Challenge Day 73 - 6mm ACW Union Cavalry

Seeing as they have been up on the Challenge blog for almost 24 hours, I think it's safe for me to post them here.

My 15th entry for this year's Challenge was a bunch of tiny blue men on tiny brown (and black, grey and white) horses. They netted me 83 points - nothing earth shattering or designed to crush the Dux into submission; but enough to keep me trotting along nicely toward my new target of 2500 points.

As with the infantry, figures are from Baccus.

Having decided to go with 14 figures on each 60x60 mm stand, I was left with 7 spare figures. I decided to mount them singly on 20mm round bases for use as markers (command points, messengers, etc).

The dismounted cavalry:

The mounted cavalry:

Some close-up shots of the mounted cavalry:

It was only after adding the basing texture that I noticed the proportion of sand to grit had swung heavily in favour of the latter since I started this project. Since doing them on Friday I have made up a larger batch for the rest - I'll have to try to remember to add a little sand after each batch to keep the proportions right.


As of this moment, I am working on some more Union infantry. I decided to try painting them up 2 sticks (48 line or 32 skirmishing) at a time - I had been doing 4 sticks of line (96 figures) and a stick of skirmishers) in one go and found it difficult to maintain my concentration. Painting smaller batches seems to be doing the trick, although it does waste a bit of paint. I'm actually very close to finishing the batch I started at lunchtime and that's with taking several breaks.

My plan for this week is to get another 6 bases of infantry done (including the 2 I'm working on now), and maybe some artillery (I might work on that this evening).


Update

I finished painting the infantry and they've been varnished. I didn't want to start another set of infantry, so I decided to start on the artillery. I've painted all 27 guns that were prepped and primed (I have a few more unprepped in my reinforcements box) - these will be the initial batch for both Union and Confederate armies. They haven't been varnished yet.

I've just started work on crews for eight of the guns. I doubt I'll finish them before going to bed, but the last steps shouldn't take too long to do tomorrow. Once they are done, I'll start on another two lots of infantry.