Review: Green Stuff World 1/144 Figures

 

Heyhey, it’s review time again! Today I’m taking a closer look at Green Stuff World’s new product range – generic modern/sci-fi 1/144th scale figures.

A few weeks ago, GSW announced several packs of 3d printed figures, printed in 1/144th and 1/100th scale. Curiously, they call the 1/144th scale figures 15mm and the 1/100th scale 20mm. The company has been around for a while, this is a surprising error. But anyway, it’s just in the online store and can easily be fixed. 

For this review I’ll focus on the 1/144th scale versions because they fit my Gundam stuff and I’m a big fan of 10/12mm as a figure size in general. So much so that curiosity got the better of me.

The company came out with quite a few packs right away: 

• Military Figures (26 figures, 10 different poses)
• Civilian Figures (40 figures, 10 different poses)
• Military Casualties (24 figures, 8 different poses)
• Civilian Casualties (24 figures, 8 different poses)
• Mechanics (18 figures, 8 different poses) 
• Astronauts (18 figures, 7 different poses, some of which interesting zero-G floaty ones)
• Pilots (18 figures, 5 different poses)

I got the Military, Civilian, Civilian Casualties and Mechanics sets. Let’s have a closer look at the Military set:

The set contains 10 different poses, number of figures of each pose in brackets: 

• Kneeling with Binoculars (2)
• Standing, pointing, mapin hand (2)
• Sniper, prone (2)
• Sniper, kneeling (2)
• Missile Launcher, kneeling (2)
• Missile Launcher, standing (2)
• Standing, gun in one hand, pointing (3)
• Standing, gun lowered (4)
• Standing, gun aiming (4)
• Kneeling, with box (Loader? Radioman? Rummaging through stuff?) (3)

The resin prints look OK. Not overly detailled, but it’s hard to tell before we take a paintbrush to them.

Designs are vague enough to fit generic ultra-modern and sci-fi soldiers. According to the official description, they’re supposed to be used for dioramas mainly and don’t come with bases printed to their feet. Luckily though, they feature more miniature-ish proportions rather than ‚realistic‘ ones. Feet, heads and hands are slightly exaggerated, so gluing the feet to bases should work just fine.

Assembly

Now this is the tricky part. These are resin prints, they come on a grid with a ton of supports. This makes transporting them safe and easy. Getting them off that printy grid though is not much fun. You basically have to remove one support after another (6-9 per figure), and carefully so, because especially knees and ankles love to snap on these. 

First I tried using my model pliers/nipper, but it proved to be too crude a tool. Soon I switched to using very fine (nail) scissors instead, which proved to be more useful. Once the figures are off the grid, you can use a sharp modelling knife to remove any remains of the supports.

Painting

After a basic paintjob and gluing them to bases, the figures were ready for gaming. I have to say, that I kinda like the model railway look the civilians give especially.

The soldiers come with interesting earphones on their helmets (which I only painted on figures I’d like to be read as radio operators) and sunglasses/visors. I just painted the faces as if without visors/shades because I find shades on soldiers to look rather boring. It doesn’t make much of a difference on 10/12mm figures of this sculpting style.

I deliberately put them on bases with plenty of space around, as to protect the figures. The soldiers are on 32mm and 25mm round bases (the single dude on a 20mm). The civilians are on 50mm round bases, the covered-up casualty on a 25mm base.

Verdict

Getting these figures prepared for painting is no fun. Once they’re „good enough for the gaming table“, I rather like them. Especially the civilians are a handy addition. If you feel a bit morbid, you can mix in some figures form the Civilian Casualties set, as I did. 

Now as for the size, a little detour: A while ago I got some 1/144th scale plastic figures by Bandai.

These are excellently detailled; more so than the Green Stuff World prints I would say, a bit slighter and generally realistically proportioned. GSW’s figures measure 11-11,5mm foot to eye, the Bandai ones 11mm. 

The grey one in the middle is Bandai's plastic figure.

The GSW figures might work with 10mm ranges such as Pendrakens. Even though these are 10mm foot to eye proper, the proportions aren’t too dissimilar. 

GSW provide some useful pictures on their website.

I painted one full pack of the Military figures and the full pack of Civilians, plus a few Civilian Casualties figures mixed in. The civilians are really nicely done. Facial features are clearly identifiable, there’s a good mix of poses (quite a few with hands to the head,I assume for ease of printing). Given how the set contains a whopping 40 figures, this is important. More variety of course would always be welcome, but I think for just one set it’s pretty good. On the military figures, I’m not too fond of a few stylistic choices (shades, „earmuffs“, guns look odd. Like huge SMGs. Surely this has technical reasons too). But very useful as generic soldiers.

At the price point of EUR 4,25 per pack, these are very affordable. They are almost priced along the lines of these very cheap N gauge model railway figures you can get online. Which probably do the trick as well, but require (re-)painting and are of worse quality/detail. Pendraken’s figures are more expensive of course (roughly twice as much). However, in any pricing consideration I must urge you to factor in the time spent getting these figures out of their frames. Which is not a very fun thing to spend time on. I can’t put it any other way.

Once they’re done though they’re handy figures, and if you’re looking for generic 1/144th scale figures – this is a pretty good offer. Be it for your 1/144 diorama or wargaming – useful figures.

Right, I hope you enjoyed the review and found it interesting. If you have any questions, comments or indeed commission enquiries, feel free to let me know via the comments section, the Battle Brush Studios Facebook page, on Instagram or via e-mail.