"Favourite Old School Figures?" Topic

I'm partial to Garrison myself, which qualify as old school as they featured in Charles Grant's The Ancient Wargame! Never owned any Spencer Smith, Scruby, Hinton Hunt or Stadden. I like the old Minifigs PB Ancients range, but not fussed by the horse and musket. Some of the Hinchliffe ranges I have fond memories of too – still have a few.

Well I have quite a number of original plastic Spencer Smith figures. They are so old that the plastic has gone brittle and they are beginning to disintegrate before my eyes. I have started replacing them with the metal versions.

I also have some early Minifigs 15mm ECW figures. The ones that came in strips of five. I have a soft spot for them because they are the first metal figures I ever bought.

Barry Minot's "Quest of Thane Tostig" figures.

I do have a soft spot for Hinton Napoleonics, mainly due to gaming with (and painting for) an avid collector of them for several years.

The Halfling set from the old Grenadier range.

Spencer Smith SYW

Custom Cast 25mm ancient Persians; SKT Khmer.

I was painting some Minifig barbarians just last night. It's surprising how well updated painting skills can make them look.

Garrison as you say I still have a biscuit tin full of Sassanids.

Custom Cast Orcs of the White Hand.

Deployed en masse, they still look great.

Miniature Figurines chunky 25mm Napoleonics………my first metal war-game figures bought from the late Dave Rotor's shop near Victoria Station…. Happy days of uncomplicated wargaming.

Ive got a soft spot for my Heritage 15mm Napoleonics (my first), and my ultimately chunky Rafm orcs.

All the Heritage 15mm lines were classics.

I like the old Ral Partha goblins/orcs and hobgoblins. The 1979 versions. Those were some great figures

Hinchliffe all the way

As noted on another thread, Custom Cast dwarves – best yet.

Heritage Dungeon Dwellers – purely for nostalgic reasons.

Al | ravenfeastsmeadhall.blogspot.com

Too much to choose from………for me the uglier the lead the fonder the memory (although that tends to be for fantasy / SF !!!). Historical – Hinchliffe Late Byzantine and Sassanid Elephant – the first metal figs I can remember picking up. I did recently pick up a very old Garrison box with about 10 unknown Grenadier types in. Nice to look at.

Sci fi Ral Partha's galatic Grenadiers

Early Minifigs with the telephone pole lances.

Rick

I must be getting old, I have and like all the figures mentioned. Nevertheless my favorite Old School figures are the Britains Zouaves. I had 4 or 5 sets of those for my Little Wars games. Second was the Foreign Legion, marching.

Going forward in time, I had lots of fun with my SAE WW2 figs and Dinky vehicles.

Rob H, thanks for that reference. I have a box of those which I had forgotten maker until you mentioned it.

BobNoDog…No worries, just remember my name if you decide to part with them.

Anyone like to guess my favourites?

Dragon Tooth?

I like Warrior Miniatures Napoleonics. Loads hate them, but I always liked their rough quality…

Hinchliffe 25mm Sassanid Persians were great figures – they were the only 25mm figures I ever regretted selling.

I also liked the Hinchliffe 12mm Napoleonics from the mid 70's, shame their system never took off.

Early Minifig strips with hardly any variation in pose. Still got my Trajanic Romans, wish I could find some of those strips figures still, need a few command and some Legionaries…<sigh>

It has to be the Airfix 20mm Union and Confederate infantry: strangely modelled with webbing pouches rather than cartridge boxes, and some pretty strange/useless poses, but they were my first wargame figures and served me well in many a battle.

In 54mm all of my old Britains Ltd. esp. the French Zouaves and Cuirassiers. There were some neat French and Belgian machine gunners w/bi-pods.

In 25mm Ancients I equally liked MiniFigs (bless them for variety in nationalities) and Garrison (Greenwood and Ball). Still have many of them and they have seen a lot of wargame action over 40 years!

Yeah, Hinchcliffe were THE aspirational 25mm wargames figures of their day. Im still using some of them in my Byzantine army, and their mounted Naps Generals were exquisite.

Staddens are and always will be my favorite figures.

Dave Rotor's shop near Victoria Station.. That takes me back…. got a lot of Minifigs from there whenver I went down to the Smoke..

Im still using my Scruby, Hinchcliffe, Minifig, and Ral Partha.

Yes, those chunky 25mm Minifigs … manufactured in Pine Plains, NY! I must have re-fought Rourke's Drift with their wonderful Brits and Zulus dozens of times!

AND Ral Partha Republican Romans and Carthaginians … with the metal spears and the chunky cavalry! I had boxes and boxes of them! Also had a ton of Ral Partha orcs.

Airfix Napoleonics – always preferred them to the ACW, even though the range was rubbish. And have now painted some to current standards and quite like them all over again :-)

Dear Alte Fritz is right. Staddens and for me Surens. Perfect figures, Old School or not. One of the last lines with near true human proportions.

11 ACR – I have some Hinchliffe and other old school "true 25mm" Napoleonics I'm trying to part with, here in San Rafael, CA. Send me an email to widowson1@att.net if you are interested.

Never managed to get enoughg Thane Tostig figures to do the game as described in the rules – but they were nice figures, liked the armoured sprites in particular, great dramatic poses.

Whatever happened to them I wonder ?

Hinchcliffe and Staddens.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly

25mm minifig naps. quintessential

The Halfling set from the old Grenadier range (I have this)

I love the Mini fig strip figures if only because they formed my ancients army still in use to this day.

Painted Napoleonic flats from Germany. Back when there were 4 DM to the US $. USD The day they arrived was one of the most exciting days of my thirteen year life. They came in little cardboard boxes packed with straw. I eventually aquired 100s of them. Then one day I noticed how un-imposing they looked head on. Twenty-five years later I traded them for an army of Ral Partha Boers.

It has to be the Airfix 20mm Union and Confederate infantry: strangely modelled with webbing pouches rather than cartridge boxes, and some pretty strange/useless poses

Ah yes, many warm memories of battles on the bedroom floor at my best friends house! Years later I found out that many of these 'useless' poses were actually historically correct – the shoulder arms, right shoulder shift, arms port and in the confederate set, my favorite charge bayonets – even though the figure didn't actually have a bayonet!

For all their flaws, these figures had a certain charm that the ugly "Waterloo" sets never achieved.