D&D Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures Vampire Review

I have been looking for a vampire miniature for a while now something that would lead my undead army in to battle.
Looking around the internet I saw some nice looking miniatures from Wizkids under the banner of D&D.

 

The pictures looked fantastic you get two in a pack with different poses plus they were at a good price I think I picked up this pack for £4.

The have a vast range of differnt miniatures and furniture that are advertised as pre primed ready to paint out of the box.

I think its time I get some paint on one of these..

Straight away you can see in the packet both models clearly and are primed in a grey from with Vallejo paint. It also has the picture above at the back to give you an idea of the detail expected on the model and the package comes with two round bases.

Once I opened the box and started to look closer at the miniature I started to feel a little disappointed. 

 

Firstly the miniature plastic material does feel cheap and slightly bendy which for the price ok you can expect that but primer was rubbed off in some areas.

Also one of the big things about the model is that it has clearly not been cleaned from mould lines before priming and there is hardly any detail making it appear flat.

The second model in the pack suffered the same problems as the first but had slightly more visible detail.

I decided to go with the first sculpt as the pose would fit more in a rank and file.

When I was trying to paint it was difficult to find many raised areas for detail as I said most were flat and it was hard to tell differnt parts of the cloth.

The fingers are not that defined and I could not really see the gold detail like the picture on the box around the bottom of the cloak or the edging which is in purple in the picture.

After putting on a few bases colours and washes I left it all to dry and came back.
This is how the Vampire turned out.

So my thoughts..

Now I know I am not the best painter in the world and for some reason the washes came out glossy but this was really hard to get anything looking right.

The lack of detail on the clothes and the model really made it difficult to pick out the differnt parts.

Due to it having so many mould lines also makes it a problem and having it pre primed is great but having to go back and clean it up and prime again defats the objective of painting right out of the box.

Now this could be a one off for this particular pack that encounters theses problems and maybe its not aimed at the painter/mini wargamer market but more at the D&D player who wants a cheap model and can paint up quick.

As I said I cant judge the complete rang on one pack but from this I have felt a little disappointed yes it was cheap but I could have gone on to find a another miniature at the same price with slightly better detail such as the Reaper rang. Obviously I would have to clean it up and prime it but I by the looks of things I have to do this with these that any way..

If anyone has painted more of theses minis I would be intreated in seeing or hearing your experiences as this line has some nice looking products that I hope don't suffer the same problems.