Hey all,
I'm new to this forum, so please bear with me. Anyway I just orederd the Custer at The Little Big Horn figure. I love the pose and that it's historically accurate. And I'm a Little Big Horn junkie. Is there anyone else on here that would like to see more figures for this battle? Especially in resin/plastic?
Travis
I think that's a great idea. WGA Digital just announced today that they're coming out with stls for the Lakota, soon.
@Travis Gibson AFAIK no one does plastic plains Indians. (Once apon a time, in a previous millenia, Airfix did 20mm ones [1] - a lot of which ended up being converted to Ancient Brit or Hyborean cavalry under old school ancient rules [2]).
Boxes of 28mm US cavalry & plains Indians inspired by those old figures may be viable. As the Airfix originals, have both mounted & unmounted figures in the box.
I'd suggest using the stock horse sprue for both, say 6 beasts for both, have 2-3 split figures (as with the Rifles), lower torso mounted and standing plus saddles and as many extra standing figs as would fit on a sprue with 3-2 sprues per box. Done cleverly, both boxes would become a goldmine for kitbashing (as were the airfix originals). Also make the US cav scale compatible with the Perry ACW range.
Even consider a 28mm Airfix Wagon Train inspired plastic Box ?
Forts, civilians, chiefs, scouts and misguided senior officers are all potential for 3d printing.
[1] Airfix Wild West
For early yrs after ACW, Perry's US Cavalry should be good, remember that the US Army, after the war, was not only downsized, but also (criminally) neglected and under funded. So the army had to rely on old uniforms and weapons, the infantry massacred with Fetterman had yet the old muzzle loading rifles(!), when there was plenty of breech loaders in the warehouses ! Don't know if someone will ever do US Cavalry in plastic, there are some good ones either in metal (Artizan Design) and resin (Black Scorpion minis). Some conversions could be possible, given that most soldiers had to be creative for chronical lack of supplies, a single uniform's set was issued for year, to every soldier, so it wasn't uncommon see soldiers with civilians jackets and similar.
@Alessio De Carolis The US plains Cavalry idea would be an addition to those ~20 year old Perry US Cav plastics.
If sculpted with the dishevelled look of the above prints, the two would would compliment each other and be a kitbashers dream. I have mixed Perry US Cav arms and heads with Warlord French Chasseur torsos to create an alternate US ACW unit.
@Dennis Horne Effectively US Army bought a lot of french chasseurs' uniforms, early in the war, but must were too tight for the standard size of US soldier. Pratically most US' citizens were bigger than their french counterpart!😆
The Perry Cavalry are pretty adaptable. I turned some into late century British lancers using loose pith helmets from the old old Wargames Factory Zulu War British. You get three guidon poles in a box, so those became troopers with lances; one bugler, two officers with swords or pistols.
Main conversion was removing the sabres from the rider legs and attaching it to the saddle. Turning the civil war era carbines into credible british ones was just a matter of adding putty to make the carbine bucket.
@Dennis Horne Nah, anything Historical or original Fantasy done by WA should be in scale and compatible with WA's other historical and original Fantasy stuff first and foremost (which if the Perry Zouaves I have been giving WA WW2 French guns to are anything to go by will be close enough to Perry ACW for most people😉). Also maybe done with plans to do other wild west sets, The DEAD MAN'S HAND gun slinger sets out there besides being chunky heroic leave some things to be desired (for starters where are the pepper box pistols? No riders? 😆).
Just saw that a whole range of Little Big Horn (70+ figures) in metal, sculpted by Paul Hicks, is coming to Kickstarter this month! If it's of interest to anyone:
https://www.beastsofwar.com/news/brigade-games-little-bighorn-kickstarter/
I like the Dead Man's Hand sets for what they are, but they really do have a chunky, doughy look to them, and are a bit short compared to WA's figures, I think - Dead Man's Hand figures compare closely to Oathmark, Frostgrave, and Stargrave figures. If you can live with that, I'm sure they'll be great for that sort of thing! Speaking of Frostgrave, the "Ghost Archipeligo Tribals" kit is definitely rooted more in pulp fantasy than any real-world native tribes (they don't seem to have left the Stone Age, either!), but can surely pass with a little imagination for native tribesmen from the Americas, Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, Africa, lost continents, the Hollow Earth, Victorian Mars or Venus, and elsewhere.
The Perry ACW stuff looks to me like it would absolutely be close enough for at least pulp Western cavalry, and could very likely pass for Americans in the Philippines, Cuba, China, and elsewhere in the general "Gunboat Diplomacy" era. I'd have never thought of using them for British lancers though - what a great idea!
I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple hard plastic kits out there for Native Americans - I don't recall if they were Plains tribes specifically - I seem to recall one might have been, and another might have been for Mohawks or similar tribes - but if you've got do make do with what you've got, you can do worse than to use the wrong tribes for stand-ins.
I'm all for Wargames Atlantic expanding into sets of "cowboys and injuns", frontiersmen, banditos and desperados, and so on for the Imperial Conquests range! It was a pretty busy period of history with lots of interesting history, geopolitics, and military adventuring going on, and the Wild West is surely a popular enough genre to work with....
@Yronimos Whateley There is only one Hard 28mm plastic set for Native Americans sold by Warlord, they however where for Woodland Amerindians that fought in the AWI, not very Wild West like persay.
