"In any scale, what's the worst Napoleonic figure?" Topic

While looking at figures, it occurs to me that it seems some companies have an incredibly ugly figure(s) within their ranges. For me, I'd have to say 15mm Old Glory French Young Guard figures. Besides being way too enthusiastic in their pose, the faces are just ugly. Years ago I obtained a bag on eBay and after looking it over, just tossed it straight into the trash. Even seeing people painting them nicely, they're still ugly to me.

So, what Napoleonic figure(s) do you dislike the most and why? Let's not bash the company, just the figures.

I don't see how you can bash the figures without bashing the company that produced them.
Mark

I don't understand how someone can ever throw a retail packaged bag of figures away, *someone* will at least give you postage money for them :-p

Cheers,

The Bandit

Marco: Well, if you're polite about it… besides, Old Glory does make some fine figures outside of that horrible blip.

Bandit: Perhaps so. Though looking at the Old Glory Young Guard, I cannot even see how anyone would do that. I suppose I should have hung on to them in case you were interested? :-)

The old Kriegspieler 20mm line had a Russian grenadier in greatcoat in the "utility" pose. Not that the figures itself was bad (average for Kreigspieler, which were of course pirated Hinton Hunts), but it was the stupidest pose I've ever seen – the guy was standing there, holding his musket at arms length to the right. As if in response to the command "now hand your gun to the man on your right!"

I absolutely never understood the purpose of that figure. Very difficult to mount on a stnad, as well. Calling it the "utility" pose was something of a sick joke.

You people obviously do not remember Peter Laing figures….

Bandit: Perhaps so. Though looking at the Old Glory Young Guard, I cannot even see how anyone would do that. I suppose I should have hung on to them in case you were interested? :-)

Ahah, I would have in fact taken them…

I do know where you're coming from though, I have a bunch of ACW figures (unsure of the brand) that I'm gonna need to find a home for, someone might like them but not me.

Cheers,

The Bandit

For me the worst figures I bought were OG15 Marching Austrian Infantry In Helmet – to me they just looked like lumps of slag – but the guy who bought them from me on eBay seemed happy with his purchase. And ScoMac has produced some quite nice painted examples from them – but they were well beyond my limited abilities to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Hi

Essex 15mm Napoleonic French in campaign dress (in various poses) one chap, when painted looked like a Zombie with plenty of forehead and deep gourged eyes also being a few mm bigger than the others … a terrible sight!

Littlearmies,

For me the worst figures I bought were OG15 Marching Austrian Infantry In Helmet – to me they just looked like lumps of slag – but the guy who bought them from me on eBay seemed happy with his purchase. And ScoMac has produced some quite nice painted examples from them – but they were well beyond my limited abilities to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I've got some of these and let me tell you, the figures you had and the figures ScoMac painted might very well be completely different, at least in quality… most of the ones I've got are good casts (i.e. early 1990s or well after 2005)… but I've also seen the ones you describe as lumps – and that is an accurate description. Amazing what a worn out mold makes a figure look like and what magic a fresh mold can work.

Cheers,

The Bandit

This is a great topic, which I suggested a year ago and no-one had any interest! Well done then for getting it going.

My vote would be for the incredible poses in the Airfix plastic 1/72 Waterloo range. For every box of cuirassiers, you got a chap crouching behind his dead horse waving his sword. For every box of French Line Infantry you got this idiot carrying his wounded comrade (and his musket!) over his shoulders. You got crawling British infantry….crawling on all fours! We all started with these, but looking back, they could be awful……….

Don't get me started on contemporary ranges. Even the best, in 28mm, (and we know who they are) do produce the odd "turkey". The mediocre companies, not worth comment……

Peter Laing….every….single….time…..[sigh]

It has always amazed me how a great painter can make a horrible figure still look good ….. but nothing can really be done about the pose : )

I often lament the really unique poses that may or may not look good but are impractical to ever use. If I want wounded I've got the choice of dozens of men hit and flailing but far less actually on the ground… there are even mêlée packs out there that have pairs of men grappling, they look cool but I don't know when ya use them.

Cheers,

The Bandit

I am old AND remember into the dim past ewhen Ral Partha tried a true 15mm Napoleonic line..they had great coverage of nations and unit types and variations on nations(Russians early and late..Prussians the same ect) but this was the mid 70's and their sculpting was mmmm a bit primitive..but we painted them and played empire with them anyway….

I would agree – a lick of paint can make presentable even the worst sculpt [when viewed from three feet].

I wouldn't call myself a button counter, but my pet peeve has to be when figures have glaring historical inaccuracies, such as double belts, when they only wore one, or short gaiters in lieu of long – not all folks have access to thorough uniform guides that might recommend them against purchasing such figures, but the sculptors should.

15mm Mikes Models Normans were pretty blobby. Buying from a text only advert in Military Modelling from the other side of the world though – you never knew what you were going to get.

I remember some of the Jack Scruby ACW miniatures were just awful. We all had Airfix Plastics and thought wow metal figures, they must be good. This was before the internet and images. When they arrived, I was very disappointed. Much worse than the Airfix.

Napoleon at War French Cuirassiers. They look like slightly squashed toads in armor.

They look like slightly squashed toads in armor.

I think I have those-part of the Flintloque range?

There have been a lot of bad ones out there,still are but they do keep getting better overall.Sculpting is really improving.
Mark

You people obviously do not remember Peter Laing figures….

Yes I do, in fact I still have a few officers and standard bearers for my 30YW army. Not very good but needs musts when you're trying to build a new scale with limited choice of figures.

Personally I never liked JACKLEX 20mm but that will date me.

I have many unhappy memories of those wretched Airfix plastics.

hose wretched Airfix plastics.

Some were wretched, but some were very, very good. The 2nd edition Afrika Korps and especially the 8th Army remain some of the best plastic figures I've ever seen:

link

Remember the "washingtons army" with half a dozen crawling around and the silly dolts carriying the barrel of ???, what ever it was? I was 11 at the time and I thought , huh? Even at that age, it seemed wrong.

I was told that the Peter Laing figures look the way they did by design. If you were to look at a person from a distance so they were 15mm tall you wouldn't be able to make out any of the fine details so beloved of wargamers. That the figures reflect what you would really see at that distance, a somewhat impressionistic blob! Arguably a more realistic approach.

Warrior Miniatures (25mm)

Way too spindly, probably why they were cheap.

I must agree that some of the OG figures are Ugly.

They do a range of female cosssacks, all of whom have been beaten with a very big ugly stick!

rabbit

Strange views on the Old Glory range at the start of this thread.

PeninsularWar: I had a set of the Young Guard, painted them up and loved them. I changed to earlier Napoleonic period so sold them on ebay to get some cash for new figures and they sold for a great deal of money. I thought they were good figures and the guy who bought them paid about £100.00 GBP for a 32 man unit. So its all to individual taste.

LittleArmies: Old Glory Marching Austrians in Helmet??? Those are great. I recently bought a new pack as well, and the molds are certainly not worn out. These guys have clearly defined belts and webbing, buttons on the jackets, and their blanket rolls are the best I've seen, even as good as AB. Poses are not as good as other ranges, but they are probably the best quality at cost Austrians available. Here's mine to show my point… link

Sorry for disagreeing on these. As for "worst" Napoleonics, I would say the only figures I truly dislike are certain smaller scale figures where the heads are as big, or bigger, than the bodies. They just look too wrong for my taste.

Colin

When first produced Peter Laing were the best in 15mm – because they were the only ones. I have some of the later medieval figures and they look fine painted AND were very simple to paint.

Some modern figures are 20mm rather than 15mm and damn near impossible to paint quickly – far too much detail that gets in the way of a simple paint job. There is always room for simple to paint figures in the market I think.

I bought some Redoubt 25mm 95th Rifles once and they were ghastly.

I bought a batch of Old Glory dragoons and hussars. I put them eBay the day after they arrived.

The moulds were terrible…not aligned properly it seems. Regardless of that the sculpts were pretty poor anyway.

Any Hinchliffe figure in a firing pose purchased in the 1980s.
Almost all of them were made with crapped out molds that made it necessary to spend a half hour gouging out the lead between the musket and the body.

Front Rank -JUST KIDDING!!!

Eclipsing Binaries – This was a 100 figure pack with the old light blue / grey cardboard. The figures sold today by Timecast may be much better – but the ones I bought from eBay were shockingly bad. I'd suggest the molds had been run on long after they should have been replaced.

Arifix had a lot of useless figures for war gaming but were great to use in dioramas. But that all that available to me at the time.

I'm surprised that no one mentioned Jacobite miniatures, especially their Prussian line. Spindly legs, undefined hands and faces, with a shako as big as their torso.

Truly awful.

I second Winston Smith re. Hinchliffe. Of all the figures, periods, collections.. over the years.. those produced in the 80s were the worst I ever encountered.

Cheers!
Beeker

Prince August mold your own

I love Prince August! You must be doing some poor molding! There are some truly hideous figures available from Old Glory; they obviously have at least two sculptors, since there are usually some beautiful ones in the same range!

Kriegspieler 20mm figures, some were so bad I had to guess where the crossbelts on some of the infantry figures were.

some 1/72nd figures were awful…
The british hussars by airfix, spindly weak horse legs and a kettle drummer charging into combat…

Airfix Napoleonics. In sixth grade I used cardboard as the base and thumbtacks pushed up through the bottom to keep them in place. I bought a set of Napoleonic rules from a company called Tactical Studies Rules from an ad in Miniatures Digest (something like that) that I bought at a local hobby shop. They also had this cool looking multi-booklet game called Dungeons and Dragons, but it was too expensive so I bought the Napoleonic game first.

They were painted so awfully as to be stunning. I had no idea how to get acrylic modeling paint to stick to the soft plastic, and I don't recall thinking that was too much of a problem. All armies had a yellow plastic coloration predominating whatever other colors had been Jackson Pollock-ly slapped over the top of them.

I stole dirt from neighbors gardens to make a dirt/sand table and a few old railroad trackside building rounded out the scenery. Lots of fun.

The old TTG late Romans

The original Redoubt AWI range – faces like the statues on Easter Island. The new range looks a lot better.

Warrior 25mm Napoleonics…

Is an old-timer worse than a new car just because the performance isn't the same? I feel like the old brands from the 7t's and 8t's deserve more respect because without them there would be no Perrys, Frontrank, Elite etc.

That said did I see some miniatures that should've never found their way into a mold, but that is just an opinion of course.

Warrior 25mm Napoleonics +1

Still available – oh my gawd

Another vote here for Warrior 25mm… In my teens I foolishly bought a boxed army from Warrior and I can still remember the crushing disappointment when I opened the box.

In my teens I foolishly bought a boxed army from Warrior and I can still remember the crushing disappointment when I opened the box.

There but for the grace of the good lord, went I.

Fortunately, when I was considering this Army deal, they did a "We will send you a free figure" offer.

I still have it somewhere, the weekly son of the Czar, dressed up in the uniform of a Pavlov Grenadier, as if off to a costume party.

R Mark, I feel your pain.

rabbit

I have some Mike's Models hussars, and they look very round and cartoony, but the worst figures I've ever painted were the Minifigs stick figures, I believe they're usually called 1st generation. I'm not sure if stick refers to the molded base or the figure itself…