Maybe it will be a good lesson for other beginner hobbyists if I write some posts about how I started buying and painting models.
One thing was certain: I needed pirate figures. I ruled out 28mm figures from the start, because of their price. There are already very nicely crafted models available in this size, but there are only a few figures in a set, and there is not much variety in this theme. In contrast, there are many units available in 1/72 scale from a wide variety of historical periods. So I decided on 1/72. The next step was to find which set would be the winner. There aren't many pirates, but fortunately there are some available both here in Hungary and abroad. There is a brilliant website, Plastic Soldier Review, where you can check 1/72 figure sets (sometimes painted). This was a great help when choosing and I have been coming back to it many times since. I managed to decide on two sets. One is the Buccaneers box from Mars, and the other is the Seven Years War Austrian Sampler from HäT, because I definitely wanted to have some regular forces alongside (or rather against) the pirates. Since my game is not entirely tied to a real historical period, the Austrian soldiers of the Seven Years War will be great to fight with the buccaneers from 100 years earlier.
So I have 48 pirates and 33 soldiers. It may seem a bit unbalanced, but we will see later that I solved the situation creatively. The Mars set requires a lot more preparation than the other one. There are a lot of flashes, you have to thoroughly clean the excess plastic from the figures before painting. If we get it right, we will have a great team. 12 different poses (math experts could have already calculated that there are 4 of them), 9 of which are with firearms (aiming, loading), but there are also figures with swords, axes or even grenades. The back of the box gives some clues as to how they should be painted, but of course it depends on your imagination.
The HäT set is much cleaner, I mean has less flashes. However, the figures are less detailed. Or at least that's how it seems to me at first, but then we'll see what it looks like after applying the primer. I have mixed feelings about the figures. There are too many marching poses and very few fighters. Specifically, only 4 out of the 33 figures are aiming, but 12, so almost half, are marching, with their weapons on their shoulders (based on their headgear, half of these gun-wielding guys are grenadiers, the rest are wearing triangular hats). Of the 12 fighting figures, in addition to the 4 already mentioned, 5 are going somewhere, and 3 are reloading. We get 2 officers with halberds or spears, 2 drummers, 1 ensign and a mounted officer (you can choose to have him rest his sword on his shoulder or command his men to charge with it). I know this is a sampler, but I think the number of marchers is very over represented, it would have been better to have fewer moving around during the action, or at least a few figures aiming in line instead.
Finally, I'll add a few more pictures of each set.
Some conclusions about buying figures. It's fun to search and choose the right sets. You can also learn about each historical era during the process. Even though I had previously studied, for example, the War of the Spanish Succession, I couldn't have placed it on the timeline. Not to mention the Seven Years' War. There are so many very nice sets that you should buy immediately. The first lesson is that one box is enough at a time. Two at most. It's more than enough to paint 10-20-30 figures. Finishing with the existing 300 or so seems like an eternity, but at least I won't get bored. (I bought a large diorama set last year. I wished it for a while and waited until it was the last piece and went on sale.) The second lesson is that it's hard to paint without paints. My next post on the topic will be about that.