Scale differences are more obvious when you’re looking at large objects than you are when you’re looking at smaller things. And in the world of ancient wargaming, nothing is larger than an elephant. Various people around the globe (Hesperiana and Master of None) have posted comparison pictures of their elephants so while I was sorting my unpainted lead out the other day, I thought I’d contribute to that process.
Lousy picture of the Xyston, Museum, and Outpost ellies.
What you have here is the “ANC20102 – Indian Elephant with 3 Crew” from Xyston, “IE10 Indian - Elephant Howdah Mahout, Archer Javelin” from Museum Miniatures, and “KHMC1 – Khmer C in C on Elephant” from Outpost Wargame Services”. They are standing on 40mm bases.
According to Wikipedia, a large bull elephant is 3.2m high at the shoulder. 15mm figures vary from about 1:100 to 1:120 which makes the Xyston elephant at the top end of that range, and the Outpost one toward the bottom. The Museum one is a little small by that reckoning, but their Indian horses are tiny, so if you had a purely Museum army the small elephant wouldn’t be noticeable.
I’m pleased I took this picture because I thought that the Outpost elephant was too small, when it’s actually smallish but probably OK. Reading the DBA army lists the Khmer fought the T’ang Chinese, and they fought the Abbassid Arabs and Central Asian Turks. I feel a ‘morph’ coming on – maybe in 2015!
An interesting post and photo. The difference between these samples is significant. More so than I expected.
Yes it’s interesting what a difference a few millimetres makes. It’s pesky because some manufacturers only do a couple of varieties of elephants, but as you can see with the variation, mixing and matching can be difficult. Last weekend I saw an army that included Xyston and Museum elephants and even though they had all been given the same paint scheme (which does help to blend figures in) you could see the size difference pretty clearly.