Ulster Imports, Ltd., the U.S. distributor for Freikorps figures, was kind enough to send me a variety of samples for review. The following represent my opinions on the castings and all readers, as usual, are advised to purchase samples since your tastes may be different from my own. I opened the shipment with a mixture of awe and sadness-- awe because of the beautiful sculpting of many of the figures, and sadness because approximately 1/5th of the figures had broken bayonets or rifles. For some reason, the manufacturer uses a very brittle metal alloy that makes any small part sticking out from the figure prone to breakage. This extends to dropping the figures. Three castings accidently fell onto a linoleum floor. One casting broke into 2 pieces at the neck, another lost the majority of its rifle, and the third broke at the legs this from a height of 3 feet. Brittleness aside, these figures were truly magnificent, both in detail and pose. I became especially fond on the following castings: All of the figures shown firing with either a kepi or slouch hat and blanket roll, whether standing or kneeling (ACW 13, 13a, 14, 14a, 14b); ACW 15 (charging with kepi); all figures reloading muskets (ACJ.4 31 and 32, which come in two positions each); ACW 13 (Berdan's sharpshooters); ACW 10 (at ease with slouch hat); and a bugler, whose I.D. # escapes me. An advertisement which recently appeared in the Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter stated that there were 52 different figure packs, but listed only 50. I did not receive samples of all of the available figures in the different poses, but certainly got enough to judge the quality of the castings. About 1/2 of what I got were among the best AW figures I have ever seen. There were some poses in the advancing position that were somewhat murky in detailing compared to the others, but even these compare favorably to most commercial figures. ACW 23 is a figure I did not receive, and is listed as 14th N.Y., charging, kepi, zouave. This would seem to be an ideal figure to use for any zouaves in the charging pose, especially if the casting is on par with the other charging castings. ACW 41, "Louisiana Tigers" is another one that I did not see. If in an action pose, and of good quality, it would answer my prayers for finding a suitable figure that could be used for both the Tigers and some of the early militia units of the Confederacy. Proportions on the figures were nice, hats were well done, there were a number of wrinkles on the uniforms to do some nice shading when painting, equipment was very well shown, and many of the figures were in extremely active and life—like poses. Another selling point for the Freikorps line is that the size of the miniatures is very compatible with the Stone Mountain, Empire (the old heritage figures), and Minifig lines. This allows one to mix figures from the different companies to form units with tremendous variation. A pack of 10 figures costs $2.00, very reasonable in today's market. I can't help but wonder why the castings are made with such poor metal, however. It's a heartbreak to see castings that are well painted break due to the inevitable accidents garners expose them to. This is a real drawback in an otherwise very positive review. To my knowledge, Freikorps does not make cavalry figures, artillerists, flag bearers, officers, or generals. I would love to see these manufactured. Should they already exist, I will give a brief review of them in a later issue. If you can treat the figures with lots of TLC, you certainly will enjoy playing with such fine miniatures. It is one of the few companies to make an extensive line of zouave figures. Back to The Zouave Vol I No. 2 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1987 The American Civil War Society 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