"15mm AB, Stone Mountain and Blue Moon Help" Topic

Wanting to get back into ACW at 15mm scale. I love the AB sculpts. Size comparisons, though, between the three manufacturer, is there a real noticeable difference? Stone Mountain seems to have a better pick of artillery. Blue Moon has a great variety of infantry. Their price is better than AB. HOwever, the AB sculpts are, in my opinion (and only my opinion, LOL) are better. NOt sure about proceeding with an order …

Great group of gamers on this message board. I value your thoughts.

PS – going to paint up both union and rebs to war-game with my sons.

THanks for any help.

There are Stone Mountain, Old Glory and Minifig minis mixed into my ACW units. Old Glory is a close match size wise to AB, I'm not sure about Blue Moon. Once you have them painted and based it is hard to pick out the different manufacturers on the table without looking at them closely. I think you can safely mix AB, Blue Moon and Stone Mountain. Variations in size actually make the units look better since humans are definitely not all the same size.

What Heisler said in spades!

The real advantage to Blue Moon besides pricing, is durability. I say the more you have, the better :-)
Now AB gives you incredible resale value, which isn't something to ignore at all.

Go to scalecreep.com to check out his line of figures. He admittedly states that the bayonets are very fragile on his but they are incredible sculpts! Mix in fine with the other figures you mention and Old Glory 15s as well. Don't forget the Battle Honours line, a bit shorter but still excellent figures!

I agree with Heisler as well. My Civil War collection is dominated by Old Glory 15s but includes Essex, Stone Mountain, and Battle Honours. I also have a lot of Minifig wagons. My collection is more than two decades old, but I have recently purchased some unique Blue Moon pieces, namely their field hospital, and I will be painting those up for the collection. You can see my mix of figures in gallery form at link

Wow War in 15MM just looked through your gallery, very inspiring work!

How about durability for manufacturers?

Also which ones are the cleanest casts and require least amount of prep work before priming?

Ashenduke, thank you. As to durability, my collection is more than a quarter century old and doing fine. As to the issue of clean casts, I'll leave that to others since with the exception of the Blue Moon field hospital packs I've bought in the last year or so I have no recent experience with the other ACW manufacturers… let me correct that because in my above list I left out Peter Pig and my experience with them is that they are always nice clean pieces. I would also say that while I have not purchased many of the Blue Moon 15/18mm ACW, I have purchased a large number of their FIW in the last couple years, and they are beautiful. Again, thank you for the very kind words about my gallery. Richard

My last order (almost 2 years ago now) of Old Glory 15s required quite a bit of prep work before painting. I don't have any experience with Blue Moon, and the ABs I have (Napoleonic)were pretty clean as well. The Peter Pig minis I have (unpainted) were also very clean. My Stone Mountain minis are almost 20 years old now at the time they didn't require much prep work, my Minifigs are even older and I don't remember although I would probably skip Minifigs at this point, there is much better out there now.

Why not buy a few of each, and see how they suit you? You'll only be risking an alarmingly tiny fraction of the total cost of two armies and will gain first-hand knowledge of what's out there, in return.

That aside, I'm with the majority in saying it's fine to mix figures. You're unlikely to notice the difference in size once the figures are off the painting table and onto the gaming table, but you will notice the (good) effect of having a large variety of sculpts formed up in units.

I have compared those ranges on my blog. AB are the same sculpts as Battle Honours.

link
link

AB (left) and Blue Moon (right)

Stone Mountain (left) and Blue Moon (right)

I mix them all on the table without any qualms. I would not mix Blue Moon with other manufacturers in the same unit.

I have painted just about all the different 15mm ACW ranges, and I much prefer Blue Moon to the rest, even AB/Battle Honours. The Blue Moon figures look like Civil War infantry has always looked in my mind's eye, and they are robust enough to take frequent gaming without any breakage. My AB figures mostly lost their bayonets, and even musket barrels, after a few games.