Making Medieval hybrids

Medieval wargamers have never had it so good. They've been blessed with three new plastic releases from Wargames Atlantic in conjunction with Footsore's Barons' War game. The plastic releases currently are knights, serjeants and peasant levy, with mounted knights and serjeants coming soon. Naturally, my mind started thinking about hybrids - could I use parts from other plastic kits with these? To my delight, the answer was yes.

The Atlantic sets by themselves are pretty impressive and (importantly) match up with the rest of the metal Footsore Barons' War range in terms of size and quality. The metals are great for personality and command figures. 

The parts from each Atlantic set can also be combined to make hybrids from them. Here, I've combined parts from the Peasants set with the Serjeants to make unarmoured crossbowmen and levy spearmen. But would these parts fit with other plastic sets? Fireforge does a good plastic Medieval range and Conquest Games Medieval Knights has some useful mounted cavalry. The only way to find out was to give it a go. Let's take a look at the torsos first.

From left to right, we have the three Atlantic set torsos followed by three from Fireforge. As you can see, the sets are roughly equal in size - the shoulders are slightly more narrow on the Fireforge ones, but are otherwise compatible. This does mean a little care is needed when adding the Altlantic parts to Fireforge torsos to ensure they are centred correctly.

Next, we have a selection of heads. First are Atlantic heads, followed by Fireforge, Conquest Games and then Victrix, who are about to release their own foot serjeants. They aren't currently available, but I suspect they should be interchangeable or a little larger than the ones shown here. All the heads are of similar size, except the Victrix ones which are slightly bigger.

Above are a selection of Fireforge torsos combined with Atlantic spare parts and heads. They make some unique looking miniatures, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I want people to ask "What range is that?"

The miniatures above have different heads combined with Atlantic torsos. As you can see, they all fit well. The knight on the right is armed with a mace taken from the Conquest Games Medieval Cavalry set.  

The Fireforge arms also can be used on the Atlantic models to good effect. Here, I used the gambeson sleeved arms from Fireforge with some gambeson torsos from Atlantic. They fitted together and worked well. 

The last set of models above are all Fireforge torsos with Atlantic parts for customisation. The cloaks are Fireforge. 

Making hybrids is an excellent way of making your Medieval army look unique and distinct. Thankfully for us gamers, most of the plastic manufacturers are broadly compatible with each other.