Back!

I've been away for ages due to holidays, work and now now home internet!! Once normal service is resumed i'll be able to update where I am properly. I now have a 20 man regiment of Confederate infantry done and looking good. I've said before that despite the cheapness of the figures they actually turned out ok.

I've built up my box of cavalry and they'll be my next painting job. Currently on my workbench I have the following to get done:

Wild west buildings - I've got about 4 scratch built buildings to finish off. It's my first attempt at this so results are mixed!

Wild west figures - 4 or 5 citizens to fill out the town (may need to get some more)

ECW cavalry - 2 boxes of Warlord Games ECW cavalry to build and paint although having now played a few games of pike and shotte, I already have more than enough so these boys can wait

WW2 US jeep - I picked up a US jeep on holiday for next to nothing, it's a die cast model so just needs some weathering. I also have 15 US infantry to build and paint for Bolt Action but I've got more than a 500 point army done already anyway so no rush

Dungeons and Dragons - I picked up a vintage D&D box set game at a boot fair recently that included some Ral Partha metal figs. they look cool so I thought I'd paint them up for a laugh

Templar/feudal Knights - I bought these on Ebay ages ago and have done nothing with them, they've been painted already but look poo so I'm going to redo them. I don't know what for at the mo' we'll see.

Hedges - Hedges, hedges and more hedges!!! I now have more hedges than I will ever need :-)

Like I said, once the internet is back at home I'll post some pics and a proper update.

Confederate ACW army progress

I've been working away a lot the last couple of weeks so haven't made much progress. I've managed to get some more of the soft plastic figs painted though. I've also tried out a couple of highlighting techniques for fun.

I tried to do all the variants of the figs (not many!) . All the flag holders are holding those furled up flags so I may get some separate flag dudes as it would be nice to have some unfurled flags on show. I just painted it red and added a darker red wash. Does anybody know of any tutorials on painting furled flags??

I tried some different highlighting techniques. The first fig (far left) is done my normal way - Base colours then washed in GW Agrax eartshade. The next guy has been dry brushed in grey (yes I know it looks blue!) and for the guy on the right I just highlighted some of the raised grey areas. I think I may do more with the highlighted areas. I don't really like the dry brushed guy.

I'm taking the rest of my first 20 man regiment on holiday so i'll get them finished and see how they look together. After that I'm going to do some cavalry.

New project ACW armies

Now the Bolt Action army is done, I'm moving onto the next project. I've wanted to do an American Civil war army for ages now and now is the time to start.

At Salute earlier in the year I picked up some cheap ACW infantry. I managed to get 120 plastic figures for about £20. They're not great quality and were a mixture of Confederate and Union soldiers. I decided to use these as the base for my confederate army as there wasn't much variation in the figures so mixing the 2 will look better on the bases.

Last night I painted up 2 figures to see how they'd look.

I'm pleased. They look a lot better than I was expecting as they look pretty poo out of the bag. Here are a couple of pictures that show the raw figs, primed and fully painted.

They're made of a soft kind of plastic but they painted up fine and will look good when based up.