Figure comparison - Minifigs vs Essex vs Tin Soldier vs Mike's Models vs Roundway vs Naismith

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 I've recently acquired quite a few Minifigs and Tin Soldier minis to add to my 15mm Historical Medieval and Renaissance colection (so far I only had Essex miniatures and a few Landsknechts from Mike's Models). I also bought a few miniatures from Roundway Historical Miniatures and from Naismith Design.

In this post I'll share my opinions on these six manufacturers.

Essex is, for me, somewhat the industry standard for 15mm metal minis regarding the quality of the casting and of the sculpting, with crispy details and no excess metal. The only complaint I have with them are the "weird" proportions in the anatomy of their figures (heads seem to be a bit big, legs and arms tend to be rather "stumpy" and short when compared to other manufacturers' miniatures, etc.). Another good thing about Essex is that their kits come with varied poses. They sell kits with 8 foot miniatures or 4 mounted troops (with a few exceptions).

Tin Soldier produces some good quality metal figures too (as the company name implies, duh) but they look a tad cartoonish, with large heads and somewhat weird proportions which might annoy some people - yet I think I barely notice it when these minis are mixed with the ones from other manufacturers, due to their size. A good thing about them is that the mounted miniatures come as single pieces and thus do not recquire that we glue the riders to their horses (and I really hate glueing miniatures!). Their kits come with 10 miniatures of foot soldiers or 5 horse riders. The down side is that they do not come in varied poses, so you got 5-10 copies of a miniature - ont he bright side, this is good for adding volume to a  battle formation.

Minifigs' figs are rather "thin" and "skinny", with small heads and details and the shafts of their flags and spears are very thin and thus easy to break. Their foot figures are larger than Essex's, but their mounted miniatures and their horses are more on the wee side, with small torsos and somewhat large heads (specially knights wearing helmets). Overall their miniatures are not so well detailed as Essex's, on average: some are rather plain, but some others have just enough details to be good. I've read somewhere that this relative lack of details makes minifigs good to add volume to battle formations but some people on the other hand might be annoyed by this. Personally I don't care about that and I think they are all pretty good. So far the kits I've acquired only come with 3 miniatures of horsemen, and 6 of footmen. However, I've also acquired a kit with about 10 or more footmen, so there are different standards of MiniFigs kits out there. I think they mix well with the ones from Essex.

Mike's Models are somewhat on the middle ground between Essex and Tin Soldier regarding what I called "cartoonish features": their heads tend to be a bit bigger and their faces are relatively large, sometimes showing vivid expressions, an impressive feature for such small sculpts. I really like these minis, all are very detailed and they look beautiful on the gaming table. Mike's Models 15mm range miniatures are sold by Essex. They too mix well with the miniatures made by Essex.

Roundway Historical seems to be a smaller manufacturer, or perhaps one who closed his doors, because I could only find very few kits. I bought them from Noble Knight Games and could not find another store selling them. Their miniatures are well made, with good details, and their foot soldiers tend to be taller than the ones from Essex, but their mounted troops seem to be smaller. They mix well with miniatures made from the other manufacturers aforementioned. Their kits come with 4 mounted or 8 foot soldiers, just like Essex.

Naismith Design seems to be out of business, but I don't know for sure. I also could not find more than 3 different kits for sale and neither another online store selling miniatures from them. They were a bit expensive and their kits only come with few miniatures: 3 horse riders (bellow the market average of 4) and only 6 foot soldiers (bellow the market average of 8). These miniatures were, to me, somewhat a disapointment: although the details and sculpting were good, these are way too small to mix with the others 15mm. I believe they are trully 10mm (maybe among the taller tier among other 10mm ranges?). Their horses were beautiful, though. 

Now let's see some side by side Figure comparison:

From left to right: Essex, Roundway Historical, Minifigs and Tin Soldier - Even though the one from Tin Soldier is noticeably taller, I do think they will all mix pretty well on the game table.

Now only the horses. From left to right, same order as above: Essex, Roundway, Minifgs and Tin Soldier (their cavalry miniatures do not recquire assembly, which I consider a great feature!) Notice how Minifig's horse is a tad smaller and Tin Soldier's is considerably larger!

Now for the foot soldiers. From left to rigth: Essex, Roundway Historical, Minifigs and Tin Soldier. As I said before, Essex's scultps are a bit "stumpy" and short, with relatively shorter limbs. TinSoldier's tend to have larger heads. But still, I do think they will mix well on the gaming table.

The horse riders - from left to right: Essex, Roundway Historical and Minifigs. For some reason, Essex tends to get the limbs' proportion more accurate on their horse riders sculpts. Notice how Minifig's has a shorter torso and larger head when compared to the other miniatures.

Now look at the Landsknechts - from left to right: Essex, Mike's Models and Roundway Historical. All three mix very well and have similar sizes.

Some more Landknechts - from left to right: the first 2 are from Mike's Models, and the last 3 from Essex. They mix very well, indeed.

Now let's take a closer look to how Naismith Design looks like when side-by-side with the others:

Horse Riders - From left to right:  the first 2 are from Naismith Design, the third one is a dwarf rider from Splintered Light, then Roundway Historical, Minifgs and Essex. Do you see how small the horse riders from Naismith Design are? They are smaller than the 15mm dwarf!

Now let's look at the horses - from left to right: the first 2 are from Naismith Design, the 3rd is a pony by Splintered Light (to be used by dwarves), Roundway Historical and Essex. Strangely enough, Naismith design's horses are not that smaller than the others. And they are beautiful horses, specially the first.

Now let's see the foot soldiers: from left to right - Naismith Design, Essex, Minifigs, Roundway Historical and Tin Soldier. The one from Naismith is at leaast one head smaller than the one from Essex, and looks tiny when compared to the "giants" from MiniFigs and Tin Soldier. It is not just his height: all his proportions are smaller!

The same miniature from Naismith compared to 2 hobbits made by Essex and a dwarf made by  Mirliton. The 15mm human foot knight made by Naismith is the same height as a 15mm hobbit made by Essex!

Well, my only choice is to recruit these Naismith Design miniatures as hobbits! They will work as Hobbit heavy infantry, light cavalry and heavy cavalry!

Overall, great miniatures.

- Armored knight miniatures are quite versatile; they can be incorporated into any medieval or Renaissance European army.

- Minifigs and Roundway Historical are good manufacturers.

- My "frustration" with Naismith Design will be remedied by using these miniatures as if they were hobbits.

See you next time!

Mustering 15mm Fantasy armies - Dwarves (and a Dragon)

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Greetings, everyone!

It's been a long time since my last post!

Well, I am just upholding yet another wargaming blog tradition: the hiatus.

In this time I've been busy with "real life" things, but every now and then I've found a bit of time to paint (and purchase) some miniatures.

In this post I'll show you some pictures of the dwarven army that I've been mustering:

A part of my army, above: a dwarven pike block protected by a heavy infantry (on the right) and a arquebusier unity (on the left side). In the background, a group of archers, dwarves riding large boars, and the commander with the standard-bearer further back. My army is facing a dragon.

Most of the dwarves in the picture above) are from Mirliton 15mm fantasy range (labeled as "Chaos Dwarfs", which implies that they are somewhat bad guys - or antiheroes at best). I also have some from Alternative Armies, Splintered Light Miniatures and, of course, Essex. The dragon is from Lance&Laser Miniatures, from their Battle Dragons range and is actually a 28mm miniature, and labeled as a "Basilisk".

Two painted miniatures from the Heavy Infantry unit. These are from Mirliton Miniatures (they are labeled as "short weapons chaos dwarfs" - I simply call them Heavy Infantry).

A Arquebusier Dwarf  on the march. This one is from Alternative Armies.

The same Marching Arquebusier, side view.

Figure size comparison. The dragon, a Mirliton Dwarven Lancer (which I will use as a pikeman), an Alternative Armies dwarf arquebusier resting, 4 Mirliton dwarven arquebusiers, the marching arquebusier from Alternative Armies and a Mirliton heavy infantry dwarf.

A close from two of the Mirliton Arquebusiers. This pack only comes with 2 variant poses (shown in the picture)

I have many more dwarves, all from the manufacturers aforementioned, and all of them are high quality. A quick comparison:

Essex - good overall quality, it is only a shame that each miniture does not stand by itself due to their narrow bases. These dwarves from Essex have a more "Eastern European" look due to their long cloaks and fur capes (Some look almost Russian to me!). They are a tad shorter than Mirliton's dwarves. They come in packs of 8 units each, with some variant positions distributed randomly (so far the "worst cases" I got were a pack with 4 equal identical miniatures plus 2 pairs (4+2+2) and another one with 4+3+1 - but as far as my experience colecting Essex miniatures goes, the packs will mostly come with 3+3+2).

Mirliton - I only bought the ones from the "Chaos Dwarves" range. They are very well made, each miniature has a small base that is wide enough for the miniature to stand by itself. These Chaos Dwarfs have a Viking-esque look, with horned helmets and scale mail armor. They come in packs of 8 miniatures each, with variants, but not so random as the ones from Essex:  I got one with 2+2+2+2, which means 4 variant poses among 8 miniatures, and another wih 4+4. They are a bit larger than the ones from Essex.

Splintered Light Miniatures - these are also great. Depending on the set, they come with great variety (I acquired a Treasure Hunter pack, to have some "dwarven civilians", and a "Battalion pack" which comes with some 20 different foot warriors. The dwarven bowmen pack (named "Dwarven Rangers") comes with 3 different poses distributed among 12 miniatures). These have a more "fantasy-esque" look, even "cartoonish", I'd say, with more rounded heads. They are roughly the same size as the ones from Essex, if not a tad smaller.

Alternative Armies - the best thing about these is that they come in packs of 16 instead of the usual 8 that seems to be the market standard (or so I think). The bad thing is that they are visibly taller than the dwarves from other manufacturers, which kind of stands out when one looks closer, but is not such a matter when one looks from a distance. Another bad thing is that a few of these miniatures come with some ammount of "flash" (what is the "scientific denomination" of excess lead?). Their pose variation is somewhat mixed, but still good: some packs come with 16 identical minis, and some have 4 different poses, evenly distributed (4-4-4-4), and some come with nearly identical poses, but with minor differences (open or closed helms, chain mail armor or plate mail, etc.). 

Figure comparison. Left: Alternative Armies; Right: Mirliton. Notice the (albeit small) difference in size. The Alternative Armies sculptor made thinner dwarves with longer legs, while the guys from Mirliton made them sturdier and "chunkier", with shorter legs.

Figure comparison. From left to right: Alternative Armies, Essex and Splintered Light. All 3 are dwarven crossbowmen miniatures.

Figure size comparison. From left to right: Alternative Armies, Mirliton, Essex and Splintered Light Miniatures. Notice again how Alternative Armies has made thinner/"slimmer" dwarves than the other manufacturers!

The dwarven treasure hunters pack makes for a nice set of dwarven civilians, either to populate a dwarven city diorama or to use as peasants / town levy in a battle!

The dragon (actually a "Basilisk") - this one is from a 28mm range, but 28mm monster miniatures also work great with the 15mm and 1/72 scales, as I've written before!

In future posts I will share more pictures of (hopefuly) painted dwarven warriors, among other miniatures.

Untill next time!

Godspeed!

More painted vikings and scenery

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Another group of painted minis.

These brave warriors bellow are from: Strelets M004 - Vikings, Strelets 250 - Vikings (the unique sprues from the big box "Stamford Bridge" set), Orion 72004 Vikings, Orion 72029 Early Rus (here recruited as vikings!) and Emhar Vikings.

The drakkar is an aquarium scenery that I recently bought - its size is almost perfect for the 1/72 scale, in my opinion. (Only us wargamers would look at such things and imagine these alternative uses!)

On the background of some of the pictures above there are: 

- one of the peasant houses from my other post 

- a couple stone huts with hay roofs I am currently making. 

- a piece of a river I am making for my game table - it is made with EVA foam sheets and EVA putty.

(I've got many, many projects running in paralel and very little time - not much different from most of you!).

Trying some 15mm medievals

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This is a blog focused on 1/72 scale miniatures, but the nice details of Essex 15mm minis caught my attention and so I decided to buy some and add them to my medieval colection.

I've bought, so far:

1) from Ebay, a Hussite army pack, which contains:

 - 1 Horse wagon with 2 horses

 - 3 "mantlet wagons" (I'd call these "wheeled pavises") each with 2 horses

- 1 artillery wagon (with a wooden frame with sliding doors, to protect men and guns)

- 1 small canon with a crew of 2 men

- 3 knights (I'd say heavy/medium cavalry)

- 2 mounted crossbowmen

- 8 halberdiers

- 8 flailmen

And quite a few hand gunners, crossbowmen, etc.  I do not remember the exact number right now. 

2) a lot of separate kits straight from the Essex website: 

- A command group consisted of a king, a herald and a standard bearer

- Many knights on horses, from light cavalry to gendarmes with armoured horses

- 8 knights on foot

- 8 medium swordsmen

- 3 groups of peasants (which are 3 different kits: armed peasants, armed pilgrims and "poorly-armed hordes")

- 6 monks (I like miniatures of priests. They add more realism and variety to games)

- 24 pikemen (3 groups of 8, each group holding the pike in a different position, in order to make a pike block)

- And others (do not remeber how many: crossbowmen, handgunners, assorted footmen, etc.)

Yesterday I started to  base them, since most of them do not stand by theirselves (no pun intended) due to their very thin lead bases.

I do not like the idea of gluing miniatures to a base forming a permanently based group - I like versatility. So I decided to base each miniature individually and then build larger bases in wich there will be holes where to fix each individual miniature in a way that I can change each one whenever I want.

To base each mini, I cutted small round discs made of biscuit (for those of yiu who might nit know: biscuit is "cold porcelain", which hardens after a few hours of contact with air) and then I glued each miniature on a disc using loctite superbonder:

All these minis are from the Hussite army pack. The first ten discs are all irregular. Only after a few tries I came up with a quick way of making standardized biscuit discs.

.

The 24 minis pike block. On the front row I placed heavy pikemen (these have "Conquistador-style helmets). On the middle row, landsknechts (with plume hats) and on the back row swiss pikemen (dressed in various ways, resembling a town levy). All in order to add some variety.

3 different types of gunners from the Hussite army pack

I chose green collored biscuit because I think it will mix well with grass (and I will use diorama grass and pebbles to cover the bases).

Honestly I expected that this hussite army bundle would have peasant miniatures (my favorite kind of medieval minis), but I guess this army represents more "professional" hussites - after having fought a few battles and after looting fallen soldiers and knights. I guess the flailmen could represent "better armed peasants" or "battle-hardened peasants", I guess. Anyway, the flailmen are very versatile and could fit into a peasant army as well. I mean, every miniature from this Hussite army pack is very versatile and could fit into any dark ages, late medieval and renaissance army. Some even in ancient armies. Versatility is a key word here, and I like it a lot.

Eventually I'll expand this european army (adding more peasant units, siege weapons., etc.) and also build a Muslim army. Perhaps a 15mm viking army too. I've been checking the Essex website and I think that many English Civil War miniatures could easily be used as medievals (specially the pikemen, billmen and civilians).

Let's see. Time will tell.

For the muslim army I think I'll use grey biscuit  for their individual bases because it probably will mix well with either grass or sand (the grey bases will pass off easily as pebbles). 

On a future post I'll share the results of my basing process and (hopefuly) pictures of a few painted minis and the assembled war mantlets and wagons. 

Strelets 005 - Army of Joan D'Arc

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This is one of my favorites (if not my favorite) sets from Strelets. I got 5 copies of this one (1 bought individually and 4 [almost complete sets] as a lot at an ebay auction).

The guys from PSR gave it a rating of only 6 for the sculpting, 7 for Historical Accuracy, 7 for Pose Quality and 8 for the Mould. The only 10 this set scored at the PSR website was for the pose number (which is indeed very good, since all 36 poses are unique). 

In my honest opinion, I'd have given a 9 or even a 10 for the sculpting and a 9 for the pose quality. 8 for the mould was kind of fair, due to the flash in a few places. 

As a fan of Strelets' work in general and an avid hobbyst colector of medieval miniatures, I thought the sculpting on this set was very good precisely because it has that "Strelets look" which is unique for this manufacturer. 

I personaly don't like "hyper-realistic" figures and I genuinely think that Strelets delivers in their sets a very nice balance between the "realistic look" and the "toy-ish look". Hence why I hesitate to buy those "perfect and ultra-realistic" 3d-printed minis that are popping up in ebay and other market places (mostly 28mm rpg minis, but still...) 

That being said, let me start with what I like about this set:

- this is a very nice looking set with the aforementioned "Strelets look". It is indeed very "Streletsy".

- This set provides a nice arrange of heavy infantry (or dismounted knights, or armored infantry if we use the Chainmail rules and jargon) which may be employed in any medieval european wargame army. 

- Also, the variety of armours is great too. You get a decent number of different helmets and armour styles in this set.

- There is also a good number of crossbowmen poses: 4 in total. A guy crouched, reloading his crossbow, another one with it rested in his shoulder (a good pose for a tower or wall sentinel, for example, or even to represent a marching crossbowman), one holding the crossbow as if waiting, and finally one shooting.

- I really like the short glaiveman (or perhaps they are Billmen?) with the very large shield. A group of these could work as "man-handled pavises", as in the picture below:

- A very useful piece is the king, which can be used as thus in any european medieval army (and also medieval fantasy armies)

 

- Another very useful piece in this set is the Herald figure, which is great to  compose a command group, for example. Also I think it is always nice when manufacturers provide civilian miniatures (specially priests, heralds and peasants) so that our games and dioramas have a greater variety of miniatures and thus more flavour. There should be more medieval civilian sets in 1/72. I'd buy, for sure!

- The horses are very beautiful on this set, specially the armoured ones. All the horse poses provided in this set are great.

Now the bad side:

- Since the French were known for their paladins / heavy knights, a higher number of such mounted figures could've been provided, and not only 6 mounted poses - and of those 6, 2 are mounted archers, 1 is Joan D'Arc herself and 1 is the King of France. Only 2 of the mounted poses in this set represent the famous french heavy cavalry, one with a sword and the other wielding a battle axe. The old Accurate / Revell "French Knights" set does it better by providing more knight poses. The French Warriors set from Italeri also does a good job. Obviously, all these sets may be used together to create a large French Army for the 100 years war.

- Some flash, specially in the edges of the small details (such as the herald's fleur-de-lis baton), which makes it more difficult to trim.

Overall, this is a very good set whether you are a wargamer and/or a collector of medieval niniatures. Even though this kit represents french soldiers and knights, I think these minis might be recruited by almost any other medieval european army, even those who have the fleur-de-lis design on their shields.

I really liked this dismounted knight! Perfect to represent a general or an officer!

Strelets - Normans

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Here are a few pictures of some Normans I've been painting (Strelets M001 - Normans; Strelets M002 - Norman Archers; and Revel Normans too!)

A shield wall, with the commanding officer in the front and the archers in the rearguard!
 

As always, I  really enjoy the versability of these minis, since they are perfect for almost any dark age army and can also represent different human armies in fantasy games (I'd use these Normans for Gondor, Dol-Amroth, etc.)

The Norman Archers are also very versatile, working for any middle-ages army and the ones without armor can easily be recruited as  peasant archers, which is very good in deed, since there are almost no peasants miniatures in the 1/72 scale! 

The same can be said regarding the Revell Normans too. Even though they are "thinner" and a tad smaller than the Strelets ones, I think that after a paint job they work together nicely. 

Painting always gives life to miniatures.

In future posts I shall publish more (and better) pictures of these nice Strelets minis.

See ya!

Lucky toys - Huns

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Here are some miniatures from Lucky Toys, actually their first set. I think this is an Italian manufacturer.

Freshly cut out from their sprues!

This set is called "Attila and Black Huns" and depicts... guess what... Huns! 

A standard cavalry set with 12 poses of hun warriors. 

This one did not get a very high score at Plastic Soldier Review due to not being very historically accurate: these minis are more Hollywood-esque than historical.

I got 2 of these sets recently, and since I am not interested in building neither a Hun nor a Mongol army, I guess I'll use these Huns:

- as "generic barbarians" or as a mercenary army in any historical battle game

- as the Huns when I play the "Siege of Bodenburg" game in 1/72 (if I remember correctly one of the Players plays as the Huns in this game)

- in fantasy wargames probably as Mordor cavalry (since according to the Lord of the Rings books some human nations sided with Sauron) or as Cimerians - I think these would match really well the Dark&Light Alliance "Cimerian" sets (though I don't have those, at least not yet)

A quick review of this set (in my blog I won't judge historical accuracy, unless the set is really, really farfetched!):

The bright side:

- good plastic with medium consistency 

- dinamic soldier poses, all of which are engaged in combat

- Nice details on every miniature

- nice horse poses

- the riders fit the horses well, without needing glue

- All poses are engaged in combat, which means there was no space "wasted" in the mold, for example, with more than one drummer (I know that historically there were armies who included such musicians in their cavalry - the examples that come to my mind are the mongols and the muslims - but there are kits made by other manufacturers that include too many copies of such horse riding drummers, like having one in each sprue, when the ideal, in my opinion, would be to include the horse drummer only in the command group!)

The down side:

- the horse tails are kind of fragile and might break easily

- some amount of flash (at least my 2 copies had some flash!) - however, easily removed with a sharp knife due to the plastic not being soft

Well, I liked these minis! I hope I'll be able to paint them soon!

Some painted Strelets minis

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Here are a few of the minis I've been painting in the last few days, all from the "Vikings against Franks" set by Strelets, which I own five copies of (1 won in an eBay auction and the others bought together as a second hand sale, also on eBay. Strangelly, the seller did not know that it was 4 copies inside a single box: the ad only said "100+ miniatures"). 

First, let's see the Franks, this lovely band of Christian warriors and knights:

The whole group of Franks I've painted so far.

I'd say this one is an officer due to his fancier armor

I really like painting armor because of the shiny result I get with metalic ink.

Here is a king (Charlemagne?) with a santard bearer (left) and a scout(?) (Right)

Four archers, one of them trying to string his bow.

Now let's see the vikings, this lovely band of pagan warriors and berserkers:

Here we have a commander figure. I'd call this one a Jarl.

The whole band together

A berserker with his belly full of beer (You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like!). For this one I kept the original collor of the miniature on his pants, boots and weapon because I liked it. And on the background in the left, another berserker swinging his great two-handed sword.

A bald berserker with a giant club

Two viking archers

Although this kit got a somewhat bad review from the guys at Plastic Soldier Review, I liked it a lot. 

Of course, it was one of the first kits produced by Strelets, in the early 2000's, and the company has improved a lot the quality of its miniatures since then, but I like this style that has a rather toy-ish look, and also the fact that there are no repeated poses in this set, which means 40+ poses, which brings a welcome variety to a wargaming army. There are a few miniatures I did not like very much (because of a few details) but on the whole this is a good medieval set!

It makes me think that Strelets planned this one to work like a standalone wargame, hence the title "Vikings against Franks". 

I'll definetly try to play a skirmish using only this set some day!