Ah I love getting interesting stuff in the mailbox, it makes every week feel like Christmas! This weekend the figures I ordered recently from Copplestone Castings arrived. The order also took a little less than a week to get here from the UK which is superb! It must just be the aeroplanes flying out of New Zealand that are slow.

I’ve heard good things about Copplestone from various places on the internet, so I wasn’t overly concerned about the quality of figure I’d receive. What primarily concerned me was how well the Copplestone Castings figures would mix with the Artizan Designs Germans I already have in the garage. I know at least one of our gentle readers expressed a similar interest, so in these photos we have a based and primed Artizan Designs German DAK sentry on the left (or sinister if you prefer) compared with the shortest figure from each of the three sets I ordered from Copplestone on the right.

The first photo compares a gentleman from the Copplestone ‘High Adventure‘ ‘American Adventurers‘ pack. You can see that the two figures mix perfectly well. In fact they even seem to have similar facial expressions. Comparing manufacturers it seems that Artizan Design’s figures generally have slightly more ‘crisp’ details. Possibly because they focus more on the historic wargaming market and are concerned about capturing the uniform details of the mid-twentieth century soldier. Copplestone’s figures still have plenty of detail on them but I notice it’s sculpted more ‘broadly’, for example compare the jacket pockets on the above figures.

This second photo shows a rather rotund, bespectacled figure from the ‘High Adventure’ ‘Armed Archaeologist‘ pack. Even though he’s shorter and fatter than the German soldier the two still look fine together, also remember I’ve photographed the shortest figure from each Copplestone pack. In fact that particular Archaeologist seems to have a bit of a German look to him as well – possibly it’s the moustache and goatee.

Copplestone get points for the way they shipped their figures too by the way. Each of the packs arrived in a snappy little black textured cardboard box, the kind normally used for jewellery I believe. Indeed opening them I was half expecting to find some Victorian Egyptiana in there – a dusty scarab broach perhaps. I suspect Copplestone pack all their figures this way but it seems particularly suitable for the ‘High Adventure’ line!

Ah yes, I’ve left the ladies to last. As adventuresses each of the four figures in the Copplestone ‘Female Archaeologists‘ pack are tall and slim which suits their active characters. They’re all well sculpted and all look lady like, thankfully only the figure in the pith helmet has an open collar with plunging cleavage.

The lady in the jodphurs drawing her pistol does have a rather well rounded posterior which does look a little odd on the metal figure but probably won’t be noticeable once painted. I imagine she’s most likely to get painted first too…err not because of her behind but because of the four female figures she’s the most American looking. She reminds me of the Rachel Weisz character in ‘The Mummy‘ actually (yes, although she was playing a British character) and will serve as an excellent foil to the familiar looking bullwhip carrying figure from the ‘Armed Archaeologist’ pack.

In closing I’ll just add that Copplestone Castings figures were all well cast, with almost no flash on them and all have minimal mold lines. I could happily order from Copplestone again, so they too go into the blogroll.