"What is your least favorite figure pose?" Topic

For me it is a horse with 2 legs off the ground. It invariably leads to a fragile figure, especially if the model is expected to be handled or played with.

It's a two-way tie between the Airfix WW2 US Marine holding his rifle above his head with both hands and the WW2 British Para doing yoga or Pilates with one hand in the air.

I agree with the OFM

x42

Prone figures, they are a PITA to base.

Iirc and he Airfix Para with his hand and n the air is an office figure looking at his watch with one hand raised, although is another figure waving his arms aro nd who is some sort of casualty. The sillies figure in thatvsetvar they guys with their SMGs firing into the air, presumably shooting their own pals as they descend!

Can't say I've had an issues with horses with just two feet on the ground. Perhaps it is a problem with some scales or manufacturers?

Standing WW2 and Moderen figures, Any sane warrior will mostly be lying down. Attacks and movement is rush and rest. Some excuse for sutting at an MG or SGL but even some MG's can be shot prone with a periscope.

Prone, or marching, shouldered arms.

Cavalrymen with their arm held out to side, away from the body, with the sword (or spear/lance) held vertically.

The Airfix commando after he'd lost his kayak….what on earth could I do with a British Commando who looked like he was surrendering ? All my historical source material (British War Films, mostly in Black & White) strongly indicated that this could NEVER happen. So, completely useless….unless he and his friend were carrying some balsa wood planks over their 1/72nd scale heads…..

The figure on the back of a 15mm elephant with a long spaer held vertically.

martin

1/72nd fan here. My least favorite would have to be prone figures. But it's rare to find sets of figures that are 100% usable. Some of the figures are just abominations.

1/32 plastic AWI figures: The guy getting shot.
Having that on the playing field is asking the dice to hate you.
And the blasted thing is upright on the base, so it's hard to convert to a prone casualty.
Stupid figure. Hated it as a kid. Still do.

Raised rifle in clubbing or stabbing pose
Throwing a grenade, usually too many in a box
Prone figures
Waving to other troops. "Hey Steve!"
Surrendering poses

The old Airfix "stabbing a snake" pose--generally one to every sprue. Second place goes to the cavalryman blazing away with two revolvers toward his right, and no hands on the reins. I think that was IMEX's contirbution.

The minesweeper guy.
The stabby over-the-head guy.
Parzival -- good call on the getting shot guy.
Overly energetic poses.
Prone figures most of the time.

Horses are tricky beasts, with little in contact with the ground when they run (see Eadweard Muybridge's horse in motion pictures); so whilst I understand figure sculptors desire to be 'accurate', I'm with the OFM about the horse with just two legs in contact with their base.

As for foot figures, I simply can't abide kneeling figures.

Prone.

myxemail 11 Nov 2024 5:33 a.m. PST
Raised rifle in clubbing or stabbing pose
Throwing a grenade, usually too many in a box
Prone figures
Waving to other troops. "Hey Steve!"
Surrendering poses

Are you talking about those green plastic army men? you forgot the mine sweeper dude

link

Levelled pikes or spears that prevent moving opposing bases into contact.

Prone and two hooves off the ground are way up there – and the leveled pikes means you have to base very, very carefully – one pose that I have an irrational dislike for is the "Hey Steve" pose that at one time Old Glory seemed to like – a figure with a rifle pointed ahead of them and the head turned off sharply to the side

link

Prone, unless it's a light machine gun team. Even then I would prefer a moving figure. Second place in least loved is kneeling figures. In both cases, I'm sure they are more accurate in a firefight, but war gaming is more about movement.

Wounded or dead figures are nice for dioramas or morale markers. But I dislike when they are included in a pack of otherwise useful figures.

I agree with the 2 legs off the ground for horses and shouldered figures.

Air Fix WWI French standing machine gunner with a bi-pod. No matter how gentle I tried to be, the figure never made it through a battle!

Heroic sword fighting poses -- sword is supposed to point at your opponent and not the chandelier, and the shield is supposed to be in front and not a counterweight to your mighty blow.

Cavalry men shooting sideways.

martin

I'm a strictly Orthodox Pose Hater: Prone, Kneeling, Marching.

Pet Peeve: Mine Sweepers.

TVAG

Any 1/72 plastic figure with a wall on the base. Caesar modern Brits has a couple identical poses of a rifleman bounding over a wall. All the German MG34s and MG42s being supported on ruined brick walls…

Boy. You guys pretty much nailed them all.

I use prone figures as prone markers.

Lancers and pikemen with horizontal weapons. Looks good (well, depending on the quality of the sculpt, obviously), but a pain for gaming.

Prone
I know its more realistic but I cant be doing with a platoon all crawling along
Exceptions for LMG crews etc

Strictly speaking everyone should be dug in never mind crawling.

Throwing a grenade, having apparently ditched the rifle.

The really odd poses seem to be the preserve of plastics.Not just classic Airfix, but Plastic Soldier Review turns up strangeness in more recent sets.

Maybe theres a bigger push towards variety within something at least partly aimed at the toy market?

Barcephus wrote:

Are you talking about those green plastic army men? you forgot the mine sweeper dude"

Yes, if too many. One or two for pioneer stands is ok

I once found a dance video of Cossack dancers with pikes. They even formed a squatting charging phalanx. Someone, somewhere, probably makes figures for that.
I had a small Renaissance Cossack contingent in my Polish army. I would have bought such figures. 🙄

what on earth could I do with a British Commando who looked like he was surrendering ? All my historical source material (British War Films, mostly in Black & White) strongly indicated that this could NEVER happen.

The Kommandobefehl of 18 October 1942 pretty well guaranteed that no commandos would survive surrendering.

To the original question, my least favorite pose for any period is marching. They just don't look active or interesting on the tabletop -- regardless of period.

Prone.

I paint the under side of the figure, then glue it to a base and never see it again. Also, since they take up about two figures' bases of real estate, they never fit in the spots where someone would be prone.

Sill, I like swapping figures of different poses to represent different states, so I don't mind having them. Just "least favourite" per the OP.

I don't have many minesweepers, but they get conberted into broom operators to represent the guys back at base on KP. You have to get them to an armoury to swap them out for an armed figure.

It probably depends on the period, but for me, standing/kneeling firing figures and prone figures.

I haven't heard the term Hey Steve in a long time. Gave me a good laugh.

The one figure in the Airfix ACW boxes I never, ever used was the one bayoneting a snake. I accumulated quite a few of them over the years, and eventually found that once cut from their bases, they made good casualties.

A few units of marching can be useful, after all, thats what soldiers do most of the time. They start in reserve.

-Guy in the act of getting shot-
I'm ok with wounded or dead, just not in the moment of getting shot.

-Way Too Specific Poses-
I know that's kind of generic. But an example is Marvel Crisis Protocol: I'm not a fan of X-men holding a Sentinal arm, or Black Cat in the act of flipping upside down. It looks cool, but in certain situations on the game board, illogical. (What if you aren't fighting Sentinels?)

-Horse Archer Shooting the Guy Beside or Behind Him-
(Or if corrected, Horseman Riding the Wrong Way)

+1 Thossmoss!

Pikemen with levelled pikes.

They look great in dioramas.

Absolute pain in the arse to play with.

Cheers,
JohnG

Figures firing one way and their head looking the other way.

An essential element of the fragility problem with two horse's legs being off the ground is the "realistic" sculpting which features very slim lower legs. Please don't throw technical horse lingo at me. 🙄
I much prefer "stumpy" horse legs, like you get from Foundry to the delicate "realistic" legs you get from the likes of RSM or Falcata.
I recently acquired the full deal of the Falcata Cuera Spanish colonial dragoons. One horse had been bent during shipping to be parallel to the ground, but with all 4 legs bent 45 degrees. While trying to straighten it out onl leg after the other snapped. There was no way to glue it back together, with the jointure being so tiny.
The same range also features separate arms that must be glued in place, along with a tiny hand to hold a lance.
This range was very obviously designed as an artwork, and not for handling and gaming.

To have a category for the Poll, I suggest "fragile anatomy that doesn't cast well".

How about "thin spears, javelins or pikes cast to the hand."
There is probably a technical casting feature. But this joint is inevitably very weak, resulting in bent spears and spears breaking off.
As a proud owner of a Macedonian army in the 80s, I started out with Minifigs pikemen. They featured the universally ridiculed "barge pole" thickness pikes. They still bent. Then Minifigs switched to the 2nd generation slimmer pikes. One had to straighten out for appearance sake each unit
I much prefer empty hands to accept stiff wire spears.

In another instance of the Falcata Dragoons mentioned above, some flags and guidons are cast to the hand. Naturally the flag itself is very thick.

Both of my above rants describe figures that have not even survived cleaning and assembly before priming. That includes one horse and nearly all the guidons.
Some horses required drilling a hole up through the base into the horses belly. This is so I could strengthen the casting with brass rod. Yes. This is necessary in 2024.

I should NOT have to repair figures before I have even painting them.
Imagine a delicate tiny person like Ariana Grande playing rugby. Sure, she's cute, but how long would she last?

According to what the Intewebz tells me (I had no idea who AG was before that post), she's shorter but slightly lighter than my daughter who played four years of club rugby in college. She's also taller/heavier than any all-around female olympian champion gymnast since the 50's (my daughter was in gymnastics in grade and secondary school), all of whom are probably more athletic and resilient than most people I see at wargaming events.

She is on the low end of recommended weight for her height, or the top end of dangerously underweight, depending on whose scale you use.

So … which rules do you use for rugby and where did you get your pop star figure?

I just used her as an example of a pretty but skinny person. And I picked rugby as a rough sport without padding or protective armor.
No, I don't have a figure of her, nor do I have a set of tabletop rugby rules.
I guess it's a flawed example of RSM or Falcata horses with fragile "accurate" legs and the stress they go through merely being based with a rider, painted and played with.
These horses actually have a heavy body, which I assure you Ms Grande does not have. 🤷

By the way, I had a genius idea for the horse that broke off its base completely. I took one of the casualty figures that came with the set, and will place them both on an oversized base to use as a cavalry casualty marker.
Technically, they aren't wasted figures, but….. See my rant about casualty figures above.

I could have gone with Gringos40 Cuera figures, but I got these in a trade. I may be their 3rd or 4th owner.

OFM's point about 'realism' in pose, combined with cast on (long)weapons is very valid. The figure sculpting might be beautiful, but if they don't survive being posted, let alone being handled then you have to question fitness for purpose.

One range of true 15mm, when first released garnered lots of "wow, they're 15mm, I thought they were 28mm" type comments. Level of detail, proportions etc were brilliant, and survived being vastly over magnified in pictures.

Great figures, I bought into them (albeit at a small scale); horses with to-scale accurate legs with just two legs in contact with the ground arrived with ankles bent, or worse, snapped. Swords bent through 180 degrees, which often didn't survive the straightening process.

They are still beautiful figures, but what were expensive figures became even more expensive as I now mount riders on horses from another manufacturer, swords (even if they survive being packed and posted) are automatically cut off and replaced with replacements made from staples.

Smaller scale figures need to be distorted in proportion in order to be usable. Horses might look brilliant if anatomically in proportion and in accurate poses, but those horses have but two legs, each not much more than 1mm square, in contact with the base.

As for long spears/pikes? Cast on all too quickly turn to lead spaghetti – open hand, ready for hard wire spears/pikes every time.