"Have you gone plastic yet?" Topic

When historical 28mm plastics were about to come out I had a "may the best looking figure win" attitude. This year will be painting about 75% plastic.

What's your experience?

I relly enjoy working with the plastics.
Perry,Victrix 28mm
Clif

Have Bolt Action…I like them, especially the all plastic tanks !!

When I don't have to put them together I am in,until then no…time and lack of patience…But they do look nice!!

Plastic only.

Not a fan of plastic infantry and cavalry, although I appreciate the detail that can be produced, I find them too fiddly to assemble and they lack weight on the table. I do have 20 and 10mm WW2 plastic vehicles, but still prefer die-cast or white metal.

Plastic 54mm for skirmish gaming.

It's the only way to be sure.

link

I dislike painting plastics, they don't take to my inking and hihglighting style. About once a year I have picked up plastics and tried them out thinking maybe these will be better. But so far no luck. So I am 100% in the metal range. I might try the new Perry 100YW Englsih box set. But most likely they will be half assembled and part painted and then end up in the trash.

I have an issue gaming with 28mm plastic figures. They just don't feel right to me, pickiing up a base of 4 figures feels wrong. But that is the 24 years of metal figure gaming that has trained my mind.

My last issue that I have seen is the rifles, spears and swords break too easily for my taste. But that is with limited experience so not high on my list of why I won't paint 28mm plastics.

Chris

I don't mind plastic, but I hate building plastic kits – vehicles or figures.

If they make plastic figures for the period I will buy them.

If not I'll buy metal. Although I have started periods because of the existence of plastic figures for it.

Not for me.

Phil

Don't like the assembly of plastics.

I've never liked plastics. Plastics and resin feel cheap and ephemeral to me. I will use them for Kings of War, when they will lighten the weight of whole unit movement stands. They may be very welcome and possibly grow on me by then.

Only buy plastics now. Don't care for resin at all. Metal getting to expensive for me.

Assembly sucks and swords, bayonets, rifles are way too fragile.

I've been using plastics since the '80s.

Nope, not really. A few odds and ends, here and there, that's all. Mainly large or simply Fantasy "Bones" figures from Reaper that are cheaper than the metal equivalents and with NO assembly required.

I have never understood the concept of the "my figures don't feel heavy enough on the table top" line.

Assemby issues, I get. Lack of undercuts doesn't match my painting style? With you.

But, when it comes to toy soldiers, their mass has never been something that concerns me (except when I have to carry them).

They're not coin of the realm or gold ingots and so I don't estimate their value on the basis of their weight.

John T

Not into assembling figures. I'm happy with metal.

Yep Lego :)

I love especially the assembly, as you can get individual character into your minis thats simply not possible with metals. Building a FOW stand with four minis that actually interact, or creating totally different units out of the same box are imho far more fun then the painting.

Apart from that, I love resin for the detail it can carry, and metals for covering eras that plastic (for lack of mass) or resin do not. No prejudices here.

My Landsknecht army is almost exclusively metal, while earlier periods (1475, 1200, EIR) are mostly plastic.

I'm probably doing the same amount of plastic I've painted in the past few years somewhere in the area of half metal and the other half is a mix of plastics: Polystyrene, PVC (bones) and Plasti-resins (restic, etc…).

No plastic figure pledge since 1985.

Have I gone plastic yet?

Do hips count?

Only the parts of my soul that are affected by my job.

Both the number of available sets and quality have been increasing rapidly for plastic 28 mm miniatures. For masses of average troops, plastic is definitely the future, and at a quality much higher than cheap rank-and-file metal miniatures. High quality metal will be reserved for hard-to-find periods and individual characters.

I don't know what the complaint is about plastic assembly. Plastic cement actually works, unlike superglue on metals, so plastic assembly ends up being a much more sanity-saving process. Metals of any decent size pretty much require pinning, otherwise the parts pop off at random embarrassing times. Actually, it's not just a size issue either – I've seen too many 15 mm metals fall apart, especially with horses and riders.

I prefer plastics now, cheaper, more variable in poses, and lighter to carry around!

More and more plastics (Napoleonic, ACW and WSS). However, after the last convention game I hosted, I may scale back a little. Prussian plastic bayonets were not really up to the abuse figures get at conventions.

Greg C.

I still prefer metal but I went whole hog for the 54mm/60mm Conte and TSSD Alamo figures and buildings, which I play with unpainted.

If you have seen the film, "Indian in the Cupboard" I am saying Plassssteeeck, just like the kid in the movie.

Plassssteeck Please.

Metal is still my favorite when I can find it and it is not too expensive. But I have found Hat Miniatures. They make an excellent line of 1/72 & 1/32 scale historical wargame figures including the old Airfix line. I find 48 1/72 scale figures of $7.20 USD a box to be irresistible. Got everything I need for the Punic Wars with roughly 1000 men between them and I may not even need half of that to fight a typical wargame battle.

I've been involved in the hobby since the late 1970s (and built and painted model airplanes and tanks when I was a kid), and I've worked with plastic and metal figures and vehicles. Most of my gaming now is science fiction, either skirmish-level games like StarGrunt or space games like Full Thrust and Power Projection.

I guess I'd say that I don't have a preference for material. If I see something I like, I'll buy it, put it together, and paint it. The material doesn't matter.

Most of my figures are metal; there just aren't that many plastic figures for science fiction gaming. I have some old Games Workshop plastic Space Marines that I got for free from Craigslist that I'll assemble and paint some day.

Absolutely no interest.

Heck I currently have only 1/72nd NATO pilots and ground crew (actually 12 boxes from a source that was dumping them in the trash) that I was told would be viable with "true 25mm" figures to represent Space fighter pilots and support crew for SF gaming.

But the reality s they fit in with nothing I own (and I am not picky.) The original owner was right in my experience – trash them.

If it isn't (legacy) 25/28/30mm armies or 3/6/15-18mm figures to fill in the niches then it has no value to me. I know of no figures in plastic that fit my needs/wants. I don't collect 20mm armies, Napleonic armies, or WW2 forces which seem to be main level of interest for plastic.

OMG, no assembly for anything in 15mm or smaller size!

I do both.

My biggest project recently has been based on 200+ Perry WOTR plastics. I have 48 Perry plastic Agincourt English on my workbench but the opposition is all metal.

My modern collection is all metal (Empress and Spectre)

I'm all plastic 1/72 mounted on pennies. For me it's about the game and they are a good enough representation for what I want not only in a game but also for batrep photos.

I share Tekawiz's thought about "it's about the game", where choosing between having to have perfect beautiful figures would delay or prevent getting to play with your friends.
That being said, I am now also getting heretofore unnatural urges to make my figures prettier and less sparsely decorated. Part of that has been "sour grapes" on my part, doubting my painting abilities to the point of a reverse snobbishness. But seeing what can be done with even minor skill, and having my carpal tunnel surgeries finally resolved, I will no doubt succumb to the urge to make my figures look much better than before.

I started with GW stuff in both plastic and metal, so plastics never seemed weird to me.

As it is now, for 28mm historicals, I prefer the current hard plastic stuff. For massed ranks, they're lighter and MUCH, MUCH cheaper. For skirmish scale stuff, they're way easier to assemble differently from each other.

I do get the complaining about plastic assembly though. I enjoy the possibilities of it, but the practicalities of having to assemble the nth 12-part legionary (and cut each part off, keep the parts for each miniature separate), gets very tiresome very quickly.

But I think the time it takes me to assemble a 12 part metal model it's comparable to a single 3-4 part metal models. And models that need drilling through the hands are not something I like. A good, cleanly cast single piece pewter figure is fine though – ancient archers are great, for example. Spearmen, with fiddly hand-spear assemblies? Not so much.

I also travel a fair bit, so the weight saved in plastic miniatures is something I enjoy, and they seem more resistant to minor knocks and stuff due to the plastic glue bond being what it is. Of course one can pin and GS for metals, but that ups the assembly time far beyond plastics.

1/72 and 20mm ancients on a large scale? Metal is ludicrously pricey by comparison! A box of HaT Princeps and Triarii costs £5.00 GBP at 48 figs per box for 10p per figure. Newline infantry come at £1.90 GBP for 4 figures, or 47.5 p each, nearly 5 times more expensive. Granted, price is not the only factor, but I only use metal for elite units or ones unavailable in plastic.

I'm relaxed either way
Just finished a couple of large [for me] projects using 15mm metals [essex] & 28mm [Old Glory]
Currently working on 20mm Medievals & 54mm ECW in "soft" plastic

Concerning painting and breakage – I find modern plastics [hard & soft] are no worse than metals as such [I manage to break bayonets and spears on both] & both take my lousy painting ability

I have Perry ACW & WoTR plastics mixed with metal figures [guns and dismounted horse for the ACW & various Front Rank for the WoTR]
I have Wargames Factory & Warlord ancients [rome & hairies]
And masses of 20mm plastics
Along with hordes of metals from 6mm upwards in hordes of periods [I flit]

My big bugbear over plastics [soft ones] is that trying to get a complete project in one hit is hard work – with metals you contact the manufacturer and they just cast what you order.
Plastics can involve a lot of trawling through the web trying to track down the last box of whatever you need.
HaT's punics were like that – I wanted 25 boxes of various sorts and couldn't get the last couple of warband

But it's a big hobby now and I for one love the choice that we are spoilt with & long may that continue

Although as an aside I've never tried resin – just seems too much phaff to stick together – one day perhaps