RedBox v Ral Partha, British Colonial

RedBox is a new manufacturer which is offering a growing range of sets with an Asian flavour. This includes several sets from the late Victorian era: besides their two boxes for colonial India, they have an extensive range of Boxer rebellion forces in release. At this stage, though, RedBox is not offering sculpts with the same quality as their competitors. Instead they look like some of the earliest Airfix sets, and come with more flash than Airfix ever did.


This picture compares several RedBox figures with the Ral Partha bugler. It is clear that the RPH trooper is much larger than the plastic soldiers.

RedBox site

Ral Partha v Esci / Italeri, British Colonial

Until the last couple of years, the only source for a plastic British colonial army was Esci. Esci released two boxes of British troops - the first was supposed to be for the Zulu war, while the second was a slight modification (including some Indian troops) to serve on the Northwest frontier. The first box was also reissued more recently by Italeri.


As the image below shows, the Ral Partha figures are substantially larger than their plastic brethren. The use of fairly thick bases allows the Esci soldiers to come up to a comparable height, but does not really create an illusion of similar size.

The Ral Partha figures, and the Esci troops on green bases were not painted by me - they came in a lot that I bought from Chuck Turnitsa. His blog is here: http://chuckgame.blogspot.com/

RP and Waterloo 1815 British Colonial

Waterloo 1815 is a fairly new company in the plastic soldier world, which has significantly increased the range of Italian subjects available. They also produce a couple of boxes on the Sudan campaign, including a box for the Anglo-Egyptian army (which includes the white figures in the photo).

As you can see, the Ral Partha sculpt is only a little taller than the plastic figures. While he would look a bit funny popping up in the middle of a unit, a full unit of RPH would not look far out of place beside a unit of W1815.

Of course, since the only W1815 figures to go into a British army at this time are the ones shown here, few wargamers would use them for a purely British force. But the inclusion of the Egyptian and Sudanese troops from the box does allow one to field an interesting command.

One final note: the officer on the left of the picture seems to be wearing an odd helmet. That is actually my fault, as I trimmed the figure from the sprue at a poor angle. Luckily, the box comes with many more officers than I really need!

Ral Partha Historicals - Colonial

Ral Partha Historicals (RPH) have been around since the 1980s. They are typically described as "True 25mm" which means they are much smaller than the "28mm" figures released today. As plastic figures have grown from the early Airfix range to today's 23-24mm figures, RPH seem increasingly interesting as a potential source for supplementary figures.

I first want to start with RPH's colonial British infantry. Today's picture lines up a single RPH figure with some of the other ranges available for this conflict. (I will provide more detailed comparisons in the next few posts.)

The RPH figure is the unpainted metal one, third from the right. In order from left to right, the other figures are:

• Esci: the figure is used in both "Indian War Kiber Pass British Infantry" and "Zulu War British Infantry Soldiers"
• RedBox: from "Colonial British Army 1890"
• Jacklex: a metal range which I will also discuss in this blog (currently half painted)
• (the RHP figure)
• Waterloo 1815 - from "Anglo-Egyptian Army" (last 2 figures)

Welcome

Welcome to the Plastic Pelisse. Since this is the first post, I suppose I should try to explain what I am doing here.

I have been gaming with 1/72 plastic figures for many years now. I started when I was a child, because they were cheap and available. As I got older, I never saw any reason to change.

However, there always seemed to be gaps in the armies that I could build in plastic. Flipping through the pages of wargames magazines, I saw that various metal manufacturers were making 20mm figures, which would help me fill the gaps. The first 20mm metal figures I ordered were produced by Jack Scruby, and they have been followed by small orders from a whole range of companies.

The biggest problem I have with ordering 20mm figures, is that I usually do it "blind." Even today, most manufacturers in this scale do not provide pictures of all their figures. And even if pictures are provided, I can really only see if they are compatible with my plastic troops when I have them in my hand.

What I really needed was a website that hosts pictures of sample 20mm figures posed with corresponding plastics.

Of course this doesn't exist (or if it does, I don't know of it), and I am not about to put up a full database of images like that. However, a blog does offer the chance to construct something incrementally.

Therefore, this blog is currently intended to build up a collection of images which will allow plastic wargames to preview the 20mm ranges available, and get a sense of how they would fit in with existing plastic armies.