Today we are looking at the Near Future Infantry Squad from Pig Iron Productions, a 10 man squad perfect for 28mm wargames including Tomorrow’s War and Warhammer 40k. Pig Iron are well known for their various 28mm infantry and heavy vehicles, and we’ve always found them an extremely friendly and helpful company to deal with. The Near Future Infantry Squad kit allows you to create unique infantry squads with a variety of weapons and poses.
Here you can see the various sprues that will make up our Near Future Infantry Squad. This 10 man kit is priced at £20 for the 5 sets of sprues or you can purchase each metal sprue individually for £4.50.
Here you can see the 2 torso sprues that come in this kit (labeled NFT.1 & NFT.2 on Pig Iron’s site) which include 5x 28mm torsos each. NFT.1 contains 5 torsos with integreal arms which are wielding rifle weapons, while NFT.2 contains 3 with rifles, 1 with rifle that is pointing (great for the squad leader) and one torso carrying a heavy weapon. Both of these sprues also come with some of Pig Iron’s new and improved sprue rubble which we will take a closer look at later in the review.
Here we have removed the 10 torsos from the sprue, they are all well cast and have very little in the way of mold lines. Each of these torsos are nicely detailed and include lots of pouches and other gear showing that this is a well equipped infantry squad.
The two leg sprues that make up the Near Future Infantry Squad (NFL.1 & NFL.s) also come with Pig Iron’s sprue rubble for use on bases. Each sprue contains 5 pairs of 28mm legs in a wide variety of poses.
Once removed from the sprues you can easily see the many poses available to the squad, very few of them are static so the squad should appear to have a lot of movement. Again, all of these were well cast, with very little mold lines to clean up.
The last thing we need to complete this Near Future Infantry Squad are some heads. The kit comes with 10 “Near Future ballistic helmets” or if you buy the sprue separately you get 20 heads (HD.21). We’ve previously tried several of Pig Iron’s kits and we think these are some of the best heads they have produced, they have great detail and suit the torsos/legs perfectly.
Here are some close ups of Pig Iron’s 28mm Near Future Infantry Squad heads.
If you’ve read any of our Pig Iron reviews before, such as our reviews on their Kolony Rebels and Kolony Rebels Squad Leaders, you’ll know we love the idea of their sprue rubble. The concept is that rather than casting these parts on a plain sprue which you then throw away, Pig Iron have sculpted rubble-like details into the sprue making it an extra part of the kit which you can cut up and use to base your miniatures. This means less waste, more value to the buyer, and better looking miniatures – what a great idea! Here you can see 2 of 4 the sprues that come with this kit after the torsos/legs have been removed.
Once you have chopped these sprues into various chunks, you have some great looking details to base your miniatures with. We’ll use these later on so that you can see them in action.
Here is one of the Near Future Infantry you can assemble with this kit, its an easy job since each model basically consists of 3 parts, the head/torso & legs. The result is great and is perfect for 28mm wargames such as Tomorrow’s War and Warhammer 40k.
For scale, here is a photo of our 28mm Near Future Infantry solider with a plastic Imperial Guardsman from Warhammer 40k.
Pig Iron’s kits also mix really well with similar 28mm kits from other manufacturers, as we’ve discovered in our previous Pig Iron Reviews. Here you can see a Pig Iron Near Future Infantry torso and head on a pair of Warhammer 40k Imperial Guardsman legs.
Here are a few more examples of the soldiers you can make using this kit, and you can see in these photos we have also made use of the sprue rubble. We think that these basing details make a huge difference to the overall model – let us know what you think in the comments.
And finally, here is the completed 10 man Near Future Infantry Squad. We think they look great as a squad and as you can see there is quite a bit of variation in the poses.
We’ve tried out a few Pig Iron Production’s kits but this has quickly become one of our favorites. The sculpts are great, the parts fit together well and there is a decent amount of variation available in those poses. We’re still big fans of the sprue rubble, which Pig Iron appear to be constantly improving upon. There also lots of potential for these parts to be combined with other kits from Pig Iron, or other manufacturers entirely. According to Pig Iron’s site they are already working on adding further options and kits to this range, so we can’t wait to see what they come up with!
What do you think of these kits? Let us know if you’ve found a use for them in your army in the comments below. If you’d like to see more of what Pig Iron Productions have to offer, head over to http://www.pig-iron-productions.com
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