"How spoiled are we?" Topic

As I was looking at some auctions of figures on Ebay I was reminded of how much our hobby has progressed over the years. Do you remember when you had very limited variety of poses for the metal figures that you wanted to create your armies from? Lines of infantry and cavalry that were in perfect lock-step looking more like the Rockettes than soldiers going into combat. We were fortunate if a company made more than one pose of a particular type of soldier. Not to mention that for metal figures there were only a few companies to choose from, and in my case, I had to order them sight unseen via snail mail. An order usually took MONTHS not days to arrive at my mailbox. We are in a golden age of miniature gaming I say!

Yes. Now we have hundreds of choices.

Maybe thousands.

Agreed. Never have the choices been as plentiful and the convenience so great. I do wish the FLGS had benefited as much but I believe that niche of the hobby has suffered.

I would agree. The stuff I complain about having a hard time finding now wouldn't even have been conceivable when I started out.

I will note one anomaly, though. More miniatures available, and I think I can find the players. More historical miniatures available than ever, but players are harder to find. More horse & musket miniatures than ever, but the players seem impossible to find. Not just locally: look through the events list for any of the major HMGS conventions of the last two years vs 20-40 years ago. If Perry, Warlord and Victrix are selling enough to justify expanding their lines, where are they all going?

The old maxim 'More…is not always better' does not apply here, I love the way figure production has improved over the years, and competition between manufacturers has pushed the figures available and their sheer quality to unheard of heights!

Based on this post, all I can say is "FIDDLY FOO! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!"

Did I yell that correctly? I didn't have my hearing aids in…

Ah yes – I recall when the only way to do Franco-Prussian War was with Airfix Union infanry and WWI Germans

If you read "The Wargame" the big battle at the end is fought with as I recall French infantry standing in for Austrians!

I remember when Hinchliffe released their brand new Palmyran range.
A cataphract and a foot archer.

But we liked it back then! We would walk to School in 2' of snow, mile and a half, uphill both ways.

"You were lucky— we had to crawl…"

Yes, a more innocent time…
I remember playing in a Colonial game where if you didn't have enough Zulu figures never mind, just throw in some Sudanese Ansars in a pan-African anti-colonial alliance! Now I'm bummed that Perry doesn't do figures for Canada's Mackenzie Papineau rebellion of 1837-38!

As I recall, the golden age of multipal poses started when Old Glory came on the scene with their American Civil War range. The original sculpts actually came withoud heads, but you added them from a generous bag of heads with a variety of hats and caps and facial expressions. I still have a big bag of leftover heads that I use to customize other figures.

And then there was Old Glory..
.
SHA-ZAM!!

@Frederick – I used Airfix French Foreign Legion and French WWI Infantry with helmets cut off with razor blades and kepis glued on! Airfix WWI Germans for the Prussians. I think I still have them in a box somewhere.

I agree with Perris0707. Glad I have lived to see it.

I remember scratch-building (really kitbashing, I guess) spaceships to face off against the Federation ships being sold because there weren't any non-Federation Star Trek ships (at least at the same scale).

@William Warner

Bill Lamming was selling multi part figures back in the 70s then QT Miniatures followed his lead by releasing a huge range of multi part Ancients.

Old Glory were late to the Multi Part party.

Kodliablair,
Sorry, nothing to do with "multi part?
We are talking here about total amount of actual "variants" in all scales.
Old Glory bags come with many many actual variants.
take for example -- the ACW alone.. The original OG, the OG second edition, Sash and sabeur, and the newest "Mann miniatures"
Whole armies could be made without a repeat figure.
This is true in 15mm, 10mm, and 40mm.
Whether or not a person likes OG figs is irrelevant-- the sheer number of variants across the ranges and scales is an undeniable fact.
Russ Dunaway

In the 1970s, making conversions and finding similar uniforms as substitutes was the common practice.

An early substitute effort was that I was looking to make a British Greek light infantryman. I took an ACW Zouave with the drooping cap. Then I add tutu to make a skirt.

What annoyed me about Lamming and QT was that Lamming had the leg on the torso and QT had it on the head. 🙄

If I was making a display diorama of a historical battle, I would want multiple poses because they would create a more realistic effect.

But as my toy soldiers' function is simply to indicate a unit's arm of service, its nationality, its current strength, formation and the area it occupies on the battlefield, I'm quite content for all figures in a unit to be in the same, sensible marching or advancing poses.

In skirmish games, OTOH, different poses help to distinguish one character from another and are appropriate.

The increasing amount of detail on small-scale wargame figures IMHO tends to demand more effort to paint them to an acceptable standard, and makes using them as proxies of effecting simple paint conversions harder.

If I was making a display diorama of a historical battle, I would want multiple poses because they would create a more realistic effect.

But as my toy soldiers' function is simply to indicate a unit's arm of service, its nationality, its current strength, formation and the area it occupies on the battlefield, I'm quite content for all figures in a unit to be in the same, sensible marching or advancing poses.

In skirmish games, OTOH, different poses help to distinguish one character from another and are appropriate.

The increasing amount of detail on small-scale wargame figures IMHO tends to demand more effort to paint them to an acceptable standard, and makes using them as proxies of effecting simple paint conversions harder.

What annoyed me about Lamming and QT was that Lamming had the leg on the torso and QT had it on the head. 🙄

Damn autocorrect and AI!
"PEG"! Not "LEG"!

When I was young, I had to walk uphill, 5 miles, in the snow, there and back, just to spend my lawn-mowing money on a bunch of scarecrow -like figures in 3 poses from a store [that's a building made out of bricks, mortar, wood, etc where actual humans work and customers show up to buy things, you know, like in old movies].