Delving into the English Civil War

The miniatures in question are 1/72 scale English Civil War Parliament infantry from A Call to Arms (www.acalltoarms.co.uk).

The Civil Wars of the mid seventeenth century were probably the most dramatic encounters in early modern British history. They were a great and bloody affair that left the nation stunned and horrified.

The front of the box has a nice piece of art work featuring the front rank of a pike block, which really put you in the thick of the action. On the rear of the box is an illustration of a musketeer and a introduction to the Civil War period.

Inside are 32 miniatures on sprues, there are four sprues in total with eight figures and four pikes on each of them. The figures are the same on each sprue, 4 pikeman and 4 muskets giving you a total of 16 of each type in four different poses.

The box says Parliament infantry but I suspect you could mix and match this set with the Royalist infantry set, due to there not really being much difference between the two forces of this period.

There is a little flash on some of the figures but overall they’re very clean and won’t need much work before painting them. These are exceptionally good sculpts with a lot of fine detail for this scale. They’re in a hard plastic though the weapons are a little thin which is to be expected at this scale and material.

I would have preferred some of the musketeers to be firing their weapons but we can’t have everything. The pike-men are nicely posed, I especially like the chap drinking from his water bottle. The pikes provided are rather bendy and I will look at replacing these with metal versions.

Overall I’m impressed with the quality of the figures at this scale and material. 1/72 can be a bit of a hit and miss affair when it comes to plastic miniatures, but Call to Arms have done an exceptional job with these. I look forward to getting some paint on them.