiarised almost everything else - the Honour Guard represent the Cymbrogi, or Knights of the Rounds table effectively, the Knowledge of Britain is "emulated" as are the 13 Treasures in the form of lost Chapter Relics from time immemorial

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  4. Nice to see the Spears of Mawdryn again. Cool bits too. Also, I love that background! What a cool snapshot from history. It was spinning me out to see the Australian flag with the separate Tasmanian flag. ---random muttering--- So the poster must have after 1856 (when the Van Dieman’s Land colony was renamed Tasmania) but before 1901 (when the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed). hmm, anyway cheers for the interesting radio link, and Merry Christmas.

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    1. Thanks very much, was working on some new conversions last night ;) I found the background image ages ago and was going to do my own based on it, but in the end just thought I may as well use it "as is." Haha I nearly mentioned the separate Tasmania in my "disclaimer." Thanks for the dates, didn't know those at all, that's really interesting. Merry Christmas to yourself sir, have a good one.

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  5. Love those shields, shame they don't make Viking ones!

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    1. There's a couple that are really pretty much OTT Viking shields, but I did see some pretty superb ones for Vikings last night - I just need to try and remember where they were now...

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  6. Looking very nice - that hastily-pressed-into-service marine is a great teaser for the Mawdryns! Pricing is not too bad either. Nice review, thanks!

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    1. Thank you very much my good man. Pricing is pretty decent, could possibly be a tad better but could be a damn sight worse too. Definitely worth checking, especially for the more scenery-based parts

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