Sunday, May 1, 2011

Plastics!

I bought the Battalia starter set for the English Civil War thing that Warlord makes about a year ago and it sat. When Wargames Factory put out their War of the Spanish Succession plastic set I bought that too and painted up 16 of the figures right away. So, that got me motivated to crack open the ECW figures and start painting.

I painted up 16 of those 5 pikemen or so and the rest matchlocks. I wrestled with the decision of how many figures would make up a battalion for awhile, but finally decided to base them 6 figures (or so) to a stand, and a minimum of 3 stands for one battalion. Sooooo, that means each battalion will require at least 18 figures. Basically (hah!) I'm using the basing system for the Beneath the Lily Banners rules. So right now I'm going to paint up a bunch of figures to fill out the ranks of the first battalion and make another one.

But the way the sprues are laid out is confusing me. It seems that maybe there are extra torsos. I just cut and filed enough figures to make 16 matchlocks, and there was one more armless figure than there were left arms. (If this doesn't sound like it makes sense, keep in mind I just drank a Guiness). On the command sprue there was a left arm that kinda matched the rank and file infantry, though it has a fist instead of a "nub" which is what I needed. I'll post a picture once I have them glued so whoever is actually reading this will understand what I mean.

Anyway, I love plastics because they're cheap, but I HATE putting them together. Painting them is much more fun. Back to work.