The Knight fantastic

In my previous blog, I compared the plastic and metal Medieval mounted knights and mounted sergeants available for the 12th and 13th centuries. This is the period of the Third Crusade and the Barons' War, to name but two of the myriad conflicts of this era.

In this blog, I am looking at Medieval Knights and Serjeants in plastic. I will return and discuss how these compare to miniatures in resin and metal (as soon as I can find them!).

Size is an important issue for gamers; they want to know if any set of miniatures is compatible with other companies. There's no point buying reinforcements for an army if the new models aren't compatible with what a gamer already has. I explored this topic in another blog, on the definition of 28mm, at least what it means to me personally.

I have a particular interest in plastic miniatures, as similarly sized miniatures can be used to create hybrids. I love mixing parts and seeing what I can come up with.

The first photo shows torsos from Fireforge Games, which were the first company to offer plastic historicals. They have military orders (Crusader and Teutonic) and Western Knights. The torsos are from their knight, serjeant, and archer ranges. They tend to be slightly smaller than the rest, but this is primarily due to their poses with legs bent.

Next, we have the Wargames Atlantic miniatures. The bodies come in two parts (legs and torso), which offers a little more variety. They offer knights, serjeants, and peasants (unarmoured). They will soon be releasing mounted and foot command sprues, offering more options. The Atlantic models are mid-range in size.

Thirdly, we have the Victrix Medievals. They have foot knights, foot serjeants, and archers & crossbows. Their height varies, the knights being very tall, and the crossbow & archers being about the same size as the other plastics. 

Here's a selection of heads, with Fireforge on the left, Atlantic in the centre, and Victrix on the right. In hindsight, I should have used similar heads, as the Atlantic look small in the photo. Had I used conical helmets, they would have looked similar to Fireforge. The Victrix heads are slightly bigger, but not significantly with most of them. 

Next, we have a selection of weapons (Fireforge - Atlantic - Victrix). These are, for the most part, interchangeable, except that some of the Victrix ones are designed to fit specific bodies. Fireforge and Atlantic join at the shoulder.

Here are three knights (Fireforge - Atlantic - Victrix). The Victrix knight is clearly the largest, while Fireforge and Atlantic are similarly sized. Again, the Atlantic looks smaller due to the pose (advancing forward) and choice of helm. The Fireforge sword is quite huge, so I tend to swap them out for swords from other sets (including from the Conquest Games mounted knights set). 

Here is a selection of serjeants armed with crossbows (Fireforge - Atlantic - Victrix). The Fireforge looks smaller, due to the pose, but the Atlantic and Victrix ones are similar sizes.

The real fun begins when you start combining parts to create hybrid models from different sets. Each of these figures includes at least one component from each of the plastic kits — I love building unique miniatures by mixing and matching bits together.

In a future blog, I’ll compare how resin and metal models stack up against plastics, plus a blog on Dark Age plastics.