Ranking British plastic infantry Worst to Best

[@briansmaller7443]

I used Victrix stovepipe shako heads on Perry British Inf bodies. The heads had so much character. I also started using 40mm frontage x 50mm depth bases for my infantry to give the bayonets more protection from fat fingers.

[@SirHector1999]

Great to see another video in this series so soon! Really appreciate your insights. Loving my dive into napoleonics and you make it a lot more fun :)

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Great to hear! Hope this series helps you out!

[@sarahofswords]

Would love to see your ranking of the plastic cavalry sets for British and French particularly for the Peninsular War.

[@SteveRussellP]

Just to let you Know some of the Regiments at Waterloo had Stovepipe shacko’s as the 28 ft Glosters and the Royal Scots as they were going to be sent overseas then rerouted to France

[@seanbissett-powell5916]

Good video ! Just a minor point... the whole thing about drummer boys is a bit of a myth. You'd find them in regimental bands (which were often civilian contractors for Home ceremonials). But the actual drummers attatched to the regiments were some of the most experienced, mature soldiers. In the French army, a drummer held equivalent rank to a corporal. They were the signalling system NCO's relied on to convey orders to the men, and needed to be some of the steadiest, best men available.

[@TPowles]

Having just purchased a peninsular centre and flank company set from Victrix (to start my first Napoleonic army) I would love to see a video on how to get the most out of these kits!

[@herzogin6600]

What I’ve always personally enjoyed about Perry is the fact that if you do 24 figures per battalion you could buy another Perry box and have a 3rd battalion. Since Perry sells separate sprues on their website you essentially get another battalion and can potentially finish a whole brigade very quickly!

[@CheckYourLeaderTV]

@@herzogin6600 yep!

[@jackOldham-ob3pf]

It is great that you started this series! it will be a good replacement for the getting started videos!

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

That's the plan! Though the getting started vids are completely finished yet!

[@ashersussex8533]

Perry has always been my favourite in terms of those box sets, and as someone who prefers the visual appeal of bases having 3 by 2 ranks of men the perry box is perfect. I also like to have my figures in the firing position and i found when building the sets that there are enough of the same parts to have 2 or 3 companies firing and a company reloading etc so that you can give the appearane of the battalion perhaps enacting platoon fire. The added bonus of the 4 riflemen is also absolutely mint and if you were to assemble a brigade with 3 boxes you'd actually have a decent little unit of rifflemen which you could then purchase their metal command centre for if you really wanted to. I suppose its also not only visual appeal but the significantly better value for purchase which I also find enticing. Nonetheless I enjoyed seeing your praises and complaints and have to agree that at times the perry miniatures are a bit fidly to put together but on the whole I find it worth it for the variety in poses.

[@jamesmaclennan4525]

There's the Wargames Atlantic 95th Rifles set as well featuring a certain Captain and his sidekicks(if you want them)

[@jonathanbirkeland1085]

Did you exclude the Wargames Atlantic Riflemen set on purpose or did you forget about it? Lol I love that it has all the bits and heads to make the cast of Sharpe’s Rifles! I think when I do eventually get into this (once I finish my American Civil War stuff) I’ll have to do Peninsular War Sharp Practice!

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

@jonathanbirkeland1085 I completely forgot about it! Tbh, I would rate it low, possibly below the flank companies from victrix. The Sharpe bits are what raises it up that high! 🤣

[@user-mc4sq3fk5d]

Welcome back! Love this series and can’t wait for the next installment. I would also enjoy ( as the guy who keeps asking you about War of 1812 figures ) seeing those Warlord Waterloo figures you painted as Americans. I won’t call it a conversion per se but welcome those sort of alternative paint jobs.

[@EdwardEast-x1j]

Been looking forward to this video! I have just received the starter boxset for the British Peninsular and have the victrix on the way!

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Victrix are great, they are the backbone of my army! Don't be disheartened, someone has to be last! Just time your time to plan before diving in!

[@johnrohde5510]

I've never been enthusiastic about representing companies - including flank companies - within the battalion. It started with Fred Vietmeyer in the USA iirc and in its current form was used in Peter Gilder's beautiful collection. I prefer to have battalions wholly of either a centre or a flank company. It makes the unit look more like an actual military unit; albeit a weak platoon rather than a battalion.

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Fair enough! I like it as it makes it look like a miniature battalion, but it's a fair point!

[@99IronDuke]

Many Napoleonic era British infantry officers, not just light companies and Rifles, used a curved sabre as a fighting sword. Officers swords were private purchases and most regulations (very often ignored in the field) only referred to the sword hilt in any case.

[@barbararice6650]

Depends on how the colonel interpreted the code of horse-guard regulations or even if he bothered and that was for station review order on campaign officers would turn up as they turned up according to their means 😕

[@kurukblackflame]

I bought the Victrix when they first came out ( at Salute on the day of release) and I was very pleased with them. Great value, very nice sculpts. A good variety of poses and options. I've had the odd bayonet break off over the years but no other problems with them being brittle. I tend to use them in more of a skirmish game context so that may be why I like them so much. Some of the other sets are a bit too repetitive for skirmish (a lot of marching figures with musket shouldered and not a whole lot else).

[@konradson]

Jojo. El Mercenario. I was speaking to his brothers a few minutes ago! Atlántica Store in Madrid, is run by El Mercenario's elder brother. There I buy my minis, both WH and historic games, as well as RPGs. El Mercenario, is editor i chief of the prestigious magazine DespertaFerro (military history in Spanish).

[@jasonkleschick2455]

I have a couple Warlord sets I group into the same brigade for Black Powder that I do like but for me they aren’t as good as Victrix. The need for flank and center with Victrix didn’t bother me since I was getting into Black Powder and knew I needed a lot of minis for the most part. If you take some math to it the ratio is easy enough to work out for center to flank company members. In the event you’d be gaming on a budget lol cause we never do that, eBay and spruce purchase sites can be useful to obtain the flank company arms to outfit your battalions. Just my opinion but I really like the price per model Victrix affords the player over what you get out of Warlord.

[@imrahilvondolamroth4205]

When i started with Napoleonics i found 2 british peninsular war starter sets. The warlord models are nice, but i despise two things about the set: the command group is ridiculously repetitive and the wings for the flank company models are seperate parts. I'd prefer to build a flank company of victrix models over those from warlord any day of the week. I have to agree that march attack is boring, I'd prefer all my models to just stand instead of walking around. And about the perry poses: You're not going to manage to get the ramrod straight down the barrel instantly, especially not when under fire!

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Haha, that's a fair point!

[@robwright5034]

Tim, I think you mentioned in a video maybe this one, that warlord cavalry is not good particularly the British, am I about to regret the 2 boxes of household and union cavalry I bought and am in the process of building.!?

[@imrahilvondolamroth4205]

for the victrix flank companies, you can do a whole battalion of fusiliers out of them, they had drummers! The 92nd were the Gordon highlanders, the HLI was the 71st if i remember correctly.

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Ah thanks! Both great points!

[@DeanMurray08]

For me the best way to go if if your buying infantry, buy mainly Perry and if you want a little bit of diversity in the ranks buy vitrix. Vitrix isn’t half as bad as they used to be and they are almost identical to perrys in scale and body parts (hands and head) and identical in size too.

[@ratelmike8825]

Finally got a chance to catch up on this video. One I was very much looking forward to. Having just completed my British Army for the Under Eagles to Glory event back in June, completely out of Victrix, my instinct was to immediately leap to their defence. But having listened to the video, Tim is very spot on with his constructive criticism on the Victrix kits. The mould lines did take a lot of time to clean up, roughly 3 months on all my battalions to get them done properly. The plastic is definitely a better hard plastic than initial issue as I had no problems with busted bayonets. One still has to be careful though. The detail around the water bottle I found to be poor, not as good as the Perry's. I certainly concur with Tim about the make up of battalions. Now fortunately I did a lot of research and certainly thanks to this channel and my growing Napoleonic library I fully knew how to build my battalions. That required quite a number of bags of both Flank and centre companies. Being excellent value for money I didn't see this as an issue but for a beginner with less knowledge and just starting in Napoleonics I think Tim has called this spot on. Now all of that being said being an experienced model builder construction I had no issues and loved the build. For me this is why I would put the Perry's set top spot as the multi part build doesn't phase me. But I will pick up a Warlords kit just to try it out as they do look great. But I'm super happy with my Victrix British Army but it did take a lot of hard work to do so. Interestingly I found the Highlanders both centre and Flank kits way better in quality then the the Peninsular sets. Way less mould lines and significantly less prep work. Now I don't want to speak too much about Artillery and Calvary Victrix .......but they are on a wholly different level. Bounce back I predict in the next video by miles!!! For me I'll.simply say...bloody phenomenal!!!. Great video again Tim.

[@1rnw792]

I somewhat recently started with napoleonics, but I went with the epic waterloo range. Would be interesting to hear you rank the different sprues, and compare them to the 28mm equivalents. I believe there are 11 sprues in total.

[@clive3490]

Warlord also include extra Swallows Nests for placing on Centre Coy figs for variety

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Yes they do

[@halfblindbear]

The Perry minis are not as bad as putting the Victrix together. I actually use a combination of all three in my units. I love how everyone forgets that the shakos changed in 1812, and many light infantry regiments kept the old shakos through Waterloo, so from 1812 forward there were probably both types of shakos seen in the British army.

[@mitchellline4242]

Could you do a vid on designing a late war "Marie Louis" French conscript army? Or even a French royalist army?

[@ZhukovsBoots]

Just wondered if you would do a video on your basing system (infantry, cavalry, irregulars, cannon, brigade officers, divisional officers etc) so it's all in one video. I know you've talked about changing sizes for your cannon bases in some videos but because all your basing stuff is spread up over lots of different videos it's awkward finding something specfic if you just want to refer to it. I can imagine it wouldn't be the most exciting thing to make but it could be useful to people wanting to follow your system (anything that means I can just have an instruction rather than having to think about things is a win in my book!).

[@georgehintze2864]

The 92nd was the Gordon Highlander and 71st Light Int.

[@zargonfuture4046]

Your comments on the early Victrix are spot on I've snipped off the bayonets and added plastic brush bristles to fix this problem and replaced any pole with brass rod. Btw anyone know where I can get thicker broom plastic bristles for pike spears?

[@e-4airman124]

thank you very much sir

[@ThunderisGaming]

Clearly the main takeaway here is that you should always paint your drummer in neon to make sure it looks as cool as possible :P

[@Luigi82932]

I very recently bought a brand called italeri in a 1:75 scale as my very first time doing this hobby because they are the only brand i can find where i live which is australia and it is just too difficult to do any detail in their uniform because they are so small and it takes ages because im hand painting them

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

They are sometimes called 20 millimeter scale too, and as you say they can be quite fiddly! If you want to see where all the detail is a quick hack is to spray them white, then paint a thin black paint (called a wash) over them. This sinks into all the recesses and shows up the detail. I love Italieri minis, t

[@Luigi82932]

@@NapoleonicWargaming ok thanks, ill try that on some of my spare ones. I think i got the french line infantry pack of 48

[@nickwake5484]

Painted my Brits up onver Lockdown and had no problem with Vitrix. All grey polystyrene, no noticable issues with flash. I made 2 battlions from each box (24 in each for Black Powder). My biggest issue was the lack of clear instruction in the boxes i had but i had that sorted well enought half way through the first box. Likes the Highlander so much i think i can field most Scots Regts. Warlords plastic starter battalions were worst for me. The shouldered arms/marching pose had terrible blank sections. Not a fan. Perry were nice enough. Think i had to change all the banner poles out for something longer (brass rod). allot of the leftovers ended up as skirmishers.

[@Pvt.FortWayne]

The highland light infantry was the 71st Glasgow Highlanders

[@karlsilcock8727]

You could get away with using peninsula infantry for the Waterloo campaign as many units hadn't had their shakos replaced with the new belgic pattern shako

[@barbararice6650]

There are photographs of a British Napoleonic army in the field during their Crimean war 😑

[@websterlf]

I think Wargames Atlantic do a plastic box of British riflemen too.

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Ah shit, they do! I'd completely forgotten about them...luckily for Wargames Atlantic :D

[@ForlornHobbies]

@@NapoleonicWargamingI was literally talking to you about them a few days ago! 😂

[@CheckYourLeaderTV]

@@websterlf they are terrible. Which is odd because their Prussians are quite nice

[@carlosibanezdiez7865]

1 Perry 2Victrix 3 Warlord

[@barbararice6650]

March attack is having the muskets at the advanced position not shouldered 😕

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

It's definitely not I'm afraid. I think you're thinking of porte arms. Here's an example of minis in march attack www.perry-miniatures.com/product/fn11-voltigeurs-grenadiers-march-attack/

[@barbararice6650]

@@NapoleonicWargaming It's just marching or else march attack is indistinguishable from march and don't attack posture wise 😑 I think the point is on further consideration, the state of the weapon and not where it's pointed, marching to the attack just means you haven't plugged up the barrel or wrapped anything round the lock, but marching in a state to engage with the enemy 😕

[@donaldsettle990]

Am I the only person still using testors liquid plastic cement with the small brush applicator. Just asking 😅

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Hahaha, the og! I don't use it anymore, but i would if i saw it!

[@CheckYourLeaderTV]

No way! Perry are way way superior to warlord. Not even close.

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

@@CheckYourLeaderTV what is it you prefer about them?

[@CheckYourLeaderTV]

@@NapoleonicWargaming Perry sculpts are crisp and highly detailed and anatomically sound. I really like the natural poses and the variety of poses. You can even produce a diorama effect with one soldier handing a cartridge to another. The unit looks like a firing line. Riflemen are handy additions for building a skirmish line. The fact you can buy metal command pacts to create addition battalions if you prefer 24 figure units is handy. By contrast the Warlord Games miniatures are dull and look a bit cartoonish to me. But that’s a totally subjective criticism I’ll admit. And I think box for box the Perry’s are less expensive. $44 USD for 24 figures as opposed to $27.31 for 40 figures is a no-brainer!!! That’s box for box. Being in Australia I don’t pay VAT with the Perry’s but Warlord still charge it. Oh, and the Perry range is much bigger with much nicer sculpts. All things considered the Perry’s are a better option imho.😎😆😃

[@skipsmoyer4574]

I think 1/72 are fantastic and advise new gamers to go that route but I have 15/18mm so plastic does me no good.

[@bigbake132]

Exactly! I have no idea why people get into 28mm, even for skirmish, 1/72 can still be done. 28mm is WAY overpriced. 1/72 scale for the win.

[@ZhukovsBoots]

@@bigbake132 I struggle enough to do a decent paint job in 28mm I can't imagine how badly I would mess up the details on smaller scales! Might try smaller for English civil war or for Romans where the uniforms are simpler than Napoleonics though.

[@BobBob-ie6oi]

1/72 is the scale of the devil. It is cheap, but whenever I see dodgy models with bad paintjobs, they are 20mm.

[@bigbake132]

@@BobBob-ie6oi Because they were many people's first models, probably painted back in the 70's, 80's as well. There are tons of examples of great 1/72 paint jobs.

[@emceedoctorb3022]

@@ZhukovsBoots The smaller you get the more you can get in to the 3 feet rule. The level of detail isn't anywhere near what it is on 28mm. I know, I've spent the last year painting up 15mm British WW2 and Warlord's Epic scale Napoleonics after having previously been pretty much exclusively 28mm, mostly GW. I've banged out nearly 200 pts worth of FoW British in just over 2 months and I found them really quick and easy to paint. I won't win Golden Daemon but on the table from a gaming distance they look more than good enough.

[@bigbake132]

*For 28mm

[@andreaspersson5639]

I can't help but think you're thinking too poorly of the Victrix "system". Mine came in normal wargaming plastic, so they've fixed that, with reasonable amount fo flash, and still with flags (of course, as soon as you start in this hobby, it seems like you want flags not in the kits anyway, so not sure how big a deal that really is). Also, while they're not perhaps great if you only buy one kit, but if you want 2-3 units (or more), grabbing one bag of each of Center and Flank companies should have you mostly good to go (I might need to count the arms before I promise something). As for Warlord, well... (almsot) everything you counted as positives for Warlord, I count as negatives, but I happen to be someone who *likes* to hobby in my hobby. I understand this puts me in a minority. Warlord's about fit for the bin. And that's before looking at the commands (I haven't actually looked at those). Perry for the win, Victrix second (they're really one system, so one place) and Warlord nowhere to be found.

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

All fair points, though I think you're a little harsh with Warlord. Still, that's what allows so many different companies to succeed in this rather niche hobby!

[@andreaspersson5639]

@@NapoleonicWargaming oh, yes. The breath of options are kind of amazing

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Realistically they're all great, As I say, I've got A LOT of Victrix, bit someone had to be last!

[@WarmasterDeath]

a thing i love about the perry's is you dont need to pissfart about with a drill to get the banners happening (my warlord russians are white metal, so i ended up loosing the bloody bannerpoles by the time i found where id put me little drill!) which has left my perry plastic russians as the only banner carrying boys in my army so far!

[@NapoleonicWargaming]

Haha, that is true! I'd forgotten that pain!

[@brianford8493]

love the insanity of this chap✌️