"Which Are The Best 15mm For French Indian War?" Topic

1) In your opinion, which 15mm manufacurer has the best sculpts of figures of woodland Indians, French, British and Colonials (including Rogers' Rangers)?

2) Are there clear pics of what those figures look like?

Thanks,

Dan
PS. Just watched Last of the Mohicans (1992) again and got curious.

The Blue Moon ones are very nice. There is a good variety of figures in the packs and they are nice looking.

In the last few months I bought a lot of the Blue Moon FIW and I think they are great. As Pictors Studio says they have a great variety of figures, equipment and structures.

Blue Moon if I were to start it anew …

I have two near-complete forces from Essex link and Minifigs link – the latter getting the look and feel right but are decidedly "old school" – and are only slightly better represented in online photos ..

I do like the nice clean sculpts of Essex but they are "cute" in a halfling sort of way. I did these some 15-20 years ago:

Yes that's eyes painted in .. and they are less pink in real life – all the colors are off because of my inability to color correct properly.

I have always liked the 15mm Minifigs FIW figures. However, the amount of poses are limited and they're only available from the UK for the time being.

I have a bunch of the Blue Moon American Revolution packs (and one FIW pack, the frontier settlers.) They're really nice figures, plus photos of the entire range can viewed online before buying. If I was building FIW instead of AWI, I'd choose Blue Moon

If I was to start all over again, I think I'd go with Blue Moon as well.

Funny you should mention this now. Minifigs have recently put pictures of Matchlock FIW 15mm figures up on their website. I think they are worth a look.

If you want a complete range QRF are very good and nice figures with variants too.

I'm toying with doing FIW and if I do it will be a mixture of QRF, Essex and Matchlock.

the matchlock figures are very good , often overlooked .

If I do it over again in 15mm, it'll be with Blue Moon. I have Falcon, Minifigs, Essex, and maybe a couple of others in there I can't remember. All have their good and bad points.

I think the Blue Moon line is excellent.

Eric

Dwight how do Matchlock compare to Essex sizewise?

I'm going with Blue Moon. I have some of their 28mm FIW stuff and they are great. The 15mm look to be just as good.

Wow.

link

Blue Moon has certainly expanded their range since last time I checked. And the prices on Grandiosity seem enticing too:

link

Very, very nice.

QUESTIONS:

1) For simple frontier woodland skirmishing action, would you say that one of each of the following sets would suffice?

French side:
15LOM117 Woodland Indians (30) *
link
15LOM111 Campagnies Franches de la Marine (30)
link
15LOM112 French Irregulars/Militia (30)
link

British side:
15LOM117 Woodland Indians (30) *
link
15LOM113 Colonial Rangers (30)
link
15LOM116 Frontier Militia (30)
link

2) What about LOTM character figures (Hawkeye, Uncas, etc.)? Which ones?

Thanks,

Dan
* They only seem to have 1 woodland indian warrior set, so I guess one on each side would have to work for both the Huron and the Iriquois, right?

Dan,
Your list for a quick skirmish is good. I have all of the same packs. The Woodland Indians work for either French or British allies. You get 30 unique figures so you have a lot of variety. One possibility to differentiate the Indians is to group them by hairstyle. Some have a shaved head with feather plume sticking straight up, others have roached hair, etc.

I would do as rvandusen says, but would split the two packs of 30 into something more like 40 French, 20 Brits. Typically more Indians on the French side. And in some cases they comprised a large portion of French forces (see Braddock's Defeat). Or, even better, paint by 'tribes' of 10-20 and so they can shift loyalties.

Not really seeing LOTM characters…yet. Anyway, I've got the Conquest 28mm for that already.