"Wargames Factory - what can't they do?" Topic

Wargames Factory Numidians turned into Greek Hoplites, not perfect for the nit-pickers, but pretty good straight out the box/bag…

toomuchlead.blogspot.com

Nit picker.

You certainly are… :-)

Ah, a return to the Halcyon Days of Youth. This brings back visions of Historex.

Well done, but please don't tell the poor fellows requesting plastic Hoplite… ;-)

…release the 6mm androids?

Just kidding, cheap shot. Yeah they do look good!

They do look good, but I want proper crested greeks….

I have gotten completely hooked on their figures, and somehow keep finding reasons to need more!

Nit picker.

Once you've picked all your nits, what do you do with them?
No one wants a box of nits just lying around.

They can't get me off work today!

great as long as you don't mind them looking nothing like hoplites……..

…release the 6mm androids?

You beat me to it, Wellspring.

Nevermind the other L&U that are up to 100%

Ah – varglives with more anti-WF posts.

So varglives – which UK miniature company DO you work for anyway?

I don't work for a UK Miniature company. I am learning to sculpt though. Which US miniature company do you work for?

By the way, they look terrific. I might "borrow" your idea to do Ekdromi to support my Immortal Minis metal Hoplites. The only thing I might do differently is to have all the figures holding the spears in the same pose.

No expert but they look good to my.

Why do they look "nothing like Hoplites"?

it could be said that they don't look all that numidian either..

If you had shown me that picture and said "What manufacturer made these Roman Era figures?", I'd have been successfully flummoxed. You've certainly done a fine job re-purposing these. I'm no stickler for detail when it comes to ancients, but they've got all the important bits… Helmets, Spears, Shields…. Look Out, Inch Tall Ancient History!

I would like to add my third-hand cheap shot…

6mm androids

I went from feeling hopeful about a miniatures company who really seemed to "Get It", to feeling like some chump who lost a tenner to an international oil minister.

Hi Guys – work progresses on the 6mm androids. They are coming -just taking a bit longer than we hoped!

In general, the Liberty and Union League has been a bit more successful than we thought and as a small company it's difficult to keep up with all the requests (and put out full ranges of "other" 28mm hard plastics at the same time!)

But we are finding our way and getting better and faster as we go – so hang tight!

Also -Ancient German Cavalry are releasing next week – our 11th hard plastic set. And the Vikings are done as well – our 12th – so we're averaging about 1 hard plastic set per month, but we'd like to increase that by quite a bit in 2010.

Thanks again,
Tony

Tony Reidy
Wargames Factory
wargamesfactory.com

Forgot to add – awesome conversion Dean!

Not to hijack the thread…well just for a second. Tony, can the Liberty and Union league be spruced up a bit? There seems to be a lot of obsolete information lying around.
And yes, those conversions were great. Thanks for posting them.

Hi Captain – yes! It's one of the things we want to revisit as the platform I built it on is a little wonky. Now that we've lived with the L&U process for a few months, it's time to streamline it a bit.

Thank you so much, I now return you all to the remnants of the thread…

To summarise a response to Varglives and others. What the models do a good job of is representing the later period Hoplites who dispensed with armour for a variety of reasons; which could be summarised as a mixture of practical, ecomonical and fashionable.

Unarmoured troops fighting in the Hoplite style had several advantages over armoured troops; it seems likely too that terrain outside of the Greek plains was not ideal for the bulky armour of earlier days. Colonies and expanded cities were unlikely to be able to support investment, personal or by city state armouries, in lots of armour. Lastly the Spartans themselves introduced a fashion for going into battle unarmoured, or even naked (one of my other spartan units is entirely naked, and this seems to distress some wargamers!); something their allies were known to emulate, either by choice or due to the reasons given above.

I imagine Varglives bemoans the fact that these do not look like the classic hoplites of the period 800-500bc. My answer to that is simply that the represent troops of around one hundred years after the end of the classical period. For which they work just fine.

I am, like I said in my opening post, not a nit-picking, rivet counting modellor, but neither are these some arbitary flight of fantasy tagged as Greeks.

For me, they do look somewhat like later, unarmoured hoplites, although I don't think the profile of the helmets are quite right for Pilos, and the shields are perhaps a bit small relative to the size of the figures. Ideally some would have one shoulder bare. But these can be overlooked.

The issues for me are more about the miniatures themselves. The musclature of the miniatures is very pronounced, and the poses are awkward. The legs and feet, in particular, seem bulky in relation to the rest of each miniature.

I'd be careful with the notion of the predominance of the unarmoured hoplite in later times. The data is inconsistent and the interpretations can be and often are very creative. It is a habit of our times to wish to strictly classify something that in my opinion was never exactly defined in classical and Hellenistic times.

As for the miniatures… I like the creativity of the project, but BigRedBat is hitting the bullseye there for me; the poses are just too awkward. And that seems to be a result of how the torso and pelvis are connected and formed.

Tony Reidy! Yes, YOU! I'm speaking to YOU! The guy with the Penchant for purveying pretty plastic pugilistic products!

I have a small problem with your miniatures: I can't find them. I've called all over and I can't find any shops with your products in stock. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to purchase your wares, but I can't bring myself to kick the local-ish shops in the teeth by buying from the internet.

Who stocks your products? Better yet, can you add an easy to find link on your website pointing directly to a list of the friendly (and not-so friendly) hobby shops carrying your wares? The list of distributors that is currently shown isn't worth much, because I'd still be purchasing from somebody who isn't paying rent on the roof over the tables I (rarely, these days) play on.

Hi Doc,

Yes I should have added that I personally use a mix of linen-armoured and unarmoured figures for my later hoplites.

Cheers, Simon

"What the models do a good job of is representing the later period Hoplites who dispensed with armour for a variety of reasons"

That's exactly what they look like to me! I think they look great! Very much your "Citizen Hoplite" of the late period.
Well done!

Hi Valator – sorry, just saw this one! Where are you?

One of our challenges as a company is that we really don't have very good retail distribution at this stage. But that's one of the reasons that Lonnie Mullins along with a soon-to-be-named chap in the UK have been brought in to help get us "out there"!

Let me know – you can always email me at tonyATwargamesfactoryDOTcom