"Pithead miniatures" Topic

Hi all,
Just finished painting these 10mm (Pendraken) Hessians for a friend of mine.

I've added the pic to my shiny new Blog.

Comments and constructive critique welcome.

link

Cheers,
Rob

To anyone that has their products (mainly armor)…how do you like them? I've seen a few pics of them (from their site) but I was wondering how well they paint up?

I'm currently working on some 6mm stuff and after I got them all painted up and put on my soon-to-be done table, they look so tiny. So, this has me wondering about "uping" my scale.

Think I'm just going to order a couple tanks from Pithead and look for myself, but I thought I'd ask here and see what people think about them that actually own a few.

Does anyone have any pics of theirs? AAR's perhaps?

Thank you!

UH……why is my post I made under SpiderPainters?

Bug?

Here is a link featuring both Pendraken and Pithead, all painted up:
link

The site also has loads of other useful information.

I did the same thing you did. I bought a few 6mm tanks off ebay and was not satisfied with the size at all. My eyes arenīt what they used to be.

I have mostly Pendraken, but Pithead stuff is great as well, and in some cases (like the M3 Stuart) Pithead is superior.

Oh,yeah--Bug time again--maybe it's too myopic to differentiate anything 10mm or smaller!

Spider,those look good,from what I can see. Any possibility of close-ups?
Good luck with the blog.

I've some of their early war British vehicles and they are very good. They paint easily and fit in well with other ranges.

@SpiderPainter -- your Hessians look great! Nice job.

re: Pithead armored vehicles:

(Photos at bottom if you want to skip the dialogue…)

I went through the same process and settled on 10/12mm. Big enough to see detail and handle, small enough to fit on a "normal" table and allow flanking movement, much cheaper than both 1/285/6mm (GHQ) and 15mm.

After looking at various manufacturers, I went with Pithead. They have the biggest and best range of WWII vehicles, the detail is very good, and, turns out, Phil Ireson is a great guy to deal with. (The only range Pithead does not have is WWII Japanese.)

Note: if you're moving to 10/12mm, be aware that like other scales, "10/12mm" differs between manufacturers. They tend to group into 3 sizes -- 1/144, 1/150 and 1/160. Pithead is a good, consistent 1/150 scale. They match up well with Minifigs. Pendraken and Perrin are 1/160. If you look on the link Texas Jack provided, you'll see the difference.

And now the photos!

Just to clarify on the sizes, our vehicles are 1:150th as well. There are some of the older models which aren't quite up to scratch, but we're working through revamping a lot of those this year, with all the Shermans online next, along with new Tigers and Panthers.

Minifigs vehicles are a little larger than suggested above. I find them closer to 1/144. The range is marketed as "12 mm" . Their figures are slimmer, probably more anatomically correct, than Pendraken. The Arrowhead range are also 1/144 and are my favourites, along with the plastic Japanese pre-paints. I think a good piece of advice is to stick to one range for a particular model, but generally Pendraken/Pithead/Arrowhead/Minifigs may be used on the same table, but not in the same units.
One thing to watch out for, especially if buying off Ebay, is the Skytrex range are sometimes sold as "10 mm". They are actually 1/200, so totally incompatible with any of the above ranges.

I like the Pithead vehicles. They also have the only Korean War figures available in 10 mm. As long as you don't mix manufacturers in the same unit, they all look good on the table. My Soviet tank regiments are each from a different manufacturer, but few people notice when they are deployed.

I retract my statement about scales. But I will say that Pithead is larger than Pendraken and smaller than 1/144 plastic kits and metal diecast.

And also that Leon at Pendraken is a good guy to deal with, too.

Those Arrowhead mini's look pretty damn nice.

From what I can see visual quality seems to be this…

Awwowhead>>Pithead>>Minifigs>>Pendraken (only because they are a tad smaller)

Arrowhead was formerly Wargames South. Nice then, nice now. (although I'm having the damnedest time getting packages from them to the US).

Pendraken models are very nice sculpts. Very good detail. In many cases, better than Pithead.

Another excellent site for 10/12mm WWII gaming:
smww2andnapoleonic.blogspot.com

Wargames South are exactly 1/144. I have the same type of tanks painted up to match Takara and they are the same size overall.

After viewing Pithead tanks vs Arrowhead tanks I just can't see how the $2 USD pound difference is worth the Arrowhead tanks?!

The Pithead tanks look just as nice as the Arrowhead tanks, right?

Tell me my eyes are deceiving me!? :)

Thought I read somewhere (probably here) that Pithead has re-done a lot of their sculpts.

A lot of the Pithead resculpts can be seen on their new site. pitheadminiatures.com

However,I think that as good as Pithead models are, Arrowhead are better quality as they are made with more parts which of course you will need to pay for. The main advantage of Pithead is that they make the biggest range of WW2 models you can get in any scale so you can buy almost anything from them.

Regarding quality, you can see some good comparisons between Pithead and Arrowhead models on this site.

link

S&H is a little high coming overseas.

I took a look at Pendraken stuff from the War Store and ordering similar units, the price isn't much different.

Ordering from overseas, it makes more sense to order more than less, however, now I'm wondering if I shouldn't go 15mm plastic. Same price with little to no shipping, but 15mm just doesn't look "right" on a 8x4 table, imo.

I'll probably just order a bigger lot instead of piece meal ordering.

The Wargames South/Arrowhead minis are superior in.crispness and detail to the other ranges, IMHO. They are simply beautiful little models. I much prefer them because they look "right". I call them "models" as opposed to "miniatures" :-)

So, I priced out a nice sized order from both Pithead and Arrowhead.

9 tanks (M4A4, M10, M24)
3 AC's
3 trucks
3 halftracks
2 AT guns
60 infantry

the price difference is roughly $25 USD US

and comparing each sites (M24's, M4A4, M10 and halftracks) the Arrowhead mini's look a lot better. While SOME Pithead mini's look nice, Arrowhead detail, imo, is worth the $25 USD extra

The US didn't use the M4A4 , try getting them some M4A3s in plastic

Dang….didn't know the US never used M4A4's….assuming the Brits/Canadians did?

Thanks for the knowledge. This helps me a lot and make me realize I need to get some more (knowledge) before I throw down some mini's :)

7,167 M4A4 were provided to the UK. 274 were provided to "other" and 2 were sent to Russia probably for evaluation.

Look on the positive side. With the M4A4s you are well on your way to a unit of the Guards Armored Division!

Being married to a Canadian woman has me thinking outside the box these days.

Thinking about doing a Brits vs German's game or a Canadian vs German's game.

The US wasn't the only allied nation involved :)

GO good guys!! ;p

Okay, in which case the British didn't use the M3 half track they used the M9.
Things would be easier if you got some plastic M4A3 Sherman's and stuck to the US ranges.

Didn't know there was 10mm plastics?

While I will have a look at the new Pendraken re-sculpts when I finally look at Western Europe my rule has generally been "pendraken infantry, pithead equiment" -- for one thing, pithead has crew in the open topped vehicles like the su-76.

I agree that Wargames South is great, but they are more 1:144 and the difference shows; and they are expensive!