Scale comparisons: Perry, Northstar, Warlord, Games Workshop, Gripping Beast

So, as I mentioned in my previous, rambling post, I have a pile of unused models to repurpose into a Border Princes themed army. I'll base the unites around the 4th and 6th editions of the Empire rulebook, with a bit of 'counts-as' action as needed.

After raiding my bitz box and mountain of partly built kits, I found I had models from the following kits to try out:

Warlord Games: 

So how do they scale up alongside eachother?

Here we have a GW plastic Bretonnian (one of the best kits they ever made, an older GW plastic halberdier, a French Agincourt foot knight by Perry, an older GW champion with a hammer, a Warlord Games Landsknecht pikeman and finally a GW mordheim/free company dude with a crutch. 

As you can see, with the Warlord and Perry miniatures retaining their foot plates, the models are quite similar heights, or are even slightly taller. I expected this as the GW heroic scale is less about height and more about girth. Which is definitely clear when comparing the width of the models. The Perry footknight is somewhat skinnier while the warlord pikeman seems almost adolescent compared to the free company trooper. 

Here the Perry footknight is alongside the GW champion and what I believe is a Northstar/ Frostgrave adventurer armed with a two handed axe. He is leaning forward while lunging so seems a bit shorter, but is somewhere between the two scales, arguably closer to the GW scale. I’ll look at this more in a later post as I’m surprised how much the scale differs between the Perry and Northstar.

Finally we have some of the same guys again, with two extras. Gw halberdier, warlord pikeman, GW empire spearman, Bretonnian halberdier, perry footknight and what is actually a Warlord Games Bolt Action Russian with arms and head from the Frostgrave adventurers kit. Out of all of them the model that I think fits in least is the Empire spearman. He just looks too chunky IMO. Good job that seeing as I just bought some more Warlord and Perry! Managing to get 144 brand new Landsknecht for under £60 was just too good an offer to miss.

Onto missile troops:

Here is a Warlord Landsknecht handgunner, old plastic Bretonnian plastic bowman, the same in metal, a Perry English man at arms bowman and a frostgrave adventurer armed with a bow. The same scale differences persist here, with Northstar once again looking a little out of place due to the squatting pose. Maybe it’s a Slavic bowman. Cheeki. I like the Landsknecht gunner v much but I’m not sold on the Perry bowman. I might re-equip him and opt for a different range for archers. Possibly fireforge. 

My hot takes from stage 1 of the scale comparisons: 

GW are the basis for the comparisons, but even they aren’t consistent between editions and iterations. One state trooper (hammer champ) is closer in scale to the Perry than the GW spearman. Why GW decided fat heads and big hands is the way to go I’ll never know. Gah. 

Warlord’s Landsknecht are stylistically similar to Empire, but are much skinnier and overall rather ‘petite’. I think I can deal with that for the price and option to get plastic boxed sets of handgunners, crossbowmen, pikemen, halberdiers, two handed swordsman and even spearmen with a little snippy snippy of the pikemen.

Perry are closer in size to Warlord’s, which comes as little surprise due to both being historical 28mm ranges made by guys who make and play miniature wargames together. I’m interested to see if the rest of the Perry miniatures are as lanky as the ones compared here. I’d rather not have to remove their footplates to make them look less lanky, so might compare others with footplates next time.

Northstar/Frostgrave guys seem kinda short and dumpy but that might just be the posing of the guys I selected. I need to do some more research!

Final thoughts: 

Will they look weird combined in one unit? Without doubt. 

Will they be usable in separate, distinct units of their own? The jury’s out on that one. I hope so. 

Will I be using historical miniatures because of the lower cost, bigger range and non-heroic scale? Well, what do you think? 

That’s it for stage 1 of the scale comparisons. Expect many more as I unearth more kits amongst the mountain of sprues! 

Back again... again! This time with WHFB Empire- kind of!

Like most fun things that get juggled during adulthood, this blog fell to the wayside as I finished uni, started work, emigrated, started a family and so on. 7 years since my last post.... but I'm back!

The madness of 2020 has given me a little time to reconnect with the hobby of my youth and so here I am yet again. Hurrah! 

And this most recent foray into miniature gaming is not the ‘Dark Ages’/ Early Medieval gaming that I was so interested in previously. I still have them all, occasionally still paint a few of them and even more rarely get to play a game with them, but for now my attention has shifted onto something from much earlier in my hobby journey: Warhammer Fantasy! But, with a twist.

Sadly, Age of Sigmar does not tick any boxes for me. I want it to; I truly wish it did, but the theming and lore (or lack thereof) is just something I cannot get into. Plus, it lacks the simple joy of having a solid block of Empire greatswords slamming into the side of your mate’s clanrats, causing you to chuckle with maniacal glee and them to reconsider their life choices.

So, with that in mind I found some *ahum* totally, definitely, absolutely legit and fully allowed *ahum* pdf copies of the old army books and rulebooks online to peruse and reaccustom myself with and before long I was decided: I must start an army! My Dwarf and Empire armies of yesteryear have mostly been sold off to fund other projects and I was left with just a ragtag assortment of minis that I'd designated as adventurers in Frostgrave (great game!) or other fantasy RPGs. The thought of buying new GW products to use for this project made me shudder. The cost, the lack of variety and the gradual realisation that I don't like GW's giant hand n head n comedy sized gun ‘heroic scale’ left me with a few options to explore.

The most viable of them was to put some of the Warlord, Fireforge, Northstar and Perry plastic kits to good use. I'd bought a few of the pike n shotte, frostgrave and medieval plastic kits to use as adventurers in other games, so had a bunch of guys to start with. They're cheap, suitably armed, offer kit bash opportunities, are easy to build and are *mostly* consistent in their scale. I say *mostly* for reasons later discussed.

Back to army planning, I thought straight up Empire seemed a bit contrived with the range of gear my models are wearing, so I started to think about other options. I toyed with Tileans, Estalians and even human-only Sylvanians but in the end decided to go with a force of mercenaries hailing from..... The Border Princes! Truly a sandbox of Old World opportunities if ever there was one.

A part of the Old World map that is populated by humans, containing Empire, Bretonnian, Tilean, Estalian and other human factions that have either gone rogue, are on some special mission or have gone a bit mental sounded like the perfect spot to create a thematic human army that mixes elements of all those factions, while being something distinct and of itself. That way, I can use a wide range of historical figures alongside some fantasy elements. Winner winner Border Princes dinner.

So, on to the project!