Back to Fantasy! For today’s review I’ll have a look at some 28mm Fantasy miniatures by Brother Vinni. First time I’m working on any of his minis.
Brother Vinni is a sculptor from St.Petersburg in Russia. As far as I’m aware he only works with digital sculpts and all the minis come cast in resin. It’s mostly the usual let’s say “40k and WHFB compatible” styles and themes of minis, including topless female not-Catachans and the likes, but also a dediacated Fallout range and lately shieldmaidens labelled as SAGA compatible (just so people don’t get confused I suppose).
I received the package within relatively short time after I placed the order.
Question mark digitally added for dramatic purposes |
This cardboard box came in a padded bubble mailer. Let’s have a look inside!
Wrapped up in some soft plastic bouncy padding sheet stuff the minis are packaged simply in small plastic baggies.
The Models
Having a closer inspection of the miniatures which are the actual objects of this review. It’s Don Pedro and Sorceress. It seems like the bodies are all one-piece casts with arms and equipment cast separately.
The casting quality looks great (easily up there and beyond Forgeworld for instance) and barely any mould lines at all. The main effort you’ll have with these is cutting the feet off the resin chunks.
Assembly
Assembly is very straightforward. The bits come with socket connectors, but they don’t fit properly (and the holes they are supposed to go into in some cases are cast shut), so I either shaved them down considerably or just cut the connectors off altogether.
Painting
Here you can see the minis all finished. They paint up really well, nothing to complain there. The bases used on these minis are from one of my own resin bases. The same kind I used on the rest of the warband these minis here are an addition to.
Maybe you remember them. These are now to double as a warband for Frostgrave and as such require a wizard’s apprentice in the shape of Sorceress. Here’s the skeletor-coloured wizard:
Anyway, back to the actual subject of the review. As I said, the minis paint up really nice, the faces look well, there is some very Warhammer-typical iconography on the shield of Don Pedro, all is well. Speaking of him, I have no idea why he’s got a sword in that big scabbard he is wearing on his back and another sword in his hand. I considered snipping off the sword from the back scabbard, but wasn’t sure if the customer would be okay with that step, so I left it on for now.
Don Pedro’s proportions look a little off, mostly in that his shoulders look weirdly wide under a slightly small head. The woodgrain on the back of the shield isn’t sculpted, that’s just a freehand.
The proportions on Sorceress look spot on. She doesn’t have much of a chin, but I kinda like that. Gives her a bit of character (as much as cad-designed fantasy females are allowed to anyway).
Size and Cost
Here we got a size comparison shot of the Brother Vinni minis, a Black Tree Design medieval warrior and a Dark Elves warrior. The proportions on the BV minis are a bit more ‘realistic’ than the classic 28mm fantasy look, but they should mix reasonably well if set up with minis with the same basing and possibly even colour scheme.
In terms of price Brother Vinni minis are very reasonable with pretty much every mini costing €5,00. Shipping is a flat rate of €6,00 all around the world, if your order is €80,00 or more you get free worldwide shipping. Simple, straightforward. Reasonably priced. Delivery time seems to be varying (being sent from Russia and all) between 10 and 30 days. On his website, Vinni points out in several places how much care is taken that shipped parcels arrive safe and sound and that he will send free replacements if a parcel should somehow disappear. In the case of my order the minis were sent off the day after I ordered and arrived three days later.
Verdict
Very good quality, affordable for the category these are, fast service and shipping -no problems what so ever. I have nothing negative to say about these, and I usually like saying negative things. 😉 Some of his other sculpts may show their age or rather that they were earlier works with stiff poses and some bland or questionable faces, but these minis here (slight proportion weirdness on Don Pedro aside) are perfectly fine.
Thumbs up, recommended. Especially if you need Fallout-style miniatures. For this Brother Vinni pretty much is the go-to place. For Fantasy minis, which you can get from many, many places, Vinni is perfectly fine. Personally, I prefer Hasslefree, but at this point it really comes down to preferences in style and depends on the sculpt itself.
I hope that you enjoyed this review, found it interesting, enjoyed the painting and so on. If you have any questions, comments or indeed commission inquiries, feel free to let me know via the comments section, the Battle Brush Studios Facebook page or via e-mail.
Do you like our tutorials and reviews? Here is what you can do to support us: Check out the websites of our sponsors, place your next orders at Wayland Games by clicking here or on the banner on the right. Thank you very much, we appreciate any help to keep us going.
Nice review! Its very useful to find out what other models are been produced outhere and how well they fit scale and style wise alongside with other ranges.
I think your painting enhanced the miniatures a lot too and the warband is something out of this world!
Keep these type of reviews coming they are great.
Thanks once again for commenting, Navarro. 🙂 Yeah, there is more stuff out than ever before and it's all so much more available than ever before, so it would be pretty daft never having a look left or right and getting all the toys from only one company. Now to blow my own trumpet, but I recently saw that Mordheim warband again in real life and they look much nicer than in these old pictures I took then. Maybe I get to reshoot them again some time as I did those for a customer who actually lives rather close. Maybe some day. Very glad you enjoy the reviews. 🙂 I post a bunch more on my website http://www.battlebrushstudios.com. Of course only the GW-compatible stuff lands on here. Thanks for the comment on the painting as well!
Are you allowed to post anything that's not GW or Forgeworld on here ?
Thought it was a FANBOY site that bigged up anything and everything to do with them ?
This blog is not about fanboyism, it's about passion for the hobby. We don't approve everything GW does, but we care for the rich universe they've created.
I thought this blog was all about fanboyism over hobby stuff
Not at all, little furry venom spitting kitten. It's all about true thoughts on Warhammer/40K models 🙂
Hey, there are more than enough sites around for everbody. 🙂 ToP is all about GW stuff even though I try to widen the corset sometimes (as I tend to do with corsets :p ). I also don't see much reason to review GW kits, because it would always be the same review.
There are tons of other pages out there of course, so if you feel like having a look at Infinity stuff, historical stuff, Warmahordes stuff, Wyrd stuff, old-school stuff, kickstartered stuff, or what ever else I'm sure you possess the media competence to seek those out as well. It's all about diversity, isn't it? 🙂 The trick is seeking out the stuff you like and focussing on that. Dwelling on the negative is just a waste of time I think. Life's to short and there are too many nice things out there.
To, Bobsidesheep, I think we're the only blog brave enough to share our true feelings for the hobby. Too many people want to be in the "cool gang" and bitch and moan about GW.
You know what's really cool? Not being a sheep. Be your own person and make your own mind up. Don't be one of the GW bashers. It's not cool.
Sigur, stunning painting mate, you never fail to impress.
Thanks! 🙂
To be fair though – of course feelings about the hobby doesn't equal feelings towards GW. They're one company among many, many others and the cool thing is that exactly. There's so much stuff around that it's just daft to bash the stuff you don't like. It's a bit like stopping to smell dog poop instead of stopping to smell the roses.You only end up with a brown, stinky nose. And nobody wants to be the dogpoopie-nosed guy, right? 😉
The funny thing is that there are quite a few companies doing just what GW do and make a lot of money simply based on the fact that they aren't GW. Mantic's whole business plan seems to be just that (granted, their communication is better, but then their fans are easier to communicate with for them than it's for GW to communicate with their fans). Warlord Games are heavily relying on players who are disgruntled with GW, but don't _really_ want anything different. On the other hand Mantic finally seem to try to do their own thing now, which is nice, and Warlord Games push historical wargaming, which is nice as well. (you don't HAVE to play Bolt Action though 😉 )
Equally, GW do their thing. There's good and bad in what they do. And people do their thing. Overattachment to one company of course is kinda weird unless they pay you to be attached to them. Nobody has to feel like it's their job to attack them or to be their advocate. They pay people for that. The thing to feel emotionally attached to is miniature painting/modelling, wargaming and so on. THAT is the hobby and that's the healthy thing to feel emotional about (and I hope positively so). Making some company the target of one's affection or aversion probably is less productive or fulfilling.
Looking great I had a quick look round his website and there are some things to like, the diving suit is very cool. But while I like boobs as much as the next man I realy don't get the obsession with trying to sculpt them on tiny minis, on one hand his more cadian girls are cool and well proportioned, the catachan one on the other hand WTF? its a little OTT for my tastes. Thanks for sharing I may look at his stuff some more and it's always nice to have more choice.
I hear ya 🙂 You may want to check out this company then. Same theme, bit more PG. Nice kits and bits!
http://statuesqueminiatures.shop033.com/
I hear ya 🙂 You may want to check out this company then. Same theme, bit more PG. Nice kits and bits!
http://statuesqueminiatures.shop033.com/