WIP: 30YW Foot, The Blue Regiments #5

Finally finished!

Klear/ink* coat done - check
Glued to bases - check
Basing texture gunk** added - check
Basing texture dry-brushed - check
Matt spray varnished - check
Static grass*** added - check

* I went for a mix of 5 drops Quasar Black + 40 drops Earth Brown (Magic Color acrylic inks) in 100 ml Klear ("Pledge Multi Surface Wax" for those in the UK) which seems to have done the job well. The mix i was using before for the Sarmatians has double the amount of Earth Brown, which i thought would make these guys look too grubby.

** I made up a mix of roughly 2 parts Reeves Modeling Paste and Reeves Coarse Texture Gel coloured with Earth Brown ink. I also mixed in some Fine Brown Tallus (Woodland Scenics) although I'll probably leave this out next time around as it made it more difficult to push the mixture into narrow gaps between figure bases.

*** Noch Gaugemaster "Meadow Grass flock"


Once the basing texture had dried (much quicker than normal - this might be due to the warm weather or maybe to the addition of modeling paste), I touched up figure bases a little with Flat Earth 983 where the Klear/Ink had pooled, then dry-brushed with Revell Afrika Brown. This was all done last night before I went to bed.

This morning I did the matt varnish spray. Up until recently, I've been doing this inside with windows open. A couple of weeks back I realised that I was being stupid. The 2 flats below mine have a window bay at the front of the house, which gives me a small "balcony" that I can clamber out of my lounge windows onto, so I've started spraying out there - no more fumes inside the flat!

This evening I did the flocking. Thinking it might speed the process up, I applied 50% PVA to all of the bases before using a puffer to dump the static grass onto it. Yup. the PVA had almost completely dried by the time I started flocking - so much for saving time, I had to go back and reapply PVA and re-flock the lot.

I haven't added tufts to the bases - I might do later on, or maybe flower clumps.

For those of you who have been reading rather than just scrolling down to find the eye candy, thanks and here are the pretty pics:


Before flocking:

Flocked:

The Blue-Red regiment has 9 bases and is treated as a "Later Tercio" in FoG:R. The Red-Green and Green-Blue regiments will also be done as Later Tercio units when I paint them up.

The Blue-Green regiment only has 6 bases - later on I might add another 3 bases.

I'm going to be doing removable standards which can slip over the front-rank pikes, allowing me to use the figures for whichever army I want it to be. I might buy some commercial ones, but I am tempted to do my own - I just need to make time to design some templates. As I mentioned in a post a while ago, doing my own flags will also allow me to do some jokey mottos - pastry/bacon themes for Danish, appropriate songs from the discography for Saxon, ....

Now that the figures are based I can see that I was right about having tried to make them too non-uniform - the only places where the differences are clear are the hats and to a lesser degree the breeches.

I had originally intended to put 3 pikemen plus the drummer and colonel on the command base - luckily that idea had been dropped ages ago as the bases would be far too crowded. I'm quite pleased with the front rank musket bases - including the standard bearers gives a great look to the regiments.

Before I completely forget, the last time you saw the Old Glory cuirassiers was after they'd been based, but before they'd had a matt spray. That has now been done, but I've since gone back over the armour with a brush coat of satin varnish. Here's a piccy:

Tomorrow I'll crack on with the Sarmatian "other cavalry" and start prepping my 30YW cavalry - I've got 36 cuirassiers and 36 harquebusiers/reiters to do, so I'll probably tackle the cuirassiers first. After the Sarmatians I'll knock out the Red-Green foot regiment before painting the cuirassiers.