Welcome back,
today’s update is another product review, one that I’ve been meaning to post for months now, namely a review of Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V Tank that I used as a base for my British landship.
Pendraken Miniatures only really appeared on my scope a few months ago, just before Christmas when I was looking at various options for some Martians for my current project. Although I didn’t find anything that I thought might be suitable for the Martians I was however intrigued and after a brief look around the site and their massive range of miniatures I decided that there might be other products that I could use.
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| Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank |
First up is the website, the website is really user friendly and all the various ranges are clearly laid out on the left hand side of the page by period, clicking on each range brings up all the various factions or nations for it in the centre of the page. Once you have clicked on the faction you are taken to the miniatures themselves. Here however the experience is a little less smooth, the miniature ranges seem to be arranged by the date that they were released, this is fine but most of the miniatures lack any sort of picture and although all the miniatures are well described it still means searching through a full page of products and with infantry, cavalry, artillery and armour all mixed in together it could be really easy to miss what you were looking for.
The pictures that Pendraken have added to their webstore are on the whole pretty average but adding a touch of wash would sort most of them out. It is not all bad news however, Pendraken do have a rather active Flickr page with many of their products featured on there, the vast majority of these pictures are far superior to what’s on the webstore but there is a certain amount of trawling involved.
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| Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank with Baccus 6mm Colonial's for scale. |
Once my order was placed I received a confirmation e-mail to let me know what I had ordered and a further e-mail to let me know that my order had been dispatched, it did take about a fortnight from ordering to my product arriving but I did place my order just before the New Year at what I must assume was a very busy time (combine that with all the postal disruption pre-Christmas and I think Pendraken did extremely well). My products arrived fairly well wrapped and without any serious breakages, though I would have liked a little extra protection for the small and potentially fragile sponsons.
The Mark V* Male tanks that I ordered were priced at £4.00 (this has since risen to £4.25 an unwanted but more than acceptable rise with the rising cost of metal and the increased rate of VAT figured in) which I believe is a very reasonable price once the size and the weight of the vehicles is figured in. The casting on a whole was incredibly good with only a couple of small area’s needing any cleaning work, one area of concern however was the thin guns, one of which inevitably snapped off, not a massive issue and one that was easily rectified. On a whole the models were incredibly easy to clean and work with and once I’d converted them they were really easy to paint.
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| A converted Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank |
In summation I wouldn’t hesitate to order from Pendraken Miniatures again but I would be much more likely to order from them if they added some of their lovely pictures from their Flickr page to their webstore.
Ease of Ordering: 6/10
Quality of Service: 8/10
Quality of Product: 9/10
Packaging & Delivery: 8/10
Value for Money: 9/10
