As previously mentioned, I’m bringing my Vis Bellica 100YW English army up to To The Strongest strength: which means doubling the size of some of the units.

The big problem, of course, is how do you match the new elements to the old: especially when you painted the old elements at least a decade or so ago?

The first problem is sourcing the right figures. I’d used Museum Miniatures first time around and, doubtless because of their continuing quality of product and excellent service, they are still around and actually going from strength to strength with their Z Ranges. Their 100YW range was still available, so I was easily able to match up my existing unit of Household Archers in terms of the raw lead.

The second problem is the colour scheme to use. Yes, I can see what colours the existing figures are, but I haven’t always kept a record of exactly which paints I used. I do for many of my armies, especially for WW2 and later periods, but not for the 100YW one.

Fortunately I had painted the existing archers very simply: red and blue and metal, so I wasn’t too worried that the old and the new would differ too much.

Far more important was the development of my painting style. As you can sort of see in the picture above, my old way of painting was a simple two-shade approach over a black undercoat. So undercoat in black, paint a dark version of the colour you want, highlight with a light version. This was very effective, and looks good, but quite time consuming: you are actually painting each figure twice. These days, however, I tend to use GW Contrast Paints over their Wraithbone undercoat: an entirely different method.

Here is where the pleasure of using Contrast Paints comes in to play: the results are almost identical to the shading, and half the effort. You can also get some very nice depth on things like the axeman’s hauberk and the belt around it.

Okay, so I’m only painting to good wargames standard, but you can achieve some incredible things with Contrast Paints. I was, for example, very pleased with my ECW command figures (Essex 15mm).

So you now have the right figures painted to a good approximation of the existing element: all you have to do next is base them.

This is where I came more of a cropper. Firstly, for my existing army I had used thin metal bases, but had now run out. I could have sourced some, I suppose, but in the end decided to take the easy option and use my now-standard Warbases premium mdf versions.

I also had no paint that matched the existing bases (a very oddly light green) and had no note of where I had got in from. Worse, I had totally run out of the flock that I had used previously and, again, had no idea of where I had got it from. In the end, I bit the bullet and just went for the closest thing I could find in my flock collection: it doesn’t match, but it’s not too bad.

So there’s what you have to do to match old and new units:

• the figures

• the colours

• the painting style

• the bases

• finishing the bases

I’m pretty happy with the match, and I’m sure that under “battle conditions” I’ll stop noticing any differences within minutes.

Post Script

I also painted up a unit of what Museum call Brigandines and I’m using as Billmen: