January 2nd 2022 The Wargaming Company announced series 3 of Et Sans Résultat (ESR) their Napoleonic results for playing grand / epic scale Napoleonic conflicts. That’s not all, on December 29th The Wargaming Company announced their own line of 10mm figures was coming. a few of the initial images that David Ensteness from The Wargaming Company had shared.
These two developments make 2022 a pretty exciting year for grand-scale Napoleonics. I have a fondness for the Napoleonic era, there are some good rulesets out there from Empire to Sharp Practice but none scratch the itch for large-scale battles like ESR. For me, ESR is my go-to system for these large battles. Besides the rules, The Wargaming Company has a great lineup of campaign guides that includes very impressive uniform guides for painting your armies.
In this article, we chat with David, principal designer at The Wargaming Company, about the new line of 10mm / 1:160 scale figures they’ll be releasing this year.
When do you think you’ll be accepting pre-orders with the planned release in approx Mar/Apr around AdeptiCon?
Depends on how the production timeline pans out we’re really in the midst of it right now. In a normal/ideal world (isn’t it crazy that what we used to think of as ‘normal’ now feels comparatively like it’d be ‘ideal’?) we’d have started taking pre-orders already now in January for this since its target is a late March release, but until we have very high confidence that some supply chain/pandemic issue isn’t going to crop up and delay us (or until we have a firm expectation of what such a delay means) we want to avoid taking pre-orders.
The capture of Napolean’s carriage at Waterloo.
With the worldwide shipping situation, are you looking for something more local for production?
Everything we’ve worked on so far for the production side is inside the US.
Hopefully, this helps make things a bit more simple if you don’t have to count on shipping containers coming from the far east.
Yes, especially in our current and ongoing supply chain/pandemic environment.
But, and I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but I think it is worth stressing: manufacturing in the US isn’t only a COVID-specific consideration. Something that is really thrilling to us is that there are more infrastructure resources being developed within the United States, and that isn’t a new thing or a because of the pandemic thing, it has really been developing over maybe a decade where there has been brewing interest in developing production options inside the US.
The importance of this change to the historical gaming industry really can’t be overplayed. To operate with production overseas, especially in Asia, you have to be substantial enough to work within their required minimums – and that prevents a lot of startups and smaller shops from getting into the market. Additionally, even if you think you can work in those production minimums right from the get-go instead of scaling from a lower level, managing suppliers across your own country isn’t *easy*, managing suppliers across the world, with different native languages than yours – these are significant barriers.
Upcoming French figure from The Wargaming Company, preproduction image, the final figure might change
I’ll use two examples: ourselves, The Wargaming Company, and Firelock Games. Firelock is a terrific company, they are talented people, they are smart, they make great products. What I observed is that they started producing in metal, here in the US. As they scaled, they have moved to plastic production. That was a transition, not something they just jumped into at their start. Conversely, we at The Wargaming Company started by partnering with an existing manufacturer and utilizing their miniatures, now we’re scaling and moving to plastics. Ultimately I think what we’re seeing is that development of production options inside the US seems to be finally breaking the surface and allowing these transitions where companies can start smaller and scale as their brand grows. This provides fantastic potential for more US-based historical gaming startups who need to walk before they run. I think it is fantastic. And, to get back to what you actually asked me, I think it makes it possible for smaller startups to weather things like the shipping and supply chain crisis we’re experiencing now whereas before that would have just killed a company dead in the water.
Will the figure line only be 10mm plastic?
As to scale our plans for now are to release 1:160 scale, i.e. 10mm miniatures. As to material we’re going with plastic, though as you can imagine, there may be some items that we have to do via another method – whether that be using X plastic method vs Y plastic method vs metal – is going to be a long term question we’ll keep asking because of the economics of scale and the production costs and setup of the different methods. It is of course possible that some items in an ESR Box Set have to be one while other higher volume items have to be another. And while we’d like all nationalities to be the same, we’ve got to accept that down the road when we’re looking at releasing some small, arcane nationality, we may have to do it in an alternative material just because of likely demand. We’ve had some inquiries about releasing STLs so people could print their own, right now, at this moment, we’re not doing that, but it is not off the table, it is just not where we’re starting, will we end up offering that in the future? Right now I honestly don’t know, we haven’t ruled it out, but we also haven’t decided to take that path yet.
Do you find that parts like eagles influence the process you use?
Oddly enough, so far, eagles haven’t been a big problem for us. One of the bigger issues – and I suspect will remain so as we design yet more of them – is vehicles. As we continue to preview the line people will see we’re working on a pretty extensive set of vehicles and while some are straight forward, many have unique and spindly parts that we have to specifically address in how the model is designed and sculpted. Some of that is helped by the scale we’re doing, at 1:160 10mm, a lot of processes are more forgiving than they are when you scale up.
For the sculpts themselves where did your draw inspiration from?
Well, frankly, just the period – which I know is a disappointingly vague answer, but the Napoleonic era is one of massive visual interest and so the biggest inspiration was a mixture of uniform art – including our own – period uniform pieces, and artwork. There’s a lot of exceptionally cool looking artwork depicting the period. But additionally we wanted to make sure that we were making something that would be fun and approachable to paint so there are a lot of judgement calls about “do we include X feature”. Differentiation also plays into it because – for instance – at 1:160 scale, what are the differences between Russian Dragunskiy (Dragoons) and Russian Kirasirskiy (Cuirassiers)? There aren’t many at this scale so you have to decide what features to play up and which to play down so that players can clearly identify what they are looking at.
There was a lot to pack in. We wanted to develop a modern 1:160 scale (10mm) line where we could better match proportionality – as scale shrinks some items always have to be exaggerated or they effectively don’t exist, but the sculpting medium matters too. Using digital sculpting we think we’ve been able to do that closer than has been done with traditional hand sculpting and makes for miniatures that look more realistic at this scale. Because of our extensive uniform series in our ESR Campaign Guides we kinda create a problem where gamers can be stuck looking at the uniform images and then trying to find figures that match and that doesn’t always line up – by creating our own line of miniatures we can ensure that experience is better because we produce the uniform art and we produce the figures to match.
Do you have some initial guidance on how the new figure line will be packaged? Will you follow the same approach as you’d done in the past with starter forces and specific offerings for various nationalities?
This is really the rebirth of ESR Box Sets and yes, we’re going to continue to follow that general product philosophy of offering a Core Box that players can build their Force or even Army around and then flesh out with different Attachment Packs. We have talked about making the miniatures available a la carte and I can’t say whether that will happen at this juncture or not, but it is something we’re considering and talking about. We have to balance between the efficiencies of production and the desires of the market – and when it comes to new-to-historical-gamers or specifically new-to-Napoleonic-gamers there’s a real benefit to providing a little more structure and pre-configured sets.
The Napoleonic period can be really overwhelming to the new gamer, so while I grew up gaming counting the number of individual figures I needed and then computing the number of bulk packs from different manufacturers to create the most efficient combination while minimizing extras, that wasn’t because it was the best way to do it but rather because it was the available option. By providing sets we can lower a significant barrier to entry into historical gaming and we’re all about that. If we’re also able to offer some a la carte options for the people who’d like that, then we will, but our focus has to be on what can help the most people get into Napoleonics.
David’s favorite thus far
Followup: Might there be campaign bundles tailored to the campaign guides?
We are definitely planning to do this. With the previous iteration of ESR Box Sets we did some, but going forward we want to expand it as much as we can. so that if a gamer walks up and says: “I’m all about the 1809 campaigns in central Europe, what do I need?” we’re able to respond by pointing them at a bundle specifically for that which includes ESR Series 3, an ESR Campaign Guide, and a Starter Box of ESR Napoleonics Miniatures.
Do you have a favorite figure in the line so far, if so what might that be?
Yes. Definitely. Big time. Very unique. Also… incredibly fun to get into production because of said uniqueness /sarcasm. Though I’m not sure if I should say exactly what it is because it is a complex figure and odds are it won’t be immediately available at launch. We’ve got a ton to do in a short period of time, so obviously as you’d imagine we’re prioritizing the heck out of everything.
With the new Series 3 ESR rules, will there be any changes to unit basing?
We just published a “What’s Changing in ESR Series 3” for basing which I think your readers and ESR gamers will really enjoy. It is very brief, so I’d just ask that they click the link and see for themselves.
Do you have an anticipated order to the release of the new line? By Nation? Certain Unit types? Army boxes?
I read in an interview somewhere that we’ll be including French right from the start – and I really think that’s a brave choice on our part, a lot of companies wouldn’t even consider doing the French until a second or even third wave, but we’re bold like that 😉
Bold as the charge of the French cuirassiers at Friedland? You’ll certainly able to play it out with ESR.
An Audience question: Since these are plastic how will they be packaged? Will they be similar to the old sets you made with individual figures in bags…or will they come on a sprue to be cut off.
I shy away from going into too many details regarding production because of the manic work we’re doing and the timelines involved vs the variables, etc… but I also want to provide some useful context as well. Everything we’re working on results in a player basing an individual figure, i.e. not a strip. However… everything we’re working on is also focused on providing the miniatures to the customer on some form of strip or sprue or frame for a couple of reasons: 1) production methods, 2) ready identification, 3) kit assembly (i.e. packing). Obviously #1 & #3 are all about us and our workflow and what makes producing and assembling product more efficient, however, #2 is all about gamers and not only new gamers.
We’re making some really nice figures, but they are still 1:160 scale 10mm figures, and that’s not huge, some of the differences are more obvious and some are less. This can even trip up the long time Napoleonic gamer, but it is really hard on the new-to-Napoleonics-gamer and we want them to be able to readily identify what is what, so whether it be by strip or by sprue or by subframe, we can tell you that among X figures the one on the left is a voltigeur and the one on the right is a grenadier, and those in between are fusiliers. Then, knowing what you’re looking at, you can pickup on the differences between them. Our goals all involve expanding the historical hobby and increasing the number of Napoleonic gamers which means we don’t want to have a precondition that to feel comfortable getting into ESR Napoleonics you have to already come in knowing how to tell a grenadier from a carabinier from a voltigeur from a fusilier, instead we don’t expect you to know that off the bat and we plan to help you discover it.
Another Audience question: A lot of us have many of the old ESR Box Sets or have supplemented our armies with other 10mm brands, will these new plastic ones be compatible and mix well or will it look funny to have them together?
Ultimately, it has to look good to you for you to feel good about it and the eye of the beholder varies, but with that disclaimer – we focused on making sure that what we created would be generally compatible both with what we offered before in our previous ESR Box Sets and with other brands. So for general size compatibility, no our ESR Napoleonics should not look strange with other brands on the tabletop. That said, I think, and I hope gamers agree, that our ESR Napoleonics line is better proportioned, more detailed, and yet easier to paint than many others, so if you set them both on the table edge and kneel down and look at them, will they look different? Yes, definitely, but will that difference prevent you from fielding your “old” Russian Force along side your “new” French one? We don’t think so.
For the sculpts themselves where did your draw inspiration from?
