Pendraken 10mm WW1 miniatures

I recently bought some 10mm World War 1 miniatures from Pendraken Miniatures in the UK. Since the Pendraken Miniatures website is disappointingly lacking in pictures and information about their miniatures, I thought I would post a description of the contents of the packs, some pictures of the miniatures, and my review of them. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone considering purchasing some, or trying to decide on a scale or manufacturer to buy some Great War miniatures from. I bought several different packs each of Western Front British and Western Front German miniatures.

The packs of infantry typically have three poses total, one officer pose and two different poses of infantryman. The numbers of each appear to be very inconsistent. I've had packs with anywhere from 2-7 of the officer pose, with the rest split between the other two poses, not necessarily evenly. So this could be a real problem for anyone that wants a particular ratio of officers and men, or wants to split the two infantryman poses evenly for some reason. You won't be able to count on a certain number of officers, so you may end up with extras or have to buy more packs. Even the total number of figures in a pack isn't consistent, but they all had at least 30 figures.

Fist up, here's a picture of a couple of the infantry figures in front of a ruler to give an idea of their overall size. Click on any of the pictures for a larger view.



British
BP1 - Infantry in Cap


BP2 - Infantry in Helmet


BP3 - LMG in Helmet (10 figures, all the same pose)


BP15 - Highlanders


BP22 - High command (4 figures, 2 of each pose)



German
GP1 - Infantry in Picklehaube


GP2 - Infantry in Helmet


GP6 - German Stormtroopers (4 poses, including officer)


GP11 - HMG 08 in helmet (3 teams of two figures)


GP19 - High command (3 figures of two different poses, and one trench periscope?)


My overall impression of these 10mm Pendraken WW1 miniatures is favorable. They are fairly detailed and the details are crisp. They are mostly well cast, though a few had excessive amounts of flash on them. The figures look a bit stocky and not perfectly proportioned, but that is true of most 10mm miniatures. On the other hand, they are extremely sturdy miniatures, even the bayonets and rifle barrels. My other experience with 10mm miniatures is GHQs excellent 10mm American Civil War miniatures. They are amazingly well proportioned, but many of them are also extremely fragile, and I end up with many bent rifle barrels. That won't be a problem with these Pendraken miniatures. So aside from the oddly inconsistent figure numbers in the packs, which might be an issue for some people who want to be able to count on having certain ratios of officers to men, I would definitely recommend these. Of course, I haven't painted any of them yet, and that's when I'll really find out how good they are by how easy it is to paint the details.

The figures can be ordered straight from the Pendraken website. They don't have an online shopping cart, which is kind of annoying. So you have to e-mail them your order and the total and your payment information. I'd advise splitting up your credit card number into multiple e-mails if you go that route, just to be safe. But the service I got was good, the delivery was fast, and even with the expensive shipping from the UK to the US (which was about 20% of my order total), with the exchange rate it ended up not being all that expensive to order from them. It was cheaper to order straight from them than from anywhere else I was able to find online.