Saturday 14 November 2009

Renegade's 25mm (or 30mm) ACW






Renegade Miniature are offering some brilliantly cheap deals at the moment - 25mm metal figures for £0.49p each which is only slightly more expensive than Perry's plastics (£0.42p each). Its a long time since metal 25mm figures were this cheap and on average most metals cost at least £1 each, or in the case of Foundry, around £2 each. But you need to buy Renegade's Regiment deals and, as you will see, there is a sting in the tail.

Firstly, the figures. These are the top two photographs. Nice and crisp castings and very easy to paint. I painted this battalion in about four hours. The mouldings for the command are less crisp than the rank and file and need a little work (perhaps the moulds themselves from which the figures come are ageing) but otherwise very nice figures. I bought three "Regiments" of 24 figures but because I want four battalions of 16 I also bought a bag of the command ACW8 (see lower picture).

Therein lies the problem. Note the number of standard bearers (2), officers (4) and drummers (2) in this bag of eight figures. When you buy a Regimental bag you get 20 rank and file and four command, which I expected to be one officer, two standard bearers and a drummer. But no, you get two officers, one standard bearer and one drummer. Fine for Confederates, who normally carried only one flag, but not for the Union, who normally carried two. So I will need to find standard bearers from somewhere else.

Lastly, please look at the third picture - size comparison. Sash and Saber and Perry's look fairly similar in size but Renegade are massive. 30mm to the brow of the head. As they are probably not mixeable together, I will keep all these Renegade figures together in the same brigade.

If I was starting all over again (and I certainly am not) I would be tempted to buy all my figures from this company as these bargain prices won't be around for too long.

No comments:

Post a Comment