"Best Figures for Plains Wars any size/scale?" Topic

What are your favorite figures and size/scale for Plains War battles?

Sash and Sabre has a nice line of 40mm but it is not extensive.

Old Glory has both an extensive 25/28 mm line and their Blue Moon 15/18 mm lines.

I see that Artizan Designs has some good looking 7th Cav and US Infantry but only a couple of packs of Apache on foot.

So what have you found and liked?

Every range has its upside and downside.
Foundry is great because they make both mounted and dismounted figures, and they make the 7th cavalry character figures.
Old Glory is a little more "Hollywood" in the look of their figures, but they make a great Last Stand set that comes with dead horses and great figures.
Artizan are beautiful figures and mix well with Foundry
Dixon does a great range too but I find some of their mounted cavalry a little stiff in their poses.
I am only talking about the 25-28mm figures because that is what I have painted.
If I were to paint another Plains Indian collection, I would probably go with Blue Moon 15's…..IMHO

54mm airfix or tssd or paragon scenics

I really like Minifigs in 15mm and I'm waiting for the new range from Legends In Time which are fantastic!

lots of 15/18mm plains war available

including but not limited to:

15mm.uk
link

QRF
link

Blue Moon
link

Minifig
link

Peter Pig
peterpig.co.uk/range15.htm

Foundry 25mm.

I agree with Foundry 25/28mm. They really are great figures.

Old Glory for me. I have both the 15mm and the 28mm.

These are some of the 28mm figures. Company B ain't comin' back.

link

Foundry for 25-28m Plains Indians and US Cavalry. They also have a greatrange of Apaches.
Conquest Miniatures for 25-28mm Commanches.

The Foundry range are excellent.

I would go with either Foundry 28mm for the 7th Cav. and Indians.

Or if doing small skirmish I would go with 40mm Sash and Saber. You can also use thier ACW Union and Confederate Cav. mounted and dismounted figures.

Foundry and Artizan are great. Britannia is good too.

You can't do any better than the Copplestone sculpted Foundry 7th Cavalry.

My 15mm collection is old. When I did it not much was available. I used figures from Yellow Ribbon, Stone Mountain, Minifig, Old Glory (ACW) and Essex (ACW). Today I would definitely go with the Blue Moon 15mm/18mm line as the basis for my collection though I would supplement the collection with figures by other manufacturers, and if you can find the mounted Plains Indians by Minifig, I highly recommend them. They are beautiful figures. You can see my collection in diorama form at link

RAFM's 25mm Boots 'n' Saddles/Plains War Range. The figures ooze character and can be supplemented by Old Glory. But they are 'true' 25mm.

The Artizan & Foundry Cavalry figures are best. Just wish someone did mounted Buffalo soldiers other than the few poses from Dixon. The Old Glory figures are OK, but they are definitely "Hollywood" in that they have sabers & the horse equipment is sparse & not what would have been seen on campaign.

Indians: Conquest Comanche are great. Foundry are great. Old Glory might have been great at one time. The problem with old glory is that the torsos are cast separate from the lower half of the body & the lower half of the body is sculpted directly on the horse. The idea was to give a wide variety of poses. Sadly, over time many of the upper bodies have become noticeably smaller than the lower bodies requiring use of green stuff to get the body to fit & look right.. Old Glory are still pretty good, but keep in mind you will need some green stuff or other putty when assembling them.

Oh, all of this is 28mm.

Wow some great information guys thanks. This interest is inspired in part as, well…I grew up with toy Cowboy and Indian figures as a kid plus all those Wild West movies and there was a recent thread about a The Sword and Flame variant for the Indian Wars. I downloaded and printed the free rules and got kind of hooked on the idea of running some The Tomahawk and the Flame. Keep the ideas coming and the recommendations. Chortl great pictures of the Old Glory figures and nice paint jobs, love the stripes on the shirts.

And Irregular does the period in 6mm too!

Oh, just because they are labeled "7th Cav" doesn't mean most of the figures can't be used for other regiments, such as the 4th & 6th.

The Conquest Comanche can be used as Comanche, Lipan Apache, & most of the sculpts will fit Kiowa & Kiowa-Apache.

The Foundry Plains Indians fit Cheyenne & Arapaho best, but can be used for any Plaines tribe.

In the Old Glory Indians, Indians with the Crow style pompadour & Pawnee style hair with shaved sides really shouldn't be used for Southern Plains Indians.

Chortle those look nice. What rules are you using?

Conquest is indeed really nice but the Crazy horse mounted figure has a ridiculous tomahawk. You will have to change it. Unbelievable tree-chopping axe.

"Chortle those look nice. What rules are you using?"

I haven't yet gotten around to painting the injuns. I'm thinking of using Pony Wars or a derivative.

I would love to do this, but it's in a long list of "well one day", when I do, I'll use Pendraken Miniatures 10mm, you can use a low figure/ man scale to really give a scale impression of how large the Indian tribes could be (and just how small the cavalry units were in comparison) you can also really create and model the most important factor, the scale and space of the actual terrain.

10mm all the way

I prefer Blue Moon's 18mm Plains Indian Wars figures. I'm currently using them for most of the troopers for a Little Bighorn diorama that I'm working on. In the foreground I'm thinking of using some Thomas K+L 20mm dismounted acw figures to provide some extra depth. By the way, Legends in Time carries most of the BM Indian Wars groups (but not all of them) at a reduced price.

The Galloping Major has some truly outstanding dismounted US
Cavalry. Lance has done an outstanding job of bringing the John Ford Cavalrymen to life.

28mm: Foundry and Artisan without doubt. Tipis etc from Acheson.

15mm: Blue Moon and Minifigs

6mm: for the wide open spaces, the new Baccus range being released later this year.

My collection is 28mm, but I'm very tempted by the Baccus stuff.

For rules, we've had a lot of fun with Osprey's MWWBK colonial rules (with a lot of rule tweaks for added flavour posted to the FB fan page) but till we discovered them, our ‘go to' rules were "Yellow Ribbon" (now OOP?)

I understand Baccus will be rereleasing the "Pony Wars" rules originally by Ian Beck as part of their Plains War Project.

Galloping Major seems to be an iffy option at present. He is redoing his website and moving to a new server. Many of the buttons don't seem to work, the Western range among them.