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More news from The Plastic Soldier Company. Coming soon a Pz1V kit that allows you to do several different marks, F1, F2, G and H!

Also announced were 251's (C&Ds) complete with crews.

Check out this blog for a peak.

http://wwiicentral.blogspot.com/

If BF were not in trouble already (and IMO they were) they are now!

Truly we live in a golden age of wargaming!

These simple kits seem to offer an excellent balance of detail with ease of construction and tabletop toughness.

I was always surprised that FoW managed to establish themselves with 15mm and get such a lock on the WW2 games market. There have always been plenty of 20mm / 1-72 scale models around and compatible rules.

I assumed it was because FoW is selling a lot to players moving up from GW games, who are used to the style of rules and have the mindset that a company produces a game and models and you buy everything form that company.

To be fair to Battlefront, they have done a very good production job, with a good range of well produced books and so on.

Kilkrazy wrote:Truly we live in a golden age of wargaming!

These simple kits seem to offer an excellent balance of detail with ease of construction and tabletop toughness.

I was always surprised that FoW managed to establish themselves with 15mm and get such a lock on the WW2 games market. There have always been plenty of 20mm / 1-72 scale models around and compatible rules.

I assumed it was because FoW is selling a lot to players moving up from GW games, who are used to the style of rules and have the mindset that a company produces a game and models and you buy everything form that company.

To be fair to Battlefront, they have done a very good production job, with a good range of well produced books and so on.

IMO its all about layout. People seem to like a nice colourful, well-laid out rulebook with lot of eyecandy. As opposed to ten sheets of A4 stapled together in a card cover with reams of unbroken text.

What I can't fathom is why it has taken so long for someone to do plastic 15mm. Airfix et al have been banging out pretty tiny kits for years (have you seen their Vickers Light Tank? Its smaller than most BF mediums), and I know I remember having piles of tiny plastic Germans when i was a kid that can't have been any smaller than 15mm.

1/76th & 1/72nd (20mm) the scale of Airfix and other plastic makers is a good bit bigger than 15mm... In fact alot bigger!

Its only the last 20 years that the technology has had the ability to retain detail down to a small scale and I suspect its taken till now for someone to weigh up the economics and see that its viable with the recent drop in mould costs.

Also dont under estimate the popularity of FOW to be driving this, without it I dont you would have ever seen plastic 15mm tanks.

What Im surprised is why there is nothing else in 15mm.

15mm ACW, Napoleonics and Ancients would seem a winner.

I suspect it wont be long now.

Big P wrote:1/76th & 1/72nd (20mm) the scale of Airfix and other plastic makers is a good bit bigger than 15mm... In fact alot bigger!

Its only the last 20 years that the technology has had the ability to retain detail down to a small scale and I suspect its taken till now for someone to weigh up the economics and see that its viable with the recent drop in mould costs.

Also dont under estimate the popularity of FOW to be driving this, without it I dont you would have ever seen plastic 15mm tanks.

What Im surprised is why there is nothing else in 15mm.

15mm ACW, Napoleonics and Ancients would seem a winner.

I suspect it wont be long now.

Its not a "scale" issue though, at least as far as vehicles go. That is my point with the Vickers Light in 1/72. The actual vehicle itself is scaled to 1/72, but the model is physically smaller than a BF PzIV by quite a lot. Other small vehicles are similar, Bren Carriers and the like. And the little plastic men I'm recalling were only slightly taller than a BF 15mm. I may even have some somewhere still. I have a feeling they may have been 1/76. It wouldn't be a massive leap to make them just that smidge shorter...


Looking at Victrix and similar, I wouldn't be overly surprised to see 15mm Napoleonics etc either. What I would like to see though is plastic trucks and soft-skins at a much reduced price, so I don't have to pay "armour" prices for a near-decorative item.

Zvezda are going to be doing Russian and German trucks in 15mm very soon

I have a strange feeling my 15mm WW2 army will never get plastic tanks, the Italians.

General Seric wrote:I have a strange feeling my 15mm WW2 army will never get plastic tanks, the Italians.

The who?

My Hungarians also feel your pain.

I'm looking forward to their 15mm Late War Brits, not sure why as I am yet to see anything other than the tanks in this article painted up! There does seem to quite a bit of postive comments going around about the PSC.

notprop wrote:I'm looking forward to their 15mm Late War Brits, not sure why as I am yet to see anything other than the tanks in this article painted up! There does seem to quite a bit of postive comments going around about the PSC.

If they come in battle bowlers I might consider replacing my 2nd Seaforth in their Turtles, at a substantial saving in price. I imagine that a painted rifle company will sell on for more than the cost of a box of plastics.

Does anyone know if this can be bought in the US and from where? They look very nice.

Ask and ye shall receive,

http://www.thewarstore.com/theplasticsoldiercompany.html

I believe the 15mm plastic Panzer IVs are due out this weekend at Salute.

Along with the 20mm Soviet Heavy Weapons (so you will soon see that in 15mm too).

Yup saw the panzer ivs today at salute. Not as good as the t34s, they had an issue with a few ugly joins that would be annoying to clean up, especially around the front of the track links, but still really nice and great detail.

Very interesting release list from them with plastic germans not far off. I saw their late war german 15mm troops too and they were very nice.

Aldramelech wrote:
If BF were not in trouble already (and IMO they were) they are now!

Would you mind giving some sort of substantiation to this claim? I'm not saying you are wrong, just wondering where you are getting your information from?

Yes, I flew to New Zealand and broke into their head office and nicked all their account ledgers, Pop round and I'll show you........................

If the reasons for that statement are not obvious to you then I suggest you go and have a big long think about it.

Stupid question...................

Though Battlefront hasn't released anything in plastic yet, they are looking at the possibility. iirc, the troops in the Market Garden Firestorm box set were created with an eye toward creating plastic infantry lines in the future.

Also, BF will be coming out with pre-molded plastic scenic infantry bases. The first ones are due out as part of the Cassino release that starts in June, and are - unsuprisingly - Italy-themed.

A shame they're not looking into finding a way to charge less than £7.50 for an armoured car. If they don't pull their finger out whole swathes of their ranges will become obsolete. I wonder what their sales of Soviet infantry and T-34s are like right now.

I think now that they missed a trick when they only made the accessories for SdKfz251s and Shermans plastic. Battlefront are behind the curve right now and scenic bases are so not the solution.

Agreed. And I don't see them rushing to correct the mistake either. Firestorm? How long ago was that? Every range after that hasn't even had a whiff of plastic and there's been loads. The simple answer is that Evan does not have the expertise to work with plastic and that Battlefront are so arrogant they believe they cant be effected.

Lots of people on the BF site bang on about BF's range and how your never going to have that range in plastic, but the point is the competition don't need to have a huge range, they just need to sell the stuff BF make most of their money on i.e T34s, Sherman's, Pz1Vs, Tigers, Panthers and Trucks/Halftracks to do the damage to BF's sales.

Exactly. The same thing that happed to the soviet range it about to hit the German range when Plastic Soldier release their Panzer IVs and late war German Grenadiers. I've always passed Panzer IVs over for StuGs in the past biut I think there's a good chance I'll be picking up some Plastic Soldier Panzer IVs.

They aren't the only ones. Peter Pig is a dab hand at missing a trick as well. Getting thePeter Pig range to make a good deal more money than it does would be so simple for him. It's quite frustrating at times.

While I am a big fan of most of the battlefront range, the plastic sprue for SdKfz251 is awful. Bad detail, bad moulding and rigid plastic that is a pain to clean.

Following up on my previous post, the plastic soldier panzer ivs have a couple of points where they did not scale down to 15mm as nicely as the T-34s did, namely the front track links have an ugly gap, and the front armour plate needs very careful cleaning or there will be a strange overlap/underlap. While they are still really nice if you dont mind cleaning those bits up, I would certainly recommending looking at them in person first.before taking the plunge The T34s are fantastic though at least

It also comes with one glacis plate. Does anyone know if it is modeled to be an 'F2'/G' type or the thicker 'H' type?

If they're the earlier ones I may have to modify mine slightly with plasticard.

BF are confusing "making a period/scale popular" with "Being the only one who does that period/scale." Its a variation on the age old GW belief that because they popularised war-gaming, they ARE wargaming. And slowly but surely reality creeps in.

Plastic scenic bases? How utterly un-engaging and dull. There is a good reason that the only thing that Maesltrom have left in droves after the big BF stock-sale is decorative bases...

Agreed again. Who buys bases when they can buy Tanks? lol

Also "Cassino"... BF are starting to remind me of a child told to do something they don't want to. "Oh, Ok, but I just have to do this thing first. And this other thing. And I need to do this other thing too, but when I do that, I can do the thing you want me to do." There is a whole theater of war utterly untouched by BF (The Pacific/Burma) they could be doing, releasing a whole raft of new and previously undone troops (!4th Army/Gurkhas/US Marines) whilst pushing ranges they already do as well, (Aussies/New Zealanders/Early War British Armour.) and a whole new faction on top of that. (Japan.) They even LIVE in the middle of the damn theater. They could even do this stuff in plastic. It could be their big "plastic release". But instead they do a book for a single battle in a campaign involving troops and lists that they already covered in North Africa (!?!) and equipment they already sell.

And some bases.

Plastic PZIV are the future, and BF apparently don't even want to BE in it.

Postscript: Why is the Italy stuff even IN "North Africa"? Everything about that is wrong, especially ignoring all the activity that went on BEFORE the Germans got there.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:BF are confusing "making a period/scale popular" with "Being the only one who does that period/scale." Its a variation on the age old GW belief that because they popularised war-gaming, they ARE wargaming. And slowly but surely reality creeps in.

Plastic scenic bases? How utterly un-engaging and dull. There is a good reason that the only thing that Maesltrom have left in droves after the big BF stock-sale is decorative bases...

That is absolutely it, IMO.

20mm was always the scale for modern skirmish because heaps of vehicle and aeroplane kits were already on the market. Airfix and other companies did soft plastic 1/72 scale infantry, but a lot of wargamers preferred metal because it paints up nicer and stands up better on the table.

Flames of War seems to have got launched off the back of 40K and Saving Private Ryan. The film put WW2 back in people's minds, and the FoW rule mechanics are fairly similar to 40K, so there was a player base who found it easy to transfer..

Doing the game in 15mm was a good idea for BF because it made them the official supplier of the official models, but of course there is nothing to stop other companies from competing directly.

In fairness to Battlefront they were making 15mm resin and metal hybrid models before they released Flames of War. I have one of their pre-Flames of War Bergepanzer IIIs

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Also "Cassino"... BF are starting to remind me of a child told to do something they don't want to. "Oh, Ok, but I just have to do this thing first. And this other thing. And I need to do this other thing too, but when I do that, I can do the thing you want me to do." There is a whole theater of war utterly untouched by BF (The Pacific/Burma) they could be doing, releasing a whole raft of new and previously undone troops (!4th Army/Gurkhas/US Marines) whilst pushing ranges they already do as well, (Aussies/New Zealanders/Early War British Armour.) and a whole new faction on top of that. (Japan.) They even LIVE in the middle of the damn theater. They could even do this stuff in plastic. It could be their big "plastic release". But instead they do a book for a single battle in a campaign involving troops and lists that they already covered in North Africa (!?!) and equipment they already sell.

You need to look at things properly.

There are LOTS of theaters in Europe that haven't been touched yet. Soviet fans keep getting annoyed at how much of the Eastern Front has so far been essentially ignored (the only Late War exposure so far has been Bagration and a *very* brief look at the Siege of Budapest). There was a lot of stuff that happened in Italy, and there are a lot of players who were complaining about the fact that the initial schedule skipped it - which is why BF basically changed their plans to add books focusing on Anzio and Cassino.

Further, the release schedule simply can't accomodate an entire new front at this point in time without dropping lots of planned product. BF *still* hasn't finished releasing Bliztkrieg figures (BF has released new figures every month since the book came out - excepting this month - but there's a lot of French and British stuff still due out next month), and we're going to see something similar when the EW Africa book comes out this year and Barbarossa is released next year. The schedule is so overloaded right now that the Bulge release (which will *finally* add some post-Normandy lists for the US) had to be postponed for a year (the first book was originally slated for late 2010).

The only "fat" on their release schedule is the Vietnam stuff - and that's pretty light. It barely scratches the surface of that war, and the only new figures in the release this month are the US ground vehicles (as everything else is from the WI offer a while back). Cutting it would have added a little room to the release schedule... but not much.


Also, Cassino is NOT a rerelease of Africa stuff. The North Africa campaign ended in the MW period (and the book covering both Africa and the early Italian campaign are both for that time period). Cassino is LW (as was 'Dogs and Devils').



Getting back to complaints about the lack of Pacific books...

The Pacific isn't happening until Early War is done - at the earliest. The Early War releases simply contain too much product to make a proper Pacific release feasible. It's not just rules and lists that need to be released. Figures also need to be created - and unlike companies that only make miniatures, Battlefront doesn't have the luxury of only focusing on the popular figures like Panzer IVs and T-34s.

Eumerin wrote: It barely scratches the surface of that war

Dont you mean barely gives any historical forces...

A great deal of the EW stuff is interchangeable between theaters. An even greater deal of what would be needed to do a Pacific release already exists as well (as I pointed out.)

Would it have been so complicated to release an "Italy" book, instead of splitting Italian campaigners lists between two different (big and expensive) or more books? And yes, Cassino is just going over more of the same ground, because BF already DO everything that turned up anywhere near Cassino.

And if they have time to do a Vietnam spinoff, they could easily be doing other things as well. They have been happily RE-releasing books with mild layout changes or in new bindings, and meanwhile all those people who could have been buying BF Pacific gear are shopping elsewhere.

Anywho, my point is that if BF want to do a plastic release, they could do worse than follow the GW pattern of going "BOOM, NEW PLASTIC STUFF, and here, a new ruleset and theater and everything shiny tacked on." But no...its decorative bases...