Landships II

Pat · Commander in Chief

Pegasus French: finally arrived

Ian P · Major

Hi Pat,

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Sounds good. Are they much larger than the old Airfix figures?

Pat · Commander in Chief

Ian P wrote:
Are they much larger than the old Airfix figures?

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No Ian, not at all. This is not a Zvezda set. PSR has them both at 23mm = 1,66 m in real life. Excellent for 1916!

It is the sculpting style that sets the two sets apart.

Pegasus have more, and more delicate detail, which is to scale, so notably thinner than the Airfix detail. The Airfix heads are slightly over scale, while the Pegasus are not. The Airfix guys are more stocky, as if in winter gear. The Pegasus bases are very thin.

Happy to report the plastic takes ordinary styrene glue well.

The material has not only the colour of toffee but also a similar feel. I like it much better than the rubber / eraser stuff H�T is experimenting with. It is all another material than the Pegasus WW2 Soviet Marine set (which didn't accept the same glue that well).

-- Edited by Pat on Friday 25th of March 2011 08:18:46 PM

RCD · Lieutenant-Colonel

Like you I have finally managed to get this set. What a gestation period for this set to finally appear! I am pleased with it except for the common mistake of no number two for the light machine guns. The colour does not matter because I want to paint a few in colonial Brown.

Talking about painting the figures what exactly should the colour be? I thought that the horizon blue should less of the blue/grey (with light coloured trousers) suggested - more of a powder blue. Have I got the wrong end of the stick? What have other modellers used for the light blue uniforms?

As for the Airfix WW1 French I must admit I have a real soft spot for them. yes they do show their age (1966!) but like the British and German sets (lets forget the RHA and American sets) they have so many poses never repeated again. The pigeon handler, trooper carry a heavy lead and digging - love them or hate them they are different. The British and German sets with banglore torpedoes, semaphore, stretcher bearers, first aider etc. No doubt a golden age for orginial ideas. Companies like Caesar now seem to be churning out the same poses (and quite often the same subject) with no orginality ever creeping in - BORING. Yes the Airfix French are dated but there are still companies producing inferior sets to this golden oldies!

Even HaT in the future sets like the WW1 kilties seem to have cut out 2 poses - including the only orginal one of the lewis gunner resting his gun.

Pat · Commander in Chief

RCD wrote:
Talking about painting the figures what exactly should the colour be? I thought that the horizon blue should less of the blue/grey (with light coloured trousers) suggested (...)

As for the Airfix WW1 French I must admit I have a real soft spot for them. yes they do show their age (1966!) but like the British and German sets (lets forget the RHA and American sets) they have so many poses never repeated again. (...)

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Agreed the Airfix WW1 French are still a valuable set, I was just pointing out� where they don't mix all that well with the Pegasus (or Caesar WW2 French, for that matter) figures. It might all become invisible through paint.

The correct hue of horizon blue has been discussed here. This thread might help: http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=63528&p=3&topicID=14799445

The Airfix WW1 Germans are still great, with the most convincing hand grenade throwing pose of all times. Never liked the British too much, not because of accuracy problems (what did we know of webbing then!) but because of the lack of an aggressive advancing pose.

Agreed many current sets are boring both for topics (you didn't say "Nazis" did you) as for poses. But still we are now getting a lot of WW1 and WW2 sets we have been asking for for decades: Ottomans, French, Italians, etc. Happy modelling! Pat

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