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Mantic's Undead Wraiths form part of their Kings of War range. To date Mantic have produced a wide range of mainly plastic miniatures. The wraiths however are metal castings with this set containing five 28mm miniatures. The miniatures arrived in a plastic box (like an old VHS video cassette box), inside were two pieces of thin sponge and the miniatures themselves wrapped in bubble wrap. The box also contained an A3 size poster with artwork of an undead army on one side and a mixture of background story telling, painting guides and Mantic company information on the other. There are three different miniatures in the set. One armed with a two handed sword, another with a scythe and one (obviously a leader/champion) with a morning star/flail. Of the former two miniatures you get two each and one of the champion miniature. The champion miniature also requires assembly having separate arms. Lastly the box contained 20mm square bases for the miniatures. These were solid plastic bases with a circular indent to allow the miniature to fit into it.

The miniatures out of the box contained little or no flash but mould lines varied quite a lot. The champion and two handed sword were fine, but the scythe wielding one had a prominent mould line along its entire profile. But given the miniatures pose that was inevitable.

I think it's also worth mentioning at this point, that despite all of the aforementioned packaging both of the scythe wielding miniatures had suffered from quite major bending of their weapons. I was very careful when trying to straighten them but one of the weapon heads broke off in the process. The weapons are very thin and I'm now wondering about the general survivability when getting these miniatures in and out of my figure boxes. The thin haft on the weapon means it is going to be difficult to pin it back on. I don't know what caused this bending but it was significant that both scythes were in need of straightening.

The miniatures are all roughly the same height, 36mm from base to top of the helmet. The build on these miniatures is surprisingly slight. Admittedly you're not going to find muscle bound wraiths but fantasy miniatures often have exaggerated proportions even on undead.

The slight build is in most evidence with the scythe wielding wraith. The pose of the miniature along with the slight build means the profile of is very flat, making it stick out as a bit odd.

The level of detail is quite good. Not as sharp as I would have expected. Some of the armour edges are quite soft. But you can clearly make out the important features. You can also see that the armour worn by the wraiths has been made very stylized with faces on the breast plates and shoulder pads.

With the slight build of these wraiths I was worried about their compatibility with other undead fantasy ranges. First up we have one of the wraiths alongside a Games Workshop Banshee miniature.

The Banshee is considerably more bulky than the wraith and stands a good head height above it.

Next we have the wraith alongside a skeleton from Brigade Models Celtos range (left) and one from Otherworld Miniatures (right). Again there is a bit of difference in height. But part of this is due to the wraith miniature sitting in the recessed base. Placed on a similar base to either of the skeletons I'd be happy to mix these miniatures together.

I have always had a soft spot for the undead and so had been interested to see what Mantic would come up with for their undead range. I must say these wraiths have caught me by surprise. The general design works well (apart from the faces on the armour, some of the shoulder pad faces look clown like) but they are an odd bunch. As I've already mentioned the scythe wielding miniature doesn't sit well with the others and there are only three different wraiths. If you were looking to build a unit of ten or more wraiths this set from Mantic is going to lack variety. Especially if your fantasy game rules like you to assign specific weapons to a unit. Even the champion/leader miniature with its separate arms cannot offer much in the way of variety, since one of the hands is pointing. Unless you place this pointing straight forward it is going to look unusual pointing to the sky or ground. This release is more in keeping with the old Ral Patha RPG releases where you often got three different poses of the same monster per blister pack.

Overall I would say these miniatures have more going for them than against, although the scythe wielding wraith is the weakest of the bunch. But as a supporting unit alongside Mantic's plastic ranges, where you can buy boxes of up to 48 multi pose plastic miniatures the lack of variety for the wraiths will be hard to ignore.

Reviewer - Germy (27th July 2010)