Thursday 18 August 2016

New school? Old school?

Having said in my last post that I was definitely going to go with Newline Designs as the figures of choice for this project I’ve had a bit of a wobble. One of the problems I have with Newline is that although the Boer figures are absolutely superb the British ones are a bit disappointing being noticeably smaller than the Boers and less animated. Also, rather crucially, they don’t do any Highlanders and I really wanted to include these in the OOB of my British force.

So I decided to put in an order for sample figures from the Jacklex range just to see if I could maybe convince myself to go old school once again. The Jacklex range is comprehensive and does indeed contain Highlanders but the figures are quite simplistic and I need to see some in the flesh to help me make up my mind (I do have some Zulus and I’m not too keen). In many ways an old school approach may be better for the sort of games I had in mind and may also make the task of painting easier.

While I wait for the samples to arrive I thought I’d paint up a few more of the Newline Design figures. The picture shows one of the mounted Boers in their range getting ready for the brush – you can see why I have been drawn towards them, truly brilliant little works of art.

4 comments:

  1. The Jacklex figures are easier to paint and have a real Old School charm. The newer figures do have to be cleaned up a lot however-I try and grab "vintage" Jacklex wherever possible.

    Shame the Newline British are not up to scratch because those Boers are marvelous.

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    1. I'll have to see what I make of the Jacklex figures when they arrive. Good idea about finding vintage figures if I go that route, hey haven't I done something like that before? Shame the HH colonial range is so small!

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  2. I thnk Raventhorpe do a 1 pdr pom pom.
    My forces are made of Jacklex and Phoenix which mix together very well, though the Phoenix are a little wooden, but have more detail on them than the Jacklex. One of the decisions that has to be made with Colonials is what scale of action you wish to represent. Are you representing a multi battalion battle aganst the Boers or a smaller action with a couple of battalions, or only one, or a skirmsh with perhaps a company of Brits. and appropriate Boers. A big advantage of Jacklex is they do make British artillery and a nice maxim , though that is rather unsporting to use unless there is a restriction from deploying it like a WW1 mg.

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    1. I was intending my 'units' to be built so they could represent companies, battalions or brigades so the games could be at different levels. I like the idea of skirmish games but I want to play the big battles too. A case of cake and eat it!

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