Brigade of Guards or Dirty Dozen?

[Guy Farrish]

The ‘Do I Really Want to Pay More…’ thread has thrown up multiple references to the ‘best’ figures.

That idea has a lot of assumptions packed into it.

Scale

Size

Historical accuracy

Style

Material

Animation

I want to focus on one of those: Animation.

When I started (Disclosure: 1972) there wasn’t much choice of any of the above, but certainly not animation.

I began in what gets lumped into ‘Horse and Musket’ these days and the positions of figures available generally speaking were:

Shooting

Marching

Advancing

March attack

You might get kneeling firing for mad enthusiasts who wanted a multi figure depth firing line.

I think Minifigs did the odd bizarre hippy figure with hat on musket being waved above head, but I didn’t know anyone who actually bought them.

We wanted figures that lined up like Soldiers in proper uniform ranks.

Airfix did not subscribe to the four pose principle.  You had to buy multiple packs to get sufficient figures in the same pose to make one unit.

And you got the rest.

Variety was fine and dandy for WWII, but for Napoleonics and AWI, boxes full of people bayoneting their foot, caught in the act of being shot, hopping on one foot with musket at the high port and prodding with spontoon led to units apparently afflicted with ergot poisoning or a mass wastage of figures.

I can embrace a variety of position and animation in the periods after the empty battlefield became a thing in the twentieth century. I can understand ancient players wanting barbarians who have not trained to the 1788 Drill Book (but Romans or Hoplites should be drilled) but the rag tag mob of drooling oafs comprising many a column and firing line from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century need a good flogging to get them up to scratch (We’ll exempt the ACW figures – colonials).

So, is the plethora of attitudes struck by model soldiers these days a boon to the artistic composition of vignette bases? Or a sign of a less organised era that values individual expression over military efficacy and good order?

Do your units look like the Dirty Dozen on a bad day after a night out ending in Cardiff’s Chip Alley? Or do they put the Brigade of Guards at Trooping the Colour to shame?

[Mike]

Guy Farrish wrote:

Do your units look like the Dirty Dozen on a bad day after a night out ending in Cardiff’s Chip Alley? Or do they put the Brigade of Guards at Trooping the Colour to shame?

Depends

😀

My Warhammer are pretty much the same uniform and the same sort of pose, I want them to look like part of a professional army doing as they are told, but with some slight variation to reflect the fact the units are raised by local lords rather than a central point.

My 6mm sci-fi had the RDF, which were the professional army, so the same uniforms but a variety of poses as I feel befits a small unit.
However the Crimson Alliance (Junkers) were insurgents and they had no uniform or drill books, they were the dirty dozen sort.

My 15mm Burning Sands was small level skirmish with no armies as such and thus no units, so whatever I liked the look of and could afford.
I bought packs of models meant for mass battles and they mostly came with a few poses, so I used just those few, I could have bought extra packs to get extra poses but that would mean a waste…

But generally as a rule of thumb, big armies very similar, skirmish games not so much.

[General Slade]

I have had many nights out that ended in Cardiff’s Chip Alley.  And I have no desire to replicate them in miniature on the wargames table.  So it’s Brigade of Guards for me.

Nice neat lines.  Parade uniforms.  All the same manufacturer. All the same pose.

And plain bases.  No flocking.  I hate, loathe and despise flocking.

 

[Ruarigh]

Guy Farrish wrote:

So, is the plethora of attitudes struck by model soldiers these days a boon to the artistic composition of vignette bases? Or a sign of a less organised era that values individual expression over military efficacy and good order? Do your units look like the Dirty Dozen on a bad day after a night out ending in Cardiff’s Chip Alley? Or do they put the Brigade of Guards at Trooping the Colour to shame?

It depends on which period I am using them for. My Vikings need to be in an orderly shieldwall. Likewise, my 18th-century figures should be in the same drill sergeant-mandated pose within a unit. For WW2 and sci-fi, I am happy to have several different poses on a base, although I do try to keep them grouped appropriately, so prone figures can be matched with kneeling ones, but not with standing, while standing figures can be matched with kneeling, and I would not group advancing figures with stationary figures, because I want my units to be doing roughly the same action.

Like Mike says, all bets are off for low level individual skirmish games though. I’ll take what I can get there and am happy to have a bunch of different poses because figures are not acting as a unit.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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[Thuseld]

I don’t play any game that requires standing in ranks, but I love variety in poses in general. However, if I played Napoleonics or some such, I would want it to feel and look as accurate as possible, so it would be small scale figure, in ranks, with as many figures as I can fit on the base.

Experiments here: http://inexperiencedmodelmaker.blogspot.co.uk/

Tranquil Stars updates: https://tranquilstars.wordpress.com

[Mike Headden]

I prefer a little variation in pose, wherever possible, in regulars and more variations in irregulars and in all post 1900 era figures.

Availability of figures is an issue. My 6mm Sumerian spearmen have clearly been drilled to the standards of the Brigade of Guards …. because there’s only one figure available.

My 10mm Pendraken WW2 Germans are a variety of poses on each base, some moving, some stationary, some standing, some kneeling, some advancing, some firing. Though no-one bayoneting moles or dancing a jig 🙂

I have no problem mixing figures of slightly different height or build from different manufacturers, people come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. Though in the smaller scales, as with the Sumerians for example, there may only be one source

Horses for courses.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

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