Half a Brigade, and then some...

Well, something like a painting table has now been set up in my new (temporary) home and as a result, I’ve been able to progress on the American Civil War project. The half finished unit of the 27th New York were completed first, and they were followed in short order by the 96th Pennsylvania. Both units are subject to a little variation and experimentation, but the 96th (below) definitely came out the best, having in particular a more gradual shading of the coats and a really good skin tone (achieved by starting with some Cavalry Brown mixed into the Medium Flesh tone).

A close up of the command of the 96th:

As I’d noticed some slight warping on the cavalry I based back in November on 50mm square bases, I opted to use thick black Plasticard for these figures instead. This certainly has several advantages here for these figures; as I could cut it very precisely, and then cement the figures to it very easily with normal plastic cement. Still it is pricier, but it’ll never warp. For reference I used '60 thou.' Card.

So two units finished, two more to go; though not just yet as I need a break from painting all that blue. This brings me neatly to the painting and buying totals for the year so far. Well obviously from the pictures above, I’ve painted 36 American Civil War miniatures, but also in the time between finishing them and updating this blog, I’ve also managed to knock out a unit of Dwarves too.

A simple job for these chaps; who represent one of the militia units in my Dwarven army, hence the mixture of greens on the costumes. This unit benefit from a better skin tone than my old Dwarves (influenced by the experiments on the ACW guys above) but equally suffer from in some cases, caked on layers of glue and enamel paint obscuring the detail (as on the sample chap shown) so are as good a job as I could manage quickly.

I have however, in the same time bought some more figures; two came on the cover of Wargames Titillated whilst I succumbed to buying the other 12, new, for the extortionate price of £4.10 including postage. I picked up a small unit’s worth of the old Grenadier plastic Dwarves from their present distributor EM-4 Miniatures; the figures themselves were only 20 pence each, a bargain! Postage was almost as much, but as the items arrived within 48 hours of ordering, I really can’t complain. The figures themselves are basic but perfectly proportioned to go alongside GW figures, as a budget option for Dwarf or Orc players, the range provides an alternative to trawling eBay and bring & buy tables. Their website even provides suggestions on how to convert the figures. Well worth a look.

So how does this leave the running totals for the year?

Bought: 14
Sold: 0
Painted: 56

A ratio of exactly four to one. Not bad so far!