HI Professori, good to read. yes CW turks the figures are good and painting up okay.not as difficult as napoleonics thankfully . the three sets and command give me much thought.

so far i have 18 sets turn up.thats 72 s-r boxes by time i get 25 st903 is 100 stes.maybe the saving is in teh art work .That goves me 9 battalions of usable infantry 100 figs each.Thta sfine i happy dellighted to have so many rouskies also.doubling my rus inf collection

Again teh same cw question Artillery and cavalry.
however i fear this talked of set s-r saw guns at portsmouth /fort nelsom will just make english guns though smaller represented than teh french.so maybe no french obus 9 or 14 pdr something for the turks too please to consider.

CW Turks re helping sell those other figures .Maybe sardinian do the same ,we will see.

Andreas,
I completely agree with your assessment. I just got
my first box of Russian Peasants, a box I was really
looking forward to and man, I am VERY DISAPPOINTED!

These figures are terrible! Flat, poorly sculpted indeed!

Quality over Quantity any day!

I would have to agree with Andreas and the others on this. However surely this is about costs and making money, which much be increasingly difficult these days. The quality has gone down but also they are doing more sets on popular themes rather than filling gaps like they used to. After all, we dont NEED another set of French Cuirassiers, particularly with Zvezda and Legio products due out this year (OK I accept some people always WANT more cuirassiers!)

If Strelets stuck to completing ranges (like Crimean) and making Napoleonic, Roman and other sets that have NEVER been done by anyone else I think their sales would benefit. I wont be buying any Strelets cuirassiers until I compare them with the Zvezda and Legio sets when they appear, and probably not even then.

Pictures speak for themselves, I'm going by what i see at PSR, and there are the arm lengths on the Russian Peaseant figures.

I won't try and defend them, but the recent lowering standard seems endemic throughout the industry. Redbox, Hat, Italeri and many others have either scrimped on posses, short-cutted sculpting, mal-molded, or missed the proper scale It is troubling.

and I consider myself an art collector.

Unfortunately, I'm also an army builder and I'll just buy one box as a collector, but might have bought 2,4,6 or 8 boxes of those Russian peasants or Dacians had they been sculpted better.

The currassiers I can highly recommend though. They're nice figures.

Yes I agree, all figures are a doubley a work or art. In sculpting and in casting/molding.

Although some of the new figures give new meaning to the term "small arms", others are nice and the Vikings have a better assortment of emeies to plunder

You may consider to set up some ranks of 300-400 densely packed Strelets' Romans. The view is very impressive, almost like a painting.

the dark age figures are excelents
idem the crusades and nevsky
most of the romans are nice(i like the auxilary)
i like all the ancients cavalry(dacian too)
dacian infantry and russian levy are not the best
but napoleonic cavalryare so good for me
so dark age is the winner

Unfortunately I think the Dismounted Mongols are another poorly sculpted set with short arms, skinny waists, flat, ballet-dancer running poses (when will plastic figure makers learn that people don't run sideways with feet raised at ridiculous angles??), ring-holes that pass through the torso and thick, clunky weapons. Plus moulded-on shields for which there is no evidence for light cavalry.

Sculpters, please acquaint yourselves with basic stuff like Eadweard Muybridge's photos of animals and humans in motion and Gray's Anatomy...