Odds ‘n’ Sods

Sometimes I find it easier to paint small groups of figures than full regiments. With the recent heat and lack of time, I’ve taken that easier route. And painting what I fancy, it’s all been late 17th century pieces.

This is the pioneer set from Dixon with a couple of extra gabions from Renedra. The Dixon sculpts are really old now, but still lovely. Cos of their age though, they’re genuine 25mm figures so wouldn’t mix with my usual Front Rank figures. That doesn’t matter for this engineer and the blokes trying to look busy whilst he’s around!

I had also bought some Dixon figures to create an Irish Jacobite regiment with some leftover Front Rank minis. They just looked wrong together size-wise and style-wise. So I bought some Warfare Miniatures to drop into the Dixon unit. Warfare are a far more modern range, but a good deal smaller and slimmer than Front Rank. They’re lovely so great to have an excuse to buy some.

This though left me with more leftovers! And I really didn’t want to waste them. So another small painting batch has passed across my painting table this weekend.

The left over Warfare minis. 3 officers and a sergeant. I’ll make some command bases!

That’s a very small painting batch…

 So I added the Warlord Games baggage mule set, subbing out the ECW figure they come with for more spares, a Front Rank sergeant for the civilian drover and a Front Rank grenadier to escort.  Oh and another mule of unidentified origin but generic enough to fit most any period.

Undercoated and a few light colours added for the bits I’ll use Contrast paints on. I undercoat brown, white, grey or black depending on how I’m going to paint minis and what I want end result to look like. 

For the most part the mules will be done using Contrast paints. Brown undercoat and a variety of brown Contrast paints will complete 90% of their paint job.

Painting completed, with a variety of techniques - block colours, base main and highlight, washes and dry brushing! Think I used every technique at my disposal with these few pieces. In the bottom photo, the human figures are still on their temporary painting bases - whenever poss I put 2 figures on a painting base. It seems to help the painting. The mules are already on the mdf bases I use for my late 17th century collection.

I then use tiling grout with added stones and grit for my groundwork. For this collection it gets a nice earthy brown all over then drybrushed as shown above. Just the tufts and flock to add - love tufts! - and the flags to the command bases and…

The Warfare Miniatures leftovers become a Jacobite Irish Guards command base carrying James’s royal standard, and for the Sedgemoor campaign a command base showing Monmouth’s standard carried by an officer and sergeant of the ‘Red’ regiment.

The mules have come out well. There’s little colour other than the grenadier and a pig (spot the pig’s ass?!), but I’m happy that it looks… ordinary. The primary use I have in mind is the baggage train at Killiecrankie. Nice to have as often baggage influenced the course of real battles and also nice to have for scenarios. The front base can be used on its own if need be. And the mule of unknown origin can either be put at the back of the baggage train - oops it’s got loose - or used separately.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed my painting of a few odds ‘n’ sods. Far better to read about the painting side of the hobby for me than my tabletop generalship ;-)

Cheers

Chris