"Has plastic helped you move to 28mm" Topic

No… ;)

It's a no from me to both 28mm and plastics.

I think they look fine when photographed for a magazine,
I half think that was their intended purpose,but are far
too big in real life.

Maybe I'm odd, but I find 28mm to be easier to paint than 15mm in many ways.

I enjoy painting 28mm more but I cannot deny 15mm paints up sooo much quicker (due in part, I imagine, to that lack of detail).

I won't build plastic why can't they just cast them into a single piece?

I think this is a good point. Plastic toy soldiers are cheaper in bulk why not make them easier to get on the table? It's all about the unit, not the individuals.

I won't build plastic why can't they just cast them into a single piece?

Because it restricts which poses you use and what details you can put in. But you can get them done in a single piece from HaT, e.g. link

I used to have several thousand 25/28mm metal Napoleonics I had since I was a teenager.

About 6 or 7 years ago money was a bit tight so I sold them all on Ebay, I was amazed at the money they went for.

A few years later I regretted it but wasn't able to invest the huge amount of cash it would take to rebuild so I started buying Victrix and Perry Napoleonics and am building up a decent sized French army again.

I buy the occasional metal figure for things not available in 28mm plastic, mounted colonels, cannon and crew etc but now stick to plastic.

Have bought enough plastic to make up 2 armies (Sicilian Norman and Carthage), but actually still finishing up my lead Komnenan Byzantine (just built my Vardariots) – you just can't get get any Byzantines of any era in plastic.

And apart from the Hairy German Infantry, I couldn't replicate my lead Late Romans either.

As to WW2, just built a small Commonwealth skirmish force for Bot Action etc, but the real driver was getting the (lead) armour at 1/3 price – there is still a lot of stuff missing in plastic 28mm scale

Definitely.

But mainly that's what my club plays.

As to WW2, just built a small Commonwealth skirmish force for Bot Action etc, but the real driver was getting the (lead) armour at 1/3 price – there is still a lot of stuff missing in plastic 28mm scale

What is Bot action. Some sort of robot war game? :-)

The availability of good quality, affordable plastics recently triggered my conversion to 28mm for ancients.

In the warm afterglow of putting together a Bandai Star Wars plastic kit and looking for options to complete my unpainted 15mm Carthaginians, I realised that 28mm Punic armies from Victrix had become price competitive with 15mm metals. They're also rather pretty…

Having always preferred the scale and detail of 28mm (perhaps it was my early exposure to Perry-era Warhammer), I decided to jump back into 28mm. Its a bit of a gamble as most of my local ancients players are in 15mm, but they also focus on DBA which I've never been able to warm to.

So yes, quality and affordable plastics did make me switch.

ether drake:

We play DBA using 28mm all the time (just did so last Saturday for a Big Battle game). I spent a lot of effort to make DBA 3.0 more 25mm friendly.

Just paint up two armies as a matched pair and I suspect your get some takers to play amongest the DBA crowd.

I too find 28mm much easier to paint than 15mm – I certainly turn out armies much quicker though motivation might be a factor.

TomT

My experience is similar to Drake's. Plastic 28s have brought me back to 28s. They're much easier to build than multi-part pewter figures.

I too started with GW/WHFB/Perry figures in the late 80s/early 90s. I miss those one-piece castings. Just plug the figure's tab into the slotta and you were done.

There were some multi-part figures back then but nothing like the HELL that is Infinity or Malifaux today. Figure poses have taken precedent over gamer convenience. They look great but are tough to build and too fragile for the tabletop.

@Drake…DBA is not my first choice either (although Tom and I played this past weekend…we old men vs our teenage sons…old men won…woohoo!). You might enjoy L'Art de la Guerre (ADG) as an alternative.

ADG uses DBA's elemental approach (an element is a unit) but with several improvements:

- heavy and medium infantry units/elements are two ranks deep which looks much better imo. If your troops are based single ranks you just put two elements together.

- troops in combat suffer damage, often even when winning. This avoids DBA-style bumper cars (true fact: in DBA two sword elements in a one-on-one fight can never defeat one another no matter how many times they engage).

- shooting is less abstract with light troops actually…shooting.

- light troops can't act as walls stopping heavies dead in their tracks…they need to shoot and fall back rather than getting stuck in with them.

As Tom suggests, you could build matched pairs. And since you're starting from scratch you could use ADG's official 80mm-wide bases which do a much better job accommodating today's "large" 28mm figures.

With an 80mm frontage you can actually fit the number of figures indicated by ADG (or DBA for that matter). It's pretty tough to impossible on a 60mm front. Even Tom has a lot of 3-figure heavy infantry and 2-figure heavy cavalry elements.

When reentering 28mm ancient/medieval/fantasy I was going to go with 60mm bases but they're waaaay too small for today's chariots, warmachines, and large infantry such as orcs. And they don't work well with GW's 20mm and 25mm individual bases.

With an 80mm base you can fight 4x 20mm HI bases or 3x 25mm HC bases which conforms to the official DBA/ADG figure-count specification. It's why ADG added an 80mm-wide basing option for GW/Perry/Large 28-32mm figures.

I like 28mm, but far prefer metal.

Hankering for 28mm nap and fantasy skirmish games got me to buy plastic, lack of compatibility with my already extensive collection of 15/18mm Napoleonics and ancients is one reason I will never embrace it fully. I would welcome plastic 15s but I never was interested in 1/72 or other incompatible scales in plastic because I have all these collections in 15 I want to keep using. I have contemplated buying. 28mm plasticWOTR figs for a standalone game of DBA if just for the spectacle. Metal would too pricey.

I really dislike assembling figures, outside of the fantasy stuff my wife likes and the Sash and Saber Dark Ages figures. So, while I do like plastics, it's 1/72 troops I buy, both painted and unpainted. Going to 28mm plastic isn't a viable option, given the headache they would cause.

Well, plastic has kept me quite firmly in 1:72/20mm :)

History teaches us that glued joints fail after a few years, which is why your old model kits fall apart however carefully stored. Also the ftalates leach from plastic so it crumbles. It took about 40 years for this to become evident with Airfix figures, so there is really no knowing how long plastic figures will last.

I like the idea that my metals will outlive me.

I have hard plastic 20mm tank kits that I built in High School (a very long time ago). The glued joints have not failed nor has the plastic crumbled.

I have very old Airfix figures from grade school. The do get a bit brittle but they are soft plastic.

I fully expect my plastic figures to long out live me and my son to be battling away with them (and his off spring thereafter).

TomT

I was already there.

yes.

I tried metal and thought that it was far too heavy and expensive but plastic brought me back (and to metal as well still with a heavy emphasis on plastic)

Soft plastic is the one that crumbles.

I once read the guidance a US military museum gave to model builders, which specified that models had to last 100 years without repair and for this reason any using modern media such as plastic, resin or CA glue could not be considered.

Modern hard plastic may or may not last, nobody knows. Metal definitely will.

My Airfix are still going strong. Some of my early metals have succumbed to lead rot.

But I like 1/72 plastics for how realistic they look compared to the 28mm stuff – which even though made in plastic, is still sculpted in heroic style.

Now, if I could get my plastics in 28mm to look as good as m Metal Mindens, then I would be really in trouble wallet wise

I was already there but yes, the availability has helped me expand my collection. I enjoy converting and kit bashing the figures.

I have no issues with the prep / assembly involved.

No, I much rather trim metal castings before painting, than have to endure adhesive vapors…..(must reserve my glue exposure for other/required hobby wants instead).

As for me. Love plastic 28's they look great on the table. But admit the main down side; the larger scale shows the 'lack' of my painting skill, shaky hands.
I do think they could be made simpler to build. i.e. a simple 'socket-pin' for arms rather than two 'flat surfaces' that slide up/down and have to be 'held' until set. Can / has been aggrivating and time consuming.

I got out of GW's 40K litteraly because of the wt., I just got tired of carrying so much lead.

Have to say, for Big Battles, "15mm" is as small as I would want go, still big enough for good detail, small enough to put LOTs of mini's on the table.

Have played cpl 54mm games, amazing, but No way would I put my 'skill' against that size.

I did actually start my foray into historicals before the the first plastic kits for it were released in 28mm…A small romano-british force followed by a small ECW force. They still are mostly metal but it took a long time to build them up to a useable size. In the meantime The plastics came out and now I have large armies for a whole host of periods, naps, ww2, WSS, WOTR etc that are mostly plastic.

Without the plastic I'd still probably be putting together those first two armies!

Prefer modern 15mm- 18mm that have an enormous amount of detail while occupying less space and allowing me to travel confortably to tournaments with them as well as playing truly massive battles.

Lorenzo

I do think they could be made simpler to build. i.e. a simple 'socket-pin' for arms rather than two 'flat surfaces' that slide up/down and have to be 'held' until set.

While such pins might be easy to add to arms or bodies, there might be a challenge in adding the matching sockets to the opposite parts. Keep in mind that the plastic moulding technology does not allow for undercuts, so the part with the socket hole would need to be aligned in a very particular fashion.

Another alternative is to mould the torso in two parts (front and back) so you can leave gaps at the sides that produce a shoulder socket when parts have been glued together. I have seen this done with some SF figures, but it might be difficult to make it look good with many historicals (never mind the usual suspects commenting about needing to clean and glue in one extra part).

No; scale creep "helped" me move to 28mm.

Rick