Welcome to the Army Men General!Previously: >>11025293>Plastic soldiers, knights and pirates, cowboys and indians, fantasy and sci-fi, cops and zombies, all are welcome here!>Archived threads:https://archive.palanq.win/toy/search/subject/Army%20Men%20General/>Army men wargame rules:https://combatstorm.com/https://onepagerules.com/portfolio/one-off-games/https://www.plasticcommand.com/https://freewargamesrules.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=army+men>Places to get army men:https://bmctoys.com/ and https://victorybuy.com/https://www.armiesinplastic.com/https://www.toysoldierco.com/https://www.classictoysoldiers.com/https://www.toysoldiersdepot.com/https://www.hobbybunker.com/https://www.michtoy.com/https://www.toysoldierhq.com/https://micshaunscloset.com/http://www.expeditionaryforce.com.sg/
New week, new arrivals, namely the other half of one order and a second order. The bagged set is the tan/yellow counterpart to the green one from last week; the black-lidded bin is the pirates and skellies set also mentioned last week. The other bucket comes from ViiKONDO, an AliExpress store that comes up routinely when searching for army men sets. They have some nice-looking stuff but for whatever reason they have significant shipping costs relative to most other AE stores. I finally bit the bullet and ordered one of their smaller sets just to see if they're worth it (I really want one of their larger sets with a Scud launcher truck).
>>11055404Primary reason for getting this set? These two tanks. At a cursory glance they appear to be just another reiteration of the classic Timmee Patton but a closer look reveals that they are in fact an entirely new tank. While the Timmee is essentially an M60, this one is much akin to the M48. I quite enjoy collecting different army men tank variants and these do not disappoint. Not much to say about the armored cars, they're alright. Standard army man in this pic onward for scale, something that will come into consideration in a big way later.
>>11055437Next up, F-14 for the Tans, F-22 for the Greens. The ships are of greater interest to me, steadily building up a navy to match the other plastic armed forces branches and non-carrier warships have been a pressing need. The one on the right is another almost-Slava class cruiser; left is a bit of a mystery, I'm fairly convinced it's a smaller warship and the main clues from its appearance are VLS hatches forward of the bridge and a helideck at the stern but I haven't found a convincing match for it among the various types with VLS. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to get an ID for it.
>>11055467The terrain pieces is where the set both shines and stumbles a bit, at least for me. The trees are excellent, the ruined building pieces are a common design but of better quality than typical and the flags are all but broadcasting Chinese wishes for a USA/Russia showdown while they sit back and enjoy the fireworks.Where these stumble a bit are the barbed wire fences, good quality like the rest but somewhat on the small side, reaching only to our scale trooper's knees. This is something that will become even more of an oddity with the the next image. The sandbag walls are alright a letdown for me as they're only one half of a long established sandbag wall design that clips together to form a triangular bunker. These have no clips and are all of the same side and while they can be lined up as a continuous sandbag wall, they could be better.
>>11055472Last and certainly not least (for obvious reasons), the grunts. While I did have advance warning of their actual size from the listing's photos (including one that outright indicated an average height of 2.7 inches) I had grown accustomed to photoshopped army men sets and didn't pay close attention. These guys, while not the largest army men on the market, certainly dwarf the average soldier by a significant margin. There appears to be 8 distinct poses and they are provided as a random assortment of 10 soldiers for each side - disappointingly I am lacking one of the poses in Green as a result, but oh well.
>>11055480Interestingly one can see significant inspiration in at least some of the poses from classic army men sets:>crawler is heavily drawn from a Matchbox British 8th Army pose>both soldiers with peaked caps are inspired by a pose from Matchbox German Infantry (pistol guy) and Matchbox Afrika Korps (running guy)>trooper with rifle pointed downward is likely a take on a comparable Matchbox American Infantry poseThe rest likely have similar origins but I'd say they're distinct enough to be considered OC.Overall I am impressed enough with the quality and interesting new vehicles to potentially eat another high shipping cost to get that Scud truck, we'll see.
>>11055496This is the set in question - would set me back 70 maplebucks with only 30 of that for the set itself. Still on the fence, leaning towards yes but I'll sit tight for now.
