"54mm Plastics for Napoleonics, 1812" Topic

I've found:

A Call to Arms
Armies in Plastic
HaT
Victrix

…so far. What additional figures are out there? I'm primarily interested in what I can use for the war of 1812, but open to conversion possibilities.

Thanks!

Suspect you mean the war in the Western Hemisphere rather than the chilly one with the overture?

Expeditionary Force has several sets including cavalry.

REAMSA make some nice -looking Spanish and French figures.

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And the 54mm plastic sets by Chintoys are quite nice too.

Italeri make Austrian infantry, British and French cavalry, French artillery and limbers, Mamelukes too -- but sadly out-of-production. Occasionally found on eBay, however.

Airfix are OOP but also available on eBay. Likewise All The King's Men, whose website has disappeared.

I started collecting these but then sold them off as a blind alley, for various reasons.

First, scales are hopelessly inconsistent not only between, but within ranges. Call to Arms British infantry are completely incompatible sizewise with Call to Arms French infantry. Both are smaller than Italeri.

Then there is detail. It's very uneven. Call to Arms Dutch infantry have the detail of 1960s 1/76 figures. Their French infantry OTOH are excellent.

Then there is coverage. I was unable to find anyone who makes British centre company figures. There are flank companies, and there are guards, and there are light infantry, and there are rifles. If you want to do light infantry skirmishes you're home and dry. If you want to do battalion action with oversize figures – it ain't happening. This is a pain because British centre companies are the easiest to convert to US line infantry.

Finally, materials. No two of these ranges are made from exactly the same medium. Call to Arms are made from something like Airfix's K-Resin, HaT appear to be made of some sort of hard rubber, Italeri hardish plastic, and so on. I mention this because you may get different painting results on different surfaces and it may also complicate head swapping.

@ 4th – thanks for comments. Useful info.

I am very disappointed that now I have the cash, All the King's Men has shut down.

I think the alternative for people who like consistency is 40mm Sash and Saber, which is an alternative.

Personally, I think what makes me nuts is that very few make boxes of marching figures. If the guy at AIP would just make a basic mold of 10 Marching figures for every period he covers, he may not know what to do with the cash. Buy an island?

While I realize that for many, large scale is immediately a skirmish venture [and nothing wrong with that, it's great gaming] for people with access to 12x6 tables, 54mm is just plain awesome looking!

What I did with the AiP figures is buy multiple boxes, and then put figures together, so at least there was uniformity within the unit.

So did you mean Russia 1812 after all? Some respondents obviously think so, but at least one talks about US infantry, assuming The War of 1812.

Ah ha. Since posting I now see cross posted to that Forum also. This is asking about the Anglo-US War of 1812

I really miss the 54mm figures from "All the King's Men"

@ 79thPA

That's what I have done with Airfix 1/76. I like all the centre companies to be the same so a typical British battalion has 2 standing firing grenadiers, 2 kneeling firing light company guys (firing denotes elite, kneeling denotes light), with 16 guys in the same pose as centre companies. Usually there are actually 14 because I like one company to have the flag guy and an officer.

By buying 14 sets of Airfix British, therefore, I get multiple battalions in the same pose.

Now I just have to paint them :-)

Airfix also made 54mm – you can still get them on Ebay…

@ green Tiger

Yes although they did both a 54mm multipose kit range and a 1/32 one-piece-casting range, so whichever you want you tend to get loads of the other in the search results.

The Airfix 54mm cavalry figures are a different scale to the infantry – 1/30 and 1/35 respectively, I would guess.

Pvt Snuffy is right that they look cool, but they are really dispiriting to collect. Even when you find something you need you find it's unusably off-scale.

You can always carve the wings off the flank company figures and use them as centre company which is what I am doing with a lot of the British plastics I have… depends how fussy you are…

Mike

yeah…fussy really doesn't have a place with this. If you want correct scale, details, etc, that's what finely sculpted 28mm stuff is for.

If you are going for a toy soldier look, lack of correct detail is sort of part of the ethos.

That Chintoys stuff is impressive never seen anything from them before.

Figure modellers used to go ape for that kind of detail in 54m.

The obvious corollary for the OP from Rdfraf's comment is that when you do find some figures you want, buy all you will ever need right away.

Absolutely do not assume you can do so later, because whether we're talking Italeri or ATKM there may well not be a 'later'. In fact of all the manufacturers listed (that I've heard of) only HaT and ACTA are still producing. Sobering.

Barzso Battle of New Orleans are long OOP but can still be found on eBay, for a price. If you're flush with cash, there are currently several sets of painted 1812 figures:
auction
and
auction