GHQ Matilda 1

I'm in the process of organising all my unpainted microarmour, and I'm finding quite a bit of stuff I'd completely forgotten I'd ever bought.

Among them are these Matilda 1, from GHQ. They're tiny little things, and beautifully modelled, but being GHQ they're also pretty bloody expensive — $US10 for five, which (when I bought them) meant about $NZ17, or about $NZ3.40 each. Add on postage, and that brings them up to about six or seven Kiwibucks each. A lot more, if I hadn't bought a bunch of other stuff at the same time, so the postage cost was spread out a bit between them.

I have some other Matilda 1, from Scotia. Compared with the GHQ models, their sculpting is fairly... "crude" is a harsh term, but I can't think of anything more appropriate right now. On the other hand, they only cost me about one Kiwi buck apiece, and they're readily identifiable on the wargames table for what they are.

I haven't yet seen any examples of the Matilda 1 from Heroics & Ros; I might add a couple to an order one of these days out of pure curiosity; I'd expect them to be roughly equivalent to Scotia quality, but with H&R you never can tell. (Note: see below)

Is the extra money for the much better quality of GHQ justified?

I'd say that really depends. If all you want are identifiable playing tokens, then I'd say not. However, if your interest is more in the micro-diorama modelling line, then I'd say definitely yes.

Personally, while I like having exquisitely detailed models on the tabletop, I'm quite willing to settle for less as long as they do actually look like what they're meant to be. And the skyrocketing cost of postage from the USA (which often doubles, or more, the cost of an order) means that, with the high cost of their models, I won't be buying any more GHQ stuff in the foreseeable future. That's kind of a shame.

Heroics & Ros Matilda 1
Image courtesy of Les Hammond

Addendum:

These are Heroics & Ros' new sculpt of the Matilda 1. The detail level and price are comparable with Scotia, though the edges are a little sharper. The proportions are a bit exaggerated vertically, but the profile does give a good visual impression of the dumpiness of this little tank.