"Recommendations - 10mm Napoleonic" Topic

Good evening all

I have been giving consideration to starting a collection of 10mm Napoleonic forces – whilst I enjoy 28mm figures, it is expensive to collect sizeable forces plus you need A LOT of space / gaming room to get a decent game going.

However, I have a few questions about 10mm – I tried searching the forum but could only find a thread from 2012 – i'm fairly sure things have moved on in 5 years!

So here goes….

1 – I want to re-fight the Peninsular – which manufacturers would people recommend for this particular Campaign? I would require Spanish and Portuguese figures as well as British and French (which seem fairly well covered by nearly all 10mm manufacturers)
2 – Painting – has anyone here made the transition from 28mm to 10mm? How do they find the painting and basing process? – frustrating – or surprisingly liberating?
3 – Figure Comparison – is there obvious "scale creep" between manufacturers in 10mm?
4 – Rules – I quite like Rank and File rules, having used them for some of our big 28mm games – I would ideally like to adapt them to fit 10mm figures – does anyone have any experience of this?

Plus I also want your opinions and views – if anyone has tried 10mm gaming and stuck with it – or not, i'd like to hear your views

Regards,

J

I would usually advise 10mm gamers to look at Pendraken.

However if you are looking at doing the Peninsular War then you would be disappointed.

Pendraken are re-doing their Peninsular British and they won't be available in the short to mid-term.

It's a pity as I'm trying to expand my existing Peninsular collection.

Have a look at Magister Militum.

link

I have no experience of them but perhaps you can enlighten us should you go down this route.

Although I haven't painted 10mm in years, I have painted quite a large number of OG 10s. I'd recommend taking a look. At 10mm I'd suggest going with a line that casts its figures on strips. These are much easier to paint than individual 10mm figures, especially if you are going for mass effect.

Here is in my opinion the best source for insprirtion of what can be done in this scale:

link

His rules are also very good.

I use pendraken for my peninsular war, but avoid the older british molds.

Rank and File. Nice and simple rules that give a good result. As for 10mm, I do 6mm, good luck.

I use Pendraken for 18th Century (sorry, not much help there).

As for painting, you have to take a leap of faith at first because they look so tiny next to 28mm and the clouds of self doubt are bound to close in. But give it a shot and "surprisingly liberating" is a good way to describe the experience. Before long, you'll be punching out ranks in your sleep, being very forgiving to paint and come with that ideal level of detail to differentiate troop types but not too much to slow you down.

In my opinion, 10mm is the ultimate scale for massed battles, ease of transport and fun to paint lots of them.

I'd say what Cae5ar has just said, save that he's beaten me to it.

My list of 10mm Useful Wargaming Manufacturers. hope it helps.

As always, comments are appreciated.

Take care

Andy

I've got a mix of Old Glory and Bend Sinister. I'm not sure you can get the latter at the moment. 10mm OG is easy to get hold of.

Lancer is also about to put out a Peninsula range. It may be worth contacting them to see what they have in the works.

Painting requires a slightly different approach. I wanted mine to stand out on the table so I used more highlight than shadow. Once you get used to the size you can churn out units in 1/4 of the time it takes for 28mm.

My stuff is here.
link

I'm an old fan of 10mm for horse & musket periods, but it's like a curse watching company after company start and fail to have a complete Napoleonic range for over a decade (maybe two!) now. And, being extremely picky, of course the most complete ranges nowadays (Old Glory and Magister Militum) are ones I don't like for their figures … Bah! ;)

At any rate, yes there has been scale creep in 10mm figures. When the ranges started, the "true" 10mm figures could be fit on a 5mm frontage per figure. Nowadays, almost everyone does something closer to 12mm, with a 6-7mm per figure frontage. However, I think the larger scale has become more or less universal, so you don't have the wide discrepancies like you do in 10mm ACW figures.

Something else to perhaps consider is that Adler 6mm figures are actually 8mm in size, and they have a beautiful and extensively complete range.

Cheers,

Christopher

The Old Glory are decent but they do not do Spanish or Portuguese.

I switch down to 10mm about 9 years ago and have ZERO desire to go back to 28mm.

British Peninsula is a bit of a problem. Currently the only choices are Old Glory and Magister Militum.

Pendraken are great figures but they decided to do a Waterloo Range first. Yes, you can use them for Portuguese at this scale.

Magister Militum have a great grange, but they're larger figures. The company is great to deal with and do a great Spanish range too.

Old Glory are closer to Pendraken in size but they come in 5 man strips and I for one hate have to hack them apart to fit on to the way I've based them. (Two ranks of 3 figures).

Old Glory do, however, do excellent artillery, cavalry and generals.

Bend Sinister/Red Line. Currently Si hasn't got his website working. He's a great guy to deal with but I don' know how well he's doing currently since the website is down. Great figures, closer to Pendraken in size and the only range that did British in Campaign Dress.

Here are some pictures from a few of the games I put on:

link

link

Figures are a mixture: Bend Sinister, MM, Pendraken's "Old Range" (Starfort). Cavalry and generals include Old Glory. Artillery is all "Old Glory"

For Rules we use "Napoleonic Command 2" – available form War Artisan:

warartisan.com/rules

Hope this helps,

As to space, the two games featured above were played on a 6'x5' (1.82x1.5m)

All

Thanks for some great answers, there is certainly lots to consider – figures in strips – I didn't consider that to be a possibility, however I could just adapt my basing to suit – 2 ranks of 5 figures per base would work in my opinion :)

I think I might get out there and grab a few sample packs from different companies and paint them up – they are hardly expensive and it will give me a chance to see what they look like "in the flesh"

Regards

J

For the Peninsular British you are really going to have to choose between Magister Militum and Old Glory, at least until Si gets his act together with Bend Sinister.To my taste, the MMs are a bit too chunky (think Front Rank v Perry) but I don't like the strip figures from OG because they don't fit well onto my preferred 20 mm bases. The OG cavalry look good. For Spanish and Portuguese, I think there are only MM figures at present.
For Italians, I am using the old Flashing Blade figures (many of which were acquired by Bend Sinister). They are very slim and obviously smaller (true 10 mm?) than MM (which are around 13mm high) and Pendraken, but easy to paint. I bought a lot of them (about 600) off Ebay. My French are from the Pendraken 1809 range and I really like the sculpts, size, poses etc. I have looked at Lancer, but find them a little too squat.
Just hoping that Bend Sinister British infantry become available or that Pendraken prioritise the return of the Peninsular range (are you reading this Leon- stop working on fantasy stuff and get back to producing Napoleonics to the same level as your brilliant LoA range)

As for painting 10 mm- piece of cake conpared with 28mm. Base coat (I prefer white, or black with a white dry brush to bring out detail). Thin coat of main uniform colour, then pick out details. Satin varnish coat, allow to dry, Magic Wash, dry and final matte coat. When I put my mind to it, 36 figure battalion can be finished in three or four hour long sessions- I was doing well to finish four 28 mm figures in that time.

As for rules, take a look at Over the Hills, ideal for 10mm divisional level + battles. We have done Vimiero, Rolica, Barossa as well as a few " what ifs?"

All good responses above. Nice pictures 138SquadronRAF.

In my experience, there is a little bit of 'fiddle factor' regardless of the manufacturer. Having to rank up single Pendraken French was about the same effort as cutting down Old Glory strips to fit my bases.

As long as your basing and flocking is consistent, not too many people will notice the difference.
Mine are based to give flexibility to use for most common rule sets or to fit on sabots.

Here are my Pendraken 1809 French.

Bandolier, nicely done sir.

Forgive the late arrival to this debate. I moved from 28mm to 10mm a few years ago, so there was some adjustment in painting technique required. The inability to give figures the level of detail you would spend on a bigger figure means they are quicker to paint, and I can get through 1500 figures a year in this scale compared to 400 in 28mm; but some of the painting is tricky and it is harder to base them up, especially Magister Militum, which have very thick bases to cover up with basetex or whatever you use.
In terms of figure choice, Pendraken are the best looking figures out there, but they have focused on post 1812 uniforms, so not much help for most peninsula conflicts on the British side. (fine choice exists for the French though). A bit of ingenuity goes some way though; you can use their figures for units whose uniform didn't vary through the war – highlanders, riflemen, some cavalry, generals and artillery. Where you are stuck is for line units in stovepipe; some Magister Militum (especially the Portugese) are a bit chunky; Lancer are now making decent early British figures, and Redline were good, but Si has been largely out of action of late. Only Magister seem to do many Spanish and Portugese figures; however, if you can stand it, you could use Pendraken's post 1812 British infantry to masquerade as Portugese in barantinas, and British riflemen can also be used as cazadores

"Redline were good, but Si has been largely out of action of late"

Having recently received some great sample figures from him, I can confirm he is still operating