For me it's the 'Mounted Pretorians' set. I won't buy but one box of it, but the set has a nice commander for my Strlets' Roman Legion.

None! They are all crap!. No seriously, the best set will be the one they do that has decent scuplting, perhaps next year. Now, if we were talking about Zvezda.....

Dear Huw

The best manufacturers set the standard or norm in 1/72nd scale plastic figs as far as I am concerned as it is to do with compatibility. Caesar, Pegasus, Zvezda, etc apart from occasional scale anomalies look OK together and exude qualities of realism you don't find in white metal or other scales. That to me is the essence of collecting 1/72nd scale plastic figures. Taking care not to specify any manufacturers, as there are more than one, but figures that would not have made it into an Airfix box of 50 years ago for technical or sculpting reasons seem to be OK now or at least I get that impression.

David

I like my figures to look as real life as possible. I understand there may be those that like the style of Strelets and others figures, but I like realism. Strelets cover some interesting subjects and I would use them if they were more realistic and better produced. As you point out Airfix set a higher standard 50 years ago

I think you have to look at the way the masters are produced I cant say for sure how strelets does it, but I get the impression their 1/1 so no bigger then the final product or maybe a tad to allow for shrinkage...
pegasus masters for example are at least 6 inches tall and this can make a lot of difference to the final produce but is more expensive as well..

I would like to know more about strelets production methods but maybe its considered a secret by them...

over to you Strelets....

Cheers

Dear Ironside

I think Valdemar use 1:1 master to production model scaling and they are superb. The spetznaz masters and others by Alex (sculpts for Valdemar) on Benno's forum are certainly 1:1 as there is a mm rule and a plastic figure next to them. Lots of photos of his work on

http://photofile.ru/users/alex-san/3110308/?page=1

in Russian but easy to follow and the masters are often with a small Russian coin to give the scale size.

The first pic shows his attitude to scaling which I can't fault.

Some of Strelets sculpting is good but there seems to be a lack of discrimination or quality control as the very good and very bad often get mixed in the same set or the same series.

( I cited the RTW Winter Russians as these IMHO look smaller and more slender than some of the recent sets. In fact I have one in front of me next to a new Zvezda WWI German and they look fine together in terms of scale and proportions. Some of the Bashis have very nice detail but lack posterior bulk. I intend to get more of both these sets. The RTW Winter Turks also look good though I haven't got them yet.)

David