Joe Shaughnessy

BAVARIAN ARMY

The Baccus Project:

"Want some free lead little boy?" Okay, someone offers you a free army on the web what do you do? Accept of course. I have never painted 6mm figures before, just 1/300 vehicles, modern and Ogre. I have however been painting for nigh on 30 years. Currently my projects are 10mm Naps, 15mm WW2, and 28mm Ancients. I would describe myself as an impressionist miniature painter. If it looks good at arm's length I am happy. My paints are Vallejo, the primer a white spray primer from the local hardware store, shading is provided by a dip mixture of clear acrylic floor wax and black paint, finished off with a spray of dullcote

Step 1: Clean and prime. Minis are mounted on popsicle stickes and primed with a white spray primer.

Step 2: Basic colors are blocked in.. At this point I start with the coat and pants for the infantry, both blue, and the horse and light grey clothing of the heavy cav and the horse and red coats of the dragoons.

I then start on the details. Cuffs, hat, and flesh are the first, followed by the belts, guns, bayonets and lacing on the hat. On the cav I first do the armor and cuffs, followed by the saddle blankets, flesh, belts and reins.

Next the minis were hit with a coat of clear acrylic floor wax, (Future), and when dried a coat of the black/future mixture.

Bases are painted green and then the minis are hit with a coat of dullcote to take the shine off. Finally flags are attached.

Basing I thought long and hard about. I do not currently play any WSS rules but two rules I have looked at are Volley and Bayonet and Age of Honor F&F variant. Using the same thought process as my Napoleonics I decided to use the basing for AoH, .75 inch w x 1 inch d for infantry and 1 inch by 1 inch for cav. The only problem here was that the infantry need a snip of the base on each side to fit the .75 inch wide bases. When using VnB's 3 inch wide stands, 4 stands would form an infantry unit and three stands for cav.

Summary:

First the bad things. Some of the cav are very brittle. Two of them came broken off the stands. At this scale even small amount of glue show up pretty glaringly. I disguised it pretty well with paint and flocking, but be carefull when trying to reposition or seperate the figures. Second, these guys are really hard to photograph. My finished product actually looks much, much better than my feeble attempts at photography .

The good. Really easy to paint up regiments of figures. The above was accomplished mostly over a weekend while watching the EPL on television. For my style of painting this scale is really attractive. I don't have to worry about the correct number of buttons or how the sword knot was tied. If I decide to dive further into this period this is the scale I will use. While the initial selection was for DBR, I think I would enjoy the spectacle of larger units providing more of the mass effect seen in period woodcuts. But that is also the advantage of my basing choice, two stand may be a unit or eight, depending upon the rules set.