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| Not the best of paint jobs, but a fine basis for refurbishment! |
The school I work at recently got a laser cutter, so offered to have it cut some V&B mdf bases as way of testing it was working properly! Naturally since I now had a pile of bases I had to get some troops on them. I wasn't wanting to do any major effort, just wanting to get figures on bases in order to swell the V&B ranks quickly. Fortunately I was able to acquire from Glenn a number of preloved and prepainted Airfix figures from the Washington's Army set (click
here for the PSR review) that I was able to refurbish, wash, and base.
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| More painted figures - more stands of troops! |
Now I have already gone through this process with my AWI French (click
here for that post), and my AWI Americans (click
here for details), but with those figures had been very nicely painted by the original owner. I wanted to see if I could get useable stands using figures that weren't as well painted.
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| Spacing out the figures - these look like they might be painted as Hessians of some type? Or are they Americans? |
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| A well painted example found amongst the less well painted. |
Now using prepainted figures does mean that I am guessing as to the intent of the original owner as to what they were meaning to represent. Given that for the longest time this set was the only source of 18th century line infantry, the possibilities are rather large - more so if I add in the strong likelihood that they may have been painted to represent an imaginary or generic regiment, or merely painted using information that was incorrect.
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| Pseudo Spanish! I can't find a Spanish unit that has that exact colour scheme. |
First off are the white coated fellows that I am choosing to believe are some type of Spanish troops. The red breeches and black boots are similar to a Spanish soldier depicted
here, and another
here. A table giving the uniform colours used by Spanish units in the Seven Years War can be found
here, but it doesn't give the colour of breeches, leggings or boots worn. So given that they don't fit a known colour scheme I will use them as Spanish until I learn that they aren't.
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| But still they look nice and can be used as generic Pseudo Spanish |
And incidentally, should you know what these fellows could be, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.
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| The colour scheme is rather nice though. |
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| I am quite pleased with how well these three stands turned out given the state of the source material. |
The other two stands that I have finished also lack a colour scheme that I can definitively say is one thing or another. They could be meant to represent american forces, either state or even Continental troops, but equally they may be meant to represent German troops of some type - assuming that they are meant to represent troops from the AWI!
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| Two stands of blue coated rebels - again the colour scheme doesn't seem to match anything I can find. |
Still the end result is quite pleasing, and I know that I will be able to find use for them, either as Americans or Germans!
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| Again I am rather pleased with them, although I am tempted to put a small amount of Fall leaves on the bases. |
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| The wash brings out the detail in the figure extremely well. Airfix did a good job designing these figures! |
So far I have finished five stands, with six more ready to go. I am finding the process of recycling these figures quite fun, and a good way to ease me into painting up the legions of bare plastic AWI figures that I have waiting for me.
