I recently read on the Hawgleg forum that Blue Moon had just started a bunch of 15mm lines, among them some Wild West. Since I had just started some 15mm Wild West I went to their site to check them out. I was blown away. Everything about their 15mm site is just outstanding. First of all, they have pictures of everything! Not just pics of a few of their minis. Every mini. Not just a thumbnail that you can't tell what the heck you're looking at, either. They have thumbnails that you can click on and get 2 progressively larger pics showing all of the minis in a particular pack. No more having to buy minis and hope they look good or are equipped the way you want. You can see them. They're color pics. The minis have been washed to bring out the detail, and there is a lot of detail. The pic above is one of their enlarged pics showing their "Personalities" pack.
I bought the Personalities pack and I love it. First of all, the service was great. The pack showed up in the mail in 2 days!
Every mini is different. I had recently bought some other brands' minis. They didn't have pics of all their minis on their website. Some had just a title. One pack I got from that other brand had 12 minis in the pack but only in 3 poses. I hate that. With the Blue Moon minis I got 25 different minis for $15, including a coffin, blacksmith anvil and one of the 25 minis is a mounted "One-Eyed Fat Man" like Rooster Cogburn from True Grit. As you can see in the pic, the minis are in groups of 5. These are my unofficial descriptions of the groups:
5 Mexican Bandidos
5 Kerchief wearing Masked Robbers
5 Lawmen
5 Personalities: A "Blondie" from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", a "Bat Masterson" a "wild Bill Hickock" and a couple of others.
5 Miscellaneous Types: A blacksmith, an Undertaker, 2 other townies, and the mounted Rooster.
Size: The minis are pretty much 18mm instead of "true 15mm". They're noticeably larger than the Minifigs and Peter Pig minis I have. The latter seem to be "true 15mm".
Detail: The level of detail on the Blue Moon minis appears slightly superior in comparison to the Minifig and Peter Pig minis. But maybe that's just a function of size and my failing vision. :)
Now for some poorly executed pics of badly painted minis :).
Blue Moon 15mm Bandidos - Block Painted & Dipped
Size Comparison Shot (Left-Right) of Blue Moon Bandido with Minifig and Peter Pig
One-Eyed Fat Man
I am planning on painting the remainder of these minis up in like groups, as I did with the Bandidos. I'm going to use some unofficial Gutshot conventions for the painting, also. The Lawmen are good guys or "White Hats". Therefor, I'll be painting their hats white. The Masked Robbers are bad guys or "Black Hats". So they get black hats. I'm thinking that using cohesive colors in a given group will help for making "warbands" for Flying Lead, also.
As always, comments are welcome, and thanks for looking.
Luckyjoe
1 comment:
Excellent review! Our hobby could use more like this. Thanks for the useful, well-written information.
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