Pet Peeve no 257 not a review of Perry and Warlord Napoleonic French Infantry boxes

OK so I'm busy painting my way through some French Infantry for Sharp Practice. I was using Perrys and then because I was hitting a painting block switched to Warlord Late French because they're in Greatcoat so far easier to paint. And all is good. I've pretty much rattled through the unit I needed and my core force is now complete. To do that I bought a box from Warlord - actually from a 3rd party supplier for cost reasons, and for some reason this box boils my blood so as it's a Sunday I thought I would share.

First up - the ££££ . 

Warlord are selling this box for £27.50 as of today. I got mine for £22 inc p&p shopping around. The box contains four half box sprues each of six models, two of which are flank company, and four metal command figures. That's £0.98 per figure. The box also contains an info sheet with some paper flags and a set of ammo box decals and a sprue of bases. 

This is the box from Perry Miniatures

It's not quite equivalent as this one has no greatcoated figures. Also the whole box is plastic. Forty-four  figures split into six sprues each of five men for the line companies, a six figure Command sprue (full size) and two four figure half size elite company sprues which are in more active \ skirmishing poses. I should add the line sprues contain arms to allow you to model them as elites in line as well. Cost from Perrys- £25 so £0.57 each. I'm sure I can pick them up for less if I shop around. The box also contains a similar paint guide \ flag sheet and bases. 

Perrys do another box with similar content but half in greatcoat. I didn't get that because I wrongly assumed I would have the fortitude to paint the whole lot in normal uniform so would not need the greatcoat.

So what is my peeve? Apart from the price, it's bloody obvious Warlord are behind the curve here. The Perry boxes are well thought out and FULL of sprues. I can't stress this enough, you feel like you're getting your $$££ worth as the box is chock full with nine sprues to the point it is hard to get it closed again. Also the box has three different sprues in there so you can get a whole unit in plastic. The comparison with the Warlord box is stark. The sprues only fill half the box, the rest is a plastic clamshell holding the four metal command figures plus some foam to hold them in place. I don't know, but to me it looks like Warlord decided not to include the command and skirmishers as plastic to keep the production cost down to one basic plastic sprue. The side effect is that you and I as the punter are paying more for less figures, some in metal, and three layers of packaging. Working with metal requires different tools and techniques than with plastic too. I know the Warlord sprue was conceived and designed a while ago, but so was the Perry. I'd also accept the Warlord sprue is slightly easier to assemble with fewer parts but it's not that much of a bonus. 

Come on Warlord. Surely it is time to redesign this box to be all plastic, including command and flank company, reduce your production costs, save the planet by cutting down on packaging and bump up the value for money to your customers. This is probably the most common of all the Black Powder range to be bought, being Napoleonic French AND Waterloo period, so it is pretty much a flagship product.

Rant over. And to be fair if you buy the Warlord army boxes or starter sets the per figure cost does come down quite a bit, and it also has to be said Perry produce their artillery and other stuff you will need in metal just like Warlord, and at a comparable price.

So am I getting wound up over nothing or do I have a point? What do you think - comment below please       

Size Matters - Scale Creep and Pasta

OK I have to say from the outset this is a bit ranty. I also have to say there is no suggestion I could do better as a putty pusher, but this has got under my skin and I need to vent.

Why are figures getting bigger?

As a side project I've been working on some Boxer Rebellion Great Powers units. The plan is to have a go at 55 Days at Peking in 28mm as a club game using a varient on The Men Who Would Be Kings rules (TMWWBK). I already had some Old Glory Austrian Sailors. These represent the landing party from the Cruiser Zenta. Old Glory's range is several years old and a nominal 25mm, but in reality they are on the large side which means they pass easily with most "modern" 28mm .

At this point I should add OG were a bit "cute" with their Boxer range - as far as I can tell the Italian and Austrian Sailors they do are the same bodies but with a head- swap. Worse things happen at sea. The other issue is the posing - OG have gone for some very dynamic running poses, even to the point of one guy running with his rifle to his shoulder in a firing pose - very strange. And while I'm on the subject the packaging from OG is very inflexible - you get 30 in a bag, usually an Officer pose and 5 "normal" guy poses. One last minor problem is OG don't make a Skoda M93 machinegun, which the Austrians had at the Legation, but this isn't a problem as Redoubt do, and their crew, although bigger than OG, are still close enough. Anyway I have had them a while and I rather like them. I also had the mixed Naval Arty crew OG do - again mostly headswaps.

So at Vapnartak in a moment of weakness I found myself buying a bag of Pom Pom guns from OG too. The twisted logic being use the arty crew plus some suitable Matelot gunners to make a 1Prd QF which the Italians had at Peking. This has so far went smoothly, so my next thought was "if you have the gun, why not get the Italian sailors to go with it??" Here I ran into a problem. OG only sell their figures in bags of 30 (as I mentioned earlier). In TMWWBK units are generally 12 strong, and in fact the whole Italian contingent at the Legation was only 29 men meant that buying a bag of Italian Sailors was going to be wasteful, so I thought I would shop around.

I discovered 2 other manufacturers of 28mm (note that) Boxer Rebellion era Italian Sailors - A fairly old Redoubt Miniatures range, and EMP miniatures, who had recently created a range using Kickstarter and these looked quite nice, so only needing a dozen, I decided to order them from EMPs "28mm Historical" range over the weekend. EMP were damned fast and the figures arrived today. I opened the package to discover 2 had broken rifles (in transit I assume) so I got on to EMP and they happily volunteered to replace them with no quibble. All good. Then I took a look at the figures, and another problem loomed - literally. They're HUGE. Not just in relation to the admittedly "25mm" OG figures, but also in relation to just about every other figure I have.  One of them stands 37mm tall! the rest a few mm less, but all so far past 28mm foot to eye as to be useless alongside other figures. Either pasta in the late 19th Century had powers to build the physique only dreamed about by modern bodybuilders, or there is a scale creep problem.  Here's a pic to explain far more than words can.

 L-R EMP, Old Glory, Redoubt (EMP stood behind) and EMP again.

As you can see the EMP figures are literally head and shoulders taller than Redoubt and OG, and yet are nominally the same "28mm" scale. And that's before you put them on a base.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. Actually I'm not - I'm going to go to OG and buy a bag of Italians from them, even if that means spending more and getting "spares". At least they will fit with the rest of the collection. This is a shame because the EMP figures are interesting if you ignore the size problems - there are some nice poses in there (but importantly no officer - another problem with them).

Anyway - Caveat Emptor and all that, but it does wind me up that figures are getting bigger and bigger for no apparent reason. Ah Well

RTFM - Musing on rules

I've realised I have been guilty of falling into games unprepared. By that I mean over the last year or so I have been caught up in the enthusiasm of a new rules set, skimmed the rules while rushing headlong to get the toys painted, and arrived at the table with much fanfare to find the games halting and not as successful as I had hoped. 

A prime example I played a game of Dux Britanarrium last week at the Hartlepool Club. It was our first try out, and at the end I thought it went OK - but just OK. The truth was we had missed large bits of rules we skimmed over in our enthusiasm, and as a result both our enjoyment and enthusiasm suffered - what should have been a good gaming session was just OK.

That got me musing, because it is not the first time it has happened. So I decided to have another game, this time just to try out the mechanisms, and whenever there was any doubt to read the rules carefully.

So I set up a game between Dave & John with me manning the rule book - a full battle rather than a raid so we could concentrate on the rules rather than rushing around in the chaos and tempo that raiding scenarios involve, and we got stuck in. Actually before that I READ THE RULES again just to refresh my memory, and read the rules as things happened to make sure we were getting it right.

It took a while, but we learned rather a lot. One thing I learned was just how good and well thought through Dux actually is, Our skimming and fumbling had meant we had missed some of the more subtle bits in there, and at the end we also had much better understanding and dare I say it, fun. Last night wasn't an OK gaming session, it was a good gaming session. I'm sure the others felt it too.

Moral of the story RTFM!

One last rambling thought. For the last few years I had heard of the Two Fat Lardies rules but had never really tried them. They were for me pigeon holed in the same niche as some Peter Pig rules - nice mechanisms but too light hearted and tongue in cheek to be thought of as "serious" sets of rules - the Carry on Wargaming style of naming, and indeed the whole company name and pie and pint logo thing helped reinforce that. I was (and am) a fan of some of the older PeterPig rules but the layout, presentation and general impressions were always of an amateur production - one man and his photocopier (which to be fair is pretty much what they were at the time). I had subconsciously  expected the same from TFL. The other side of the coin was the WRG style written in almost legalistic precision (Barkerese). Like them or loath them you had to take them seriously and read them carefully.

Taking the plunge with Chain of Command educated me otherwise.  I think it also showed a step up in ambition for the TFLs. Here they had a product that was in their view (and mine as it happened) superior to the market leader (Bolt Action) in almost every way, but it still lagged behind BA in popularity. I don't want to get into the whole "why" one rules set is better than the other, or what drives popularity, but having looked at both, Chain should have beaten BA hands down in my opinion, and it didn't. 

Like Chain, Dux is a well put together and very nuanced set of rules (at least as far as I can say that after 3-4 games), and the resulting game is interesting and enjoyable. It deserves a bit more respect, to be treated more seriously, but I think my initial expectations that the TFL "brand" is a little frivolous had coloured my view. I wonder if the happy go lucky branding that TFL have used in the past is now starting to bite them back a little?  I hope not, because if Dux and Chain are any indication, TFL are producing some of the most interesting, thought provoking and, yes fun, rules I have seen in quite a while, with production quality to match. Long may they continue

Sometimes I think if there is any value in the narcissistic process we call blogging, it may be that it gives you an opportunity to vent to the anonymous and amorphous "internet".

Here's the thing - why do we (wargamers) accept and do things that are in "the rules" when they are patently counter to history?

A couple of weeks ago I was playing my second game of Muskets and Tomahawks, this time against a player who plays regularly at another club. M&T is a skirmish game set in the French Indian Wars. They're a fun set of rules with a healthy dose of flavour.

Line of sight and line of fire are blocked by other models unless it is a friend from the same unit in base to base contact pretty standard fare so far. They also have a formation rule for the trained troops that fought in firing lines - basically they are easier to hit but get some morale bonus. Anyway we set up and I was somewhat surprised to see my opponent and his Woodland Indian troops formed into units two ranks deep. When I queried this he said the rules allow it, and its a good formation that maximises firepower while at the same time keeping the unit compact and easy to control - which of course it is.  In fact it exactly replicated the firing line formation of the formed regulars, but with none of the restrictions or disadvantages. It is also not disallowed in "the rules". This is true, but the end result is a game that bears no visual resemblance to the historical record or even the pop culture impression of the war in the woods and forests of North America - in fact it looked much more like a bad 1:60 ratio Napoleonic game. It has been bugging me since.

So whats the solution?

"Its only a game" - sure, but its a game about something real. Not sure what the solution is, probably just need to be less uptight :-)

I think I'm going to have a bit of a tinker with that in our games to discourage Indians and irregulars forming ranks. If it works I'll let you know,