Let's talk about monopose...

[Pattus Magnus]

I agree with a lot of what folks have already said - monopose plastic figures made a lot of sense when they came out. And in my opinion they look quite good when they’re painted and based. Really, for mass battle games I think the look way better than units made with highly dynamic unique individuals figures. Reaper figures, for example, are great for role play and small skirmishes, but most look really odd in ranked up units. Where I grew up, role playing figures were all that was available for fantasy armies and I struggled to get enough. Eventually I bought Prince August mounds and cast my own.

There’s a little irony in me enjoying monopose figures, since I also really enjoy putting together conversions. I have taken dozens of the monopose ex-Grenadier plastic dwarves and orcs and cut them apart to make multi-pose figures! Partly, I get a kick out of the challenge of seeing what I can put together. I also enjoy the Oathmark and Frostgrave kits and building units that are varied but consistent. I suspect I am similar to Elbows and Onebigriver and am happy with units made up of 2-4 variations on a troop type. Some GW kits, like the more recent Skaven clanrats also hit the sweet spot for me, where the available arm combinations allow varied but consistent units. I’m not so keen on most of what they did since Age of Sigmar came out - gluing together 6-12 parts to make a complicated single pose figure does not make me happy. It has all of the tedious parts of kitbashing (cleaning mould lines off tiny pieces, mainly), with none of the creativity!

I find GW’s Lord of the Rings figures a bit strange. Overall I like them, but the boxes have about 18 unique sculpts each - some single piece and some with 2-3 pieces - and they’re fairly dynamic poses. It’s great for skirmish gaming (as the main LotR game is), but they look odd in ranked formations. It creates an unsettling feeling of uniformity and dynamic poses that doesn’t always work well together (and some of the poses are just strange - a figure stabbing one direction while looking back over it’s shoulder in the opposite direction might be straight out of scenes from the movies, but it doesn’t work in a unit…).

To return to the original poster’s point, I have heard folks express distain for monopose figures, but I don’t share it (and I get the impression many folks on LAF don’t either). The magic is all about what someone does with the figs after they come out of the box.

[Elbows]

I think that's another issue entirely - the "how the hell are these guys supposed to rank up?" issue with a load of manufacturers.  Particularly when they're supposed to be intended for a rank-n-flank style game.

I know personally I'd actually really dig something like an orc unit which was sculpted as marching in column (weapons slung over shoulders etc.), but then those minis wouldn't be popular for dungeon crawls or skirmish games.  GW was pretty notorious for releasing even single pose plastics which were wider than the bases they came with, .  How many units of dwarves have you seen angled about 45 degrees to the base, etc.

I know people have the same issue with Napoleonics - some kits including a lot of firing poses...when the reality is they're going to spend 98% of their time marching in column and it makes it much easier to move/use/place them without rifles/bayonets sticking out, etc.

[Tactalvanic]

Late 80s - early 90s with a two many years break or so due to reality intruding.

But I think the main thing being, as others mention business is what it is and mono-pose figures made for reduced costs, and your experience and entry into the hobby coincided with the emergence of hard plastic into the industry, and in its nascence at the time had not evolved to the complexity that it would in later years.

but effectively - for mass battles lots of troops the same are easier to rank and can look and do look impressive.

so most of my early mountain foundations are a mixture of individual and mono-pose, and now multi-part, multi-pose "modern" stuff

I love fantasy Warriors, love the mono-pose orcs and dwarves and so wish they had been able to expand on them, such a dream never to come to pass.. yet. If only they had managed to do some elves.. ah well.

Still, I keep checking em4 to see if the "out of stock" has changed yet, regardless i don't really need more 

I love my Oldhammer my old 40ks and some of the modern, pride myself that I have resin and even mantic "restic", and no GW fail-cast. 

I love my 3d printers, when I have time to use them!

I love my Prince August moulds in their box awaiting the awakening and heat to come their way.

Boy do I love my old Grenedier stuff even more to.

so like the great English mixture of metric/imperial - scale in mm, measure distances in inches etc. I don't care, bring them all on - but especially - unit with special characters and mono-pose rank and file in all its glory.

glorious, all of it. except fail cast, I don't need that in the mountain 

But most of all, horses for courses, we are so lucky to have so much choice now. There is so much new and old available.

I thought all fantasy Dwarves are meant to stand/walk at 45 degree angle, something like crabs having to walk sideways sort of thing 

But now, that fantasy marching in column.. that's, that's tickling me now, do I need to add a project for a couple regiments of fantasy troops marching in column, do I need some more multipart boxes for a unit a marching for each fantasy trop race.. oooohhh you project creating temptress you..

Except the dwarf unit, they have to march in column at 45 degrees. agh you temptress!

[Freddy]

1.) depends on the pose, everyone marching or standing in the same pose makes sense (it is required in the army after all), everyone jumping in the same pose is weird.Also depends on the subject, Napoleonic armies or honour guards are ok to be a clone army, for ragtag warbands it is weird.
2.) monopose is easier to paint in big batches
3.) monopose shall not mean exact copies, changing the heads and the weapon arms can add a lot of variety while keeping the easily rankable unified pose. I am now sculpting a skaven unit with this philosophy, there are multiple bodies with the same pose and several weapon hand and shield options. This way I can have the best of both worlds.

[Major_Gilbear]

As somebody who's returned to mono-pose again somewhat recently (and being, I think, close to tikitang in age), my thoughts as follows:

Pros

> Waaaaaay fewer mould lines to remove. Modern multipart-plastics are especially difficult to clean up completely. I am very bothered by mouldlines (you may not be!), so this this the #1 boon for me. This mostly applies to plastic monopose for WHFB, but I am also quite partial to the 1-peice metal "flats" for both WHFB and 40k for basically the same reasons (and my too-many Imperial Guard armies are thankful for that!).

> Few/no assembly of parts. As somebody who pins most joints (on plastic models too), this is again a big plus.

> Easier to speed-paint. Every model is the same; so after the first batch, all the others should go even faster. Plus, few/no undercuts, so no annoying spots to get the brush into.

> If you need to put the models in a game where they are ranked up into units, the right design and size of mono-pose models makes achieving this a cinch.


Cons

> Units (and armies) look overly-uniform and repetitive. If they are precision-drilled elite units, it's not too bad. If they are supposed to be more varied, this is a bit of a problem. Varying colours across a model helps, but the overall mass effect from across the table for most mass-battle games will still always be very uniform.

> Boring. For all the efficiencies outlined above, the sheer repetition on having big units or even armies of monopose is frankly dull, and has a good chance of causing burnout.

> Static posing. Yes, it's a pain that converting the model to look different is hard and often somewhat ineffective, but the big negative is if the models don't fit on their bases all that well, or if they otherwise rank up badly - this is essentially an unsolvable problem unless you move to much bigger bases (which is often not an option for mass-battle games).


Source: I have been (and still am) working on WHFB 4E Dark Elf Warriors and various editions of WHFB Plastic Skaven. For different reasons, each and every Pro/Con listed above applies to both armies. I also have lots more GW monopose figures to tackle at some point.


At some point, GW realised that there was a balance to be struck between variation and not being able to rank up models. Whilst their 7th/8th edition kits were all muuuuch better-considered in this respect, the sheer size of models you were expected to fit onto (usually) 20mm x 20mm bases (with a mounting face of about 17mm x 17mm due to the sloped sides) was completely unrealistic. IMO, if you have to number the bottoms of the model bases to that you can get them to fit back onto a movement tray at the end of the game, then something has gone very, very wrong!

To return to the original poster’s point, I have heard folks express disdain for monopose figures, but I don’t share it (and I get the impression many folks on LAF don’t either). The magic is all about what someone does with the figs after they come out of the box.

Quite! Many conversions I've seen over the last 20 years are not much more than part-swaps or kitbashes really. Actual conversions, where fixed-pose models are transformed magically into rather different ones via cutting, grafting, sculpting, and imagination are often rather rarer these days. Oddly, when it was converting metal models, I would have agreed it was hard work; but for plastics, which are much more common these days and are far easier to cut and glue, I do find it ironic when people complain! 

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As a slight aside, back in RT and WHFB3E, there were various plastic kits released that were often more modest in how much assembly was required, and could in some cases be argued to be a half-way point between monopose and multipart. And then, in subsequent editions, those models just disappeared. It's a great shame, as the old 3E plastic Skaven actually look great and rank up well, and for 40k the Squats, Orks, and Imperial Guard were all great multi-part kits. As much as I realise that some kits were retired for various reasons, I was always sad that it took so long for them to get a half-decent plastic replacement; those old Skaven, Orks, and Guard in particular.

[Khusru2]

My MiniFigs ancient armies, from the '80s are monopose. I have no problem with them. They are units. My F&IW and skirmish games are mostly multipose with the exception of the British and French regulars & some GW figures. Skirmish gaming lends itself better to figures having different poses. It's characterful.

[ced1106]

Some rulesets are equipment-dependent, so it's "nice to have" a miniature whose loadout matches their character sheet. As a boardgamer who also buys miniatures in bulk, I do find it frustrating to have spent all this money, yet not have a miniature matching the character sheet for an RPG or skirmish miniature. I do also notice that monopose often means single-piece casted miniatures, which often have a smaller range of weapons than multipiece ones, much less poses.

Monopose is usually cheaper, has little assembly, and easier to paint than interchangeable. So when a ruleset gives me a choice, usually monsters whose WYSIWYG doesn't really matter for their stat block, monopose is fine. You can still do a variety of paintjobs on them to make them somewhat different.

[tikitang]

Also depends on the subject, Napoleonic armies or honour guards are ok to be a clone army, for ragtag warbands it is weird.

I agree with this. Context does make a big difference.

If I was making a warband for Mordheim, for example, I wouldn't have them all the same; I'd try to make each one look like an individual character.

But, if I took the same ragtag warband and put them into a dungeon-crawling adventure game like Advanced Hero Quest (or something similar), where they encountered rooms featuring perhaps up to a dozen plastic Skaven at a time, I wouldn't be averse to having the Skaven as "clones" (just like the original AHQ box set comes pre-packaged with). In fact, I think it would almost be more weird (to me) if each of the Skaven looked unique. I'd start thinking of them as characters rather than just monsters to be slain. Although this perhaps lessens the "realism" and makes it feel more "gamey", I don't really have a problem with this.

But, if my Mordheim opponent showed up with a warband consisting entirely of 1993 plastic skaven as in the photo above, I might think that was an odd choice!

[Luigi]

As other have said, "clone" miniatures are good and actually better than multipose when ranked in tight formations.
I actually prefer these type of miniatures, they make painting so much easier somethng I can get done a in an afternoon or two with then a full rank to show for it.

[tikitang]

For all the efficiencies outlined above, the sheer repetition on having big units or even armies of monopose is frankly dull, and has a good chance of causing burnout.

This is also a very good point.

I once, not that long ago (a couple of years perhaps), painted a band of identical soldiers (I believe it was eight) for a certain project idea I had. They were incredibly simple models—basic men at arms with helmets—which in theory shouldn't have taken very long to paint, and I chose to paint them in a batch because of this. But, by the time I had finished, I was utterly exhausted and had completely fallen out of love with the project, which I subsequently abandoned. I had never experienced painting burnout before and I never want to experience it again! That is why I vowed to never batch-paint again, even if I'm painting identical models.


Another thought that occured to me is that I really think there is something about both board games and video games which encourages "monopose-thinking" (to coin a phrase). Just scanning my own board game shelves, I'm conscious that they all involve player characters going up against different "types" of enemy, and each enemy type has its own artwork (and miniature, if applicable) with no variations. I wouldn't expect anything different; it just feels right. Similarly, in most video games, the player character finds themselves combatting hordes of "clone" enemies, each represented by a single 2D sprite/3D model. In both cases (board and video games), it's not just cost-saving to only have one type of art/model for one type of enemy, but it's also psychologically much easier to "read" the game when you identify a certain type of enemy with one repeated image.

I wonder if it's my background in both these sorts of games, combined with my introduction to Warhammer in the early 90s, which has predisposed me to expect to see identical models to represent a type of unit?

[SotF]

Not entirely monopose, but I've been building an army using, mainly, Reaper's Anhurians and the main troop types have 2 versions of each (1 if you go with the bones versions). It kind of pushes you to look for options in the figures that can add a little variety but the uniformity creates a lot more in the way of unit cohesion.

The cavalry were rather easy to modify since I was going for weapon swaps anyway to go from the lances that were never straight or looking right to spears and some things for the standard, champion, and a trumpeter...and using a wardog instead of one of the unit because I had one that looked cool and was to big to fit the foot troops.

Several of them can be modified rather easily for different things such as the drummer can be modified to work well as part of an artillery crew

[Dubbya]

For anyone into this "era", hit up the Middlehammer Facebook group or similar. It is funny how forgotten it seemed about ten years ago, exactly as the OP says - not generally liked by modern fans and old lead fans alike!

[Major_Gilbear]

If I was making a warband for Mordheim, for example, I wouldn't have them all the same; I'd try to make each one look like an individual character.

[...]

But, if my Mordheim opponent showed up with a warband consisting entirely of 1993 plastic skaven as in the photo above, I might think that was an odd choice!

Well, they're not that bad - small adjustments to the monopose plastics are perfectly possible, and can look nice. I made a few minor alterations to get some command figs for a unit of 40, and they look fine to me. That said, there is no denying how uniform the overall unit looks, no matter how I end up painting them...

A couple of thumbnails attached for you to see what I mean.

[Phil Portway]

Give me mono-pose every time. Recent revamp of my 80s Gobbos. you can still make them almost interesting with painting different colours

[Elbows]

That stuff, however, highlights an issue: if it's going to be monopose, it better be a good monopose.  The goblins are a good example; perfect pose.  Standing, shield, spear, done.

Now imagine if that one pose was jumping on one foot, spear in hand, screaming.  An army of those would look stupid by comparison.  Same could be said for Napoleonics.  A basic soldier marching would be infinitely preferable to a guy running with his bayonet forward, etc.

This is why the monopose plastics from GW in the early days tended to work pretty well- they were "boring" poses, but that's the best one if you only have one choice.  Look at the classic first plastic Space Marines ; bolt gun head at the ready across chest, feet planted.  Great pose if you only get one (well three technically if you include sergeant, devastator and the flamer swap could make four...).