Post
by tbarkowski » Tue Dec 11, 2012 7:17 am
I am really a huge 10mm wargaming proponent. Started in 2007 as I had moved to a location where there were only 4 war gamers locally and to get to the next closest addict required 4.5 hours of travel half of which by boat!
I came from an area rife with gamers. We all painted units and they went on the table and only a few gamers had enough to game with their figures exclusively. We games 28mm, 20mm, 15mm every period imaginable but mostly 28s.
My 10 battalions of English WSS troops now meant nothing. I decided to give 10s a shot. I bought a few bags of WSS both of Pendraken and Old Glory. They both painted nicely and very quickly.
I bought a ton of them. WSS, Ancients, WW2, FPW, 2nd boer War, WW1, AWI and more if I think about it more. I could paint full armies, both sides, do them fast and game with or without the other 3 guys getting excited enough to paint the period or not.
I have 10s of thousands, mostly Pendraken. By and large I love MOST of the lines they do. however you must realize a couple of things. They make figures for damn near EVERY and ANY period you can imagine and if they don't, they soon will. Given that, they employ several sculptors accomplish this. They make lines that just blow me away with the sculpting detail, pose variation and animation and others range from ho hum and uninspired (mostly older ranges) to terribly frustrating for me to paint to my satisfaction.
IMHO you simply can't say Pendraken is good or bad. There are lines that get rave reviews and I simply can't stand painting them, others that I can crank out up to 45 figures an hour that please me to no end.
There AWI range is most certainly the later in my books. These don't paint quite at that rate for me but the detail is amazing. Who's the sculptor? Clibinarium, the same dude that does Barry's Glorious Revolution 28s. He is quite simply my favorite sculptor at this time.
Pendraken LOA figures are two different lines. The old line is ho hum to me. The new line? Well guess who sculpted it? Yup....Clibinarium and although I have just a few of them they are fantastic.
The reason I've only bought a few is quite simple. I still do paint 28s. I just have to be a lot more selective about what I pick to paint, as I need to own the whole shooting match with my projects now and that means big bucks in making that commitment and lots of bench time to boot when I go in that direction.
So when I learned that he was doing the Wargames Miniature line, I decided to sell my house and buy Barry's line to build 25-30 battalions and 40-50 squadrons for each side.
If I would have decided to keep my house, I would have bought Clibs 10mm LOA without question.
A word of caution though. If you haven't painted 10s en masse before try doing a 100 or so first. They require a completely different painting strategy and style than 28s and some people either never get it or can't enjoy the work. To me 28mm is art while 10mm is manufacturing. I can get zen painting either yet I need to employ a different a mindset for each.
Cheers,
Tim
Tim