Prepping the Strelets plastic cavalry.

I have been busy so far this week on the painting front with another ECW regiment of foot completed and a few packs of the excellent Peter Pig ACW's almost finished for Graham C. I have another regiment ECW horse undercoated ready to paint to follow, but planning ahead for Monday I have prepped up a box of Strelets plastic cavalry of the WSS for Old John and they are now ready for the usual black base coat.

I'll save photos of the Piggy ECW's and ACW's for the usual weekly painting update but felt that these lovely Strelets figures deserved a few words and photos to themselves. The quality of the castings is really first class, crisp and sharp and the poses of both men and horses all very workable as a unit. There is nothing by way of blurs that can be tricky to remove from plastic figures. Compared to some of the Plastic Soldier Company figures that I have painted in the past there is none of that 'soft' detail at all and the faces are a delight.

One slight issue was that the riders do not fit the horses very well, tending to spring up from the saddle slightly leaving unsightly small gaps. I was going to paint horse and rider separately (not my usual method), but felt it better to get the riders fixed down and work on them as one piece. In order to overcome the 'spring' I had to use a tiny blob of blue tac sat on a bed of glue with more glue on top before pushing the rider down firmly and holding for 10 seconds or so. There was also a little careful trimming of inside legs required here and there in order to get a good fit, all in all a bit of a fiddly job but well worth it to avoid any irritating gaps. Once black undercoated everything will be good to go next week, I'll start them on Monday. 

Box art shows the uniforms and is a very good painting guide. I have no hesitation giving this box set a 10 out of 10 for quality and they should make a fine unit once finished.