Re: [GZG] [OFFICIAL] Change to 15mm Free Trader Crew.....

[Tom B <kaladorn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jon, 

I've got probably a thousand of your 25mms. I have WEG SW figures. I have Denizen Ventaurians, Mid-Tech Marines, and some Federation troops. I have old (Grenadier?) Traveller true 25mm. The Rattlehead Games figues are 25mm it seems. Battletroops - got them. Some of the star wars clix (esp aliens and thinner/smaller humans) can fit well with true 25mm. Assault group troops claim to be 28mm, but if mounted on a penny, they look like 26-27mm at most. They fit just fine with my GZG troops (except the overthin old NAC figures). So there are still a lot of lines that you can buy that are smaller end of 28mm and most of your recent 25mm sculpts have been a bit heftier so they work well together (new NAC, for instance). 

The question in making any figures is obviously one of return. There are a lot of variances in 28mm lines. I don't think the GW market is for you necessarily - they're caricature figures. Yours don't have that sensibility and people who'll play games where a chainsaw hand is deadlier than a blaster aren't likely to be much interested in realistic looking figures (exceptions will exist). 

There are a sufficient number of sci fi true 25mm lines if you look around or small 28mm that are closer to 26-27mm and fit fine once painted and based to justify (I think) doing a few more 25mm sculpts. You've already got great lines of 25mm stuff. Presumably you still have the master figures so could replace moulds. Unless you were planning on moving a lot of stuff over to 28mm, you'd end up with two figure scales and they might not look good together. 

I think also that, with the cost of white metal (likely to continue to escalate), we'll eventually see anyone who wants to play anything other than RPGs or games with less than 20 figures a side start to scale back scale (arguably, this might mean 15-20mm). True 25mm still has a niche though. 

I bought some of your 15mm stuff and they are nice, but I've realized with aging eyesight that I will never be able to paint them acceptably. Given painting costs me about the same on 25mm and 15mm (both are a pain for painters to do camouflage on and the detail on 15mm makes painting a bit slower to do a good job), I'm not likely to be rushing to buy big 15mm armies. 

I'm only one opinion, but I think true 25mm still has life and your existing ranges are so good that stepping into incompatible territory would be a shame. You could scale creep a bit towards 26-27mm without too much pain and call them 28mm (be small for standard 28mm and real small next to Giganto 28mm Heroic aka 30-32mm figures, but you can't have it all...). 

For RPG and Skirmish use, 25mm is still a good scale visually. 15mm tends to lack the range of figure poses and the detail and is quite a bit harder to paint to the same level of quality. 28mm works for RPGs, but I find most 28mm figures are steroidally enhanced, melee loving, animal skin wearing half-man, half-GWborg figures. Not very (even scifi) realistic and not very appealing. 

Tom B

-- 
http://ante-aurorum-tenebrae.blogspot.com/
http://www.stargrunt.ca

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine 

"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." -- Thomas Paine 


_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l