"15mm Samurai - Essex vs Two Dragons etc." Topic

Hi,

Through the generosity of a friend, I recently inherited a batch of 15mm Essex samurai, which is great timing as I had also recently ordered Osprey's Ronin rules and was thinking of using 15mm for small skirmish/troop games.

It looks like I have figures from Samurai archers (upper class and poorer), some poorer samurai/retainers with naginata (including a pair of monks), samurai standard bearers of various sorts, and mounted samuari, mostly with bow, as well as various porters and baggage carriers.

I'm new to 15mm samurai figures, but I have to say that these look like very nice figures, with good detail, posing, and variety – perhaps a step up from what I would have expected (fairly or not) from Essex.

I've been hearing for a while that Two Dragons figures are the best of the lot, but the photos on the Minifigs website aren't the best. Are they really that superior to figures like Essex? And how do they scale with them?

Cheers,

Christopher

PS – does anyone know if the current Two Dragon packs are single pose, or multiple poses?

link

I did my 15mm Samurai collection about a decade ago. Most of the figures I used were Two Dragon but I also incorporated some Essex and some Old Glory 15s if they offered something interesting that Two Dragon didn't. Peter Pig was just coming out when I was finishing my collection, but I added a few of those as well. If my memory serves me correctly and it may not, I think most of the the Two Dragon figures packs are single pose. You can see my collection at warin15mm.com/page04.html

Personally, I don't think 2 Dragons are that good by today's standards. I went with Old Glory for my 15mm Samurai. Though it's all down to personal taste of course.

I would guess that 2 Dragons are closer in size to Essex than OG. Legio Heroica have just brought out a Samurai range as well, though they will likely be bigger than Essex.

Two Dragons are single pose though there are a small number of mixed packs containing one each of a number of codes. You can buy individual figures but you need to read the conditions.

Two Dragons have a rather cartoony style which I suspect is very much dependent on taste. I also went with OG15s though I may have gone with PP if the had been available at the time. OG have the disadvantage of large packs but do have a fairly good deal of variety.

Essex samurai are almost all intended for an earlier period than the others mentioned. The armour is really quite different, even at this scale.
They are indeed some of the most interesting poses that Essex do.

In the end I went with Old Glory 15's.

Thanks for the information guys. I hadn't thought about there being possible differences between the armor types, so I'll have to look more closely at that.

I have to admit that the Peter Pig range also looks good, especially with their attached sashimonos.

@WarIn15mm – what a beautiful collection! Thanks for sharing. I know this period has the potential to really suck me in, so I'm going to try and limit things to semi-skirmish level while building a terrain collection … all the while knowing that Gamer Megalomania will set in eventually ;)

Cheers,

Christopher

I bought a bunch of Old Glory, but found they were a pain to clean up.

I gave up with them completely when Peter Pig's range came out.

I'll go with Peter Pig.

Have not seen the samurai Essex in person myself as I went with the Peter Pig samurai also and had some two dragon as well, they mix fine size wise but as someone has already said they are VERY cartoon like so would avoid them personally, I painted up a few then just gave up on them and ordered more Peter Pig to finish, you won't be disappointed with them, they paint up a lot better than they look.

Although the two dragon dark age stuff is excellent and well worth getting, as I have Vikings and Rus and those are the best as far as I'm concerned.