"Pros and Cons of 15mm Plastic Historicals" Topic

I have to say I'm still not convinced that 15mm hard plastic historicals are the most viable product line.

So far, WW2 is being done by PSC and – to a lesser extent but seemingly growing – by Battlefront. I would guess that the majority of PSC WW2 15mm sales are going to Flames of War players most likely. So perhaps that is a pretty good little market.

But what about the other historical periods? Here are my thoughts on it in general – let me know what you think

(And this is just me – Tony – not acting as spokesman for Defiance Games – I'm just curious about it) We do 28mm hard plastic Sci Fi with our ALIEN WAR range and that's what we are focused on)

Anyway – very very good 15mm metals can be had for about 50 cents. If you're in the USA and fork over the $50 USD you can get the Blue Moon 15s for about 30 cents each. If you're in the UK you're SOL on that.

But 50 cents for a figure – when most armies are – what? – 100 – 200 figures – isn't much of a bank breaker. Not when good metal historical 28s are $2 USD+ so a 100 figure army is going to immediately go for $200 USD (not counting cavalry)

So if someone is selling 15mm plastics – they'll probably need to price them around 30 cents or so at the most to begin with.

BUT….it's not like cheaper means everyone is going to buy a LOT more. The various rules only support so many figures to begin with. You're just going to pay slightly less than you would for the same # of figures.

AND…one of the great benefits of hard plastic is multi-part – which 15mm ones will definitely NOT be (way WAY WAY too fiddly). MAYBE some head swaps – but that's about it.

So the prime advantages of plastic – multi-part, conversions, ability to customize your figures, ability to use multi-part to get more dynamic/rounded figures – all that goes out the window with 15mm.

The only real benefits are price. And possibly weight if you don't want to lug around a lot of metal – but 15s are pretty light to begin with.

So – anyway – it doesn't seem to be a very viable product line for a manufacturer to go into based on those facts. Is there something I'm missing? Or is it generally just a bad idea?

Thanks,
Tony

Tony Reidy
Defiance Games
defiancegames.com

Sad to say your arguments are pretty solid. I always wanted cheaper than metal opponents for my allied metal Nap armies. Not having many larger figures, not having part swaps doesn't bother me. Plastic does seem to be a growing line so the first producing might grab a large market.
P.S. Boxes of lead do weigh a bit if it's close to 1000 figures in them.

Well you seem to be assuming that wargamers are
(A) Rational and (B) not megalomaniacs.

100 figures is basically two Austrian battalions for me. I'm of the old school type wargamer who like to field large battalions, so plastics would be ideal for me.

You're right with the multi part aspect, don't bother with that. Just three or so march attack poses of the basic nations would do.

Perhaps weight is more of an issue than you think. I live in the UK so my blue moon figures have to be sent from the states and that works out at £18.00 GBP for 50 figures, I assume a good portion of that is shipping. A thousand metal figures will cost a lot less than a thousand plastics!

For me cheaper figures – especially cavalry would mean I would buy more. A good easy to play large battalion scale rule set rule set wouldn't harm either…

for me plastic horse and musket figures would have 2 advantages. Firstly i'd find it much easier to paint them whilst on the sprue. Secondly a 15mm plastic army would weigh less which is important as i game away from home.

The advantage is in marketing. There's no real price difference between plastic 28mm and Old Glory, however I can drive 20 minutes and buy Victrix, Warlord, Perry, Wargames Factory, or Gripping Beast plastics. For whatever reason it's apparently easier for distributors and/or retailers.

Personally, I'd rather 6 or 10mm plastics- for some reason the old Epic Imperial Guard set was one of my favorites of any minis set ever back in the day.

Rich

First of all, Blue Moon are $0.50 USD as it is. Then if you get the Old Glory Army Card they drop to $0.30 USD each. So for those gamers who do large units and lots of them and have tables 12' long, you're competing with them.

I think if you did "a game in a box" you might find a niche. But here I'm thinking of:

A box with US infantry, a couple HUMVees, and a bunch of Taliban for $29.95 USD

If you can do this with a bunch of periods it might work.

Re: Old Glory. True the plastics are everywhere. But after you buy the three boxes of Gripping Beast then what? Where do you get the rest of your army?

armies of 100 to 200 figures? maybe if you are doing Hesse Darmstadt….but not if you are collecting Napoleonic French, Austrians, Russians, Prussians, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Bavarians, Polish, etc etc

Not if you are doing American Civil War in 15 mm…or SYW, or 19th century…..

I think most collections are in the 1,000s of figures. Not 100-200.

I think in most of the examples I have seen the metal figures are better than the plastic equivalents, so the plastics only really sell on price and novelty (and, personally I suspect in some cases the novelty might wear off).

With 15mm I don't think the basic price is high enough to make a cheaper alternative necessary. It may be desirable for a section of the market but not necessary all round.

There is plenty I want the people I buy metal figures from to make for me. If they don't, but something as good comes out in plastic I might buy it. I haven't bought any of the plastic WW2 15mm figures (though I have been bunged a few) as I don't think they look as nice as the metal figures I can buy in more flexible quantities.

I do like the Zvezda 1:100 kits. Better than PSC in some cases (I'm not a big fan of the PSC T34) and generally more accurate than Battlefront.

Pre 20th Century, though, when it's mostly infantry and cavalry? No … It's just not something I'm looking for.

Phil

I concur, and imagine that even if the plastics are cheaper initially, to get their ranges started, over time they'll raise them to be comparable in pricing to that of the metal minis.

I'll stick with the metal, barring huge discounts, superb figures, or incredibly dynamic poses in plastic.

I don't look forward to assembling multi-part plastic figures in such a small scale (or really in any scale, for that matter).

Mako11 – why would you be assembling multi-part 15mm??

I think you are right, plastic has three appeals: price, weight, and customization.

The largest appeal of historical plastics is price. You can get a often high quality figure for a remarkably low price ($0.73 for a plastic Perry fig vs. $2.00 USD a pop for a metal one). As has been pointed out, 15mm figures run from about $.70 USD to $.30 USD, so 15mm already has the advantage of being cheap.

Likewise, 15mm figures are small, and therefore comparatively light weight. Yes, huge numbers weight a lot, but its a lot less of an issue for 15mm than 28mm.

Being able to 'build you own' figures is fun, but for many 15mm is too fiddly for that. Also, historical figures have a far smaller call for customization than fantasy or sci-fi stuff. Look at the flak Victrix got for the plethora of poses in their first few sets. Historical players, particularly for horse and musket periods want to build uniform units, which makes multi-pose plastic sets less necessary.

As Extra Crispy points out, a game in a box, it might work, otherwise I don't see 15mm plastics being worth the expense.

@RMCaras:

You have thousands of Bavarians? I agree 100-200 is pretty small overall. But break it out by troop type. I have about 300 Napoleonic French Line, 100 Legere. 100 DRagoons. So you;re right my French army is thousands. But it is split among so many troop types sales potential is small.

And then you have to get metal commanders and other bits from somewhere too.

EC-
Face it, if gamers only bought what we could reasonably paint and use then the entire industry would only need to produce about 10,000 figures a year.

For me the advantage of plastic is convenience- I can get it locally or choose from several online retailers. This lets me build projects in smaller steps instead of spending half of my time organizing unpainted piles. If there is a way to do similar in metal, it hasn't happened yet.

Rich

100-200 figures? Really? (As I glance to my figure shelves groaning under the wieght of literally THOUSANDS of 15mm figures, War of 1812, Napoleonic, Samuria and 7 YRS war…)
Sigh…

15mm plastics? who does those? 10mm is the true Napoleonic scale, cheap and easy to paint. You need 1,000-1500 to have a real Nap battle IMO.

If you were to do 1000 to 1500 WRG 7th boxed armies, I would be interested. Multi nation corps for Napoleons Battles would also be of interest. I think that you could come up with your own big army rules and boxed armies and generate interest in periods that people previously had no desire to game in.

Well, I have no interest in anything smaller than 25/28mm anyway, so have at it, fellows.

I'm working on a Napoleonic order right now. There are 2000 15mm figures in it.

I did two 15mm 1000 figure Napoleonic Swedish armies almost back to back one spring. It was kind of crazy.

I have no idea how many 15mm French I've painted over the years. I think there might be a market for some plastics.

Where I see 15mm historical plastics working is where players want a huge army and possibly with relatively few poses. Some of these might be : Celts, Zulu, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian War. Ie. Where the player is fighting massive battles with lots of figures snd figure pose variation is not essential. I think you could certainly find a niche market their Tony. Probably the best way to sort it out is to run a poll to see what people want in 15mm plastics. Then you can see what the top 2 or 3 lines are and go from there.

DON'T DO IT! NO, NO, NO! 15 mm metal is already so cheap I have over 32,000 of them (stopped counting).

And I don't think they could come out cheaper than metal with the production costs – be on a par with 28 mm plastic which are more expensive than all but the most expensive 15mm metal (figures that are premium priced because they will only sell a limited number – can't do that in plastics)

I like plastics for cost, for weight, and for customisation. Living in the middle of no-where, weight also impacts on postage costs -- a double plus for plastics.

I built the PSC plastic Russians, and they are some of my favorite figures. I dont mind the assembly -- in fact, I enjoy it. Once assembled, spray paint kakhi, black boots, brown guns, flesh, helmet, and devlan mud. Hey presto -- some great looking figures. The thin bases made them easy to glue to the BF bases, I used.

Assembly is not a big issue for me – in fact, I enjoy it. A few single part figs, and a few figs with missing arms / heads, and a selection of heads / arms to glue on would be ideal. Not hard to sculpt, no incremental cost apart from mold making for the extra arms / heads, and allows me to customise. Also allows for poses that are not 2D.

The real advantage of plastic is large numbers of cheap core troops. Think ACW, Napoleonic line, Gauls, Zulus.

The next big advantage is pre-paints. See the airfix pre-painted plastic kits. If I could buy my french line already painted on the sprue, and all I needed to do was assemble and touch up -- there is a winner!!!!

Actually, I wouldn't mind intelligently designed multipart plastic troops. Especially CAVALRY. (horse in 2 pieces, separate rider). Same with artillery. Separate gun, carriage, wheels, limber, etc.

100 troops per side? No, Tony, try over 100 troops per UNIT. (Though I have been accused of insanity, what with 12 troops per company-base, 10 bases per battalion)

At a lesser level of insane, 40mm wide bases can have 8 figures per base (in two ranks), and you have 4-6 bases per unit. That's 32-48 figures, plus separate skirmishers if your rules require them. 40-60 models per unit, and I need ~12 units per side.

There's an easy 500 models per side.

EC beat me to it – a game in a box would get you started. Either that, or make your own rules for BIG plastic battalions.

Also recommend that you go with 12mm and not 10mm or 15mm. Go off scale, so that people have to buy whole collections. You then have a chance of recouping your investment. You offer the bulk in plastic, then have filler things (like Generals) in metal to save costs.

Austrian Corps in a box, Russian Corps in a Box etc. Buy a bunch of them and you have Austerlitz. You would need to go in cheaply for anyone to have an interest, hence my suggestion of going off scale to lock people in. High volume, low cost = profit. Low volume, low cost = pain.

Don't forget the 3mm stuff which Pico are coming out with in Napoleonics (and already in ACW). People can get VAST armies for not very much. That competition sucks away the potential of your market.

As others have said, one attraction of 15mm (before we get to the plastics part) is to enable large units, i.e. battalions of 24+ for the Horse&Musket period, and allow for 'proper' battles to be laid out on the average tabletop.

As for plastic, the relative ease of conversion holds true even in the smaller scale. Doesn't mean all the figures have to be multi-pose (I wouldn't advise it), but a small percentage like Nick Bowler suggested, or just the possibility for the gamer to swap heads easily (ever tried drilling the necks of dozens of 15mm metal figures?), would be a boon.

So the basic tenets of plastic economics, as exposed above by Uesugi Kenshin, would still appear to apply: periods with large armies, fairly standard uniforms and a limited number of troop types and poses. It's probably no coincidence that the Perrys started out in plastics with the ACW, while Wargames Factory picked the early 18th C. as their Horse&Musket period. See also the recent appearance of 10mm prepainted ACW plastics from Gordon&Hague

Note that as you go down in size, some detail won't matter, or matter less. This might, for example, make SYW plastics viable as 15s, whereas in 28mm too many people may point out too many missing details.

Hopefully the current fad for imagi-natons, fanned by the recent release of "Maurice", will motivate someone to jump in!

Pose is the critical thing.

lots of variation – and the potential to sell to diorama makers and kids playing soldiers from forts of building blocks.

or all march-poses ala the 28mm 'batallion boxes' with aspecific gamer market in mind.

I'm sticking to lead becuase the 8-12 man packs give me maximum control over the unwanted figures I end up with. I suspect that same decision will be critical to the viability of most 15mm ventures.

I live in Thailand and work in wierd places so postage costs are a huge part of my expenses. Easily 30-50% of all costs.

And I agree with Lion in the Stars. My 6mm figures are 220-300 figures per unit dense pack. I want to see masses of fugres to make it look like a unit.

So at 15mm I'd be using 25/28mm basing and still end up with 100 figures per unit easy. In terms of shipping wieght, that's a game breaker. Plastic would be oh so nice.

Bad idea. Hands up everyone with tons of 15mm figures you don't intend painting ….
But if it was up to me – I'd try 40mm or 1/48 (36mm) in 100% anatomically correct figures. Look at the 54mm Preiser SYW Prussians – do that in 1/48 and you are set. 40mm metal SYW is big in Europe.
Reading the 3D sculpting mags, designing realistic figures seems to be a doddle.
40mm D&D, FIW, Dark Ages, WW2 and so on – I would definitely buy all ranges – as long as the figures look like real people not wargames boofheads and hamfists.

There already is a thriving market in 20mm plastics. For people committed to "light and cheap," they're probably already buying at this scale.

I agree with some of what thehawk says … but I don't know anyone who has tons of 15mm figures they don't intend painting. I'm a backlog offender however.

40mm plastic SYW I might well buy. No chance for D&D or any non-historical figures … any scale, any time … (thread is plastic historicals, of course, so I should be OK saying that)

I do like 20mm plastics and am searching for a new project where I can do justice both ways. I'm not hung up on 'hard' plastic (another part of the oversold novelty: there are pros and cons between rigidity and needing assembly – and these days there are some intermediate formulations where it is hard to tell which is which*) – my guess is the next novelty will be soft plastic 28s offering all of the supposed advantages but without as much assembly.

Phil
*and complex Zvezda sets these days take a lot of assembly despite being notionally 'soft' plastics

I think that the 15mm fans may have a problem with breakages – rigid plastic legs, bayonets, lances etc are goingt to be VERY fragile. People mention this with 28mm, where mnost things will be 4 times the cross section. So how practical will 15mm be in historical periods?

But, hands on heart here. I like 1/72 soft plastic, so I already have all the price/weight advantages I want, and I find them big enough to paint. So I may just be too biased against 15mm.

I think they will continue to sell, because everyone has different reasons for liking or disliking miniatures. I thought I would never go to plastic, but I've seen the 15mm plastics from Wargames Factory and they are better and more realistically proportioned than any 15mm metal that I've seen. And I love creating new figures by cutting and gluing. Easier in plastic than metal.

I like 15mm but the cost relative to 28mm (plastic) has made 28mm armies affordable to me- crikey I have even bought and painted one, something I would not have done if no plastics were available. However as a committed 15mm collector given the chance to buy my figures at (say) half the cost if produced in plastic I would jump at the chance. 15mm's only appear really cheap when compared to the larger scales, as unit sizes tend to be larger as the figure size gets smaller (in my world anyhow) the price differential is less than you may expect. So I guess I am waiting for those "mass" troop types that would be ideal fo 15mm plastics…all the ones mentioned earlier, or Partians, Huns, Ancient Germans, Normans, generic 18th century types, Zulu's etc..

Once upon a time I guess we all said 28mm plastics wouldn't work either…

Cons – Perrys don't do 15mm

Pros – errr, didn't you read the cons?

"Mako11 – why would you be assembling multi-part 15mm??".

I won't be.

Leaving them unassembled makes them rather useless, unless you need casualties on the tabletop.

I suspect that if they can keep the cost of plastics at 50% of those of metal, with similar quality, or better, people may go with the easily breakable stuff.

More than that, and metal is the way forward.

Hi

A 'twist' might be for multi-pose minimal detail range of figures.

There are a few 15/18mm ranges that are not overly detailed, but I can honestly say that I know of no manufacturer that has a complete and well thought out range of figures which are deep sculpted, well posed and designed with the painter who doesn't want to detail multiple cross belts, shako attire, buttons and other regalia.

As someone pointed out – perhaps a 'new scale' might be another 'twist'?

I looked at some 15mm plastics at a recent show. They were closer to 12mm or 10mm than 15mm. This has been a problem with metals in the past and will be an issue with plastics as well.

Not a criticism just a fact. I did not get any for my store after having some 15mm and 10mm players look at them and give me their opinion on scale comparison. I did not feel like I could sell them regardless of the cost per casting.

For me price is less an object than getting paint on the figs. I started out with Airfix and painted them by the hundreds. They got all chipped up from playing and held no collector value and are all gone now. I only work in metal 15s that will hopefully last long after I'm gone.

Deeter

If I can build a small (200 figures) 'playable' army in 15mm then I will build several armies if I have a cheap source of miniatures.
I wont stop at just French. I'll want Russians, then Prussians, then Austrians and British.
And once I have them I will start on Brunswickers, Hessians, Italian, Ottomans blah blah blah,…..

"For me price is less an object than getting paint on the figs. I started out with Airfix and painted them by the hundreds. They got all chipped up from playing and held no collector value and are all gone now. I only work in metal 15s that will hopefully last long after I'm gone."

The OP is talking about hard plastic figures. They don't chip. Metal figures chip more easily than hard plastic figures. These are not made of the same material your other Airfix figures were made out of.