EotD - Coaches and Carriages - review

For Christmas I was happily surprised that my girlfriend had arranged for me to get some of the new carriages for Empire of the Dead. Since my favourite faction is Supernatural Branch I had put the Black Mariah on my wish-list and the Streets of London set is just superb value for money.

Here they are after I assembled them.

Each set is both resin and white metal. The carriages themselves are made from resin, while the axels, wheels, horses, drivers, heads and lamps are white metal. I’m still surprised at how relatively heavy resin is. The windows of the London Omnibus and the Gentlemen’s Coach don’t have drapes, which I actually thought, but I guess they have just been painted on.

Each of the carriages in the Streets of London set comes with the same 4 heads, so that you can put whichever one you like onto the body. 

The torsos and legs are different, with the legs for the Hansom Cab driver actually being part of the resin carriage. Inside the Hansom Cab there are two passengers sculpted out of the resin. They don’t look good and lack a lot of detail, so I’m not sure whether I will just leave it black so that it looks like the passenger seats are empty.

The horses are for the London Omnibus and Gentlemen’s Coach are not the ones pictured on the box itself. The pictured horses gallop while the ones that are actually in the box are just walking.

Individually each white metal part is detailed and with a minimum of mould lines. The same goes for the resin carriages. However, if you place the resin carriages on a flat table and look at them from behind you can see that they are not completely proportionate. While it is not much it is still annoying to the eye. Most of it can however be fixed by slightly offsetting the wheels, but in the case of the Black Mariah the back door is leaning a bit to the side. Small problems, but still annoying.

The real problems come when you try to assemble each carriage. The posted images on theRequiem Kickstarter of the axles are invaluable and you really should have them in front of you when you begin. Though in the case of the Gentlemen’s Coach and Hansom Cab you still have to figure out how the springs fit behind the wheels.

The problem is the large wheels and their axles on the London Omnibus, Black Mariah and Gentlemen’s Coach. All three carriages comes with a set of large and small wheels. If you just glue them underneath the resin carriage, the carriage itself will lean forward because the large wheels are set too low. In the case of the London Omnibus it was so bad that I had to file away 2-3 mm for it to look nice and prevent it from looking like it is leaning forward.

There are also no obvious way to attach the horses to the carriage, and it might require a bit of extra white metal to make it look nice. But I will have to look into that when I actually try to base them. For the pictures I have just placed them where I believe that they should be.

Despite the challenges of the axles and large wheels, I still think the carriages look good when assembled. I have never assembled carriages like this before, so I don't know whether it is just me being picky, just make sure that you have your files ready, because you’ll need them.