More Plastic Toy Soldiers

These are some of HäT's 20mm (1:72) plastic Zulu Wars British infantry, based for the Black Powder rules.

They're painted somewhat inaccurately, but that really doesn't matter for my purposes, since these particular guys are intended for one of two generic late C19th Red and Blue armies, made up of whatever figures I can lay my hands on.

HäT figures are ideal for this sort of thing, because compared with metal figures, or even with hard plastic 28mm figures, they're as cheap as chips. The Zulu Wars sets are especially good for wargaming purposes because the sprues are mercifully free of the sorts of "character" poses you tend to get in figure sets from the likes of Airfix, Italerei, or Revell, which improves their cost/benefit ratio enormously.

The only problem with them is that they're not that easy to source here in New Zealand. There's a local chap who imports them, but I keep forgetting to get his contact details, and so whenever I see him at conventions and what-not I pretty much have to just be happy with whatever he might have in stock at that moment.

So far I have enough infantry for about twenty stands, half a dozen artillery pieces, and a couple of dozen cavalry. Those in this picture are HäT late C19th (Zulu Wars/Sudan) 17th Lancers, but I have a box of Revell Waterloo-era British Life Guards that I'll also press into service. The horse-drawn artillery limbers shown here come from the Revell American Civil War set of Union artillery. At a pinch, I could even throw in some HäT Peninsular War British infantry, though they might start looking just a teensy bit out of place amongst the pith helmets.