Menhom Dark Shadow - Review

Another mini under the loupe, this time my first purchase from Andrea Miniatures.

Menhom Dark Shadow

(c) Andrea Miniatures

I felt in love with this piece few years back, when a friend send me a link with the pic. And it was the love at first sight. Unfortunately at that point I was on a verge of quiting the hobby, or not sure if I should get back to painting (don't remember exactly when it was), and the mini itself was too pricey just for a whim, so I didn't buy it. But never really forgot about it. And finally managed to buy it few months ago.

The mini itself is from an Andera's range Warlord Saga, the line of 54mm fantasy miniatures (some really nice stuff there - check it out).
I did measure it, and from the top of the spike to the floor it has 80mm, so it's quite tall even for it's scale (please notice that Menhom is bending forward, standing straight, he'd be even taller).


Packaging:
The mini comes in a paper box, not too stiff, but parts are secured with thick sponge, so there is no way anything can move inside. It's very important, as the metal used for that mini is rather soft and can bend easily.

What's in the box:
As you can see, in the box we find 15 metal parts and one resin (the bottom part of the body).
All the spikes and horns are on one bar, which is nice, because they're tiny and some of them are really thin.

Quality:
The metal parts of the mini are rather clean. You can find few mould lines, but they are easy to remove. You need to be careful with the thin parts, like sword or spikes, because the metal is very soft and can bend almost under the weight of the brush.
Unfortunately the resin piece is way worse. The resin is rugged, especially in all these places that are hard to access, and by the look of the dress, you can say, that there is lots of such spots. There are also few mould lines, but comparing to the roughness of the surface in the recesses of the folds, it's not a big deal and easy to fix.

 

Assembly:
I'm rather happy with the way parts fit together. Even hands and wrists have little 'pins' to make the joints stronger. The only problem here are spikes, especially the longer ones. It's very difficult to make them fit the recesses and even if we manage to do that, making them stay there - it's completely different matter... I guess the only way is to paint them separately and glue to the mini at the last minute.


Overall opinion:
'Beautiful mini with issues' - that's the simplest way of describing this piece. If you don't mind prep work and can be patient with fixing all the imperfections, Menhom will be a very nice addition to your collection.  I'm not the fan of the intense preparation myself, but luckily the mini isn't bad enough to discourage from buying more Andrea Miniatures in the future (I got my eye on few Vikings there:D).


Were to buy:
If you're from Poland, I'd suggest to go straight to Jama store, they have great choice of minis (and even if they don't have it at hand, they can just order it) and the service is swift and very firendly.
UK - SK miniatures.
For the rest of the world - google closest retailer:)

Or of course, you can buy directly from Andrea Miniatures website.


Other Andrea Miniatures reviews:
Urmuth Scars of War