Last of the Line

 A quick break before the penultimate 1983 post, here is the final batch of WSS units which would be fully prepped if I had not run out of black primer! All are plastic Warlord/Wargames Factory and most are destined to be Portuguese. I have a pile of generals to do too, but these are Front Rank. I could have used the excellent Ebor miniatures, but I wanted them larger than life. Never been a fan of Front Rank, but their WSS and 9YW ranges are wonderful. Service from Gripping Beast was top notch.

Black! Black!

And that completes the French

 I will get round to photographing the whole lot eventually, but the regiment Battenbourg completes the French Collection (see what I did there). My first unit of Spaniards, Reales Guardias Españolas , are done bar the flag. Most of my units are currently sans flag, but this will be corrected when I save up enough cash to order from Maverick Models. The building behind is another Masterplan model, now rather rare.

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…

Prepping For Easter

 No, not stashing tins of soup and loo rolls, but doing all the boring stuff, like priming and bases, before I can start slapping on the colour.

Black! Black! The colour of the night! Mummy locked me in a cupboard and fed me pins!

All this started with a box of WSS Alliance infantry I bought on a whim. I made them up, primed them black then they sat in the loft for a year before I thought “I’m more likely to flog these if they are painted”.  So, I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, a year later… I have scores of the bloody things! This will probably be the last phase (it’s my third Marlborough’s Wars starter set) if I can just stop faffing about and umming and arring over 12 or 16 figure infantry units and one or two flags per unit.

Alarmingly, I have more infantry sprues waiting for assembly but I’ve run out of painting sticks!