Gaming in plastic #1: getting started with plastic soldiers
by Bob Barnetson
Over the next few months, Tabletop Gaming News will be publishing a series of weekly articles about 1:72-scale plastic models. These articles will be aimed at both new and experienced miniatures gamers who are considering getting into historical gaming with plastics. These articles will cover:
- Selecting a historical era and army, using ancients as an example.
- Clean-up, assembly and priming plastics.
- Uniforms and selecting a colour scheme.
- Painting techniques such as the magic dip, block painting, washes, skin tones, complex shield and clothing patters, and painting metallics.
- Sealing and basing single and multiple figures, including sabot basing.
Additional articles based on reader requests may be considered.
painted Romans
Why Game with Plastics?
Perhaps the most oft-cited reason to game with 1:72-scale plastics is the low cost. It is possible to get boxes of 40+ figures for $12 CDN in most historical eras. At 30 cents each, these models are significantly less expensive than metal figures. For gamers who are either exploring historical miniatures for the first time or starting in a new era, this cost saving is very attractive.
Plastics are also readily available at many local hobby stores and over the Internet. And, most importantly, there has been significant growth in the available ranges over the past five years, particularly from producers located in various eastern European countries.
Biplanes
Drawbacks of Plastics
There are some drawbacks to using 1:72-scale plastic miniatures:
- Pose selection: Plastics soldiers are normally purchased in boxes contain 20-40 figures. Often, each box will contain some figures unsuitable for gaming or in greater quantities than desired. And, if you desire units comprising a single pose, you must buy several boxes or trade among your friends.
- Limited range: Manufacturers gravitate towards figures with higher sales potential. This can mean that the figures you need for your army are harder to find. Somewhat mitigating this problem are the small manufacturers that are filling these niches with metals.
- Painting plastic: Plastics have a reputation for shedding paint (e.g., flaking) more readily than metal figures. Proper priming and sealing can minimize this problem. Plastics can also bend during storage or handling, whereas metal will break.
- Aesthetics: Some gamers like the heft of metal figures and the chunkier sculpts. Plastic figures are normally sculpted with slimmer builds and less raised detail than metal figures. Heft can be increased using steel bases.
Materials: Most plastic soldiers are produced using polyethylene plastic. This plastic can be either soft (i.e., bendy) or hard, depending on the formula used by the manufacturer. Polyethylene has traditionally been very difficult to glue, thereby making multi-part models (e.g., cavalry) difficult to assemble. It also limits the gamer’s ability to customize figures.
Over the course of this series, I will address these concerns through the application of modeling, painting and basing products and techniques.
Selecting an Army
Selecting an army to build is a function of personal taste and product availability. Other important considerations might be what armies your likely opponents have (unless you are building both sides) and what rule system(s) you plan to use. For the purposes of this series of articles, I’ll be focusing on building an army of first- and second-century BCE Republican Romans.
I’ve chosen this army for three main reasons:
- Interest: I find this era to be interesting, as do my gaming partners. We are also discussing running an eight-player game at the club so we need to paint some extra Roman units.
- Versatility: After our big game is done, this army can be used to fight one fellow’s Gauls and Carthaginians or another fellow’s Roman army (during the civil war). The components of my army (particularly the allied skirmishers and cavalry) can also be supplemented with additional hairy guys to make a barbarian army.
- Mix of units: This army allows me to paint a wide range of units, which is useful for this series of articles. I plan to include unarmoured tribesmen, partially and fully armored warriors, light and medium cavalry, and missile troops. Some of these units will also have special features such as complex clothing or shield patterns, as well as clothes that include fur, cotton, and metallic components.
I’ve also decided to base the figures two or three to a 40×20mm base. I’ll most likely use them in our club’s version of Command and Colours Ancients we have adapted for use with miniatures or for Warmaster Ancients. Using a 40×20mm base allows me the flexibility to do both. An alternative would have been to base them individually on washers and then create multi-figure bases using magnetic sabots. This would allow me to play games with individual figure removal, such as Warhammer Ancient Battles.
Command and Colours Ancients game
Developing an Army List
Some gamers just buy a box of figures and start painting, adding to their army as they go. I’ve always found that I am more likely to complete projects when I start with a rough plan of what I want. I started by developing a list of what units I’d need and then extrapolated to determine what figures I would then require.
For our club’s miniatures version of Command and Colours Ancients, we use the following unit conventions:
- infantry units comprise 3 bases,
- leaders units comprise 1 base,
- all other units comprise 2 bases.
For the infantry, we’ve been denoting the type of unit by the number of figures on the base: two figures for skirmishers, four figures for phalanx, and three figures for all others.
Elephants
After some consideration I’ve decided that my army will comprise:
- 4 Leaders (12 figures)
- 4 Skirmishers (24 figures)
- 1 Archer Unit (9 figures)
- 10 Medium Legion (90 figures)
- 6 Heavy Legion (54 figures)
- 3 Light Cavalry (12 figures)
- 3 Medium Cavalry (12 figures)
We normally have between 12 and 16 units on the board during a game. By having 31 units, I can change the feel of the army I’m fielding by swapping out a few units or even divide the army in two and field it against itself. This list means painting 213 figures.
Selecting What to Buy
A useful website when looking to purchase plastic figures is www.plasticsoldierreview.com. This website contains a comprehensive list of 1:72-scale figures available, provides some commentary on their accuracy and quality, and normally includes pictures of unpainted figures. This gives you a good sense of what the figures look like and which poses you will get.
With my army list in hand, I looked through the pictures and reviews. I eventually got my hands on nine boxes of figures. They include:
- Italeri 6021 (x2) – Roman Infantry 1st & 2nd Century BC
- Italeri 6028 – Roman Cavalry 1st & 2nd Century BC
- Italeri 6029 - Celtic Cavalry
- HäT 8018 (x4) - Republican Roman Hastati & Velites
- HäT 8044 - Alexander’s Light Infantry
Miniature Boxes
Purchased locally, these sets would have cost about $90 CDN. The boxes gave me a good mix of troops and included highly detailed Italeri figures that are suitable for demonstrating painting over a white primer and the plainer HaT figures which are best painted over a black primer.
Utilizing the Mix of Poses
Plastics come with a fixed set of poses in each box. An important visual element of building a Roman army is that it should look reasonably regular, although the lighter troops might be more varied and a bit tatty. Consequently, as I clipped the figures off the sprues, I started sorting them into piles. First I separated them into piles based on what kind of unit they could be used for (e.g., skirmishers don’t wear mail). Then I started putting together the number of bases of each type I needed.
As I sorted out individual bases, I made sure the bases of the legions had a roughly similar mix of poses while I tried to mix up the light unit poses a little. If I were assembling a barbarian army, everything could be mixed and I might try to include figures from different manufacturers on each base. With a bit of care mixing up the paint colours, such an army would look suitably barbaric. Now onto the painting.
Sprues
Up Next
Next week, we’ll tackle the first step in working with plastics: cleaning up the figures, assembling them and getting them primed for painting.