Warlord Games has started replacing Bolt Action’s metal artillery and support weapons with plastic, beginning with its best-selling range: Germany.
What’s Changing
- Three core frames for Germany: a PaK 40 anti-tank gun, a heavy weapons frame (MG 34/42, medium mortars, Panzerschrecks), and a crew frame matching the late-war plastic Grenadiers.
- Why now: Third Edition’s platoon system has players fielding far more heavy weapons, metal prices swing constantly, and multi-part metal kits are notoriously fiddly to build.
- What’s next: every nation with a plastic infantry kit is due a core gun, heavy weapons frame and crew frame, with the rest of the metal range converted over time.
- Metal crews aren’t vanishing: sculpts like Fallschirmjäger and Afrika Korps teams may live on in hybrid kits with plastic weapons.
Our Take at Xpidemix
This is a very positive direction. Metal kits are a real pain to build, and plastic simply does it better.
Plastic doesn’t bend. Metal barrels tend to arrive bent, and even after straightening them by hand they’re often still not quite true. On the battlefield a metal gun doesn’t look too weird, but put it side by side with a plastic kit and the difference is obvious: straight barrels, sharp edges, and crisp detail in both the moulding and the sculpting. Everything just comes together better as a plastic kit.
Looking to upgrade your gun line? Visit us at 1004 Toa Payoh North #02-01 or browse xpidemix.com.
Source: Warlord Games’ original article, The End of Metal Guns!, by Marcus Vine.
