Over recent years I had seen many of Peter Dennis' wonderful paper soldiers on Facebook and YouTube and had often thought about having a go if just to see what all the fuss was about! When I saw his 'Peninsular War' title pop up on Amazon for just £10 I could not resist ordering a copy. For those unaware it contains every type of British, French and Portuguese soldier for the War that can be printed, glued and folded to create armies in 28mm scale for wargaming as an alterative to painting model soldiers. They are of course 'flats' but the artwork is very clever in the way it portrays for example, cavalry. I'm sure that I will have a go at a couple of units just to see what I can do with them! Patience is required as you need to cut carefully around each individual figure including muskets and bayonets to remove all trace of white edges but Peter does explain the method of doing this in his video linked below. It looks fun and it looks really therapeutic, and while it will never replace traditional metal or plastic figures it does offer a cheap alterative way of getting into the hobby.
So. Paper Soldiers, what do you think?
Cutting them out looks really fiddly and they look quite susceptible to bending / creasing. For 2D figures like this I think the Wofun approach is better, albeit they still need the edges colouring.
ReplyDeleteHi Rob, yes cutting out can be fiddly but Peter has a clever method of twisting the figures and keeping the scissor hand rested which works well. I originally bought the book with the idea of printing them at 50% and simply using then to create 'blocks' with pre cut MDF but then I went with the 15mm Essex figures! Re the bending, using 100g paper as suggested with the layer of PVA sandwiched between the front and back makes them fairly sturdy. I doubt I will go anywhere with this but I really wanted to try making a few up.
DeleteWofun are great of course but very expensive.
All the best
Lee.
They are a great idea and perhaps some value if you want to dip your toe in a new period and try it without making the bigger investment of lead / plastic / 3D figures first …… we have all be down that expensive route! I did see an article years ago about cutting these and the recommendation then was to use Decoupage scissors, which are intended for fiddly cutting.
ReplyDeleteThe one book that I bought, I was not impressed by the rules, but in truth, the paper lads are rules agnostic!
https://peterspaperboys.com/
ReplyDelete