"Just converted to 10mm Napoleonics from 1/72 plastics." Topic

I decided to go with Redline Napoleonics by Bend Sinister. I just put in a small order for some line infantry, command and some mounted officers. Looking forward to them. Once they're partially painted, I'll order some artillery and cavalry while I'm finishing my first batch.

Now it's time to figure out who the opposing force will be. I'm leaning towards Austria and doing the whole 1809 thing, but I think I might do the War of the Sixth Coalition period instead.

1/72 plastics have been frustrating me a bit lately. Either the poses don't work out right, or the style and size between on manufacturer and the next means making an army is a bit troublesome. Zvezda was once the hope of many doing Napoleonics in 1/72, but they've abandoned their traditional kits. I don't find this issue at all with my 1/72 Colonials or WW2 (where 1/72 is awesome), but with Napoleonics, I'm finding I get a set and end up a bit disappointed.

It's true that I'm now paying the same price per miniature and getting one that's half as tall, but Bend Sinister's stuff looks excellent and the smaller size should speed up the painting process (at least, that's what I found for 6mm, 10mm is probably similar). It also lets me either increase my figure density per base or maybe go with smaller frontages to make some of the battles normally too large for my table a reality.

Looking forward to painting up my first miniature of Napoleon himself.

My plan is to put 6-12 figures per 40mm base. I don't know if I'll be able to fit too rows of infantry on a 20mm deep base. From what I understand Bend Sinister's miniatures don't come mounted on strips and their more realistic proportions should mean I can pack them together fairly tightly.

Welcome to a fantastic journey. Its hard to go back.

I started down this path some 18 months ago, great fun. Si is great to deal with and his figures are really good value. They paint up fast and have a good level of detail.

You should easily be able to fit the figures on a 40mm. I fit 4 cavalry on a 40 x 20mm, or 6 infantry on a 25 x 15mm.

Depends on what rules you want to use and the figure to man ratio – I am using 1:20 which has a nice massed effect without being too overwhelming.

Cheers

Ironlegs
10mmnapoleonics.bogspot.com

Hi, 10mm is a good scale too. Is that picture of Napoleon and ADC distorted? The horses don't look right.

Thanks,

John

Jack Scruby, the father of American historical miniatures wargaming, and the manufacturer of historical miniatures, always maintained N scale was the best and 15mm was a "bastard" scale.

Congrats, they look great.

Bob Coggins

@ John Leahy – I think that image might be wider than it should be. His website had a php image resizer thing and I just took the raw image rather. I'll let you know when the miniatures arrive! I do a lot of stuff in 1/72 but found the plastic Napoleonics to just fall a bit short of my great experiences doing WW2 in that scale.

@ Ironlegs – your blog was definitely a source of inspiration to go with 10mm when I was figuring out what to do. Your pictures definitley helped me make the decision to put in the test order with Bend Sinister.

I use my figures for a lot of different rules and right now I'm into grand tactical ones where a base is a brigade. So I'll probably be starting with no real fixed number. The bases will also serve as double duty for when I want to play a more zoomed in tactical game at a base being a company (so around 1:10 if I put around 12 miniatures on a base).

I love 10mm a great scale as you can do big battles and small regiments sized games and it all looks tight.
#
28mm great for shows crap for small games.

PS go 2 ranks they look fantastic that way….and cheap.

I'm definitely going 2 ranks. Ironlegs' pictures show I'll have no problem fitting them on 20mm deep bases. I want those bases full of miniatures. It looks like I'll be able to get them to historical scaled per person frontages of 4.6mm per miniature (assuming 10mm scale = 1/160).

Another issue I had with 1/72 (which is just shy of 25mm to the top of the head) was artillery basing. They cannons are just wide enough that I end up with the hub-to-hub parking lot effect if I put more than one base next to eachother. Crew end up being difficult to place as well.

Ten figures on 40mm x 20mm is fairly standard and looks good. Look at Black Powder as well.

I have a copy of Black Powder somewhere. I've been meaning to revisit my rules approach as well. I currently run games with a cobbled together system like a prom dress made from carpet remnants. A bit of Grande Armee, some DBx ideas, some turn structure I got from somewhere, some ideas from Neil Thomas' Simplcity in Practice.

I'll definitely consider 10 figures, but I'm also going to consider 18. Assuming I can get three ranks deep on 20mm without figures being too close to the base edges.

Sad to see you move away from 1/72 Naps, but wish you well me 10mm.

And re your comments, I agree to an extent. I love teh Zvezda stuff, but they lost me when they abandoned their plans for a set of French infantry. But HaT are making great strides forward with their Spanish and new French so I shall continue :-)

3 ranks of 18mm is impossible in 20mm deep. 2 ranks barely fit on 1" depth. In 18mm you will get at most four figures on a 40x20 base, sometimes three. Been there done that.

Looks like my last post wasn't clear. I meant 18 10 mm miniatures, not 18mm miniatures. If the footprint of one 10mm miniature is less than 4.5mm x 6mm then I should be able to fit three ranks of 6, or 18 total 10mm miniatures on a 40mm x 20mm base.

Marc the plastics fan: And re your comments, I agree to an extent. I love teh Zvezda stuff, but they lost me when they abandoned their plans for a set of French infantry. But HaT are making great strides forward with their Spanish and new French so I shall continue :-)

HaT is so close, but I find they lack a bit of focus when releasing stuff. They tend to jump around too much instead of finishing a range. For example, they release their excellent 1808-1812 French Line Infantry in 2004 (an awesome 100 figure set), but then have no artillery sets appropriate to that time. Instead, their next releases were Waterloo related, then a bunch of Napoleonic transport/limbers/etc., and then into World War 1 and a variety of other subjects.

They make a lot of great stuff, but they tend to stop short of making the handful of sets needed to wargame a particular era of the Napoleonic Wars. And say you wanted some Peninsular War British of the same style for your French Line to fight. Well, that gets released five years later in 2009.

In their Ancients lines, they seem to have been far, far more consistent in finishing a given product line. There's more than enough to wargame with their Assyrian stuff, for example (and it's really, really nice).

Figure collectors are a different market than wargamers and while HaT has been doing great things for wargamers, they haven't yet figured out how to cater to both audiences.

Don't tempt me! I'm considering 10mm for WWII gaming at the moment…. But those Naps look really cool….. No, no, I musn't!

Sorry, Nathaniel. I misread the post. :-/

I don't know about your manufacturer, but maybe my various 10mm periods can give a guide

ACW – 30mm bases, 4 figs wide, I have 2 rows and could definately get a third if I wanted (Actually I have 7 figs oon many- so the 2nd row can get musket between front rank)
They are Chariot

Everything else is Pendraken
WSS 20mm bases 2 rows of 3 – 36 man units
link
link
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ECW – 16 pike men on a 30mm base
link

Imperial Romans 2 rows of 6 (Auxillary I have 2x5 which came down figures I had and laziness painting)

The big advantage of 10mm is that if you are using 25mm on an inch rule set you can just convert to 10mm and use cms

10mm for WW2 is definately the way to go for anthing abouve platoon level – 3 to a 30mm base gives a nice spaced look, and armour isn't horrendously expensive.

Ah, for the lack of good French infantry!

You'd think there would be all sorts of them out there in 1/72, but they are ALL deficient. The HaT figures are poorly posed – either too flat or ridiculous looking marching poses, no cords for the fusiliers, no gaiters. Italeri/Esci all have cross belts, useful for elites only, and have coat tails too short.

I, too, was hopeful for the promised Zvezda set of French fusiliers (and additional Russians, too), and bitterly disappointed that they cancelled the large sets in favor of the grossly overpriced mini sets.

It's very discouraging.

@ CPBelt – You did make a pretty persuasive argument for 10mm in terms of getting multiple miniatures on a base where you can't in 18mm.

Last Hussar: I don't know about your manufacturer, but maybe my various 10mm periods can give a guide

They were, thank you. I'm beginning to have no doubt that I'll be able to put the miniatures I want on the baze size I have chosen.

Widowson: I, too, was hopeful for the promised Zvezda set of French fusiliers (and additional Russians, too), and bitterly disappointed that they cancelled the large sets in favor of the grossly overpriced mini sets.

It's very discouraging.

Fortunately there is 10mm :D

I don't think Zvezda is ever going to change back to traditional 1/72 figure kits. I think their mini-kits are probably a big success in terms of sales (and margins). I think they realized that the model builders out there will get what they expect from a tiny kit with a couple of sprues in it and that many of the figure collectors don't truly care about the contents in terms of numbers of figures. They keep releasing them (over 25 kits since the line launched) and I don't see any sign of a change in direction there.

It's no good for those of us who are wargamers, but for the typeical person building a diorama or just wanting to paint some figures up, I think the lower model count is still acceptible. I know lots of people on model building forums who buy a box of 1/72 plastics, choose a single example of half of the poses, paint those up for display and then chuck the remainder into storage.

If you go on a modelling or figure painting forum and look at the painted figures section, rarely will you see any example of an entire box painted up. So maybe Zvezda is on to something given their target audience.

My dream is to be able (money + painting time) to base 10mm on 25mm figure bases – That would make my WSS for BP 4 times as large – 24 x 20mm bases each with 6 figures on, rather than the 6 bases I have now per battalion. The advantage I have at the moment with using Cms is my 10' x 3' diningroom table is equivalent to 25' x 7'6" in the rules. On the inch scale its only 2 cavalry moves wide rather than 5!

A few years back I started the process of painting a 10mm Napoleon's Battles army with each stand 3 ranks of 3 and for the British 2 ranks of 4. 54 figures on 6 stands looks stunning. 52 actually with room for a mounted brigadier or colonel. Alas illness has slowed me down.

Bob Coggins

Sorry to hear about your illness, Mr. Coggins. I've had a bout with a nearly fatal illness myself which lead me to relax a bit about my collections and accept smaller games and lower figure counts. Now that I'm in remission I've largely kept that approach. This is my first forray into a high figure count approach in a long time. And I'm willing to take it slow.

I'm planning on building an army with a 40x20mm base being a brigade and if one day I can put them all together and have a 1:10 figure ratio battalion based game, that'll be a happy extra. I'm still in my 30s though, so assuming my health holds, I should eventually get there. Till then, it'll be a base being a brigade rather than a company.

Last Hussar: My dream is to be able (money + painting time) to base 10mm on 25mm figure bases – That would make my WSS for BP 4 times as large – 24 x 20mm bases each with 6 figures on, rather than the 6 bases I have now per battalion. The advantage I have at the moment with using Cms is my 10' x 3' diningroom table is equivalent to 25' x 7'6" in the rules. On the inch scale its only 2 cavalry moves wide rather than 5!

For me, it's the space. While there are small local conventions that allow me to accasionally use a large table, I too am generally limited to 4' wide tables.

I think I'm going to go with 12 figures on a 40mm x 20mm base. Similar to your 6 on 20mm x 20mm. After I paint my new arrivals up, I'll probably line up both 12 and 18 miniatures per base and see what I like. The problem with 18 is that for a British line that's 2 deep, I may not have the room to get two rows of 9. It would basically involve squeezing them into 4mm files with a couple mm on each side before the edge of the base.

I've heard Bend Sinister's Redline miniatures are thinner and slighter than other 10mm, so maybe it'll work out. The British are a long way off though. I'm just starting the French and will probably do Russians, Prussians and Austrians before I do British (if I ever do).

I got sick of the inconsistencies in 1/72 Napoleonics. Zvezda looked like they were going to be the saviour as did HaT when they released their 1808-1812 French Infantry. Then of course they changed sculptor and started churning out these thin, wizened creatures that simply didn't match up and were totally inconsistent size-wise.

I've since gone to 28mm plastics for Lasalle Divisional/Brigade gaming and 10mm Pendraken for 1809 Grande Armee large-scale gaming. Received quite a few Pendraken figures and am pretty impressed.

Pendraken is on my list of ranges to check out as well. The pictures on ironlegs blog definitely inspired me to go with Redline by Bend Sinister to start. I've heard Pendraken isn't as chunky as MM and OG.

I know Napoleonics aren't simple, but I'm continually shocked how well companies can do 1/72 for World War 2 and can't seem to make things work as well for this era. There are some issues with some of the Revell sets for WW2, but generally speaking, you can mix and match from different sources without too much trouble and lines from companies tend to be far more complete. I guess it might have to do with relative popularity, but that doesn't account for issues within the kits.

Regarding 10mm basing, before the scale creep of the past few years you could pretty much always fit them on a 5mm per figure frontage. Now, however, much depends on the line and pose, and 6-7mm per figure is the norm for some. One thing to keep in mind is that some lines have larger bases, and that simply clipping the edges of the base will allow you to squeeze in that extra figure (this is what I did with Pendraken's WSS figures for instance).

Cheers,

Christopher

6 on 40mm frontage is about the most you will get, given my experience with Pendraken, Citadel (it was War Master that got me back to 10mm) and Chariot.

I find 10mm more forgiving of poor painting, while still having all the detail if you want to go mad

I may just go mad!

Thanks CATenWolde & Last Hussar for letting me know about per figure frontage. If I can fit 6, I might do that, but if 5 turns out to be what I go with, then that'll be okay for each row.

My plan at the moment is to make my first batch of bases to have command (eagle, drummer, officer) on each one. As I'm playing one stand = one brigade until I get more miniatures painted, I figured I'd start there and then as I make more bases, I can make bases of enlisted men without command to expand the existing ones with command into full units of companies for rules that use battalions.

I'm leaning towards Austria and doing the whole 1809 thing

If you're interested in 10mm and 1809, have a look here at my blog:

TMP link

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

Sorry to chime in late but Pendraken and Redline are closer to 1/144th scale as they are 12mm figures. N scale is 1/160th scale, I believe. So maybe you are looking at 5mm frontage per figure instead? Which would be an easier calculation, I think.
Be careful on a rigid ground scale calculation as I believe some units occupied more space than others. The thin red line comes to mind ;-)

I have seen 4, 5, and 6 figures wide for 10mm(12mm) on a 40mm wide base, if this helps… Once you start crowding the bases, it leaves little to no room for nice base additions like grass tufts, etc. Our group uses 4 wide and 2 deep for regular line units. 5 wide and 2 deep for guard units (simulates guard units being more likely up to strength and a bit more disciplined). The bases are 40X20mm. We put cavalry at 3 wide and 2 deep but have 40X30mm stands for these.

Thanks for the suggestions about basing. I'm leaning towards 10 miniatures but may do 8.

I got my test order from Bend Sinister today. He threw in a sample of Russians so I can make up a stand of them as well. They're really great miniatures.

The miniature's proportions are way more human like than I could have hoped for. They really will fit in their historical per man frontages if I wanted to make something diorama like.

For Pendraken and N Scale see Post 6 of my 1809 Blog.

TMP link

Is there no way to link right to a specific page of your blog?

So I lined up the figures on the bases using sticky tack. It's definitely going to be 10 figures per base. I could fit up to 7 wide and easily have 3 deep, but that'd be a bit much.

Thanks for the photos those units look tempting.

Any suggestions on the number of cavalry to put on each 40mmx20mm base? Light cav like Chasseurs à cheval? Hussars?

What about cuirrassiers? Dragoons?

Is 3 per base too few for the lights?

I can't help but think that using 40mmx20mm bases defeats part of the objective of 10mm.

Personally, I mount 6 infantry in two ranks on a 20mmx15mm base. That gives me 24 infantry per battlion, a ratio of 1:20-25 approximately.

By using 15mm sized bases you'll get a mass effect, but will not be able to get larger actions on to a standard 6'x4' table.

Cavalry, are 3 to 25mmx20mm base.

I do one base = one brigade, so I have no trouble with larger actions.

So I ended up going with 1 inch by 3/4 inch bases with 6 miniatures on them. Sort of like how Ironlegs bases his infantry. Cavalry are going on a similar sized base with 3 figures per base. I'm also going to make some individually mounted recon cav on pennies.

I painted up my test stand, flocked it and gave it some varnish. I don't have a digital camera right now, but if I have the opportunity, I'll get some pictures taken. I went with slightly brighter colours than what's technically historically accurate as smaller scales need more contrast.

Nathaniel, that sounds reasonable.

The one big problem I have having converted to 10mm is that I do not want to paint anything larger ever again.

I'm still getting into my groove on 10mm. I'm painting them with much the same technique that I approach 15mm with and I think I could probably save some time. I prime white, block paint each colour, give it a brown/black wash and then re-highlight the original colour. I think instead, I should go with a brighter colour to begin with and do the wash and then just stop paitning.

Well, figured I'd post an update.

I ended up abandoning 10mm.

I painted up a few bases and liked my results, but the actual act of painting them just wasn't as enjoyable as when I work on 1/72 plastics. Maybe it's just that 1/72 plastics are my first love when it comes to miniatures, but I can just paint them for hours and hours while I seem to get board of my 6mm and 10mm stuff after a half hour or so. I sent my stuff to a friend in another city who I know just loves 10mm. I'm going to concentrate on my 1/72 ancients for the time being and revisit the idea of Napoleonics in 2014.

Hurrah! Or is that commiserations?

I share your frustrations with 1/72 Naps, but remain hopeful that HaT will continue to impriove the quality of their products (I think the Prussian and French Legere in MAC are truly lovely, along with some other more recent sets, and teh Spanish look interesting).

I miss Zvezda, so have bought up loads of what I need, and will survive with other's products. But for me, they give me a nice compromise between painting and visual appeal – I was a 15mm guy, but they are just too small for me, and 28s are too big – so 1/72 is my Goldilocks size.

Welcome back

Glad to hear that you have come back to 1/72 plastic.
In my opinion it is possible to create great looking Napoleonic armies in all the established scales, but it's hard to beat 1/72 for value. 48 good-looking infantry models for £5.00 GBP Keep em coming Strelets and HAT!

Strelets has really really grown on me. What did it is only looking at painted examples of their products. Scans/pictures of unpainted figures definitely don't give you an idea of what they look like once they are painted. Once painted, they look just fine. Even their earliest and chunkiest releases.

I think the biggest problem any maker of Napoleonics faces is the changing nature of the appearance of the soldiers over such a short period of time. Different helmets and hats, changes in standard issue equipment and even the occasional uniform replacement can really make a figure that's appropriate for one year totally wrong for the next.

So I find that if I pick a year I need to track down infantry, cavalry and artillery that are:

a) appropriate in terms of uniforms and equipment
b) similar in scale/proportions
c) matches the other figures I'll use from other manufacturers

And then I need to do it again for the opposing force. HaT, for example didn't release appropriate opponents for their 1808-1812 French until 4 or 5 years later, for example.

Things are obviously better now, but I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to get back into Napoleonics. With ancients, it's just so easy to find what you need that's in a reasonably consistent style.

Part of me wants to do 3mm (1/600) scale Napoleonics just so I don't have to worry about any of these issues at all. At that scale everyone looks so similar that Oddzial Osmy can pretty much get away with make miniatures without even a set nationality. Like their ACW stuff shown here:

So in the mean time, it's off to Sumeria. I have some HaT Sumerian Chariots and Infantry on the way which I'm probably going to base up in big impetus style bases.

the problem for me with the 3mm stuff is "Why?" I know it is supposed to look more like a historical formation, but as a game I just am not convinced it will give me anything more as a player. And as a painter, I just cannot see the appeal.

And that is not meant as a slur on those who enjoy the micro scales, just my take on it. I have often been tempted (Adler especially when i see them at shows on display), but I never feel the games give me what I am looking for visually.

I agree, the Strelets models look far better painted and ranked-up on the table-top than you imagine they would when you see them on PSR or when they first comes out of the box.
I've got the Russian Grenadiers in greatcoats and the new French in Egypt stuff and it looks great when painted. They also make some fantastic cavalry sets. The HAT cavalry can look a bit static, especially the earlier stuff.

Scale doesn't really matter in terms of gameplay as long as everything fits on the base. It's not very common for a Napeoleonic rules set to do line of sight based on figure height, for example. From the perspective of bases of miniature are essentially counters, what figures you put on them are definitely a matter of aesthetics. I've seen some fantastic Victrix 54mm stuff on a base for a convention game. Just put one figure per base and call it good:

As for Strelets, I know it would be mountains of work, but it would be cool if Plastic Soldier Company integrated painting into their reviews. Some of their higher rated stuff has really shallow detail that is a pain to paint and Strelets and some HaT stuff gets lower scores in sculpting because the chunky nature actually makes them easier to paint. A "paint-ability" score would go a long way to help balance their reviews.

A "paint-ability" score would go a long way to help balance their reviews.

That's actually a really good idea. You should e-mail them or something.
Cool photo as well by the way.

It's not mine, it's from a game at Salute or something. Just a good example of 54mm.

I've already communicated with the people running PSC and while they do actually paint some figures, the time the site takes means they don't actually have the time to paint every set of figures and don't feel comfortable reviewing on paint-ability without actually painting them.