Received my Man of War boots today, as well as my boot spikes (MachineCraft) and chest electronics (Westaby).
I know there is a big saga going on with this last round of MoW boots, so here are my thoughts now that they are in hand. As a note, I am new to this, so these are just my opinions, more experienced Fett's can certainly tell me I am wrong.
1. I got mine at size 11-1/2. My normal shoe size is 10-1/2. I think this size will work for me as I have a wide foot and this boot is actually somewhat comfortable. The toe is slightly long, but a little padding up there should solve that pretty easily.
2. The opening is huge and probably going to be the hardest to fix. When walking around, the biggest irritation was the huge gap around my ankle. I clamped off the excess behind my ankle with a binder clip and that helped immensely, so I just need to find a way to do that without ruining the aesthetic. Maybe some elastic sewn up front to bunch it under the spats? Or tuck the legs of my flight suit down there to fill out the space?
3. There is a little bit of room above my foot before hit hits the fabric. I was walking around with 1.25" lifts which helped a little, but I may need to add some extra padding there as I felt like the boot didn't lift with my foot until it contacted the fabric. Irritating, but not a show stopper.
4. The toe shape seems to be OK as the boot spike kit I picked up from MachineCraft fit it almost perfectly. They don't have as aggressive as a cutback behind the spike strip as the reference picture though. With some decent screws holding it to the boot and some adhesive behind it, I think it will at least be passible.
5. As noted by someone else, the outer layers of piping do no have as aggressive of a sweepback towards the black elastic, they more or less just sweep up towards the top of the boot and run parallel to the elastic. There is a little bit of additional separation at the top, but not a lot. Based on some reference pictures I saw, I think this will be covered by the spats.
6. The soles seem to be 4 parts: the bottom layer of white; a consistently thick off white/beige; another sliver of off white/beige below the heel tapering off towards the toe (more obvious in picture 2); then another layer of white right below the boot itself. I am hoping this is paintable as the "ice cream sandwich" look is a bit goofy.
7. They are a lot more beige than I anticipated. Not really a problem as they will be painted, but I was expecting it to be a lot whiter.