WoFun standees: first impressions

A Bluecoat regiment

Modellers, painters and figure collectors should look away now! These aren't for you!

I received my first WoFun standees order - 18mm English Civil War Royalist and Parliamentary forces. The good people at WoFun also threw in a complimentary sprue of Scottish cavalry. Cunning!

On first sight the figures were very vibrant (in a good way) if a little smaller than I had imagined. I rocked the first set of figures backwards and forwards to remove it. This was a mistake as I did a tiny bit of damage. It's better just to push the cut-outs forward. Once I got used to it, it was simple and fast to remove the figures and push them into the supplied MDF stands.

Other than playing with counters or blocks, this is the first time I’ll be able to put armies on the table without condemning myself to months or even years of painting and the common prospect of losing interest in a project long before it’s completed. At my age and with little time for painting, this has become a pressing consideration. Reducing the hobby to a pure wargaming experience is liberating. Of course, I will still be doing little bits of modelling and painting for fun, but it won't be the treadmill on which most previous gaming has been dependent.

Personally, I wouldn't choose WoFun flats for a skirmish game, and I don’t think 2D tanks would be very convincing, but for linear warfare with the players generally facing the front or back of the playing pieces, I think they will be quite convincing.

WoFun armies raise a few questions: duplication, storage and whether to 'pimp' them.

The 18mm sprues typically contain two sets of the featured product which is OK for line infantry but may not be appropriate for rarer units. Unwanted duplicates need to be swapped or sold. 28mm sprues provide a single set of figures so are not affected by this.

I normally base figures on steel so they can be stored and transported safely in plastic boxes lined with magnetic sheet. I'm not sure what to do with these figures. I've yet to find out how brittle/resilient they are, and whether they need to be glued into the stands. They are extremely light - virtually weightless - so it will be quite easy to carry a large number of them and a pity to change this. If I utilise some bubble wrap and am careful, it should be possible to keep them as they are.

It's common to run a black marker around the rim of the figures, though this may reduce the vibrancy. Flocking the bases is also popular. The most extreme thing is to paint the edges to match the faces. I'm not currently planning to do any of these things myself. The last two steps do transform the look fantastically, but they contradict the whole 'ready out of the box' concept.

I'm happy with having chosen 18mm for this particular project, but I'm not entirely convinced this is the best choice in every respect. Although the detail is there when viewed close to and at eye-level, once on the table they tend to look like dark blocks. This is even more characteristic of the 10mm ranges. 

Smaller is darker because a smaller surface reflects less light and is more difficult to see. When painting smaller figures, you compensate by using brighter paint. In this case, I guess Peter Dennis's ink and wash illustrations have simply been digitally reduced which appears to give more emphasis to the ink, and less to the wash.

This does not seem to bother other gamers. 18mm is apparently a lot more popular than 28 mm, and there is huge enthusiasm for 10mm Napoleonics.

Even in full, natural, daylight the stands seem
to present with a lot of 'black ink'.

For my War of Spanish Succession project I'm now inclining towards 28mm. The aesthetic appeal of the Baroque period is an important aspect for me, and the larger scale will show Peter Dennis's brilliant artwork to better advantage.

The 28mm sprues contain half the figures which means that armies will cost twice as much, but the increase in footprint is minimal. A 4-figure 28mm base is about 40mm wide as opposed to about 30mm for the 18s. If playing the envisaged grid game (Simon Miller's Lust for Glory!) this will mean using 6" rather than 4" squares. For Sam Mustafa's Maurice, which I play already, I don't think it will make much difference.

For the WoSS there are two areas where I might intervene, albeit minimally. One is repainting facings and stockings where required to produce specific regiments and to utilise any spare stands. The other is adding 3D paper flags. I'll explain more if/when the time comes.

Whatever the downsides or challenges, I won't have to paint hundreds of figures or risk a further increase in the lead mountain.