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!