The plea that all figure manufacturers adhere to a recognized international measurement will I'm afraid fall on deaf ears, despite this I have been able to successfully merge several ranges. About 80% of my figures are Front Rank which to be honest are 20mm; I was attracted to these because they are nice clean figures and are not loaded down with accoutrements, the kind of guys who drop everything and join the line of battle. Front Rank have a large selection of different poses so my regiments do not look like the Brigade of Guards; the best of FR are their new firing figures and kepi zouaves which are some of the only figures you can get advancing at "right shoulder shift." However, on taking part in a re-enactment last year I took careful note of what the well dressed Civil war soldier was wearing; once again most were not laden down with leatherwork, but almost universally carried a haversack, water bottle, cap box, cartridge pouch and a tin cup. In order to have soldiers thus equipped I had to look elsewhere; at first I looked at the new Essex range and found them to be just a little smaller than FR and being sharper in detail; they also had figures not available to FR, e.g. kneeling, different zouaves, overcoats etc. I got over the problem of height by adding a piece of card to the figures metal base and found that if the troops were the same height then the difference in bulk could be overlooked, this also applies when mixing cavalry. The situation improved further when I purchased a bag of 100 Old Glory figures who could have been reenactors in miniature, they were perfect, they are about the same size as Essex and look fairly rugged at first glance, but they paint up very well and are extremely well animated; on the minus side some of them are a bit thin, but they have them kneeling, loading, wounded, lying down and all kinds of variations in between. Battle Honours are the latest troops to join my horde, these are very much like Old Glory as far as equipment goes, but are obviously better fed as they are slightly plumper; in size they hover between Old Glory and FR; they are very clean castings and well detailed; they also offer a good range of assorted poses including kneeling, loading and running. In fact they are so good that nearly every figure is up to "personality" standard. I also use Tabletop Games standard bearers and drummers for a bit of variation on army command stands; these are very small and definitely need a card base; the drummer could always be said to be a boy. There is some nice detail on these figures, but their faces let them down; other figures in the range look very ''wooden"; time has not been kind to them. I do however use their artillery pieces as they offer a large choice and they fit nicely onto Johnny Reb bases. A word of warning Front Rank cannons are lovely but big! Lastly, I have one regiment of Frontier figures. These I haven't mixed because they are beautiful imitations of the 39th N.Y. (Garibaldi Guards); again these are very crisp castings about the same size as Essex and I have no doubt the rest of their range are just as good. I have found that a good liberal sprinkling of all these makes in the one regiment leads to a very realistic and rugged bunch of veterans. I do have one complaint against figure manufacturers; if they make "personality" castings of a particular regiment/uniform why don't they complete the work and add the obvious i.e. officers, drummers and standard bearers? Back to The Zouave Vol VI No. 2 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 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