Catching Up

Ok, I've been remiss. I have received a couple of orders from different manufacturers in the past few weeks and haven't reviewed them.
So Let's get started.

First up we have Darkest Star Games' Garrhul. I ordered 2 packs of the of Pack Troops with helmets, 1 pack without helmets, 1 merchant Prince and Bodyguards and 1 Garrhul Sniper.
They arrived about 2 weeks later, not bad for a Pacific crossing.

Back Row: Without helmets,

Middle Rows: With helmets

Front Row: Merchant Prince, Bodyguards and Sniper.

The figures have a strong resemblance to art work depicting Vargr in the Traveller roleplaying game. Which isn't surprising when one considers that both Garrhul and Vargr are essentially upright, bipedal wolves, the style of armour, particularly the helmets is very similar to the Vargr style of armour. There is not much a designer can do about the basic helmet design, wolf heads are a very specific shape, unlike us humans who can fit several styles of helmet onto our almost round heads. There is one important difference between Garrhul and Vargr (see below).

There is a good selection of personal weapons with each pack including "3x Advanced Combat Carbines, 1x Advanced Combat Carbine with underbarrel Grenade Launcher, 3x Advanced Combat Rifles, 1x Light Machine Gun, 1x Marksman's Rifle, and 1x Particle Rifle". The Particle Rifle will be employed the same way a squad Plasma Rifle in SG II is employed. They do lack a pack (squad) GMP/S system, my solution will be to employ a drone or robotic unit as the pack (squad) missile gunner. Come to think of it, that is what I'll do with any group of figures that lacks support weapons. 

The Merchant Prince is unarmed but his bodyguards carry a Carbine and Assault Shotgun.

The Sniper uses a Gauss Sniper Rifle.

Ok so now we have some close ups, comparisons and measurements.

A mix of helmeted and helmetless figures, the left hand figure carries the SAW (or should that be Pack Automatic Weapon? PAW), the right hand figure appears to have the marksman's rifle, the third figure from the left has the particle rifle while the fourth and fifth have carbines w/over and under GL. the Second figure has a carbine.

 The Merchant Prince (centre), flanked by his Bodyguards, with a Sniper prone in front of them. The guard on the left carries the Assault Shotgun, the other won carries an Advanced Combat Carbine. The standard Garrhul Sniper Rifle is a Gauss Rifle with enhanced sights.

 Here we see the difference between Traveller's Vargr and the Garrhul. These Garrhul figures are about the same height as the NSB Panzergrenadier (a Human), and they have yet to be based on washers. This means that the average Garrhul is a little taller than the average human. The main Vargr sub species is considerably shorter, by about 10cm or more than the average human. There is of course at least one sub-species of Vargr that is taller then humans, but they are considerably taller, something like 20cm taller.

All in all, these are good figures. The detail is pretty good, with minimal flash and the range of poses is quite good. 

They do lack integral support weapons but that is easily remedied with the addition of some robotic assistance.

They're well worth buying, for your wargames or even as stand ins for Vargr (despite their relative height).