WIP Wednesday tradition continues with little progress to show for the week (it is WIP, afterall. ahem) except for these grizzled-looking, partially finished American Civil War Rebel Soldiers from Warlord's Epic Battles line.
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| A barefoot Rebel trooper, marching up into Pennsylvania for shoes... |
The keen-eyed among you will notice that these poor boys don't have the "furniture" on their Enfields painted, or their accoutrements yet. That will come, along with a suitably medium-toned wash to darken them a bit and conceal my sloppy painting!
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| The Rebel "Brigade" so far. Two 3 x stand units, an artillery battery, and an officer. |
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| This could be about as far as I dare zoom in :) - I am not happy with their paint jobs. I will block paint the next batch, but they will take much longer... |
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| Rebel Regiment |
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| This picture really says it all about why I like the Epic ACW guys. That is a gorgeous looking unit and it's only 3 stands, not the recommended 5 stands. |
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| None of the muskets, brass, or other fine details have been painted yet but I'm slowwwwly getting there. |
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| The Rebel brigade, shaken out into line |
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| Red gun carriage famously based off "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John" from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) a school I visited twice, but never attended, having attended Norwich, instead - the nation's oldest private military college. |
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| The Brigade Commander |
Anyways that's all for now. I still have a pile of buildings to undercoat and of course these rebel soldiers to finish. And then there's all this WW2 Desert MicroArmor waiting to be repainted :)
Also hoping to get a game in this weekend, and start on my Napoleonic Prussians!
Nice WIP Report Steve - they do look good and if I was to "do" Epics, I would make units smaller too - I don't really see the benefit of a larger number of figures that have the same footprint - 180mm long - as less 28mm figures taking up roughly the same area - the main attraction (to me anyway) is have more room to manoeuvre etc on the table, and having a 15mm battalion take up the same area as a 28mm one does not really achieve that aim!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Keith. I fear I'm trapsing down the same path as many of my fellow gamers out there lol.
DeleteYou're right there is a "limit" to its epic-ness lol. 100 figs vrs 60 doesn't make a huge difference to the visual impact. And let's face it, 60 nicely detailed figures in a regiment still looks darn good!
Steve, you are experiencing exactly how I found the Epic’s, they seem to ‘demand’ detailed painting and yet from the practicality of what you see at playing distances what they actually need is ‘unit painting’. Despite me understanding that, I never seemed able to move my technique away from painting the detail and looking for clean edges.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, with photography, I found that they were best served by photographing from a distance to get the sense of brigades, but very often, I would want to illustrated what was happening in that field or at that crossroads and inevitably ended up using close up photography, which over scrutinises the figures.
A foot in two worlds!
I was wondering if you'd catch some of my subtle points here, Norm. I was really struggling with this unit for some reason and it's for the reasons you mention above - namely that these guys demand a certain style of painting and I have to tweak how I'm painting them if I want them to look like they do on the warlord box (not gonna happen!)
DeleteI'm trying another Pike and Shotte unit now with a different technique to see how they paint up.
I'm not ready to throw them in the trash yet!!!
They look excellent en masse! In my mind (knowing very little of the ACW), the Rebs are always heading for towns in search of shoes.
ReplyDeleteThanks Chris. Yes every ACW scenario should probably start with "a column set out upon hearing rumors of a federal storehouse loaded with shoes..."
DeletePaint the unit not the figure really does apply here, but likewise to larger sized figures too, as once on the table and at arms length, quite often all that detail and subtle highlighting etc simply disappears. Something that it took me years to take on board and I still struggle at times not to want to paint every detail!
ReplyDeleteYou're quite right, Steve. The 3 foot rule applies for sure. I am going to post again on these guys as I was able to greatly improve them with some "simple" steps and it made a huge difference on the table.
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