The Assault Group Napoleonic Austrians

The Assault Group is coming out with a line of 28mm Napoleonic Austrians, and they're trying for better proportions than most wargames figures have traditionally had.  Alban Miniatures is working on a similarly proportioned French line to oppose them.

I was intrigued by the idea of toy soldiers that looked like real human beings, rather than little dwarves with huge heads and hands, so that when Austin ordered some ECW figures from TAG, I tacked a few packs of Hungarian Grenadiers onto the order.

TAG Hungarian Grenadier Command

Here they are.  My ruler doesn't start until the figures' ankles, but they do stand about 28mm from sole of shoe to eye level.  The proportions are indeed very nice, but a couple of the poses (officer and sergeant) have odd angles of the head.  I didn't get any shots from the side, but the figures are walking in a kind of goose step, with the leading knee locked straight.

The overall effect is of awkward movement.  It's not easy to see from photographs, but in the flesh, the figures do have a strange quality about them.

HäT El Cid Spanish and TAG Hungarian Grenadier

So how do the TAG figures compare to the other anotomically correct 28mm figures I just painted?  The TAG figures are slightly taller, though that may be because they're standing more upright.  The TAG figures are, if anything, even leaner than the HäT figures.  But when HäT releases their 28mm Bavarian infantry, I think I would be comfortable mixing HäT and TAG on the table.

Old Glory and TAG Austrians

I already have a large 28mm Austrian army for Piquet: Field of Battle.  My Austrians are all Old Glory figures.  How will the TAG figures mix with them?  As you can see, the figures are exactly the same height, but the TAG figures are much leaner than the Old Glory figures.  I'll save the final determination until after I paint the TAG grenadiers, but I don't think the two styles will mix well on the table.

Foundry Russian and TAG Grenadier

So is it just the OG figures that are so bulky?  In fact, the OG figures are considerably taller and leaner than Foundry's Napoleonic line.  Here you can see a Foundry 1812 Russian musketeer, and he's even more out of scale with the TAG figure.  I don't think I have to wait for paint for this one.  Foundry and TAG will not mix.

Front Rank and TAG Grenadiers

Of course, Front Rank are the beefiest of them all.  I wish I had an unprimed Front Rank grenadier to compare, but even with the detail obscured by primer, you can see how odd these figures look together.

So the TAG figures, while certainly in proper scale, won't mix well with any of my metal brands.  Since I already have a large Austrian force, that's kind of a big deal for me and will most likely keep me from buying more TAG.

Were I starting from scratch, would I use TAG?  Probably not.  The figures have a strangely wooden quality to them that I don't care for.  It's a purely subjective decision, but there it is.  And that's not the only reason.  Because the TAG figures won't mix well with any other manufacturer, I would want to field only TAG figures for my army, and the range isn't anywhere near completion yet.  They do have German and Hungarian line infantry in helemts and shakos, German and Hungarian grenadiers, Grenzer, and Jäger.  But they lack Landwehr, any cavalry, artillery, and mounted officers.  It's likely to be years until the line is complete.

Were the line complete, my answer might be different.  Just from looking at the images on TAG's website, I can tell that not all the figures have the same ungainly posture as this pack.  I do like the proportions of these figures very much, better than any other 28mm figures.  Could I field a whole army of these figures, complete with hussars, lancers, cuirassiers, dragoons, landwehr, artillery, and generals, I might very well do so.

WAB Greek Army

Matt, a student in my school gaming club, has put together a really great looking 1,000 point Greek hoplite army for Warhammer Ancient Battles.  This is the third army Matt has finished, and he only started painting in October of '07.  

Two Shots of the Whole Army

The army's roster is:

1 General

19 Armored Hoplites

20 Armored Hoplites

20 Unarmored Hoplites

6 Light Greek Cavalry

7 Peltasts

6 Peltasts

Last month Matt fielded these Greeks against my Polybian Romans in two fights.  The Greeks won the first battle, and the Romans won the second.  We really enjoyed pitting the phalanx against the Roman manipular system.  It made for some tense games.  The Roman and Greek light troops are also well matched.

Hoplite Line

Here is the strength of any Greek army: a solid hoplite block.  Matt used North Star spears and Little Big Men shield transfers.  The hoplites are all from Crusader's Rank and File Line.  The Thracian skirmishers are also Crusader.  The cavalry are Old Glory.  Matt used Litko bases with Woodland Scenics and Silflor prairie tufts.

First Phalanx

This is an armored phalanx, with general and trumpeter from Foundry WG3/1 "Athenian Command."  Matt uses a basswood movement tray with magnetic sheeting so that the flexible steel base bottoms will stick.  This makes it easy to move his phalanxes as a unit, but also easy to remove individual figures as casualties.

Second Phalanx

This phalanx is also armored.  The command figures here are from Crusader's Rank and File Armored Hoplite Command.  Greek units in WAB do not get unit standards.  Instead they roll for "oracle points" at the beginning of the game.  These points can be spent to give Greek units a bonus in combat or to reroll morale tests.

Third Phalanx

Matt's last phalanx is made up of unarmored hoplites.  They are just as deadly to the enemy, but they only save on a 5 or 6 instead of a 4-6, so they don't quite have the staying power of the armored units.  Matt varied his tunic colors quite a bit to make the unit more visually interetsing.

Thracian Skirmishers

Matt went all out on the Thracian clothing, painting designs and using many interesting color combinations.  These are a far cry from the usual drab skirmishers.  Matt hand painted all the Thracian shields.  Unfortunately, you can't see any of them in these pictures!

Light Cavalry

These are Old Glory Thracian light cavalry.  Matt hand painted these shields as well.  The Thracian cavalry are superb skirmishers.

Matt is working on increasing the size of his Greek army to 2,000 points.  He will add strength to the phalanxes, bringing them each to 36 men, and he will add another phalanx of unarmored hoplites.  The skirmishers will get slight bumps in their numbers.

January Painting Totals

This month saw me painting a few little units toward finishing some larger projects.

15mm Napoleonic Austrians, 88 infantry

28mm Gauls, 3 infantry

28mm El Cid Spanish, 8 infantry

28mm Marian Romans, 44 infantry

That makes for a total of 352 Scott Painting Points.

Next month I have a painting commission, and I'll probably dust off my 28mm Scots Covenanters.  I'll continue painting Marian Romans and Napoleonic Austrians.

It's nice not to have any real deadlines to paint to.  I'm enjoying a more eclectic painting mix.

Polished Bronze

I've received a few emails over the past year taking me to task for using gold paint on bronze metalwork, especially on the bronze helmets of my Roman legionaries and the bronze gun barrels on my Napoleonic artillery.

I'm no expert on ancient metallurgy, but I can do a google search as well as the next man.  A quick search for "polished bronze helmet" brought up this reproduction Roman helmet:

The image is from a German site that sells reproduction metal bits from Caesar's time.  That color looks pretty golden to me.  Just as a modern soldier spends time each day cleaning and oiling his weapon, I figure that any legionary worth his salt would keep his metal gear polished and oiled.

And here is a replica British cannon from the Napoleonic Wars.  This is a half sized replica sold by a company in Argentina.  Again, this polished bronze looks pretty gold in hue to me.

HäT Industrie 28mm El Cid Spanish Heavy Infantry

I've been painting HaT's 1/72 figures as long as the company has existed.  I had a website devoted to reviews of plastic figures (it's still out there), and I was even one of the hemi-demi-semi-official painters for HaT.  If you look at the figures they released between 2000 and 2002, the sample painted figures are very often mine.

Eventually I gravitated to 15mm metals, then to 28s.  Still, I have boxes and boxes of the old plastic figures, and I sometimes paint up a few as a change of pace.  There are many things that I like about 1/72 plastics: the low cost, the easy availability, and above all the realistic proportions.  I dislike that the figures rarely rank up well into units, and as I started building armies rather than vignettes, the plastic figure boxes started collecting dust.

So it was with some curiosity, mixed with nostalgia, that I heard HaT was releasing hard plastic 28mm figures.  When Harris from HaT emailed and asked if I would like to paint some test shots, I jumped at the chance.

The first two 28mm sets HaT is releasing are El Cid's Spanish infantry.  I don't know the period well, but a quick visit to Gripping Beast's website gave me some painting inspiration.

Spanish Heavy Infantry

Here they are, based on 60mm x 20mm bases for WAB/FoG.  The sprue has one figure each of eight different poses.  Most of the figures have seperate weapons, and they all have seperate shields, but this is pretty common for 28mm figures.  These are not multipart kits like the Wargames Factory Romans I painted.  I ended up spending almost as much time building the WF figures as I did painting them, which was a bit of a pain.  I commend HaT for making attractive one piece figures.  You can see the sprue here.

If you remember my review of Wargames Factory's Romans, you'll recall that the figures did not fit well on the standard DBx/WAB/FoG base.  The HaT figures do just fit, although I had to shuffle them around a bit to keep them within 60mm.  You'll notice some overlaps in the photos above.

The HaT figures have some beautiful raised detail in their clothes, which makes the folds very easy to paint.  I just did a two tone paint job on the figures above, but the colors really jump out because of the strong relief.  The chain mail, on the other hand, was a little too shallow to take a drybrush well.  The sculptor could accentuate the mail a bit more and make a drybrush much easier.

The figures have all the strengths of their 1/72 counterparts.  They're inexpensive.  They should be readily available in hobby stores.  And their proportions are very good.  To most wargamers, especially those who game in 28mm, these HaT figures will look undersize.  But wargamers are used to 28mm figures with strangely thick anatomy.

Old Glory Roman and HaT Spaniard

The figure on the left (one of Old Glory's prepaints) is a pretty standard 28mm figure.  The HaT figure looks much smaller, doesn't it?  But look at the heights of the two figures. Go ahead and scroll down so that the tops of the heads just touch the top of your computer screen.  You'll see that they're almost exactly the same height.  Both figures are on Litko 1.8mm bases, but the Old Glory figure has a slightly higher metal bottom, so the HaT figure is even slightly taller than the Old Glory.

The ruler's measurement begins right at the top of the Litko base.  Again you can see that the figures are roughly the same height.

My first impression on viewing the HaT 28mm sprue was that the HaT figures were not much bigger than their earlier 1/72 figures.  A side by side comparison quickly shows that's not the case, however.

The Carthaginian spearman measures 22mm from toe to eye, while the spanish infantryman measures 29mm.

I'm interested to see where HaT goes with this new line.  Their 28mm figures will not match any existing 28mm range.  The HaT proportions are clearly superior, but they're also clearly different.  Will wargamers like these new figures enough to build whole armies from HaT figures?  Will HaT release enough troop types to make that feasible?  Remember that the reason I moved to metal figures was because the metals ranked up to look like units.  Harris wrote that HaT's 28mm Napoleonic sets will consist mainly of marching poses.

If HaT can release 28mm plastic figures with all the strengths of their 1/72 sets and none of the weaknesses, I can easily see myself building large armies from those figures.  So this set may foreshadow great things.

Last of the 15mm AWI British

Having covered the infantry in three posts, I'll wrap up the cavalry, artillery, and generals in this last.

Minifigs Light Dragoons

The Minifigs riders are very nice, but the horse poses are a little odd.

Minifigs Artillery

I really like the Minifigs crew.  The poses are animated and varied, just the opposite of their infantry poses.

Old Glory Burgoyne and staff

These are from the "AWI Personalities" pack.  The standard bearer is a Minifigs grenadier.

Minifigs British Officers

Again we get beautiful figures and odd horses.  The mounted officers do have a nice variety of pose.