Matt, Gloss or Somewhere Inbetween?

 Wasn’t Matt Gloss the drummer in Bros? Anyway…

A few years back I had an exchange with Andy Copestake (Old Glory UK) which was sparked by his wonderful ‘Shinyloo’ project. It was about how some figures suited the shiny better than others and we both agreed this was the case. I actually think this can be simplified by ‘new figures and post-1900’ for Matt and ‘Old Skool’ for Gloss. Having said that, scale plays a part too!

The simplest way to approach this is to trial on a couple of figures and decide what works best for you, as your opinion on your toys overrides everybody else’s. For my WSS stuff it was a no-brainer and Matt was the way to go. I now use AK as it gives the flattest Mattest I know. It’s designed for airbrushes, but paints on well and you don’t need much.

And that completes my Cloggies!

So, here is my quick guide on when to shine and when to flatten. And the inbetweenies.

Gloss: All pre-1900 Minifigs, Hinchliffe, Hinton Hunt (and similar), Airfix Type 1, Connoisseur, Warrior.

Matt: Everything post-1900, ships, aeroplanes, all ranges dating from the 1980s onwards not by Peter Gilder, all plastics.

Satin: All pre-1900 figures under 15mm. Trust me, it works.

Twelve and one flag it is, then!

 Finally settled on twelve figures for foot, but keeping five for horse as it looks better than four. I’ve got to get some flags and more 40x40 bases as I now have a major rebasing operation on my hands! I figured I could go against my standard basing configuration as I only need to represent column and line (and I won’t be playing with them anyway!). The other benefit of twelve figures is that I can get a unit from every sprue, so there is no wastage and it’s easy to work out what I need if I go mental again. I haven’t accounted for the Spanish, yet.

Otherwise, this is setting my juices flowing…