"Plastic or Metal, discuss. " Topic

"I think amongst the many game changers that have occurred in the wargaming firmament over the last 30 years was the re introduction of plastic figures. The return of high quality plastic figures in a hard plastic has allowed ALL wargamers to create large armies.

Really there can be no excuse for any wargamer who wants to recreate and fight large scale historical battles. Plastic Soldier, Flames of War, Zveda, Victrix, Warlord, Agema, and of course the Perry Twins have given wargamers a rich offering. I must admit being Old School, with a capital O.

I was a bit dubious of plastic being reintroduced probably because I had spent a small fortune on buying and painting a lot of metal figures. Frankly I still love? metal toy soldiers which is really strange if one examines why a man 'loves' an inanimate piece of metal. [ But we'll not go there]…"
From here
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Amicalement
Armand

My own experience with plastics has not pried metal miniatures from my hands.

My one experience with lots of them was not great. I found the plastics very fiddly, and the mix of figures available meant a fair number of wasted miniatures. They also were a bit too animated to fit on the 40mm square bases I play with

On the plus side, the detail was good. I'm not adverse to their light weight. The reduced price was kind of a trade-off with the figures I couldn't use.

My view is they work best for singly mounted game systems, not so good for mass combat systems. I can see buying more plastics that fit this criteria, but if not I'll stay away.

I am an old school plastics fanboy, and not at all ashamed. I will gladly play with others toys unless made out of uranium, but I mostly buy and play with plastics. I do tend to try and buy enough sets that I can limit the number of poses used in each Battalion/Regiment.

Mostly the wrong sizes for me as I migrated to smaller figures long before plastics became the rage.

I agree with the observation that they are too fiddly. I don't much like assembling kits and the work needed to make them usable well outweighs the reduction in cost for me.

I'm quite content with the fully cast 1/72 ACW figures I have almost 20,000 of right now. No assembly, they take paint well and stand up to use on the table.

The truth is that if only Airfix figures had been hard plastic, I would never have left 1/72 gaming I guess!

That said, I grow older and my eyes find the larger scales of 28mm all too inviting.

One interesting thing that is not noted is that when GW moved to some plastics (granted now mostly plastic) White Dwarf showed us countless articles on how to adjust them to make them your own unique figure.

While I wasn't particularly interested in GW then, that was an idea that resonated with me, and I have had a lot of fun with Perry, Victrix and Warlord Games plastics and in particular the idea that it is actually quite simple to convert them to something that is uniquely your own.

That said, I use different rules for different periods and feel different imperatives in whether I use plastic or metal. On one hand in 15mm I have just painted up 3 plastic infantry company boxes of Russian infantry for FoW, but am now embarked on painting about 2,000 AB miniatures for Regimental F&F.

I paint (and modify) Perry and Warlord Games 28's for Black Powder, while collecting Front Ranks beautiful Wurtemburgers for the same rules.

Who says we have to be consistent? This is a great time for us, enjoy it!

Generally speaking I'm a metal head in 28mm and usually prefer to use it for both the heft and more natural look of the miniature as plastic tends to look more stiff. However, I do use some plastic to fill up the ranks on some projects and because the quality keeps getting better I will use more, but metal will likely always remain my preference.

That said in 15mm the plastics are surpassing the metal in detail and unlike 28mm plastics do look natural and not stiff and heft for some reason isn't all that important a factor in this scale for me.

Christopher

"Both And" not "Either Or" for me.

Will cheerfully buy mostly plastics, and metal for alternative command figures and anything you can't get in plastic.

I'm opportunistic, used to buy lots of ACW plastics in 1/72, then discovered RSM95 and began buying those, but now Strelets seem to have some good stuff coming out in plastics so I'll switch back to plastics..

Re light weight of plastic figure. Has anyone tried mounting them on metal bases?

B

I am paranoid about breaking my plastic figures – but my first experience of them was Victrix so that is probably understandable. I discovered that the Perry ones bounce.

Currently painting plastics and struggling. But that is probably more my lack of ability and failing eye-sight.

I will continue to use both. The cheapness of plastics is a huge advantage.

But I will need to adjust my painting style.

I use both for my 28mm Union but to be honest while I like the end result of Perry plastics, the move to the 2nd Gen stuff like the Zouaves, later Confederate and Union infantry that need arms attaching to torsos, has been a mixed blessing.

While they give a nice animated figure and the opportunity for some customisation, they are a pain in the butt to assemble and add more time into finishing a unit through filling and fixing than they are worth.

The major benefit is that at least the paint stays on them. Which is kinda ironic give the way it flaked off the "original" soft plastic figures, back in the day!

I am just getting into the ACW using Perry plastic, l will buy a few metal packs but it was the lower cost of the plastics that drew me in.

I have, now, pretty much equal numbers of both mediums.

For me, there's no issues of building plastic minis, since I was building plastic model kits for several years before getting into wargaming. I still build them, both as models, and parts of railroad layouts. I enjoy building the many vibrant,action poses of the 28mm plastic minis. Makes the gaming table so much more interesting then rank upon rank of static, perfect poses in each unit.

Plastics for me any day. I may get a barrage of abuse but I luv Perry's plastics such as the new ACW sets and of the opinion that they are better than many of their metals. I enjoy building them and some of the poses are probably more difficult to produce in metal .I do like metal figures as well .
I think the future is exciting for plastics as they just seem to get better and better.

Besides Perry who does hard lactic ACW?

Why is that phrased as "either one or the other"? Why not both? I like how we have reached the point where units of plastic figures can be mixed with units of metal figures in the same army, just as we in the past mixed units of metal figures from manufacturer A together with units of metal figures from manufacturer B in the same army. I am looking forward to the day when figures will be sufficiently compatible that plastic and metal figures can be mixed together on the same base without raising eyebrows.

I agree with Bill N

I prefer metal. But their have been cases where the figure I needed happened to be plastic.

Like the booyaa tribe I am so used to picking up metal that I am worried about picking up plastics and breaking them!

But they are nice figures and the price is right even with the work. So I reckon the next 28mm army probably won't be heavy.

In most cases they have to be mixed and I do for more variety.
I think the plastics have come on inleaps and bounds almost like a revolution and they deserve to be talked about.

Besides Perry who does hard plastic ACW?

he asked again – politely :)