"Any hard plastic 15/18mm Napoleonics in the works? " Topic

Seems like a non -brainer. At least for the core troops I could see them selling pretty well. There seems to be dozens of 28mm Nap sets already between Victrix, Perry, Warlord, anybody else? Surprised no one has taken the plunge to the smaller scale which theoretically at least means you need to field more models.

Not as far as I know. The price saving over metal in 18mm would be less than the 28mm equivalent and that probably means it's not a worthwhile commercial exercise.

They would have to be single piece figures – can you imagine how fiddly it would be to have to glue 18mm figures together.

Can't see it ever happening, having written that of course it might. : )

I would have no problems with 1 piece 15-18mm plastic figures (other than horse and rider)

It will happen sometime I think and I recon they would sell very well.

This is something that's been wanted for awhile. I don't agree with the "not a worthwhile commercial exercise". Look at all the plastic 1/72nd/20mm stuff that is out there. There a lot of obscure troop types being produced and yet the 1/72nd folks seem to keep making them.
I can imagine that the first miniatures company that takes the plunge will do quite well.

PSC are doing hard plastic WW2. You can buy an entire company for the price of a platoon from Battlefront/Flames of War. Okay not quite, but 2 platoons.

The big question is how much cheaper than metal can you get? If price is a major sticking point, Old Glory are pretty darn cheap and good. How much cheaper could they get?

Plus then you have the whole figure ratio problem.

I would be interested in seeing these plastic figures.

I don't see the advantage in plastic for 15mm. 28mm lets you convert figures easily and (usually) mix and match poses with easy assemble over metal.

15mm would be complete figures with no assembly…

As people have said, they aren't going to be massively cheaper than metal 15mm.

Mike

Well, if you could churn out "pre-painted"/or pre-colored plastic 18mm Nap figures using a 3D printer, then I think you would be able to fill a gap in the market.
Imagine, if you could buy entire pre-painted batalions of infantry marching, it would certainly make the period easier for many to start up, as well as enable us to make really large armies to game with.
You could even make them i greatcoats at first (2-3 different poses marching and 2-3 different colors of greatcoat for variation).
Sure, you wuld still need to paint up commands, and all the things that make Naps so attractive, but you would not need to paint endless lines of Infantry marching to set up a really big battle.
Hey, you could even do generic cavalry in cloacks.
One thing is for sure, greatcoats and cloacks in endless lines would be far more realistic even.

That being said, I know nothing about what the price of printing them would be, and thus nothing about what the cost would be pr.figure…
I guess you would need to make some good sculpts as templates first of..and buy a really good printer, and set up a bussiness, and get someone crazy enough (like me) to invest in it..oh, well, back to the painting table..

I started gaming in 1970, pretty sure I can remember some hard plastic 15mm figures during the '70s. The ones I had were Russian Napoleonics. Pretty poor figures, but cheap and quick to paint.

15mm plastics would hook me straight away. The biggest problem is where to start and how to keep the button-counters happy.

Perhaps 3 sets to start. French, Spanish and British for the Peninsular.

I'd go French plus Austrians or Russians – big armies with loads of cavalry and guns.

The thing is, other than a new company who might take a on a project like this? PSC perhaps? Given that the metal ranges such as AB and Old Glory are pretty comprehensive why would they bother shooting their bulk sales of metal line troops in the foot buy bringing out more line troops but at roughly half the price?

I agree we are talking single piece march attack poses but they are going to have to come in at about £0.20 GBP a figure I'd have thought.

Plastic may be cheaper to ship…

Dr Jeckyll – that sounds way too awesome to every happen!

Timmo – I just did the conversion to USD for £0.20 GBP – 25 cents! The exchange rate is crazy right now.

So somebody has to put 100 French in a box for $25 USD or £20.00 GBP

PSC are doing 138 plastic figures in a box for £21.50 GBP (about 26 USD). That includes multiple special weapons teams, so 3 battalions each of 20 march attack plus 4 command should be doable for a bit less.

Psc?

The " Plastic Soldier Company":
theplasticsoldiercompany.co.uk

I think it's all doable but the does it stack up? Say you need to create 20 different figures for this box of three battalions plus command that's a massive upfront cost for sculpting and then the tooling against an uncertain return given how saturated the market is and how good the competition is. That's just one box. So until you do more are you in fact driving sales towards other makes until you can get out a complete range? Unless you are an existing seller of metals it's going to take years to bring even a modest range of plastics to market.

If you were a business looking at getting into 18mm plastics, which I would love to see happen, I think you'd be far better off doing something other than Napoelonics, something that doesn't need many boxes for a flexible enough basic range to be brought to market relatively quickly.

Perhaps ACW, AWI or ECW in 18mm – I'd be all over them and you could probably get away with far fewer boxes being needed. Or something colonial. Of those I wonder if only the ACW would be popular enough to be viable. Even a single modest Napoleonic army is going to need five or six boxes to cover the basics let alone any guard. So a basic range of two sides is 10 – 12 boxes to launch. Unless you already have a range of metals to support the plastics you are a long way of having a strong market position and I can't see any of those making metals giving up the modest margins that 18mm makes compared to 28mm, to embrace plastic.

Of course it might be possible to use existing modified 54mm figures as the masters since they use 'three ups', although I suspect muskets would need to be thickened up.

I might be in the minority but I think you are overstating the number of sculpts needed. For my infantry I'd be happy with 4 figures. Officer, Drummer, Standard and March Attack.

Cavalry need 3, Officer, Bugler and Trooper. Artillery need 3 plus the gun.

If I had the money to risk I'd starting with French and one other each of Inf, Art, Lt Cav and Heavy Cav or Dragoon). 1812 probably as that has lots of uniform options for the Grand Armee.

I would definitely back a Kickstarter for such a project.

Yes I agree to a point however to compete with what's already out there in metal then I think you'd need to offer variants within march attack. At the very least you're going to have to do flank and centre companies. Presumably Line and Light infantry, although you could just do generic French style infantry in coats and covered shakos without epaulettes. As you suggest light and med or heavy cavalry but they can't surely be on one single pose of horse.

What about a sprue for staff officers?

The other thing that hasn't been mentioned is would such small figures be robust enough in hard plastic – I've read that some of the 28mm can be quite prone to loosing bayonets – is that true?

So far I can't see anything that would make me buy them over metal as much as I'd love to see the same developments in 18mm as those going on in 28mm.

Now if for example they were Zulus or Mahdists already in an appropriate skin tone plastic suddenly I get more interested. Based on the PSC price for about £110.00 GBP I get nearly 700 figures and with Zulus one or two boxes would cover all the troop types.

Masters used for existing metal lines can be used for plastics as well. The initial sculpts are already done if a company wishes to branch out. It basically the same as what happened for 28s.