This time they have gone for a one piece torso plus legs but with separate arms. As I have said before the Perry's seem to squarely target the gamer rather than the modeler with their plastic sets, allowing some customisation but making it a simple job to assemble. People have said the modeling market is bigger than the gaming market, at least they do in 1/72, but I guess the Perry's know their customer better than anyone and they have been pretty successful to date so who can argue against them. Personally I am all for the less is better approach so this suits me just fine.
Alan Perry says these are the first of the plastic British Cavalry! So more to come, I must say for the life of me I can't really see the point of doing British Cavalry in plastic. Perry have covered most of the British units already in metal, and nice figures they are too, anyway you only ever need such small quantities of British Cavalry. Either making a mould for plastic miniatures is way cheaper than anyone realises or the Perry's have so much money they can afford to just do all this for the fun of it. To be honest I would have thought it would have made more sense financially to do some Prussian cavalry in plastic rather than British.
The horses look like the French Hussar set recycled, not that that is a bad thing, the Perry's have horses pretty much on a conveyor belt by now. Alan say the pics cover 4 of the 6 horse halves, well one thing I would really like to see them do wit those final two halves is a standing horse, though I won't hold my breath as we seem to be missing the standard horse at full gallop with all the legs together. Cavalry actually spent most of its time on a battle field stationary rather than charging around so why not at least give us that option and also that pose would work great for light cavalry skirmishing, firing the carbine from the saddle, worthless or not.
Anyway all that said like many, I will without question pick up a box or two.
There's no release date for these as yet.
These, amongst other things, are on my worktable at the moment. I'm showing them to reassure you that I've not forgotten the British. This is will be the first of the plastic British cavalry sets. You will be able to represent British, KGL and Hanoverian Hussars with this box.
There will be 14 figures in the box, including an officer and trumpeter. The torsos are fixed to the overalled legs, unlike the French Hussars, but have separate arms again (unlike the French). I'm probably going to leave the haversacks and canteens off, as they were often worn under the pelisse. This would then allow you to cross-fertilize the British bodies with the French to produce Brits in breaches and French in later overalls, if required, and also allowing variations in arm poses, too. There will be enough arms to make all the figures at the charge or shouldered. The heads will include the unpopular early tall fur cap 14" in height (!), the later shortened fur cap, peaked shakos, and the peaked fur KGL/Hanoverian caps. The useless Paget carbines are covered and lashed to the saddle front. Shown here are four of the six horse halves which will be in the box.
Now my obligatory moan/worry about Victrix, isn't this yet another nail in the coffin for those guys? As Victrix struggle to get any set out the door Perry seem to pop up every 5 minutes with yet another set and eliminate one more segment that Victrix can target. Soon all that will be left for them will be the least popular armies and periods and how are they going to make money from that?
I really can't believe that Russian/Prussian/Austrian are more popular in 1805/07 than 1812/14, and anyway with Perry covering French/British/Prussian 1813-1815 surely late Russians or Austrians would have dove tailed right into that new demand. I just don't see them selling the early sets, mind you if Victrix are going to only produce the sets no one wants then I would love to them do a Spanish Infantry box next, and aren't the Spanish just perfect for a plastic set, lots of variety needed around a basic torso.
Don't forget we already have the following British Cavalry in metal from Perry.
Its fair to say we don't have the Peninsular equivalents of these units, so I guess plastic Heavies, at least, are inevitable but you do scratch your head in wonderment when others are struggling to make any profit at all, the Perry's can effectively cannibalise there own existing metal lines. They truly are a law unto themselves.
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