I fancied an easy weekend. Simple and rewarding hobbying and not worrying too much about results or outcomes. For some reason that meant I pulled out some 1/72 figures and got to painting them.
Thankfully despite these guys small stature and fine details, they readily accepted me priming them with my texture goop. Which meant I could forgo the soap bath, something which for some reason often puts me off working with these guys.
As you can probably tell, I went for a realistic scheme, a long way from my usual attempts at ghosts.
Though I have a feeling this may lead to a further attempt at Ghost Legions, my game where (if you don’t remember) groups of historical figures battle each other in the afterlife. The idea essentially being of getting a full force for a game out of an Italeri/ Airfix/ Red Box/ Orion/ Hat figures.
Speaking of Italeri:
I’m aware this is somewhat preaching to the choir, but these really are underrated figures. You really can build a force for most historical periods at pocket money prices. It seems mad that these things aren’t more widely seen in more mainstream wargame spaces. Maybe it’s the hassle of giving them that soapy bath? Maybe it’s the struggle of painting those tiny, realistically proportioned details? Let me know what you think. Though I can say, if these sprues were put out in hard plastic, my bank account would suffer heavily. So maybe it’s a material thing?
Here’s some Hat El Cid Spanish Infantry:
Speaking of material, I don’t get some of Hat’s releases being in such soft plastic. Though my texture goop does go some way to firming them up.
Painting wise I’ve settled on basecoats, a wash, and then I highlight hands and faces exclusively. It gives the impression you’ve done more than you have, and gets the figures onto the table fast.
I’ve even had a little battle:
And as you can probably imagine, the Union didn’t fare so well against SMGs… who’d have thunk it?
But I did have fun. It was a comfortably quick game, clocking in at around 10 minutes (it probably would have been much faster if done for real).
The Emodels website beckons me to buy more… if only I didn’t have so many projects on the go already!
But I all seriousness, why don’t you think these kinds of figures see more use? They’re well detailed, readily available (most high streets will have them for sale somewhere), and very cheap.
Deathzap 