Digging into the Lead Mountain

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I was waiting for some new figures to arrive and had a bit of painting time to spare, so I thought I’d bite the bullet and clear some of my lead mountain.

Chosen were some 15mm American Civil War (ACW) infantry to add to an incomplete Confederate army. I’d last worked on the army well before the arrival of Contrast Paints, and hadn’t painted the figures very well, so this was very much a case of smashing out as many “wargames standard” figures as possible as quickly as possible.

The figures are from Essex Miniatures and, as with all Essex ranges, take the paint well even if they are a bit manikin-like sometimes. I painted 88 of the little blighters, in batches of ten, with each batch taking about two hours to do once all the prep work had been done. This is what Contrast Paint is made for!

Here’s a closer look:

SP AAR: Ball's Bluff at Virtual Lard IV

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Yesterday I took part in my third virtual game in ten days, this time as part of Virtual Lard IV: the equivalent of a regular Lardy Day, but with all the games being played remotely.

Today’s game was a re-fight of Ball’s Bluff. It’s the beginning of the war and a super-keen Union artilleryman has advanced his guns forward over the James river into Reb territory. The Rebs have cottoned on to the fact that the gunners are out on their own and have sent a force to capture the guns; Union high command have seen this coming and dispatched troops to bring the guns safely home. The stage is set for an epic clash!

Click on the picture below to see what happened:

My First Painting of 2021

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No games to be had due to COVID, so it was back to the painting table for the first weekend of the new year.

First finished was a unit of Indian javelinmen. I now have enough Classical Indians to field 130 points worth, but adding various other units to the collection will give me a bit of flexibility of army list and allow me to, at a stretch, field other Indian armies such as the Vedics and Tamils.

As with the rest of the collection, these are 15mm Museum Miniatures painted with GW Contrast Paints.

Next up are some odds and ends that I really painted to give myself a rest from the Classical Indians: some 15mm Essex Confederate infantry that I had half painted a number of years ago.

I’m a bit torn with these Rebs: I have about 120 infantry done painted in a very similar fashion to the above. The trouble is, I don’t like them very much! I like the officers that I’ve just finished off, above, using Contrast Paints, but the rank and file that were mostly done using standard acrylics, and mostly done quite badly quite a few years ago, just don’t appeal. Part of the problem is that I like my units looking neat and light, and these look a bit dark and gloomy.

So, what to do? Do I discard the 120 that are done and start again, painting at a better standard than I could manage then, or do I use them as a refresher between other jobs just to get the army done: after all, will I really notice when they are on the table?

Answers on a postcard to the usual e-mail address or as a comment on this post…