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| Airfix Robin Hood figures, as shown on Plastic Soldier Review |
I've never had many miniatures, although I will (soon?) be getting a large batch of them from the Reaper Bones Kickstarter. Recently I was looking for some cheaper plastic figures for my kids to play with, and I was surprised to see that the Airfix Robin Hood sets mentioned by Gygax in Chainmail in 1971 are still available new. On page 8, he wrote:
"The LGTSA Medieval Minatures Rules ... may be used equally well with any scale -- including the inexpensive Airfix "Robin Hood" and "Sherriff of Nottingham" 25mm plastic figures."
Apparently these sets were reissued a few years ago, and thus can still be purchased new on Amazon or Ebay for $10 or less. The figures are the same although the color of the plastic may be different.
From the reviews on Amazon I think these figures will be too fragile for the kids, so I ended up ordering a set of larger (60 mm) Jecsan Crusader Knights off Ebay. Though I'm still tempted to get a set of the cheap Airfix figures to join the forthcoming Bones minis.
Some folks paint the Airfix figures in elaborate fashion:
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| The same Robin Hood set shown above, but painted by Ratch as posted here |
Update:
I remembered that Gygax also wrote in a 1972 article, "Fantasy Battles", about using the Airfix Robin Hood figures as Hobbits vs 40 mm Elastolin figures.
Congrats on getting into the miniatures aspect of gaming. Just be aware that your 1/72 Airfix figures will be noticeably smaller than your Reaper minis (25mm true scale vs. 28-32mm heroic scale).
ReplyDeleteThanks for that info, which I was wondering about; it's one thing that's kept me from buying the Airfix so far.
ReplyDeleteI was just looking at Holmes' book, and he wrote: "Most wargame figures and consequently, most fantasy figures, are in the 25 mm (1 inch) size, although different manufacturers seem to have rather different rulers for measuring the height of their product".
And I take it since then there's been even more creep into larger 28-32 mm sizes? I have some plastic TSR minis from an early 90s basic set, and they are definitely in the high end of this range.
Yeah, there's been a lot of scale creep over the years. This post on my blog has photos of a couple of newer Reaper minis mixed in with some older fantasy and historical figures from the 1980s; the latter are much smaller than the former.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I had a box of the originals, like way back in the 1970's. The figures are really more like 20mm than 25mm. They're fine for kids because the plastic bends. I had a lot of the Airfix sets as a kid and we played with them outdoors all the time and everything. I advise against putting much time into painting them because the soft plastic bends and then the paint cracks and falls off, especially on weapons and ankles. The site Plastic Soldier Review has lots of other sets from various manufacturers suitable for D&D type gaming. www.plasticsoldierreview.com.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, which I will keep in mind. That Plastic Soldier Reviewwebsite is fantastic. I've added their RSS feed of updates to my blogger list.
Delete1/72 can get pretty addictive. During a lull in RPGing, I got into wargaming again and ended up with dozens of armies in 1/72. (I focused on DBA and HOTT as they need only 50 or so minis for an army.) The great thing about 1/72s now is the immense variety of figures, and they are so affordable. It's also pretty easy to convert them, and you don't feel bad if you 'ruin' a few as they are so cheap.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding was also that 1/72 = 20mm, but 20*72 = 1440mm which is a little short even for pre-modern guys, so 25mm is more like it. The Reaper gnolls I got recently are particularly bad, more like ogre-size even compared to Reaper humans. I wish I still had my Grenadier gnolls to show the massive difference.
ReplyDeleteI've got the Airfix Robin Hood set, and some similarly sized Caesar "Adventurers." Here's a post I made on Dragonsfoot comparing the Caasar figures to some TSR and Reaper minis.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=31636&hilit=caesar&start=30#p799736
Thanks for the link, Gwydion. For ease in viewing, here it is embedded: Caesar Plastic 25 mm Figures - Discussion on DF
DeleteThe "basic set" minis I referred to above are from TSR's First Quest set, and are identical sculpts to the Dragonstrike minis you show in your photos. So now I have a good idea of exactly how small the Airfix and Caesar minis are compared to the TSR and Reaper "heroic" scale minis. Seems like the Airfix might best be used as Hobbits if combining with the Reapers - similar to what Gygax did with Elastolin figures way back in the day!