"Warlord EPIC Napoleonic Range" Topic

Our good friends at Warlord have another major release of EPIC figures, this time for the Waterloo period.

This will generate some interest in the relevant community.

Unfortunately they have made a very basic schoolboy error on the British flag sheet. Every Union flag has errors with the positioning of the red and white diagonals with some appearing to be upside down. I would hope I am wrong but it is a well known easily made error and easily corrected by the release of a reprinted flag sheet.

Presumably in the 13.5mm size of the ACW release?

Presumably in the 13.5mm size of the ACW release?

Apparently, it's not mentioned in anything I have read.

I have also noted that the British offering has Rifles in close order strips whereas the French offering has Voltiguers in skirmish order.

I know that the Rifles spent much of the day in close order due to the cavalry threat but many gamers will want to deploy them in a skirmish line.

Here is a link:

link

Looks like they 'corrected' the number of wheel spokes on their artillery to something closer to accurate.

Jim

Looks like they 'corrected' the number of wheel spokes on their artillery to something closer to accurate.

12 spokes, which I think is accurate (enough).

Years too late for me, but I wish them well.

Let the flame wars against Warlord begin!!!!

Thanks Wackmole, can you light this torch?
Actually I'm tempted, but hope to be able to resist. Had they offered Leipzig, on the other hand…

I just finished the last unit of my Warlord ACW box set and looking forward many games in the future.

I just finished the last unit of my Warlord ACW box set and looking forward many games in the future.

I bought the jumbo deal and I still have about 3 sprues left to do.

Really, now you release this goodness?! After I go all-in on 10mm Napoleonics. Where were you 4 years ago?

Really, now you release this goodness?! After I go all-in on 10mm Napoleonics. Where were you 4 years ago?

I got 6's, 10's, 15's, 28's and 30's. What's the problem.

I have been gathering Perry's Travel Battle figures. Maybe I should have waited. Too late for me but Warlord should do well with this. Have fun all!

Let the scale complaining begin!

Honestly from 3' away the difference between 13.5 and true 15mm is indistinct. What they need is a competitor to match that scale *cough* Victrix *cough*

Hello JimDuncan.

Thank you for spotting the situation with the British Flags.

I have forwarded the message to my colleagues in the Studio department and they will review the design before it goes to print.

Kind regards,
Lorenzo
Warlord Games Customer Service

Thank you for spotting the situation with the British Flags.

I have forwarded the message to my colleagues in the Studio department and they will review the design before it goes to print.

Thank You for that Lorenzo, it is not often that you get such a promising reply from manufacturers.

I await, with interest, their corrections which will certainly improve the prospects of a purchase.

Jim

"I got 6's, 10's, 15's, 28's and 30's. What's the problem."

Oh my, Jim…you have issues. Good issues :) Wish you were my neighbor!

"I got 6's, 10's, 15's, 28's and 30's. What's the problem."

Oh my, Jim…you have issues. Good issues :) Wish you were my neighbor!

I could add 12's, 20's, 25's and 54's if you include other periods.

Oh my, Jim…you have issues. Good issues :) Wish you were my neighbor!

A bit too far to travel for a game.

I have been to Chicago twice on vacation.

The lead pile is strong with this one :)

while I liked their ACW infantry, their cavalry wasn't that impressive, hopefully the Napoleonic one will be better

while I liked their ACW infantry, their cavalry wasn't that impressive, hopefully the Napoleonic one will be better

link

My only emotion is total jealousy!!
I think it is a great concept for large small scale battles!!

Russ Dunaway
(mighty king and overlord of the Old Glory kingdom)

No worries on this one von Winterfeldt, John Stallard has already stated that Waterloo, and future EPIC Series will be ALL plastic!!

I am not worried, I have no issues about the material miniatures are made off, as long as they are good. One would have to see those heroic scale miniatures in more detail to judge, as said before I very well liked their ACW infantry and how they arranged them on the sprue, it looked very lifelike.

I saw this range in the flesh at Salute on Saturday. Of no interest to me but they did look very nice.

A nice, prepacked bundle that I'm sure will do well with new gamers to the period. I wish this had been around when I first started wargaming. (Not that I had £500.00 GBP going spare a the time!)

Having a unique scale,though, does mean that folks will be limited in their gaming to ranges that are produced by Warlord – at least initially.

It's taken literally donkey's years for 4 manufacturers to get out a comprehensive 28mm range of plastic Naps between them. If you are a grey haired old Grognard Gamer will you be ale to wait long enough for the Highlanders, Brunswickers, Netherlanders and Nassau troops to arrive?

And Waterloo still needs the Prussians! I'm sure it will sell, but it's as brave a move as Victrix has made with their 12mm WW2 armour.

It will be interesting to check out the rulebook.

I like the choice of scale and the idea of moulding 10 figures together for compactness and ease of assembly.

What I don't get is the whole 'epic' thing. The advertising says 'Epic Battles – Regular Tables'. So why go for 80 figure infantry units? That gives you a 240mm/9.5" frontage in line. How does that relate to producing Waterloo on anything smaller than a 20' wide table?

They seem to be calling infantry units 'regiments'. Does that mean the basic unit is a regiment? And how does that relate to French regiments having up to 4 battalions, and English regiments usually having only one? And then I see the 'brigade' boxes have 4 'regiments'. I'm confused!

Perhaps those already playing the ACW variant can educate me?

Keef44, their ACW line has one command strip for five bases, each base being two strips of ten or 20 figs per base, thus 100 figs per regiment. It makes a regiment a little bit wider in frontage than my 28mm Black Powder Napoleonics.

What I did was make each stand a regiment; we have played several ACW games using that scale and you can really get a lot of brigades/divisions and even Corps on the table, and still have room to maneuver.

Some guys have suggested using three stands per regiment, others two, but I like the one stand idea for myself. The only problem is you will not have command strips for that. With ACW it was no big deal; I made up the right sized flags with a flag staff and glued them into place up against a front-rank figure. At that scale, and from 3-5' away, you can't even tell it's not a proper command stand.

I'm not sure how that will work with Napoleonics, since the command stand is more pronounced, if you will, than ACW units. At some point Warlord may produce a separate command strip blister, as they did with the ACW line, but then you'll have to build single-strip bases until that happens…which could be a while.

Bottom line, it's definitely doable if you keep the scale in perspective.

My two-cents worth…

That's kind of what I thought. To do the 'epic' thing, you would have to break down the 80 figure units into much smaller units of one or two bases. I would have thought 2 was the minimum if you're going to represent basic formations.

I understand there will be a revised version of Black Powder included with some of the bigger starter packages – I wonder how they will handle this?

I don't know whether to be disappointed with the range / concept and how incompatible it is with 15mm or disappointed with myself in not seeing this as one of the most exciting moments in wargaming and going with it.
So many of us of a certain age seem to have similar beginnings with the hobby and how it started with Airfix. Airfix exercised a drip, drip, drip effect and then along came the boxed sets (I am thinking of the Gun Emplacement Assault Set) at Christmas and the magic of opening that has not only stayed with me but has set the standard by which all Christmas presents are, in some recess in my mind still judged.
And this is the glory and the majesty of the Warlord Epic set: it strikes me as being the most exciting (at least in terms of the hobby) box one could ever open. For sure, the sheer intensity of such pleasures lessens with age but not that much and this box, or collections of boxes (if you look at the £500.00 GBP option) has it all.
But, for reasons that I don't quite understand (we are, as wargamers, after all more emotional than rational) I am not biting (yet). I am too much committed to 15mm, the painting burden would be immense and can't really see how such large units would work. Well that is a bit pompous but what I mean is where there is an interest in historic battles one is forever looking to increase the size of the table and shrink the footprint of units. But as a points-based system that you can do on a club night, as a way of introducing and explaining wargaming to people (anyone else finding people now seem to be more curious about the hobby) or as a vehicle for Paddy Griffith's Brigade game (published in Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun) where, to get the battalion to do anything, you have to manage each company's moral) it would work extremely well. Oh dear, I feel I am talking myself in getting this game.

I think the sets for this release are superb. The show-stopper for me though is that they've gone for merely increasing the figure count on the standard 28mm base sizes (24cm frontage for an infantry battalion), not surprising I suppose given the Epic name. Sadly we don't have access to the table sizes needed to play a good sized game with units of that size so I'll have to pass. Had they gone the other direction, reduced the frontages / base sizes (or even had they made it so that the units could be put on smaller bases) I'd have definitely gone for it.

I've seen folks make reference to just using a smaller number of bases to represent units on smaller tables but that limits the option to use and show different formations which, for me, is an essential component of Napoleonic gaming. I've also seen suggestions of merely cutting the strips down and mounting them on smaller bases BUT there's a big problem with that. The infantry are cast such that most of the infantry figures are actually moulded together in tight formation such that cutting would leave a lot of damage that would then take an age to fix, even if it were possible. The problem would be made even worse given that there are flank companies to cater for, dictating where you would need to cut, and command stands.

Fantastic sets though, just wish I could find a way to use them :(

Seems that the 60mm strips can actually be cut without causing any drastic damage, plenty of pictures out there now posted by folks who have done just that for both sides. Really pleased about that as it makes these great sets perfectly usable for me :)