"Good US airborne or British infantry in 28mm metal. " Topic

So I got the Warlord plastic us airborne and was immensely disappointed.
Standard warlord, half done, half assed, made on the cheap. Warlord plastic apperantly means you'd have to massively compromise.

So I'll paint them up to have something to do between the various layers of my tank painting.

But I guess I'll never bother with anymore warlord plastic sets from any period.

So any good US airborne (market garden) or British infantry in metal.

In 20mm youd have way better stuff than 28mm…………..and cheaper. The AB British inf are some of the best figures ever made in any scale.
L

I know 20mm is better, at least in anatomy. But 28mm is my scale.

Well, these are your options…

link

I am using Empress US mini's for my US Airborne. Technically not the correct pants, but the sculpts are amazing. I wish they made more models carrying the Thompson, but that is a small quibble.

As for British Airborne, I like the Warlord metals, I have not seen there plastics yet, I do hope they are better than US Airborne plastics

I did ask for opinion on the quality. Not a list of all that exist.
I don't know enough about British ww2 uniforms to know which are good and which are bad when it comes to history.
I know I don't like artizan with their giant hands.

Thanks Johnbear!

Gunfreak – you should check out the Offensive Miniatures US airborne also
link
they're nice crisp castings, well proportioned too.
EC

Not sure about US Airborne, I've heard the offensive miniatures ones are really good link
My British Infantry figures are all the old Bolt Action metals from before the Warlord take over, lovely figures that you can find on eBay. The Foundry British Airborne are good too.

The offensive ones does indeed look good. But appear to be in M42 not M43 uniforms.

The offensive ones does indeed look good. But appear to be in M42 not M43 uniforms.

Plus with a name like Offensive Miniatures there is always the worry that when you contact them to order they tell you to p*s* off! :-)
Seriously folks, they don't. Good guys to order from.

I know 20mm is better, at least in anatomy. But 28mm is my scale.

That is TMP for you. Whatever scale you want someone will come along and tell you, you can do it cheaper and better in a different scale.

But I guess I'll never bother with anymore warlord plastic sets from any period.

I am quite happy with the plastics I have, but then I never build them straight out of the box. They are always chopped around, mixed in metal heads, weapons and equipment

I Don't think anyone makes Market Garden US Paras in 28mm metal. Apart from the Warlord support teams.

Try Victory Force Miniatures, they make US paras in M42 and M43 uniforms. British infantry too, but no British airbone. For me, the best quality of miniatures in 30mm on the market.

Cons: limited and discontinued range, international shipments expensive.

I looked at the British victory force.
They look good, but missing prone bren gunners.
I'll have a look at their airborne

Warlord WWII are some of the worst 28mm figures in the industry. The sculpts are embarrassing. I don't understand how toy makers have been creating excellent figures at all sorts of sizes for decades and a large wargame manufacturer can't seem to get things right at 28mm?

Some of the better US airborne right now are through offensive miniatures. Their torsos tend to be a little long but they are light years better than warlords product… and they're metal too!!!

I know I don't like artizan with their giant hands.

I am with you on Artizan. I find the poses a bit samey too.

I found the Artizan Airborne to be excellent both in animation and sculpting. Bought the whole range and tellingly, I painted all of them. They paint up really nice.

For all its popularity there are a dearth of decent figures in 28mm WWII and some massive missing subjects. US Army in the Pacific for example?
also many manufacturers still get details wrong especially in terms of personal equipment or don't bother to produce some basic Platoon/Company weapons. There are no correctly equipped British or US Infantry on the market.
They seem intent on churning out MP44 armed Germans though.
Today with the amount of research material available it just suggests laziness on the sculptors/manufacturers part.
My collection is mainly Warlord because you can get them cheap, but the plastics are hard work I find and there is usually a shortage of something. The US Airborne are not a good set (there is not even enough water bottles per man, ill fitting strangely arranged equipment). Although the set received rave reviews on release.

My main compliants about the warlord US airborne

Only 4 garand arms with a single firing pose garand arm,
Yet 3 Thompson with 2! firing arms
bayonet lug on the carbines(even though the cover art show it without)

All!!! 6 figures have cartridge belts, with leaves you to try and cover those belts with Thompson and BAR ammo belts, which never looks good and you don't have enough ammo pouches and since it was standard with a single 6 mag pouch for the Thompson, half the belt will still show as a cartridge belt.

Only a 3 mag ammo pouch for per spur for the BAR, meaning you need 4 spurs to give the full 12 mag belt.

No carbine ammo pouch at all.

And while they feel the need to model the cartridge belt on all 6 figures, they didn't bother to model the suspenders on the back, meaning you can't use them as lightly equipped troopers, they HAVE to have the musette bag or they'll have magic disappearing suspenders.

I've found no other use for the prone figures except for .30 cal gunner and loader, no ability to make prone rifleman.
Making a hole in the wire stock carbine is apparently too hard for the warlord people.

a shed load of various sergeant chevrons on the decal sheet but only 6 privates.

A typical Warlord example of doing it easy, lazy and on the cheap.

Gunfreak
For such a large company it is just laziness. (The plastic US Infantry have no Carbine pouches either.) I think the cartridge pouches on the plastic airborne are meant to be Rigger pouches. Which were not universal to everyone. The musettes don't sit properly if they do fit at all!
The Carbine is just an M1 its not even an attempt at a M1A1!
I can only build them in small batches- I'm 1/3rd into a Platoon and that has involved a lot of conversion work.
Their German sets lack enough ammo pouches for many of the weapons.
WWII has always suffered from inaccuracies from figure manufacturers the sort of mistakes that if it were a Napoleonic range would mean it wouldn't sell, are glossed over.
Then again that applies to WWII rulesets as well, many seem to have no idea of what they are trying to portray.
I used to review for the wargames press and did proper reviews. Unfortunately what class as reviews now are little more than the manufacturers blurb and a photo. The Warlord plastic kits just seem to toted as excellent with no real study as to their actual content.

I agree with you Gunfreak the Warlord plastics need a lot of work and extras to get decent models out of. I prefer the early sets with seperate weapons so you could chose what weapons you wanted in the firing pose arms, for example. I often buy 2 sets to get one platoons worth of figures or extra weapons and equipment from TAG. I spend a lot of time cutting and filing to get rid of cartridge pouches and trimming down so ammo pouches and equipment fit properly, chopping, altering and filling arms to get the position I want.

WWII has always suffered from inaccuracies from figure manufacturers the sort of mistakes that if it were a Napoleonic range would mean it wouldn't sell, are glossed over.

Not at all, their "blackpowder" range is at least as bad if not even worse.
Thier British heavy dragoon box is pure horror.
Uniforms are all wrong, they claim you can make Peninsula dragoons by using the bicorne heads, yet that is the WW2 equviliant of just adding a Sherman turret to a Stuart and calling it a Sherman.

Thier British peninsula infantry got waterloo ensigns because they thought it too much job/cost making proper figures.

I think almost all of their blackpowder sets have something wrong with them, their polish is apparently very bad(because it's French infantry with polish heads) Most of the "plastic sets" have metal command because they can't be bothered making a plastic command sure, and even for warlord officers look to different to just trying to make them from the regular rank and file figures. But the metal command is extremely hit and miss.

Apologies for the late submission here, but didn't Warlord offer a metal range of US airborne? Screaming Eagles I thought it was called…

In fact, I think I have them buried in my lead pile somewhere….I recall they were actually pretty nice figures for Warlord.

For such a large company it is just laziness.

I don't think it is all laziness. Some of it economics. They have decided to go down the route of putting everything on one sprue, rather than a figure sprue and a weapons/equipment sprue, and their is a limited amount you can do with that. It obviously saves them a load of tooling costs. I guess Warlord would argue that you are getting 30 figures for roughly the price of 25 before. Most people don't know or care about accurate equipment loads and are happy to just stick them together, paint, dip them in Army Painter gloop and put them on the table, so they sell well.

I don't think it is all laziness. Some of it economics. They have decided to go down the route of putting everything on one sprue, rather than a figure sprue and a weapons/equipment sprue, and their is a limited amount you can do with that. It obviously saves them a load of tooling costs. I guess Warlord would argue that you are getting 30 figures for roughly

I've got a theory that warlord has decided to cater to the noob market, selling their stuff to kids that don't know any better, a modern version of Airfix, to hell with doing it right when you can absolutely maximize profits.

They are the Anti Perry, compare Warlord plastic sets to say Perry French Hussars or British light dragoons.

That said, Warlord has great customer service and always been a pleusre to deal with.

I've got a theory that warlord has decided to cater to the noob market,

Not just complete noobs, but looking for converts from the Games Workshop market. Hence the codexes, sorry Army books, etc.

Ohhh I meant Napoleonic Figures from other manufacturers. By lazy I mean laziness in research. I too have had nothing but excellent service from Warlord and I buy their figures usually from a trader because they work out cheap like I said. But their is much at fault with their ranges and pseudo history codexes. Sadly being absorbed as gospel by many.
They made/make a range of metal M42 Parachute Infantry by Paul Hicks which are very good figures their metal British Airborne likewise.

I really should'nt follow discussions like this, they are really quite depressing. Why would anyone spend time and money on stuff that is so awful, its baffling.
L

Check these out Gunfreak
link
and these
link

Anyone look at Warlord's metal BEF infantry? How do they stack up? Particularly the 10 figure squad box set.