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I was looking (again) at some ranges to see if I will take the plunge and start getting into Historicals. This time last year I was thinking the same thing, the only thing that was stopping me was the thought of moving country. Mostly interested in plastics for price and so on.

So, I was looking at:
Celts - WGF and Warlord Games Celts for infantry, WGF for Cavalry and Chariots.
Vikings - WGF, Gripping Beast. Again,
Germans (for use as Irish) - WGF Germans, Gripping Beast Dark Ages infantry. WGF German Cavalry for the cav.
Normans - Conquest Games.

I know most of these guys are smaller than GW's heroic scale, but I was wondering how the various ranges fit with "true" 28mm like Tre Manor's Red Box or GW's LOTR? Seems to me some of them are a little outsized, especially the heads, for these sorts of ranges.
Any painted pictures would be much appreciated!

The WGF and Gripping Beast vikings are pretty much interchangable. People even use parts from one and mix them with the other on the same miniature.

For Celts,, you'll find Warlord's to be noticeably smaller than WGF. Here, WGF is better and cheaper than Warlord.

However be very careful of WGF's Romans. If you are planning on getting Romans at all, WGF's were not designed to rank up properly and you can only build them in certain ways or they'll have weapons arms and shields jutting all over the place and prevent them from being able to be placed in anything like a realistic close order. Also, WGF's Romans don't really line up in size with their Celts, but Warlord's do. Strange, I know.

WGF's Germans are sized like their celts and are fine. The GB Dark Ages Warriors have later round shields and the WGF Ancient German Warband has earlier more Roman looking shields. They'll both work for Late Antiquity, but once you get to the Viking times, the WGF's shields will look out of place if you care about that.

The Norman stuff from Conquest is designed to be compatible with Gripping Beast.

One thing about WGF: You need to really pay attention when posing them as it's easy to end up with unnatural poses. You also may want to trim their necks a bit shorter as the ball socket often doesn't go deep enough into the torso.

All this stuff is larger than LOTR. Her'es a WGF orc standing next to a LOTR orc:


GW night goblin, LOTR Orc, WGF Orc, GWSpace Marine

The reason it looks more like LOTR stuff and less like WFB/40K stuff is the proportions are more realistic like LOTR. I'd mix Tre Manor's stuff and *some* LOTR with the 28mm historical stuff, but not everything.

Thank you Frozenwastes, you are really one of the most helpful people on this forum.

Glad I could help. I decided to cut back on posting in the general discussions areas of Dakka and stick with the historical forum.

I thought the LoTR was basically true 25mm scale.

Hmmm. My LOTR stuff fits well with Tre Manor's stuff which he says is "true" 28mm, but perhaps there's some discrepancy in how the scales are described.

I find very little in any line of miniatures is consistent. Take Warlord's Celts & Romans, for example. They were Warlord's first foray into plastics are designed to match up well with one another and yet totally don't. But if you don't ever stop and do a really close comparison, you might not ever notice that the celt is too small or the roman too large.

It's also a matter of personal scale tolerance. I'm only bothered by massive scale differences when one of them is in a stark minority.

For example, I've stood near tables where people were playing ancients and one side had an army of super tall Black Tree Design miniatures with big chunky limbs and heads (averaging 30mm) and the other person was using 1/72 plastics with very realistic proportions (averaging 23mm). They were even in melee with the models next to one another and I didn't even notice. But had one player had a single unit on their side in the scale of their opponent's I would have noticed it right away.

If you are looking at normans I would suggest Perry Miniatures First Crusade minis. Many of their models are perfect for Normans.

Overall the scale and design of the Perry stuff is really good.

Some of the Conquest games Norman stuff is good, some is mediocre. I'm not a huge fan of their horses, but the knights are okay. They're a bit 'bigger' than Perry, but not so much that you can't work around it. I'll have a look at them vs the WGF Vikings and Saxons I've got (which mix together very well, while their Germans are definitely smaller than these two lines, tough work to mix parts for say berserkers for your vikings).

FireForge has Knights and foot soldiers for the Crusades. Well done figures with a lot of weapon options.