February Roll-Up

The last figures that came across the wire last week.  Four more stands for my Samurai Battles set.  With that aside my goal was reached only barely: 1027 figs complete:

6mm Figs:

28 Sengoku Infantry
6   Samurai Cavalry
58 Austrian Cavalry
624 Austrian Cavalry
 21 Modern Tanks/APCs
68 Modern Infantry

Fleet Action Scale Science fiction

2 Battlestars
18 BSG Fighters
10 B5 Starships (League, Vree, Brakiri, Minbari)
150 B5 Fighters (Brakiri, Earth Alliance)



Overall, a good dent in the unpainted lead pile, but not something I want to push for again.  For March, I want to continue to push forward on my 1809 project and focus on the French Allies.  I have seven stands worth of Adler French Infantry that are beginning of my Italian Corps.  An order from Adler arrived over the weekend, giving me the first of my Bavarian Corps troops.  (Cavalry, Light Infantry, Artillery and some leaders)  I still have a Baccus order en route with the Main Body of the Bavarian infantry.

Speaking of the Adler order, it was the first time I have ordered from Adler directly and is thus worth a quick word for those 6mm enthusiasts who have not yet done this as well.

First a word on Adler:  I love the quality and detail of the sculpts.  They are slightly larger than Baccus for the most part, and grossly larger than Irregular.  I prefer to use their Cavalry and Leader models for just this reason.  This detail comes with a cost, however: banners, swords and bayonets are very delicate and break easily.  The cannons tend to be more 'fiddly' and prone to lose parts.  The metal seems to be much softer than other manufacturers, so be prepared for some breakage.

Ordering from Adler is a step back into the past.  Download the excel spreadsheet from their site, and than manually fill-in the products you wish to order.  Ordering is by strip, not by bag like with Baccus.  Once complete, you email your order (attaching the excel document) and wait for confirmation.  In my case it was four days from ordering until I received a confirmation that the order was together and a final tally.  I then payed them through Paypal using the link on their site.  My order went through on the 18th of last month, and arrived on the 1st of March.

The packaging itself was my only concern.  The order arrived in a small box with the miniatures wrapped in small bundles of folded into tissue paper.  There was no invoice or inventory in the box, and several of the tissue packages had ruptured spilling their contents to the bottom of the box.  This was mostly cannon wheels and the odd cavalry fig, but did add an extra hassle for sorting.  I sat down last night with my order form, and broke the order out by type to base for painting.  Most of the strips have a tag with the order code, which sped up the sorting process.  Breakage was minimal with 2 infantry figs broken free, 1 standard and two horse tails.  Flash was more prevalent than with Baccus, but readily removed. The only questionable issue with flash was in shaving down some of the Bavarian's bayonets ("where does spike end and flash begin")

Not a bad overall experience, and I expect I will be going back to Adler for some of their Specialized WWII infantry as well some eaches within the Napoleonic collection.