OK OK, I have gone from aircraft to armor and ships. Roughly 50 builds later, I want to try my hand at some civil war figuresd for a small diorama. Cannon, redoubt, wagons, you know the deal. Maybe a farm house or two. While we have Tamiya and so forth in the above mentioned build, please tell me in your best bit of advice a brand and a scale which offers the greatest selection for me to paint and position in a diorama a little civil war scene. I have a bunch of the IMAX figures, they are so small. Is that all there is out there?
The best resource for all models ACW is http://www.milminwh.com. Military Miniatures Warehouse carries all the currently available Civil War figures except the soft plastic stuff. he also carries a wide range of diorama accessories including Armand Bayardi castings and thr Hudson & Allen line. One of the best ranges is the Shenandoah line from Australia. They feature a huge selection of figures in many poses and are relatively reasonable.
Except for the OO/HO stuff that is packaged by Italeri and other companies, you will be dealing with 54mm, approximately 1/32 scale and larger. There a soft plastic “playsets” in this scale, but these all suffer from a tendency for rifles and bayonets to be warped and not fixable. Paint has a hard time adhering to this as well. A good source for these are http://www.michtoy.com/ and http://www.hobbybunker.com/ .