"What do you do with your Army Men?" Topic

Imagine that your buddy has persuaded you to get into gaming with Army Men, and you have a pile of inexpensive green (or maybe tan, or gray) plastic army men in front of you.

Do you paint them?

Dip them?

Use them in their natural state?

Natural state

Natural state.

Terrain would be piles of books, maybe bunched up towels and whatever you could make from Lego blocks.

Isn't that the whole point of Army Man style gaming?

Natural state.

Why paint them, when all you are going to do is throw dirt bombs and M80s at them.

Same as John. Actually as a kid, I rolled marbles at them.

I used to shoot my air rifle at them.

Take them out into the woods on a camping trip, and set up the green and tan forces on opposite sides.

Then throw rocks at them, to take them out.

Last man (men) standing, wins.

Ditto Top Gun Ace.
Then melt them and the tanks they ride on with model glue.

oooohh ya!!!!

'O Natural!

Brian
whattheminiatures.com

Sorry, folks, but you are missing out, in my opinion. I paint them, but then, I am biased: I wrote, self-published, and marketed a set of introductory mini's rules for them. I also ran a web site offering painting techniques, using the Dip technique (ran the hobby-business for 5+ years, then shut it down).

I understand most people's attitudes towards Army Men as being toys, but when you paint them, Dip them, mount them, make up some reasonable terrain (as in something you would produce for your 15mm figures -- aren't 15mm figures just toys, as well?), then they become more than just childhood 'toys'.

Sorry, folks, but I disagree: scale/size of the figures does not elevate them beyond the category of "toys"… Try explaining to non-gamers the difference, and pay close attention to their eyes. You may convince some people that scale makes a difference, but most people will realize that you can play the same type of game with any size figures.

After painting, and Dip'ing the inexpensive Army Men figures, they turn out rather nice looking. For price, they cannot be beat. You can have 1,000+ figures for less than $100, if you go for the dollar-store variety. Vehicles will run you more, but even they are a bargain compared to some metal/resin products. In addition, you can put unit patch, and enlisted rank decals (German, American, and British, at least) on your 54mm-60mm figures; there are tattoos and pupils available, as well. Try doing that on your 15mm, or 6mm, infantry figures. ;-)

Army Men are under-rated. They are "toys", just as figures of any other scale are "toys". Price does not make a figure a non-"toy"… Add paint, a base, some nice terrain, and rules more sophisticated than dirt clods, air rifles, and fire-crackers, and you have a miniatures game. What would be the difference between an Army Men game with dirt clods, and a metal, 15mm figure game, played out with dirt clods? Besides $$$, and size of the figures, there would be no difference. Scale means nothing. It is all in the eye of the beholder. Cheers!

Well, when I was a kid, all the guys in the neighborhood got in the habit of painting the helmets of our forces in some fairly visible colors. My armies had either light blue or orange helmets. That way, we could tell our forces apart.

If I were gaming with them today, I'd probably prefer to leave them unpainted.

Sgt Slag, the ones I am familiar with had no faces, a mold line that snaked along said nonexistent face, and weapons as straight as a Philadelphia city councilman. Why waste time painting them?

If you are talking higher quality, then you are not talking Army Men.

Natural state – there's still a box of them at my mom's house and I'm how old?

Army Men are under-rated. They are "toys", just as figures of any other scale are "toys". Price does not make a figure a non-"toy"…

To hear some people tell it, prepainting a figure makes it a "toy."

Painting green Army Men, that I can buy for $10 USD for 200 guys? Sorry, but I'm not *that* dedicated to The Hobby.

They go to their plastic God like a soldier, in their natural way.

I think it would be a kick to fast-paint some plastic army men, and probably improve their look tremendously. I never did it as a boy though.

I must admit that the following clips from YouTube changed my ideas about the possibility of painting Army Men and using them to fight a tabletop wargame:

link

link

link

link

link

Mind you, I never saw these figures in the UK when I was a boy. I am sure that they existed, but not where I went shopping for my wargames stuff.

'army men' is mostly a US thing I think. You can buy what looks like them now, in small bags in newsagents, but I don't remember them as a kid.

we had Airfix and Matchbox.

I still blew them up with fireworks, melted them with matches and drove them out of upstairs windows with lighter-fuel soaked rags blazing. It just cost more.

Pat

That's how I became a fairly good marksman, by spending hundreds of hours shooting bb's at army men mostly hidden by lincoln logs.

If my sight was still as good as back then, I could knock the head off a nail at 100 yards. Nowadays, I couldn't even see the nail…

Started wargaming w/those numbers as a kid,main problem was finding a proper OPFOR for 'em.

Unpainted for Rubber Band Wars with my two sons (10 & 8)
VR
James Mattes

Sgt Slag,
What steps did you use to prepare your figures before painting and did you have any trouble getting the paint to stay on the figures? Thanks, 7th

I started painting them at about age 8, never did the M-80s, or BB gun thing. Did come up with the idea of rolling dice to see who got killed. Thought I'd invented wargaming for the longest time. Silly me.

Natural state.

And we called them "army guys" when I was kid in NC in the '60s.

Seventhcav:

Wash them in dish soap, to remove any mold release agent, dry (use compressed air if you cannot wait a few hours), then paint with acrylic paints. Follow up the block painting with either Minwax Polyshades Dark Walnut/Tudor, or use Future Floor Polish mixed with black acrylic paint (10:1, Future:Paint), followed by a matte coat.

As an alternative, which should be more durable, spray the figures with Krylon Fusion For Plastic paint as a base coat (Green, Gray, or Tan), let them cure for a week (takes that long for the paint to fully bond with the plastic, and become chip-proof), and then block paint, apply Dip/Magic Wash, followed by matte coat.

By the way, this technique works wonders on Tanks, and other vehicles, as well: paint the details, then Dip/Magic Wash, and matte coat. If you have AFV's with opening hatches, try cutting an appropriate figure in half (the guy with two hands on a pair of binoculars?), and use Hot Glue to position him in the open hatch. Hot Glue works well to mount them on bases, as well. Cheers!

"…weapons as straight as a Philadelphia city councilman…"

Come now, John, you can't expect us to buy that, can you? I mean the councilman part – not the weapons part.

What do I do? I get on the floor and play with them with my two sons. But they are not something I would use for miniatures gaming. I think it is fun that some people do use them for such – good going, but it is not something for me.

Army Men are under-rated.

Not really. I'm in this for the visual aspects. For me, and a great number of others, one could never put together a scene with plastic Army Men that would ever look as nice as even a half-hearted attempt with say Battlefront figures, for instance. The plastic army men will always look off with their goofy poses and flat appearance.

They are "toys", just as figures of any other scale are "toys".

A toy is something that can be given to kids and bashed around. With the exception of the pre-paints (and even that is not a great idea) that can not be done with the models I use. I freely admit I play 'solider' with models. I'm not trying to make what I do seem important. It isn't, but most of my miniatures are not toys – they are either too small, too fragile, or too toxic. Besides, the boxes of miniatures I buy clearly states that 'this is not toy,' so it must be true.

Go to Armymen Homepage at thortrains.net/armymen
for a variety of rules for army men. There is also a Yahoo Group (armymencrew).

We paint them and game with them.

What else would we do with miniatures?

Whoops! Found this topic a little late, but just in case…
You can do this with Army Men:
combatstorm.com
and join my yahoo group!
link