Jaw-Dropping Confrontation Pre-Paints

Blanket Statement: Rackam's Confrontation miniatures are the best fantasy miniatures in gaming. Period. The French sculptors turn their creativity toward a unique vision of fantasy—thick with flourishes, fine details, and delicate embellishments—that should leave most English speaking minis companies thanking the Gods of Pewter and Lead that they don't do the typical Western Orcs-and-Adventurers fantasy shtick. But as incredible as Rackam's minis are, they're definitely not for beginners. With the tiniest of pieces and incredibly minute details, the prospect of painting one of these minis is daunting, while the thought of squinting my way through a whole army is enough to send me running back the colored wooden chits of Ravensburger games.

Fortunately, Rackham got the hint a few months back and later this month are releasing Confrontation: The Age of Rag'Narok, a Confrontation starter game with—swoon—prepainted minis! ICV2 has the first look at minis from the two included factions: Wolfen (werewolf/gnoll/beastmen) and Griffin (knights). While these are doubtlessly master paints and higher quality that what we should expect from the finished minis, after seeing their incredible prepainted AT-43 figures, I doubt these are far from the mark.

You can check out more pictures and details from The Age of Rag'Narok on the Confrontation website. While you're there, their fantastic gallery of concept art make great desktop wallpapers and are great inspiration for any fantasy RPG. And speaking of which, for all you GMs who like crafty handouts, they also have more than a dozen professional, "realistic-looking" fantasy fonts free for download.

Wine, cheese, and awesome fantasy. A trip to Paris might soon be in order.

[via icv2.com]