The epics go marching on!

Another quick painting progress post. I do have some thoughts I'd  like to share on this epic theme. the painting, basing and future direction, but for now here are what I have so far painted from the huge box of plastic sprues, grey and blue, that remind me so much of my early Airfix days. 24 sprues of infantry in the box, I just cant help smiling every time I open it to take the next one out.

I have just 30 figures ( 3 sprues) to complete Reb unit number 4 tomorrow, that will make a grand total so far of 500 painted including artillery. I still have reservations about the guns, but I'll discuss that next post. Time being a few photos.

 

Some Union progress.

A quick update. By this evening I will have completed 3 Union Regiments, two guns and a mounted general, so with the same number of rebs that's a grand total of 360 infantry plus 4 guns and crews in 2 weeks, not a bad start to the project. One issue will be painting the same sprues over and over again as I take it further. That said Kallistra are indeed a perfect match for these having seen painted units with Kallistra command. I might well place an order for some of their cavalry both mounted and dismounted to ring the changes.

I have cut down all of the hats to kepis on the Union troops, the topper used is identical to the kepi top so they look pretty convincing I think. So far no chopped muskets and all fingers still intact. I decided to go with printed flags from the Warflag site as I wanted them slightly bigger than those supplied and I'm happy with the  results so far. 

The visual impact of 60 figure units is quite pleasing when you stand back at arms length I must say. I'm going to have to come up with some kind of unit identifier as they all look the same! I'm thinking maybe  a neat printed label to the rear of each command base, just the name and maybe paper strength on each and then record losses on a good old fashioned roster sheet to avoid tabletop clutter. I'm going to try the set of rules that Steve-The-Wargamer suggested based on the OHW rules but fleshed out a bit more and see how I get on soon as I get a few more units painted.

Images show state of play as of this morning with just the 3 more strips to cut down the hats, base coat and paint hopefully today. 

Cut down Epic kepis and replacement French heads!

Don't worry dear readers I'm not going to keep banging on about these new ACW figures, I promise things will settle down! Clearly they have captured my imagination, (a rare thing these days). With 3 Reb regiments painted I decided to have a first crack at trimming down those hats to kepis for the first Union unit. I used a scalpel blade for this taking care not to cut off any rifles which would effectively mean binning the entire strip. By no means perfect but once base coated the job is not too bad I think, especially at true scale as seem by eye. I'm far happier than just painting them  with all those hats.

With all 3 Reb units now fully based I think the overall look is something I'm pretty happy with. I gave the artillery a little extra work, basically inking over the carriage and attempting to turn the barrel into a smoothbore brass effect, again they look not too shabby I think?

I'm going to retain this as a background project, the time/reward ratio is sufficient to keep even my attention span interested, something about these just works for me and I think it's a lot to do with the strip painting and slot in basing. I'll be painting some Peter Pig 15mm ACW's for Graham alongside which will get the more usual individual approach as well as more for Old John (20mm Ottomans of the early 18th Century).

Tomorrow the last box of 40mm Napoleonics goes off to Graham, and having recovered from the shock of the first delivery via Parcelforce ( the second was not too bad at least), we are going with UPS for this and the packing method has been totally upgraded. Surely at 9.5 kg's this one cannot be thrown around at least! A few Fusiliers lost their heads so I painted some spares to replace them. 

My aim for the week ahead is to paint the 3 WSS cavalry units for Gerry (6mm) complete 3 of the Union Epic units for myself and that's about it really.

 

Just a few more painted epics.

Posting these here so I can link elsewhere. Today I'll be finishing off regiment number 3 which will make the best part of 200 figures painted in a week which included my first covid jab which knocked me out for 36 hours afterwards, just too tired to pick up a paint brush. No complaints and all back to normal now.

I'm liking these a lot, the speed at which I can knock them out is surprising even myself. I'm making myself no promises as to where I'm going with them, just enjoying the experience. Clearly Warlord are on a winner with this, I read that the launch has far exceeded initial sales projections, the initial production run was doubled but sales currently sit around four times the initial projections, pretty good business for Warlord, love them or hate them (as many seem to do).

At this rate I'll have the 2400 figures in my box licked in about 3 months :) Strips are coming in around 1.5 hours per 2 *(I'm  doing 3 at a go now so half a unit) not including basing. 

Going to do 3 Union regiments next which should be even faster, but I'm going to trim down all those hats to kepis so maybe a round the same time. 

*Edit: I know timings don't mean much to most but I like to have some idea of commitment. A 6 strip unit is averaging 4.5 hours so around 1.5 hours per 2 strips/base. I'm actually doing 3 at a time which feels more manageable than 4.  

Below: warlord Epic v AB figure for scale.

Painting the Epic ACW's #2 - some timings and highlights!

OK, so I have now painted 5 strips plus a mounted commander, Brigadier General D. Crook will command a 4 regiment brigade of seasoned men and is known for his tough fighting and hard drinking and has a certain reputation among the fine ladies of Virginia.

Like many others I think these work best with 3 bases per unit, a healthy looking 60 figures representing a regiment. One video that did tempt me was that linked below where the two outer bases had the figures moved slightly inwards to form a more continuous line, although the downside is a somewhat out of formation column. At the moment I'm sticking with the regular basing though.

Yesterday I painted 4 strips and put a timer on applying the 2 basic shades of Flat Earth and London Grey. It took just under two hours to do this, but included a break for a sandwich and cup of tea of maybe 10 minutes. Bearing in mind that I generally paint with the TV on so glancing back and forth as I go. Yesterday was a couple of episodes of The Commander starring Amanda Burton - yes, I'm a fan of her work :)

So the first image was taken at that point. In the evening I went back and finished them off in a round an hour, including this time adding highlights and varnishing. The highlights I used were Japanese WW2 uniform for the 'butternut' and Light Grey again applied at speed and only where it could be seen. I think this has made a big difference?

I added a flag from warflag and decided to trim down the second flag bearer to a musket as having two flags in the front of a Reb unit just did not sit right with me. As my epic box arrived yesterday - and what a box of joy it is - I may replace it with the better quality flag supplied. 

Today I'm going to paint another 2 strips to complete regiment number 2 plus a couple of the artillery bases. Tomorrow I'm out for my first Covid jab so will have to see how I feel afterwards but I think I may do a couple of UNion regiments next which I think will paint faster but I do intend to trim down some of those hats to kepis so we shall see.

Phots show the first 3 bases with added highlights, they look far better at 13.5mm than as they appear here looking more like 28mm figures!

Above: the result of a couple of hours work.

Above: Flag and highlights added.

Above: Brigadier General Crook on a bloody great horse!

Above: Appearing everywhere it seems is the obligatory big  box shot!

Below: video link showing the bases closed up to the centre and trimmed down hats, well worth a watch.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSPmJseBgTs&t=252s

Painting the Epic ACW's - test strips & description.

 Following on from yesterdays comments re the Epic ACW's I wanted to add a few more notes about the way I am trying to approach painting them, I'm aware the hobby blogs are going to be full of similar posts as the sets begin to roll out and it will be interesting to see how others tackle this. I wanted to record a step by step of my method, the shades used, and my reflections on the product as a whole.

I started by taking the view that these are basically ordinary 15mm figures, much like the many other ACW's I have painted over the years so I could approach them in the same way. I quickly realised that it was not going to work and that I had to re think and start again with the Warlord concept of the Epic theme and what they are trying to do here. Taking a step back and looking at the strips of figures I realised that they are actually far more like 6mm strips in terms of production than conventional 15mm ranges, this was important because it completely changed my perception of what I could realistically hope to achieve with them. My 6mm 'speed painting' method has been tried and tested over many years and thousands of figures with the key being to add dots and dashes of strong paint, that is to say selected shades that cover in a single application over a very flat black base coat leaving some of  that black showing to represent areas of shade.

Having carefully selected my range of colours and the order of application I then asked myself what I wanted to achieve in terms of the overall look and finish of each base of 20 figures, units that reflected as accurately as possible the appearance of Civil War units, without painting levels of detail that would simply be lost when viewing at arms length. That said I still want the figures to stand a little close scrutiny but without being overly fussy. For me the key is a good choice of brushes that will hold a good point, pick up a blob of paint and apply it accurately and at speed exactly where I want it. These figures have been painted using an Army Painter size 00 for everything aside from the faces where a OOOO is used and the green bases where a size 2 is used.

Lets have a bash through a couple of strips to see how this works. First stage I take Vallejo (all vallejo) Flat Earth which is my go to 'Butternut' shade ( and yes I know it varied wildly but I'm trying to keep things simple here). You can see I'm picking out spots to apply the paint but leaving plenty of black showing. First image shows the first application completed. Next London Grey is used in the same way to give the impression of a unit in a mix of uniform, with just a few trousers here and there picked out with Azure Blue. This was done very quickly trying to avoid painting over anything else. Then Flat Brown is applied to the musket butts and along the rear of the stocks. Here and there I apply a touch of brown to beards, some rear cartridge boxes and a few belts before taking up my Flat Flesh and the 0000 brush with which I blob the hands and apply fine dashes to the faces. In any other scale I would begin with light brown for my faces but for these I just went with the straight flesh as you can see. Next with a silver/steel mix I run down the barrels (back to the 00 brush for this) and the officers sword etc. I then add the odd touch of Flat Red for a bit of contrast to a couple of blanket rolls, the drum etc, because it just slightly lifts the overall look. Finally I add some very fine lines of off white to represent bread bag straps etc, not to all the figures just to a few and it's job done!

I COULD of course now add highlights to the 'Butternut' and the Grey, but honestly in this scale I really don't think there is much point as the sheer number of figures per unit  is what gives the visual impact. I do however use my favourite Satin varnish which gives a bit of 'pop' without the effort of highlighting. this is just personal choice.

Basing is very quick and simple, PVA covered before picking up a strip and after a running small amount of glue along the raised edges pop it into the locating pegs. I then scatter my extra fine Javis granite mix before shaking and blowing off the excess. Once dry a few patches of 2mm summer grass are applied and the bare stone areas treated with Sepia wash which will subsequently be drybrushed with Buff.

And that's about it! Not perfect but I think it works for this Epic theme, if you look closely you will see plenty of black shade areas showing through but this is very much a part of the look I want to achieve. 

Now all that remains is to paint the other two and a half thousand figures when they arrive!

Warlord Epic ACW's 60 test figures painted in around 3 1/2 hours, roughly 20 figures in just over the hour and that's with constant glances at Match of The Day! Plus of course basing time. I painted just two strips at a session using the 8 basic colours outlined above. Not great if you view the images blown up big, but in real scale they don't look too shabby I think?

Ups and downs, a funny old week that was!

Having cleared the decks with the 18mm's shipping off to Australia and the 40mm's gradually making their way to Graham C their new owner, plus John's box finished and packed for posting I find myself in that curious state of mind that the freedom to cast around for something fresh brings. Of course safely shipping hundreds of fragile figures always brings a certain amount of anxiety, especially where one suffers from it anyway. On Monday the large box went off to Australia via Parcelforce Global Priority, it contains 4 strong inner boxes with the bases individually wrapped in bubble wrap and is now on it's way. 

Impressed with the Parcelforce home pick up service we went with their 24 hour delivery service for the first box of 40mm's. Now this was a substantial package at 9.8 kg's with all the figure bases glued down to the bottom of the box with PVA and then packed out with enough bubble wrap to destroy the planet (it will be recycled), topped with polystyrene sheets. I attached a Fragile sticker and felt confident that it would be absolutely fine. Next day I was horrified to hear from Graham C that the box had been severely damaged in transit with one end torn open and the figures basically a jumbled mess. Several heads had come off and four were missing from the box, in addition some of the horses were bent over and riders unseated. I can only imagine that the box had been either dropped or given a kick underneath to do that much damage. Luckily it looks as though everything was restorable, muskets bent back straight and I have spare French heads to replace those lost. Graham said the horses took the worst of the damage but he was able to straighten them and bend back into position. It will require a bit of repair work and TLC but we will sort it out together. By the time I received the news I had already dispatched a second large package containing two inner boxes using the same service. This one arrived yesterday, still a bit of damage but not as bad luckily, A few heads off, some Spanish infantry off their bases and damage to the rocket battery base with a couple of the resin figures broken at the ankles. I really do not understand what Parcelforce does with them, again it had a fragile sticker on but clearly no care was taken. We have one more large consignment to go next week, but I'll be changing the packing style internally and using UPS instead, I'm taking no chances and that's the last time I use Parcelforce. 

On a slightly brighter note a couple of the EPIC sprues arrived this week. This was my first close up look at these figures and for me the jury is still out on them. Clearly they are very well designed, very detailed and in accurate shoulder to shoulder pose with the majority of muskets corrected shouldered on the right. I wasted little time in getting 6 of the strips undercoated in black and later picked out a few jackets and trousers in Flat Earth, my go to base shade for 'Butternut' uniforms. I think it was at this point that it struck me that even a 3 base unit is going to take a LOT of painting compared with say a standard 24 figure 15mm unit. Given that the demands of painting these little figures are no different from standard 15mm's in terms of detail the investment in time of producing a 60 figure unit will be about the same as for example painting 3 x 24 figure Peter Pig regiments, I really don't think there would be much in it as given the way these are cast it is quite tricky to accurately pick out colours where the figures slightly overlap. I'm going to try to get some more paint on them today and see how things go, but I have to say at this stage I'm still undecided.

I did return to painting the Eureka British infantry and have finished off the first section, half the second section, and the redeploying PIAT team, and should finish off the second half today long with them Vickers MG team. Despite what I said previously I could not resist ordering some Germans, so 3 x 10 figure infantry squads along with support weapons and command figures are on their way for the simple reason that I do really enjoy painting these sculpts.

As I said, a funny old week of ups and downs but hopefully things will settle down a bit more this week.