Parting Company

I acquired this interesting little set of figures recently from my son, not sure about the make but a nice change from painting endless pike & shot units. The figures themselves are not the great sculpts that you would expect from companies such as Warlord Games, Foundry and suchlike they are a little crude and rough around the edges but nonetheless they are quite novel and looked like they would paint up well enough.

I decided to make them into one vignette and as such wanted to make the figures appear to be from a common regiment albeit that one of them was a cavalryman. I painted them up quite simply and then used some acrylic washes to emphasise some of the detail. At this point I could have over-painted some of the detail but decided against it as I was happy enough with how they had turned out. I varnished them and set about devising a context for the figure base which obviously enough was the parting of the soldiers and their loved ones.

I cut a round base that seemed the right size and first glued down some wallpaper to simulate a paved road, making it slightly offset as I wanted space for the cavalryman on one side of the base. Next I painted the road and once the figures were dry I decided the position each one was to take up on the base. The three figures that were not on the road I glued in place and textured the base around them. The figures that were on the road I decided to paint the bases to perfectly match the road and then they were glued into place. Once the base was dry I drybrushed the dirt areas and glued down some rocks and bushes for effect and that was it all finished and ready to be put on the wargames table.

While writing this my final thoughts are that I should have put some scatter flock on the base here and there, and that it would be nice to give this set a gaming context being a set of rules that would add interest to a scenario etc. If I do actually figure something out I will add the rules to my list Pike & Shotte Characters as a free to download PDF.