Figure manufacturer HäT has taken the plastic figure market by storm. All of us would have grown up with the ubiquitous Airfix figures and in recent times Revel, Esci, Atlantic and Italeri have all laid claim to the Airfix ‘crown’. have an extensive and constantly expanding range of figures, indeed they successfully bought some of the old Airfix moulds and several types such as WWI British, Napoleonic French and several others will no doubt be familiar to many plastics collectors. DESIGN The bulk of the figures are 1/72nd scale or roughly 20mm but they also produce a range of 1/32nd scale figures. All are made in soft plastic of various hues ranging from grey (such as the Russian Dragoons opposite) to a rather ghastly bright blue (such as their Prussian Landwehr figures). Where HäT have stolen a march on their competitors has been in their marketing and an important component of this is the packaging. There has been a lot of thought gone into the packaging design with colourful artwork on every box depicting the figures contained in an action setting and with an information/painting guide on the back. I must confess it makes me wonder why they make the figures out of the cheaper soft plastic when they’ve obviously spent a bit more to ensure very well printed packaging. With Games Workshop for instance they’ve managed to do both - (figures in hard plastic AND quality packaging) & I guess the outrageous pricing reflects this but making the figures in a harder plastic would improve them immeasurably and not seriously add to the manufacturing costs - so why not do it?!? RANGE The periods covered include WWI as mentioned, Ancients, ACW and Napoleonic with the latter having the largest range. The WWI & ACW are basically reissues of the old Airfix figures. Recently have greatly expanded their Napoleonic and Ancient ranges with the inclusion of such exotic pieces as Carthaginian war elephants. Indeed their Ancient range includes fairly complete range of types - Celts, Numidians, Spanish etc, for the Carthaginian army as well as the usual range of Romans, both include cavalry as well as infantry and I believe the Romans have some ordnance such as bolt throwers. Any wargamer wishing to construct the armies of these ancient protagonists on the cheap need look no further than the range for the basics. By far the greatest variety of figure types are found in the Napoleonics range which has grown enormously since HäT started, with more being introduced all the time. There are too many to list in this review but if you’re on the ’Net I suggest you check out HäT’s comprehensive site for the complete range and latest releases. Whether or not you like the figures the site is terrific with ‘how-to’ sections, the stages of figures in production as well as galleries of finished figures painted up and forthcoming releases etc, etc. Well worth the visit at: www.hat.com QUALITY Many of the serious wargamers I know collect metal figures exclusively so the question of figure quality with plastics doesn’t come into it. However, there are a growing number of wargamers who also collect plastic figures and I include myself in that group. Some of us started off that way either because it represented an inexpensive alternative or they were figures collected in our youth (for much the same reason - they were cheap and available). The huge variety of figures now available adds an extra dimension to things as it is possible to now collect many different types of figures in plastic. When painted effectively they present just as well en masse on the tabletop. The biggest drawback from a quality perspective is that most are not in the same class as many of their 25mm metal cousins (although I’d argue some Revel and many Italeri figures would give most of the 25’s a run for their money in detail and design quality). With regard to HäT, the figure quality seems to range from the reasonably good (ie. Russian Cossacks) to the very ordinary (such as their Brunswick Avante Garde). The Russian Dragoons depicted above are somewhere in between. The horses are OK (& unlike the earlier Airfix, horse & base are moulded as one) but the figures are pretty basic and there are a limited number of poses. All boxes of plastic figures seem to contain a number of duff poses so that the more discerning gamer will always have a couple of useless figures left over and HäT are no exception to this. For example, the Russian Dragoons above don’t have a trumpeter or an obvious officer figure which is a damned nuisance as otherwise you’d have a basic regiment with 12 figures to a box. Artillery have four guns & crews (4 x figs each), the cav - as stated - 12 mounted figures and infantry about 48 per box so that, together with the extensive range available, amassing a reasonable sized army can be done for a fraction of the price of metals. The quality and range are also continually improving so HäT may be well worth considering for either the beginner or serious gamer. Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #9 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Kriegspieler Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com