I fancied an easy weekend. Simple and rewarding hobbying and not worrying too much about results or outcomes. For some reason that meant I pulled out some 1/72 figures and got to painting them.
Thankfully despite these guys small stature and fine details, they readily accepted me priming them with my texture goop. Which meant I could forgo the soap bath, something which for some reason often puts me off working with these guys.
As you can probably tell, I went for a realistic scheme, a long way from my usual attempts at ghosts.
Though I have a feeling this may lead to a further attempt at Ghost Legions, my game where (if you don’t remember) groups of historical figures battle each other in the afterlife. The idea essentially being of getting a full force for a game out of an Italeri/ Airfix/ Red Box/ Orion/ Hat figures.
Speaking of Italeri:
I’m aware this is somewhat preaching to the choir, but these really are underrated figures. You really can build a force for most historical periods at pocket money prices. It seems mad that these things aren’t more widely seen in more mainstream wargame spaces. Maybe it’s the hassle of giving them that soapy bath? Maybe it’s the struggle of painting those tiny, realistically proportioned details? Let me know what you think. Though I can say, if these sprues were put out in hard plastic, my bank account would suffer heavily. So maybe it’s a material thing?
Here’s some Hat El Cid Spanish Infantry:
Speaking of material, I don’t get some of Hat’s releases being in such soft plastic. Though my texture goop does go some way to firming them up.
Painting wise I’ve settled on basecoats, a wash, and then I highlight hands and faces exclusively. It gives the impression you’ve done more than you have, and gets the figures onto the table fast.
I’ve even had a little battle:
And as you can probably imagine, the Union didn’t fare so well against SMGs… who’d have thunk it?
But I did have fun. It was a comfortably quick game, clocking in at around 10 minutes (it probably would have been much faster if done for real).
The Emodels website beckons me to buy more… if only I didn’t have so many projects on the go already!
But I all seriousness, why don’t you think these kinds of figures see more use? They’re well detailed, readily available (most high streets will have them for sale somewhere), and very cheap.
They have come out pretty well.
Obviously ghosty ones aside, have you gooped all the figures? It’s not obvious on the more traditionally coloured ones. And yet the detail seems to still be there, faces and all!
Nice work.
Maybe I should dig out some of my childhood Airfix soft plastic ones. It’s the softness which has always put me off painting them.
Yep, everyone got gooped. I did apply it pretty thinly with a wet brush. One big-ish dollop (half the size of a pea), then spread it all around.
Thanks for sharing this post in particular. 1/72 or 20-25mm plastics are quite simply not wargames figures because the market says so. Even since it went plastic itself so metal heft no longer has that cache the wargaming public hobby face wants to sell you 28mm with all the marketing pizzazz inherited from the games workshop warhammer era. Frankly I amazed the soft plastic toy soldiers industry is still going but as you say it has some fine figures many running back decades. And yes Frank airfix ok hornby, have launched some more vintage sets – Romans and sheriff of Nottingham etc.
I mixed my plastics with metal newline plus lately lamented irregular miniatures and B&B miniatures.
As I play solo it matters not to me and I also get all that railway hobby stuff into the bargain.
The reality is that fashion retail applies to mainstream wargaming and is what matters and plastic toy soldiers just don’t cut it despite being ideal for table top battles.
I get the 15mm and less for the volume/visual argument but I think OO gauge railways were optimised for a 6×4 table and so the soldiers are too, a 3×2 board will always look better with 15mm while 28mm look great in magazines and at shows but for me shout skirmish on tables most of us live with.
As you said your choir is full of the converted I suspect. Talking of converted….
Finally a shout out – Paul of Paul’s bods blogspot has returned to the fray and he makes even airfix figures look like quality Wargames figures – I still don’t get how he does it even after he has explained it all!!!!
I think that assessment is pretty spot on. And now you’ve got me thinking… who is actually buying these things? It’s must be wargamers… I can’t imagine 1/72 is a particularly popular scale for dioramas? Maybe it’s a bunch of niche communities, who collectively keep sales up enough.
Oh and thanks for flagging up Paul’s Bods, I’ve never been there before!
Sadly quite a few of Paul’s photos died in photobucket land but those that remain are still admirable.
You know I reckon the gaming fraternity has always been a flattish pyramid but with a sharp point. The visible hobby is actually small ( the pointy bit) not much 1/72, but down in the pyramid I reckon there’s lots of gamers who use 1/72. They are not so visible. I also believe there are a lot of people who paint but don’t play wargames and nor do they do flashy dioramas either – seen quite a bit on Facebook like that.