How do I represent missing troop types?

Started by MediumAL, 15 October 2015, 06:25:54 PM

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MediumAL

Hi,
Some ranges in the online catalogue don't look complete, but the missing figures are sometimes available in other sections of the catalogue. Sometimes it is easy to find a match, but not always, and I think it would be useful to have some reference site or database which says what packs are available that would do the job. For instance, the British East Africa range does not list British/Sa/Imperial infantry, but they can be sourced from the Middle East range. Others are less obvious, and I recollect one thread where someone looking for German Schutz Kompagnie figures were advised to use Boer infantry. I'm sure that lots of people have found solutions to this sort of thing and the collective experience would be a terrific reference. Sometimes it might need a simple conversion to get the right figure, and again people's ideas and experience would be very useful.
What do people think?

Al

Techno

Hi Al.

Personally, I think your best bet is to ask for recommendations for individual 'proxies', if you can't find what you want, easily, in the 'catalogue'.
The gang here are particularly good at that sort of thing.  :)

Cheers - Phil

paulr

Seconded, I have had some interesting suggestions here ;)
Some Most were even very helpful ;D ;D
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Ithoriel

Did any of them involve military miniatures Paul? ;)
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John Cook

I use British Boar War, and NWF, for 1940s Dutch.  File down the top of the helmet and once painted they are dead ringers. 

KTravlos

I tried to start a thread for posting proxy uses, but it did not pick off.

MediumAL

I think the problem with a single thread covering all periods is finding the information. Some kind of database woud be best, but thta may not be practical. I think I'll go with the suggestion and ask some specific questions in the forum that is relevant to the period I'm interested in.

Ithoriel

For all the regular tomfoolery, the forum is a wonderful resource. Full of knowledgeable and helpful people. Some are experts in the subject and can give details of what the uniform/ vehicle/ whatever looked like and others (or sometimes the same person) knows the figure range well enough to say figure X looks remarkably like that.
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John Cook

Quote from: John Cook on 16 October 2015, 06:31:32 PM
I use British Boar War, and NWF, for 1940s Dutch.  File down the top of the helmet and once painted they are dead ringers. 
Or even Boer War.

Rob

24 October 2015, 02:08:37 PM #9 Last Edit: 24 October 2015, 02:11:24 PM by Rob
There are a number of less mainstream periods I intend to take up when time and other commitments allow.

Italian Wars, Balkan Wars, Russian Civil War, Russo-Polish War, Mexican Civil War, The Wars of the Fronde to name those I can think of immediately.

All of these can be either completely or partially made up with proxies. I have even spoken on the forum about some and been given helpful advice on proxies. However unless you take them up immediately or note down the post dates the information can be hard to find again. More importantly from a Pendraken sales point of view, the casual browser would have no knowledge of this information.

I had an idea in the past of putting text on the web catalogue showing other uses for figures if there was one. But this was deemed impractical and too much extra work. Fair enough.

I've had another thought along these lines that would be less work (I believe) and would retain the research information and importantly would provide the chance of greater revenue for Pendraken from the occasional browsers who are not members of this forum.

Quite simple really and I will illustrate the idea using the RCW. We already have a tab for the RCW http://www.pendraken.co.uk/Inter-War-c18/Russian-Civil-War-sc121/ but it shows only RED army codes not useful in WW1 ranges. However there are a lot of codes in the WW1 ranges that would be very applicable to the RCW. If these could be listed in the RCW tab as well as their original WW1 tab it would do the work and possibly increase sales for this sub-period. The codes would remain the same in the sub-period tab so the only work needed would be to have the entry put onto the web-site catalogue. E.g. RP1 thru RP7. This example is simplistic and anyone interested in the RCW would have worked this one out. But this would probably not be the case for the Italian wars which it seems can be nearly completely done from other ranges. If we had an Italian Wars tab showing these codes it would almost certainly result in extra sales for Pendraken.

:) Rob

Leman

Hi Rob, I've noted on the requests board that I think only three further codes are necessary to complete the Italian Wars. Please second it.
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fred.

Quote from: Rob on 24 October 2015, 02:08:37 PM


Quite simple really and I will illustrate the idea using the RCW. We already have a tab for the RCW http://www.pendraken.co.uk/Inter-War-c18/Russian-Civil-War-sc121/ but it shows only RED army codes not useful in WW1 ranges. However there are a lot of codes in the WW1 ranges that would be very applicable to the RCW. If these could be listed in the RCW tab as well as their original WW1 tab it would do the work and possibly increase sales for this sub-period. The codes would remain the same in the sub-period tab so the only work needed would be to have the entry put onto the web-site catalogue. E.g. RP1 thru RP7. This example is simplistic and anyone interested in the RCW would have worked this one out. But this would probably not be the case for the Italian wars which it seems can be nearly completely done from other ranges. If we had an Italian Wars tab showing these codes it would almost certainly result in extra sales for Pendraken.

:) Rob

Yep - sounds a good idea.

Once you know what can work in other periods its great - but until you do its very hard to work it out.

Simply listing figures that work in other theatres / wars / etc would be a good way to show potential buyers that they can cover most of a war with existing, if non-obvious troops.
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Leon

The easiest way for this to be done from our end, would be for someone to start a period specific thread, ie "Mexican Civil War options" or something like that, and then folks can post in there what codes and figures they've been using.  If we get enough periods covered, I'll look at creating a new sub-board for them all to sit in.  We would like to have something like this available on the main website as well, but at the moment it's just not built to support anything like that.

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