ACW Additions

As you may (or may not) have noticed from a couple of much earlier posts on this blog, I have a venerable plastic 1/72 ACW Union army based for Circa 1863 rules (sort of), that gets out now and again.  Although the Circa 1863 rules were good for their era (published in 1978) and we've had some great grinding ebb-and-flow games with them, it is time now to move on and, having considered various rule sets, I have decided to rebase them for (Regimental) Fire & Fury.

Obviously at this scale the standard infantry 1" by 3/4" basing in RF&F won't work so the bases I will use will be scaled up more or less proportionately to 40mm x 30mm (and so on for cavalry, etc.), as the rules recommend.

Actually, basing seems to be far less of an issue with modern rules and therefore I'm confident, if RF&F does not turn out to be satisfactory, that the basing will probably do for Black Powder (once I've had a look at it) or some other rule set yet to be discovered.

However, looking at what needed to be done I came across a bag of unpainted figures and impulsively thought that I might as well paint them up to bulk up the existing forces I have.  I often shy away from painting figures but actually this time I enjoyed it (and finished them in two evenings). I must be maturing.

They've been around for a while and I wasn't sure what they were but a quick look at the informative Plastic Soldier Review site revealed that they were mostly Revell with the odd IMEX thrown in.

The paint job isn't that spectacular (or indeed totally finished) but I wanted to make them fit in with the plainly painted figures I already have (that's my main excuse).

Also, although there is a lot of detail, folds and so on, on these figures, the standard shading techniques doesn't seem to work as well as it does on larger metal figures, I think because the plastics are a lot more realistic in their proportions and have much shallower folds and generally less pronounced features (that's my second excuse).  Or, I'm just rubbish at painting (truth will out!).

Adventures in basing to follow.