I would think that the majority of you by now will have seen or heard the announcement of Warlord Games new ‘Epic’ scale ACW their journey into plastic small scale figures to provide a variant for playing Black Powder games.
Two things seem to have upset a number of gamers. The first is the size of the figures 13.5mm from top of base to eye ( 15mm to top of head) the second is the size of the bases 60mmx20mm on top of that there are then the moaners who want more variety of position, uniform etc etc.
To be honest I’ve grown quite tired of the moaners and skip over, my usual thinking is if you don’t like it move on, why they need to go on a rant and try and drive their negativity home because it’s not what they want defeats me.
I’m not a fan of Warlord Games but some of their stuff is good and they have brought people into historical gaming. This foray into small scale gaming in plastic I feel should be applauded.
John Stallard does a Q and A on you tube about this and I guess the bottom line is it’s his project and he can do what he wants and if it doesn’t sell there will be no more and if it does there are hints about Napoleonic and Ancients! Bearing in mind the Warlord shopping cart ‘broke’ due to demand on day 1then initial demand seems high.
Anyway you get a free sprue with Wargmes Illustrated and of course the butterfly in me couldn’t resist
There are 10 strips of infantry ( 100 figures) a mounted Officer and an artillery piece with crew on each frame- it’s taken me around 9 hours to paint this little lot, they’re more detailed than I anticipated and I think I could knock quite a bit of time off if I wasn’t so finicky on painting all the detail and if I used more washes ( contrast paints possibly) overall I’m quite pleased.
The cost works out somewhere between 3p-4p per figure. In many ways 15mm figure manufacturers should be quite pleased they're not more compatible otherwise I think these chaps would pose a serious threat. Something I think the moaners overlook.
My local store is selling the starter sets for £72 that’s 2400 infantry, 24 artillery pieces and 24 officers and for those that don’t want to paint then they come in blue and grey plastic ( sacrilege ) Personally I hope this system works for Warlord. The units look impressive and if it was Napoleonic it would be awesome.
Finally I mentioned gamers moaning about bases sizes, most of the rules I play use bases, I would just count one of these as two that way ground scale isn’t affected but of course some people don’t want to do that!
Have a Happy New Year, keep safe and hopefully see/hear from most of you in 2021.
