Miniatures Figures

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By Richard Moore

When you first start looking at taking up Napoleonic miniature wargaming you will quickly come to realise that it just isn't all about small soldiers.

Oh, no. There is a wide range of miniatures that go from 2mm to 25mm, with 15mm seeming to be one of the most popular sizes. Figures for 15mm ranges have a good balance between being detailed, without overly large or expensive to build armies from.

And just to throw even more confusion forward - 15mm don't just happen to be exactly 15mm high. Each manufacturer seems to have a different-sized measure and there is quite a difference at times between the figures.

Anyway, this newcomer has settled on oversized 15mm - after advice from people who know far more about wargaming than I do.

Here are some of the manufacturers of 15mm figures and some information about their products.

AB
Widely regarded as being the best miniature wargaming figures around. Not only are the AB figures highly detailed, they are oversized at 18mm, and you can pick from a massive range that will almost certainly include the type of unit or nationality you want.

Battle Honours
Gamers rate these figures highly and they are compatible with AB.

Eureka
Another top-of-the-range company that delivers excellent figures for wargamers. See Eureka story.

Fantassin
This Spanish company provides some very fine figures with various poses. I have some in my collection and they match their AB colleagues nicely.

Falcon
There are good reports about this British company's efforts and the quality of the figures is high.

Essex
Getting the proportions of the figures right is essential to providing top-quality miniatures. From our reading Essex figures are clean and well detailed, but can be prone to having some body parts out of proportion.

You can get Side by Side reviews and pictures of figures at the wonderfully named site Deep Fried Happy Mice.

Alan Pendlebury's excellent NapFlags site