Strelets Forum

Welcome to the Strelets Forum.
Please feel free to discuss any aspect of 1/72 scale plastic figures, not simply Strelets.
If you have any questions about our products then we will answer them here.

Strelets Forum
This Forum is Locked
Author
Comment
View Entire Thread
Re: Coming Soon!

Some French Hvy Art is great! & some Japanese art is good to see! But... starting out your ACW line with 5 sets of troops with their guns on their shoulder is not raising my flag pole!

Re: Coming Soon!

Bert
Some French Hvy Art is great! & some Japanese art is good to see! But... starting out your ACW line with 5 sets of troops with their guns on their shoulder is not raising my flag pole!


I agree, marching and standing have never been done before as standalone sets, but at least one set could have been rushing/charging, especially the ones titled "in attack" and "charge"!

OT I wonder if the masters for the marching in frock coats could be converted to sack coats, thus making a sack coat set easily produced..

Re: Coming Soon!

I agree too. The marching acw sets are sufficient enough, we need ACTION figures not models. I won't buy any sets with them standing around, I have enough troops on guard duty! firing poses and charging forward is what we need please!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Coming Soon!

Go back a year ago or even 6 months & you would be over the moon to have the figures that are available to you now.
It is human nature to always expect more, but most manufacturers would not take the risks involved in producing one set of ACW troops never mind five at once. Strelets seem to listen to its customers more than most manufacturers so you can be sure that if the current sets are popular that you will get all that you wish for & probably more, by the time it takes for you to paint all the figures you have bought recently, and give you time to save up for all the brilliant sets that Strelets will release in about six months time as regular as clockwork unlike certain manufacturers.
What I am saying is we should be grateful to Strelets & not criticise them unduly as there recent output has been second to none.

Re: Coming Soon!

Well, I like exactly what Strelets has done with the ACW Range so far. The Union Cavalry Skirmishing is all action representing one of the Gettysburg famous events. And the two U.S. and C.S.A. advancing are representing the beginning of one of the most famous ACW actions. Anyone can buy one box or multiples. And in the tradition of the hobby, one box, one bannerman, bugler, drummer, etc. So far we've got multiple poses for each side. I'm as excited as anyone to see the more action sets, especially C.S.A. Cavalry.

Strelets is covering our ACW topic like no one has ever done before nor likely will. That's been the problem with all the other sets out there - one standing shooting pose, one kneeling shooting pose, one standing guard duty pose - boring! Very well done so far Strelets. And for me, staggering the release dates makes it much easier on the budget. This way I am getting what I want, and my family members are getting what they want, all different interests.

Re: Coming Soon!

variety is the spice of life people. While i applaud strelets for covering a subject long overdue, the simple fact is how many poses of marchers do you need?, furthermore the so called action sets are nothing more than marchers going doublequick. Unless your doing a diorama of pickets charge the rest of your life, some of us would like figures who are in a fight. The calvary set is good, but for infantry you could have a lot of other ideas for sets which would involve active fighting units. I hope strelets will take this in consideration. Troops marching have been done, lets get with fighting now....

Re: Coming Soon!

I would be inclined to agree with many of the naysayers' comments if we were speaking of a 20th Century set of figures. But I'm thinking the new sets are quite useful for the tactics of the era depicted. Much of a soldier's time back then was spent either marching from point A to point B and then waiting upon reaching point B to assault point C.

The actual action poses so popular (and I love them, too) actually were only seen at the climax of combat. When I was a kid I hated marching poses and considered them a waste of plastic. However, as I got more and more into 17th - 19th Century warfare I began to wish there were more marching poses in my ARW, Napoleonic, and ACW figure sets. After all, a column of four or even eight troops marching or advancing at ready toward the enemy isn't too impressive. Buying dozens of boxes of figures to get a decent marching or advancing column can get expensive particularly at today's prices.

Over the years I've accumulated almost too many firing poses (if such a thing be possible) - all sets have plenty of them. By providing these sets I thank Strelets for allowing me (us?) to build up large formations of troops doing the things the majority of troops did even in the midst of battle (I think of the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam where fewer than half the Northern Army was committed).

I also think the current sets have multiple uses other than Pickett's Charge. They could be used for just about every battle of the war. The Battle of Franklin comes to mind as a specific battle.

One may not want these sets as their ENTIRE armies, but I think they are great additions to armies we already have and in my armies fill a void. They are greatly welcome to me.

By the same token, I would not be surprised if Strelets didn't have some more sets up their sleeves...

I do know I had about given up on 1/72 scale figures - but as another has so appropriately posted - these recent releases have me back.

Re: Coming Soon!

ive been waiting awhile for these kind of sets,im glad they are here now.

Re: Coming Soon!

Everything that everyone here has said both pro & con marching are all valid points. I'm not a wargamer or diaramist so these sets have very little use for me. I do have the greatest faith that Strelets will make sets of men in combat! One thing I can guarantee about these sets is that they will be MUCH better than HAT's! Based on what I've seen so far. The one BIG issue with HAT's sets have been that you can get away with 4-6 poses for marchers & 4-6 poses for command BUT... you can not get away with 4-6 poses for an "In Action" set! HAT had a great idea & cheaped out on it! Matching or Command requires little... variety, but men in combat do! You need at least 2 firing, 2 loading, charging, engaged in hand to hand & many others. That is why the bulk of most sets involves men fighting! I have no doubt that Strelets will come up with some incredible "In Combat sets!" Their Union Cavalry Skirmishers have already given us a look into that & this was a set hampered by 6 mtd figured & a Streltsi Bonus Fig! The 7 dismounted poses are outstanding & perfect for Buford's defense of the fences on the Chambersburg Pike! I know that Strelets will do a much better job than HAT did on their "Action" sets, so no worries there.

Very good to hear they plan on doing some sets in greatcoats. We have a set of artillerymen & a few scattered figs from other sets. It'll be nice to have some specifically of greatcoated troops. I liked their British ones!

I'm loving that companies are starting to realize that separate command sprues are a good idea! Zvezda did it for years on both infantry & cavalry sets, but nobody else picked up on it. Caesar sort of did it by short packing some poses, technically command figs. Now Strelets & RedBox have both joined in. Very good to see!

Standing Marching Advancing

For me these sets represent what most troops would be doing most of the time on a 19th century battlefield so are welcome....


Re: Coming Soon!

it all depends on what kind of game or scene your trying to recreate.smaller actions require more fighting poses. larger maneuver games require more standing and marching figures.my own preferences go with more aggressive and fighting figures.I want to play out Pickett's Chargewhen they reach the top of the hill and have what is called the "high tide of the Confederacy".

Re: Coming Soon!

Gary W Panter
it all depends on what kind of game or scene your trying to recreate.smaller actions require more fighting poses. larger maneuver games require more standing and marching figures.my own preferences go with more aggressive and fighting figures.I want to play out Pickett's Chargewhen they reach the top of the hill and have what is called the "high tide of the Confederacy".


There's a lack of hand to hand fighting poses, like swinging clubs and stabbing, though low numbers of triangular wounds probably indicate that stabbing with bayonets, knives and swords were probably rare. Esci,Imex and Accurate had some attempts at stabbing and wielding muskets but they aren't really satisfactory. I just hope we get at least one set with "ACW troops in struggle" or something like that. Hope Strelets read this!

Anyhow, besides the standing sets Strelets have hinted that there are great coats sets coming which is all fine, but we need a set with moving and fighting figures too!

Re: Coming Soon!

Whenever I have been to reenactments there is a lot more marching around than mayhem for very wise reasons. Unless you close with the enemy which may be for a few minutes then the clubbers and stabbers are marchers or runners/chargers before the short burst of murderous madness. I am not sure whether the arguments go equally for board/table markers or dioramas concerning action poses. I have observed that wargaming has more arcane conventions than the Freemasons and of course has little to with do reality and that is OK. All games are like that so I wont guess.
When I was a child I had some of the excellent Britains ACW figures and somebody would buy me a bugler and the one loading his rifle and these were the survivors of any floor level "conflict" because to my eyes they were useless and their swoppability value was zero. I also used to collect the lurid Topps ACW bubble gum cards with titles like "wall of corpses","painful death", "dynamite victims" and lots more gruesome deaths usually involving impaling or body disintegration. I therefore wished somebody made plastic figures like this and of course nobody did and all I had were war toys which were tamed, sanitised violence. Frankly after many, many years since I can't think of any 1/72nd figures that remotely approach the violence as depicted in those 1965 bubble gum cards. The only one I can think of is Orion's Chechen rebels but they soon conformed after those first sets. Some of Strelets/Linear B Romans had also been deemed to overstep the mark.
Hand to hand fighting but no contact and nothing too vicious seems to be the figure recipe and all a bit like a junior school rendition of Macbeth. I prefer white metal figures like Massimo Costa's for action ( eg the Custer's Last Stand) as the spectacle of choreographed identical multiple figure non contact rifle clubbing doesn't do it for me. To come up with a dozen poses that look like several hundred letting fly ( but not too violent) at each other seems a tall order. I solved this as a kid with Airfix ACW figures as I just picked them up into two cupped hands and gave the a good shaking and that was a melee in my imagination and then tossed them on the table -the pity of war.