Tag Archives: Heroics&Ros

Heroics and Ros 6mm WWII Infantry

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Heroics and Ros seems about as old and venerable as 6mm gets.  They offered reasonable and varied figures for WWII at a time when even GHQ offerings of infantry were weak.  They also provided vehicles, artillery, and aircraft in a rich variety so that one could purchase a range of reasonably interesting figures to go with whatever vehicles one had.

The metal tray used above was from an AOL and shows just how many figures can be crammed into a small space, a boon for people who do not want miniatures taking up every bit of storage available.  The figures lack detail but are nevertheless distinguishable both for nationality and weaponry.  My painting on these was crude and quick.  I wanted to get a batch on the table at the time.

These serve well with Deluxe Squad Leader boards since these are standard quarter inch counters.  The addition of actual figures does lend something to any game.  The figures on top all show a (riderless) supply wagon, one of those details that always improves a game’s appearance.

Currently, these are available through The Last Square though like everything else, they also turn up on E-bay.  Infantry often comes in multiple types including regular infantry, heavy weapons infantry, and paratroopers.  Not to be overlooked are the very useful artillery crews.

GHQ WWII German Armor

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A selection of GHQ armor in the odd 1/285 scale. One artillery piece and all of the figures are by Heroics & Ros. The attention to detail on the vehicle castings is apparent. There is a precision in modeling that works well when modeling machines. Earlier castings including those from GHQ showed a free form sculpting which was not as effective.

German armor in western Europe in the later years of WWII used a 3-color camouflage paint scheme that can be a little tricky to make look good. Still, at such a small scale and with appropriate wet and dry brushing, some lapses can be readily forgiven especially since the original vehicles were often painted under some bad conditions. Most of these models were spray painted, masked and sprayed again, finally getting a wash of black and some drybrushed highlights. Details such as wheels, tires, tracks and cables were picked out with a brush.

Some of the vehicles shown here include the dreaded Tiger tank, the King Tiger, Panzer V and IV, and the Jagdpanzer IV. GHQ has a commitment to improving and expanding its range. This can be seen if one looks closely at the Opel Blitz trucks. An earlier multi-part casting is in the back. Newer Blitz show off the fine detail that GHQ excels at.
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Heroics & Ros

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Heroics and Ros
Could things get any tinier? At 1/300 scale, Heroics and Ros has created an enormous range of historical figures and vehicles that look great from a distance. Of course, close up, they seem a bit lacking but there is enough detail to figure out who is who. They are easy to paint since there is not much detail to worry about. The company used to be part of Navwar but has now become an entity unto itself.

Ancient Roman Army

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Romans in 6mm. The beauty of the 6mm scale is that it is possible to crowd a huge number of figures into a small space. With such a small size, individual details are swallowed up and one simply sees a mass of figures. This works well with ordered ranks of Romans. It becomes possible to use a smaller table space while crowding each base with masses of figures. Here, there are 20 figures to each base for a total of 80 figures, what you would expect in a century. However, for sanity’s sake, each block represents a cohort, each colored shield group a legion.

This is an old paint job on figures by Heroics Ros. I always mean to get back and do some more but that is the history of figure painting for me. The best approach for figures like this is an almost mechanical application of paint in broad colors with a minimum of detail. Still, with a little more time, errors on the shields could be corrected and some simple design applied. But in some respects too much detail would take away one of the pleasures of this scale that fine detail is imperceptible during gaming. We see the serried ranks of soldiers and little more even if every feature is finely detailed.

Time passes and the Romans have increased in number to just under 300 figures.
Now, over 400 figures. It is getting difficult to find more packs of Romans in the boxes still unpainted.