Set 6436 3 French Soldiers

[Donmobil]

With all the British sets in the past (and please bring back the British soldiers in Tricorne),I have really wanted French soldiers.  When set 6436 - 3 French Soldiers came out I was really happy.  Then the let-down.  There are 2 French soldiers and an Officer.  The ratio of officers to soldiers is at the least terrible.  I would need to buy 5 sets to get 9 soldiers plus the officer to make a unit of 10.  This leaves me with an extra soldier and 4 extra officers.  Why didn't Playmobil give us 3 different soldiers to make up 3 units and many more of soldiers and then buy enough sets of 6435 French Generals to lead them???

-- Donmobil

[Ismene]

Where else are they going to shove those aristocratic younger sons if not the army?

[tahra]

Where else are they going to shove those aristocratic younger sons if not the army?

A solution that applies to all the themes, I guess..

[Rhalius]

A common problem with playmobil sadly enough.

I remember wanting the first siege tower produced almost more for the amount of soldiers (5!!) than the actual tower. Knights are more common than soldiers, and officers as well in the western and pirate themes. Usually too many pirate captians as well.

DS releases can help though. If they actually add three soldiers there. Sadly with the red falcons of the last batch they just had to put a knight in there. 

[Donmobil]

I gave this some thought and here is what I came up with... not perfect, but do-able.

When I get the first set, I will have 1 officer and two different soldiers.  When I get the second set I will have 2 officers and each leading 2 soldiers.

With the 3rd set, I will have 1 extra officer and 2 officers each with 3 soldiers.  And with the 4th set, I will have 2 officers leading 4 soldiers plus 1 officer and by switching legs, I will use the extra officer minus the sword and belt, as an artilleryman.

Thus by switching legs and removing the extra swords I will have soldiers and artillerymen.  It really will not work out even by switching red for white legs, but one unit of soldiers will have white legs and another will have red legs.  Depending on how many of the French sets I get I could have two units each of the two soldiers plus cannon crews.

What do you think?

-- Donmobil

[Erik]

What do you think?

-- Donmobil

What I think is that it's a crying shame we can't order loose klickies through DS anymore, thanks to some eBay scalpers...
You came up with a nice solution, btw...! 

[tahra]

What I think is that it's a crying shame we can't order loose klickies through DS anymore, thanks to some eBay scalpers...

Really?

Though this has nothing to do with scalpers. If playmobil was willing to sell them, people wouldn't buy from scalpers. Solved.

[GrahamB]

Whilst the UK DS spare parts service may be different from that in other places, it is possible to order klickies through them. They may not be listed in Find Spare Parts (very few klickies are), but a request to the spare parts department in Essex has yielded several klickies for me. Not the Super 4 klickies (yet), but several others from recent sets. I haven't tried ordering multiples/ hordes/ armies though!

[Donmobil]

Set 6436 4 French Soldiers to me as a gamer is self defeating.  I explained in a earlier post how I will convert the extra officer figures into artilleryman.  As such, I will only purchase 19 sets.  This will give me all the artillerymen for 4 guns,  After this the ratio of 1 officer to 2 soldiers is bad.  I recommend discontinuing this set and replace it with the officer as a single figure.  As for the 2 remaining soldiers, drop the red pants.

Please consider the following.

A 3-pack of French soldiers, all with a yellow (gold in the real army) stripe on their black Tricorne (hat),  all should have white pants with black shoes.  All three should have the white cross belts on their torsos.  The third figure could be either klicky 30 00 8960 Naval guard with brown hair or 30 00 9010 Naval Guard with mustache.  Both figures are from set 3112 Naval Stronghold and you would not need to make new designs.

Instead of just buying 19 of set 6436 I would buy 100 plus sets of these 3 French soldiers, as I would think others would.  Just go to Garden Wargaming and look at the battle story-photos.  We really are asking for a proper French soldier set.

With all due respect, Don

[tahra]

As for the 2 remaining soldiers, drop the red pants.

Uhm.