PSC’s Roman and Goths armies unboxing and review

By Paolo Paglianti

For ages, 15mm soldiers have been in metal, as many plastic versions of the soldiers were too flexible, with fewer details and of the wrong scale (1:72). Just a few years ago we began to see 15mm miniatures in hard or soft plastic, specifically for WW2 setting from Battlefront and Plastic Soldier Company (PSC). Now, for “ancient-medieval” Simon Hall’s set of rules, Mortem et Gloriam.

(By the way, ).

The first armies available are Imperial Roman and Gothic barbarian hordes, together with Sassanid and Hunnic: quite a good start for the later Imperial age. Could we miss the opportunity to check them out? So, let’s open the “Pacto starter armies” to see how good they are.

What we find inside the boxes

Plastic Soldier Company was so kind as to send us the first two “Pacto Starter armies”, the Imperial Romans and the Gothics. The miniatures are made with the new Ultracast plastic, hard plastic with very good details. They are really similar to Battlefront’s new hard plastic miniatures if you had the chance to see them.

This is the (35 £).

 

The Roman foot in the Pacto Box. The armored Romans are for the Legion, while the unarmored ones are good for Auxilia type. You also have two command sets.

 

The pack consists of a total of 64 foot soldiers. These include 24 armored (the Legion), 24 unarmored (for Auxilia type), and 16 archers. Six of them are the foot command group: one with the usual Roman square flag, the other with the barbarian-influenced Draco insignia.

As you can see in the above photo, there are plenty of poses for Legio and Auxilia: some of them have the sword and others the pilum, and few have the “darts” thrown by the Roman infantry just before charging the enemy or receiving the charge. I’m quite happy for the poses, however, we find a single pose for the 16 archers, alas.

 

This is the Roman cavalry

The Roman cavalry. The upper rows with full armor on the horses are for Clibanarii and heavy cavalry, while the horsemen with the oval shield and unarmoured are perfect for the Roman Alae, the “ordinary” cavalry. The lower rows have the light horses (with the bow) and the two Generals. 

 

Thirtytwo Cavalry models, including two generals (lower left corner). Nine of the are full Cataphracts, with horse entirely covered in chain mail; 5 have the frontal armor (and can be used as generals or ordinary Knights or Heavy Cavalry). 10 heavy cavalry with lance or sword, and 9 light horses. The box has some more spare miniatures, as they should be 32.

Both cavalry and foot have dynamic poses, and the sculpt is really good (especially for plastic standards). Nevertheless, be prepared for some work to remove the flash around the soldiers. Some models, namely the foot and the mounted archers, have fewer details on their faces. On the good side, the flat oval shields have no mold lines on them.

 

Here is the Goth foot horde

Plenty of poses also for the Goth warbands. You can see the same pose comes with different weapons, to improve variety. As for the Roman range, the archers have a single pose.

Again, we have some more figures than the number stated on the site. Twelve archers, alas in a single shooting pose; 55+ fighting soldiers with sword, axe and spear. There are no “leader” figures or draco insignia. We have a good choice of poses for the fighting infantry, with dynamic and advancing soldiers and others with the shield in a defending posture or trusting with the spear. They all have a round shield.

 

The Goth cavalry from the

The Goth cavalry has few armored horses (you could use them for the Command bases) and unarmoured ones. They all have the thrusting spear.

 

A total of 35 cavalry figures, six of them with the frontal body armor for the horse, and four of the leaders on the rampaging horse (multipart, you need to glue the upper torso of the miniature, so you can have different poses). The Goth cavalry has lots of poses, even if the horses are a bit static.

In general, the quality of the casting is very good and comparable to “tin” metal soldiers of similar ranges. The metal armor on the horses is quite a good sculpting and I think it will take the color very well; the foot archers of both armies are a bit less detailed.

Most of the miniatures have some mold lines and flash in excess, so you need to cut them out. Not too difficult with a sharp knife, since they are on the outline and borders, but (at least in this set, it was more than I normally find on 15mm soldiers in metal.

The Price

Let’s compare the Plastic Soldier Company prices with competitors with metal miniatures. The two “Pacto” boxes cost 35 £ each, and they have (something more than) 64 foot and 32 mounted each. Additional boxes cost 10 £ and contain 32 foot or 16 mounted. So, it’s 2,18 £ / 2,5 £ (pacto/additional boxes) for eight foot or four mounted.

, somewhat the “reference” point for lots of modelers and painters for historical 15mm miniatures, asks 3,85 £ for eight foot soldiers or four horsemen. Forged in Battle asks 12,00 £ for 12 cavalry or 24 infantry, so it’s 4,00 £ for four mounted or eight foot.  s asks 4 £ or 4,25 £ for the same eight foot or four mounted. The new “Z” range from in 3,00 £ for eight foot. Plastic Soldier Company’s miniatures are cheaper even of the cheapest 15mm metal miniatures (at least, I’m aware of), the (3,10 £ for ten foot).

Doing some math, it’s easy to see Plastic Soldier Company’s boxes cost roughly half of their competitors (a bit less if compared to Museum and Lancashire’s), so a very good offer if you are doing a full army or two.

The size

We are now going to compare Plastic Soldier Company’s miniatures with some of the best-known competitors. Except for Xyston, we tried to have the same range of miniatures, the Imperial Roman age.

 

The first two rows are Plastic Soldier Company’s Goths and Romans. Following, on the top row, we have Essex Miniatures, Chariot Miniatures, Xyston ones (even if they don’t have an Imperial Roman age range). Lower row, after Plastic Soldier’s, we have  Forged in Battle, Corvus Belli (by the way, they are also being recast by Plastic Soldier!) and Alain Touller.

As you can see, Plastic Soldier’s miniatures are pretty compatible with all ranges except Xyston (actually, it’s Xyston miniatures that are bigger, like 18mm). The Plastic Soldier’s Barbarian foot is somewhat “shorter” than the Romans, while historically should be the opposite, but it’s not a great problem. You can still use the Goths in a Roman army as allies, or the contrary.

 

Are these Pacto Boxes good for DBMM and Art de la Guerre?

The boxes are made specifically for Mortem et Gloriam, but they seem ready-made also for Art de La Guerre, currently probably the most played “ancient- medieval” set of rules. An Imperial Roman army list (standard 200 points) for ADG would look something similar like this:

Four Equites (4 bases with 3 mounted each)

Two Cataphract (4 bases with 4 mounted each)

Two Equites Illiricany (2 bases with 2 mounted, should have lance but we will use the mounted archers)

Five Legionary (5 bases with 8 foot each)

Four Auxilia Palatina (4 bases with 6 foot each, with unarmoured troops)

Four Auxiliary Archers (4 bases with 2 foot)

And Three single-based generals.

For this army, you need to have a Pacto Starter army and an box. If you want some allies, you can have a Goth command or a Huns one, and Plastic Soldier does also Huns.

For DBMM, things are more complicated. The Late Imperial Roman has a lot of specific options. For example, you can have 4 bases of Legionarii with heavy clubs (used to counter cataphracts at Ponte Milvio’s battle) or Dromedarii units (on Camels). In general, DBMM standard 400 points army has twice the miniatures of ADG, so you need to buy two Pacto base boxes and add some heavy infantry or cavalry, and be prepared to find some “special” units like camels from other producers. As you could see above, they are pretty compatible.

A good DBMM Late Roman Army 400 could be like this

3 rCv(O) Generals	28	84
12 rBd(O)	7	84
12 rAx (S)	5	60
4 rBd (X)	8	32
6 rPs(O) supp Bd	2	12
12 rPs(O) supp Ax	2	24
3 rKn(F)	11	33
3 rKn(X)	13	39
3 rLH(O)	5	15
1 rLH(F)	4	4
6 Bg	2	12
		399

 

So you are good for the Cavalry (even if you still need two extra LH(F) Sagittari). You just need an extra box for the Catafracti. For the infantry, you need 48 armored foot and 48 unarmoured ones, so probably you can buy two Pacto boxes and you should do the job, using the extra archers for the rBw(O) bowmen option.

In both cases, ADG and DBMM, you should add some artillery and the Camp to the army, not included in any Plastic Soldier’s box. Also, doing the Late Imperial army, you already have a good core for the Patrician list, where you need to add some Huns and horse archers.

Speaking of the Goths, in Art de la Guerre we have the generic German list (number 90), and a good combat list @200 points should be:

Six Medium Cavalry (6 bases with 3 mounted each)

Three Light Cavalry (3 bases with 2 mounted each)

Two Heavy Sarmatian Cavalry (4 bases with 4 mounted each, armoured)

Eight Medium or Heavy Swordmen Impetus Elite (10 with 6/8 miniatures each)

Two Light infantry bow (2 bases with 2 foot each)

Four Light infantry with spear (4 bases with 2 foot each)

Three Generals

If you use some of the archers in the Medium or Heavy infantry base, maybe in the back rank, you can do this army with Pacto box and an additional Gothic Infantry pack.

For DBMM, you can do lots of list in Book 2, starting from generic Early German list (47) up to Early Visigothic (65), Early Vandal (66), and so on, if you are not fanatical of the small details that told the difference from the different German gents and tribes. The Plastic Soldier’s foot and mounted have only rounded shields, so it will not perfect any German tribe design, but if you are going for a generic “barbarian” 200 AD circa, it’s good.  You could also do Alans (adding the Huns boxes).

These armies have a core of 15/20 iKn(F) and 20/30 foot warbands (the Early Visigoths has a minimum of 48 4-figure Wb). With a single Pacto box, you can do 10 Kn bases and 13 heavy Wb bases, so you’ll probably need 3 Pacto boxes to have all options.

What next?

I’ll paint some new Plastic Soldier Company Romans and Goths, and compare them to similar “metal” painted figures in my next article, and we will see if the difference, on a game standard painting, will be noticeable or not. We’re also going to have another feature on the newly available and range, cast on the “lost” and awesome Corvus Belli range!