"Question about equip on Epic figures" Topic

Three figures out of every ten infantrymen on the sprue have what looks like a German WWII gasmask canister in the small of their backs. Any ideas about what that is supposed to represent?

I believe those are intended to be cartridge boxes, which unfortunately means (a) the shoulder strap is depicted in the wrong position to support them, and (b) it raises the question why don't all the figures have them.

The bowie knives carried by some of the figures are another egregiously wrong addition. But both of these errors are minor compared to the worst fault, at least to my eye: the jackets. As depicted, the skirts are too short for a sack coat (most common Union upper garment) but too long for a shell jacket (most common Confederate garment).

Actually, I suppose the actual worst fault is the 8-spoked cannon wheels.

In short, the Epic sprues give a very nice massed-troop appearance and (at least in the initial offering) provided a lot of figures for the money, but their uniform accuracy is mediocre. A real shame and incomprehensible in this day and age where accurate information is a search-and-click away. I guess I get the jacket length thing if they were bound and determined to have only one infantry mold, but correct accoutrements and cannon wheels wouldn't have been any more difficult to sculp and no more expensive. It's as if the designers used the 1960s Airfix boxes for historical research.

The 1960s Airfix ACW infantry were far worse! They had webbing braces with ammunition pouches on both left and right, rather like WWI or WWII British infantrymen. Why? Who knows!

I know the 8 spoke might be an ease of manufacturing issue…but yeah, sloppy work.

What I never understood was their decision to make a single infantry sprue cover 90% of the forces anyone would ever want. Why not two sprues? One union, one rebel?

They later come out with separate sprues for things like zouaves. And Iron Brigade. Like anyone needs a ton of those.

It would have been such an easy thing to do to come out with two sprues, so the Union and Confederate boxes actually contained different figures.

This basic laziness from Warlord is why I decided against trying my hand at epic scale ACW.

I posted about this last year when I got the starter bundle.

It's seriously bizarre given the fact that this company is so well established in historicals that they could get their Civil War soldiers so incorrectly sculpted.

What makes it even stranger is that their 28mm Civil War doesn't have this issue. Although that's probably because all the 28mm Civil War they carry is made by Perry, lol.

What must have happened is that whomever did the actual sculpting for these either just didn't have any source materials to work with, assumed and just guessed at what their equipment consisted of, or had some of the worst references that were given to them. I would be interested in finding out who exactly the person was who did the sculpts.

It's mindblowing given the fact that a literal 10 second Google search will give you thousands of images of both original Civil War soldiers as well as countless illustrations showing the correct basic gear.

So as was already alluded to in several posts above, the "cartridge boxes" are on only every fourth soldier or so, which makes no sense since everybody needs to fire their muskets! And where there are cartridge boxes, they are the wrong shape and they are incorrectly slung on the rear of the waist belts. They look more like 1870s McKeever boxes used during the Indian conflicts.

Canteens are to be found on only every six or seventh soldier without regard for the fact that it was worn on the left side over the haversack. You find canteens on the right rear hip of some soldiers, and then correctly on the left side on others.

It appears there is "something" hanging off the left hip of some of the soldiers, but it looks like it's randomly attempting to be a haversack but maybe a cartridge box slung on the wrong side.

Also, there appears to be absolutely no percussion cap pouches on any soldiers, which would be on the immediate right of the waist belt plate, slung on the waist belt itself.

Ironically, one of the few things that they DID get 100% right was the round eagle plates on the front of the cartridge box sling directly over the chest, and the oval belt plate on the waist belt.

But beyond that, it looks like they scultped the cross belts without knowing or understanding what they were supposed to be attached to. They kind of just "float". The slings going down to the right don't link up with the cartridge boxes, they kind of just melt away into the soldiers' right hip.

Finally, the strange sword/knife bayonets on the BACK of the waist belts. No infantry man carried their bayonet this way,and it should overwhelmingly be the socket style bayonet and scabbard, and should be slung on the waist belt to the left of the waist belt buckle, and rests just to the right of the haversack and canteen. Those three pieces of equipment are essentially a cluster all on the left side of the soldier.

In the end, the saving grace for this range of minis. is that because they are 13.5mm, it's really difficult to see how bad the equipment is. Once I had all the armies painted up and on the table, it does look pretty cool and everything pretty much blends together at tabletop height.

But if they ever released 28mm Civil War minis. with gear like this, they would get so many complaints and outcry from customers that they would have to pull them from production.

…OH, and as Eumelus pointed out, the 8-spoked cannon wheels! This had to have been a cost-cutting measure when working out the production of the sprues. It really shocked me that they would do that with a detail that is so visible and so distracting.

The worst irony of this is that the $25.00 USD Epic scale limber and cannon they sell DOES have the correct number of spokes on the wheels.

It really is frustrating, because it makes the artillery pieces look more like toys you'd order from a comic book rather than actual historical miniatures.

For their Waterloo range, their artillery is excellent and has the right number of spokes. I wonder if this is because they got complaints about the Civil War ones.