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.

Warlord Games M3A1 Half-Track Part 2

I've been making good progress this week. I've been concentrating on my US army for Bolt Action, getting the rest of the figs done and painting the half track. I've tried some new weathering techniques on this, I've added rusty spots  and used different washes with some dry bushing as well.

I'm pleased with the result so far but I want to add some mud onto it somehow into the tracks and around the arches. It's still a work in progress as I need to finish the weathering, add the front gun and the driver.

In the background is some scenery I've been making. I found a great page on how to create hedges with pan scourers so tried it out today. They turned out great. I'll take some pics and put it in a separate post.

Warlord Games M3A1 Half-Track

I've got a new project on the work bench. It's a half track for my Bolt Action US infantry. I've still got some more infantry to do to complete my small army but I'm nearly there. I plan to do this half track and then a tank of some sort. I've built up the Half-track and base painted it. It's quite a nice little model. I have absolutely no idea how useful it'll be but it looks cool. I haven't fitted the front gun yet as I'm deciding whether or not to put a guy in there firing it.

Warlord Games Pike and Shotte English Civil War Infantry

Here are a few shots of my ECW army. I bought the basic starter army box and expanded it with some extra infantry, cavalry and artillery. Here are some of the pike and shotte figs.

The flag here is one of the ones from the infantry box. I think they look quite good. I've based all my guys on 40x40mm bases which is a bit of a squeeze at times.

I've got a sneaky figure from another range here. The cavalry guy is a fig I got from Ebay. He may be Foundry, I'm not sure though.

Painting US Infantry Part 3

So last night I got some bases done on these guys. I'm not that happy with the basing to be honest but it's quick and easy to do and looks ok. I simply paint the bases green then cover them PVA, chuck on some gravel and add some grass. I bought some tufts of grass from Games Workshop a while ago and have never used them so tried them out on these men. Let me know what you think.

I've got some decals for badges from Warlord Games so will put those on shortly.

I painted the teeth on a couple of the guys that had open mouths for a change.

I'm now using my wife's fancy camera to take the pictures. The trouble is I don't really know what I'm doing so bear with me. They will get better.

Painting US Infantry Part 2

So we've got our figures primed and we've also painted the base colours for skin, jackets and helmets. Next step is to paint on all the rest of the base colours. For these guys, dark brown for wood and boots, light green for the back pack and belts and tan for the socks (can't remember what those things are called as I type this).

Here are two of my infantry guys

After that, simply dry brush any areas I want to highlight. In this case I dry brushed the jackets and helmets in the same paint I used for the back packs. Finally I apply a wash over the entire figure using Citadel's Agrax Eartshade which is labelled as a shade. I used to use Army Painter Quickshade dip but the Agrax Earthshade is quicker to use and less messy. I'll post up some pictures of my ECW army which were pretty much all done using the Army Painter dip.

I think the wash dirties them up, gives you some shadowing and dulls the base colours. I'm really happy with the finish, good enough for the game table. I've tried painting eyes and teeth but I don't think it's worth the effort, once they're on the table you don't see them.

Here are some finished figures

Ready for war! Using this process I can usually get about 7-10 guys painted in an evening. Just got the basing to do so I'll post up some more pictures of them with bases although I'm rubbish at doing bases. If anyone's got and tips I'm all ears.

Painting US Infantry Part 1

Hi there, here is the first part showing how I paint my miniatures. I am by no means a great or even good painter. As I've mentioned before my main aim is to get miniatures on the game table as quick as possible with minimum effort. I enjoy playing the games first and foremost and whilst I do enjoy the painting/building side of it a lot, painting lots of minis can be a thankless task at times.

Just a word on colouring and livery. I know a lot of people take the historical accuracy side of gaming very seriously. I don't, at all (as I've said before). It doesn't interest me in the slightest. As long as it looks like what I'm going for I'm happy.

Ok, here we go. I start off by priming the figures, usually in black but it really depends what figures I'm painting. For my ECW New model army I primed them all in red to save me painting the jackets and I'm doing my confederates in grey primer for the same reason. After the primer coat depending on the figures and if I can be arsed I sometimes dry brush them in white to pick out the features as it makes it easier to see sometimes. In this case I didn't. The first colour coat is skin so for these guys, hands and face. You'll notice I'm not overly bothered about neatness at this stage. The flesh colour here is Games Workshop Elf flesh. It's a bit bright but we can dull it down later.

After that it's jackets and helmets. I'm using Humbrol olive colour for this. All my paints are acrylics by the way.

That's it for part 1. In part 2 we'll get all the base colours done. I paint skin, jackets, backpacks/belts, trousers, guns and boots and finally metal in that order. Ta ta for now.