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We now have 4 new companies making multipart, GW-style historical plastics. Warlord making Romans and Celts, Wargames Factory making um, slightly different Romans and Celts, the Perrys making American Civil War and someone making Napoleonics.

What's your wishlist for companies like this?

For me I have 2 ideas that are not really historical but hey... it's my thread.

1 Multipart RPG figures: D&D 4th edition (or Dragons and Underground Castles as we call here in Red China) is coming and is more miniature heavy than ever. Well when I play RPGs I know I want a figure for my character, not a generic one repurposed for my guy. If Barnibus the Barberic uses a chain and a spiked club as weapons, I don't want to use some other figure who has a sword and a spiked club! i want it to be right!

So a box of warriors (to start with) sets of legs in different poses, different stats of armor. Toros with different armor. Ball joint arms with no hands. Lots of shields and weapons with different hands. Lots of heads. Some shoulder pads. Some grubbings like packs and ropes and sheathes.

Yeah. that's what I want.

2 Moderns: while I personally have no desire to game the wars of the Middle West (as we call it here in Red China) I imagine many people would. A box of high-tech first world guys (USMC, SAS, whatever) vs. scruffy terrorists, insurgents of no particular religious denomination would appeal to the moderns crowd. AFAK only The Assault Group is doing real moderns now (especially since Mongoose killed their line of prepaints) so I can see a real market.

I would really like to see nice plastic Napoleonics (so make with finding out the name of that company for me!)

Some plastic steam punk and wild west would be really cool too. Maybe not necesarily the same line, but some really nice Isaac Asimov era type figures would be really cool to game with, sort of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/Girl Genius sort of thing.

Perrys are doing Napoleonics.

Although a keen historical gamer I do not collect 28mm any more due to reasons of the space and time needed to paint and play with the figures.

If I were, I would firstly like the Perrys to finish the ACW range with an artillery set and a wagon before they start Napoleonics.

Then I would like them not to do Napoleonics, as the number of different uniforms required to do the core of an army is too large. I don't believe it can be done in a meaningful way.

Similarly I am not convince the Ancients plastics will get much further than the most popular armies, though this is arguably enough if it cover the Greco-Perian Wars and Rome and main enemies.

I like Kid_Kyoto's idea for dungeon adventure packs.

Citadel makes an "Empire Free Company" set which has a mind-boggling number of options, especially when combined with the Mordheim accessory sprue. Of course, everyone looks like a down-on-his-luck male late-medieval German, but what do you want?

I'd like Greco-Persian wars, myself. This! Is! Sparta!!!

Some pathetic peasant pikemen would be great, too, though I guess that's more of a regiment than an army. What can I say? I just like pikemen.

id like to see a couple sets to go along with the Age of Arthur book for WAB

There's a good amount of interest in Legends of the High Seas around here, and while there are a ton of pirate minis out there, the quality varies and it would be nice to have plastic to make weapon swaps easier for groups playing a campaign in a skirmish-level game, where weapon loadout may be something you want to change from game to game.

field howizers that look nice and are compatable with 40k

Grand Preceptor wrote:There's a good amount of interest in Legends of the High Seas around here, and while there are a ton of pirate minis out there, the quality varies and it would be nice to have plastic to make weapon swaps easier for groups playing a campaign in a skirmish-level game, where weapon loadout may be something you want to change from game to game.

Mike,
Empire Militia (formerly mordheim human mercenaries) are your friend for plastic figs for PotHS.

While not really awesome models, they were made for skirmish games (mordheim) and have quite a bit of weapon options to kit out the bulk of a PotHS warband minus any key character models you may want.

Though, I am sure you already knew that.

It would be nice to have a generic human plastic sprue besides that though.

I don't think I've ever seen a decent 28mm Aztec, Mayan, Incan, or Egyptian.
I think those would be cool and handy for conversions.

Do any historical makers do 25mm tanks? I don't mean like Tamiya kits, but specifically 25mm tanks. Not crazy detailed and perfect like a model kit, but more on par with what GW tanks are like.

But the demand would be quite low mot likely, unless you could sell them to museums maybe for diaoramas. Buts thats all I can see for them.

Wehrkind wrote:Do any historical makers do 25mm tanks? I don't mean like Tamiya kits, but specifically 25mm tanks. Not crazy detailed and perfect like a model kit, but more on par with what GW tanks are like.

Not in plastic.

I think the market is too small to support a specialist item like that. 25mm is too large a scale for mass battles involving tanks.

If you want historical tanks that roughly match 25mm figures you should look at the 1/48 scale ranges from Tamiya and Hobby Boss.

Personally, primarily as a collector of minis, I'd like to see some impressive things, like siege engines, Hannibal's war elephants or barbarian war chariots. Not very economically viable, I know, but one can dream.

Man what I want is movable minis, instead of all this mving you actually tell them where to go and they do all the casualty things themselves. Oh wait, thats a video game...

WWII, and armies from all the conflicts thereafter. But I'm biased as the old man served in the Royal Marines in Borneo and I'd like to do some 28mm gaming from that period.

To echo some of what's been said, figures that would work for LOTHS, which could include pirates/privateers, 17th-cent. gentlemen/swashbucklers, royal sea crews, etc.

Likewise, Old West figures for LOTOW would also be great, and better fits what most of the plastic makers are doing, i.e. one box of each. One box of cowboys (including a sprue of mounted figs) and one box of plains Indians would pretty much do it, maybe a box of cavalry (either as 7th cav. or buffalo soldiers).

Samurai, say Toyotomi-Tokugawa period (i.e. early shogunate) would be excellent. Again, one box of Samurai (one sprue of mounted) and then another of Bushi as a 'variety pack' (spearmen, archers, some with matchlocks for later period, etc.) would work the way the Perry's sets are, i.e. paint them as either/any side of the conflict, to be supported by metals, of which there is already some variety (banner-men, unarmored samurai, ninjas, etc.)

It seems to me that Colonial period (specifically, 19th century) is a favorite one, so a box of brits and zulus (or Mahdists) would cover a lot of ground. And besides, you could use 'em for Victorian Sci-Fi!

I'd actually stay away from WWII, as my sense is that the 1/72 market has that pretty well covered. Might be wrong, though.

I'd also stay away from Nappies, unless you're going to pick a particular era and campaign, and particular opponents. As much as I would love to recreate the 95th rifles, there's so much variety and so many players that it could easily get out of hand--I mean, you know some grognard is going to call for Polish lancers, Spaniards, Austrians, Prussians, Russians, Swedes, and every French unit in every uniform under the sun.

Some other ranges that I'd buy (at least) off the top of my head:
*Vikings
*Hundred Years War (Knights! Militia! Again, generic enough to do a whole host of medieval/early renaissance stuff)
*Modern era (1980s Russian troops, US Rangers and/or Marines, Commonwealth/UN forces, Mujahadeen/Al Qaeda types).

Hellfury wrote:Mike,
Empire Militia (formerly mordheim human mercenaries) are your friend for plastic figs for PotHS.

Very true, but the problem with Empire Militia from my perspective is that they're everybody's friend. With GW being so high-visibility, there are going to be a ton of people working with them as at least a starting point for their pirates, so you can end up with a lot of similar-looking pirate crews within a given community. That's also why I'm staying away from PP's sea dogs minis (despite that guy wielding the block&tackle being fiercely tempting). We've already got RanTheCid having done both of those in our local group (although he also has a ton of other pirate minis). I've deliberately ordered figs not available locally in order to up the diversity factor as much as possible.

Grand Preceptor wrote:

Hellfury wrote:Mike,
Empire Militia (formerly mordheim human mercenaries) are your friend for plastic figs for PotHS.

Very true, but the problem with Empire Militia from my perspective is that they're everybody's friend. With GW being so high-visibility, there are going to be a ton of people working with them as at least a starting point for their pirates, so you can end up with a lot of similar-looking pirate crews within a given community. That's also why I'm staying away from PP's sea dogs minis (despite that guy wielding the block&tackle being fiercely tempting). We've already got RanTheCid having done both of those in our local group (although he also has a ton of other pirate minis). I've deliberately ordered figs not available locally in order to up the diversity factor as much as possible.

I hear ya man. Black scorpion is not so easy to get a hold of in the states and not many stores carry them. Bad part is that they are 32mm scale and just a hair taller than most figs you may find for PotHS/OW.

But I too am trying to diversify my PotHS figs so that they are "less generic" if at all possible. Sadly, the 'pirate genre' is rather limited unless you go the route of foundry figs, but those seem to be hard to acquire due to large costs by foundry for stores to stock them, and due to the rather high prices for their figs on the consumer end.

I really want to do a chinese warband. I could use the figs for both Legends of the High Seas and for Legends of the Old West due to the imperial style of dress being carried over into the early 20th century. Just add a Junk, and your good to go for both games.

Chinese dynastic forces would be fantastic, as would the suggestion for the samurai forces. Ancient Egyptian would rock, and I'd like to see Saracens as well.