Orphaned Painting

When I was poking around looking for Sepoy miniatures for my Silver Bayonet East India Company unit, I stumbled upon these on the Perry Miniatures site. I was immediately taken with them and they became an itch that I had to scratch. I had the page for the Perry site open in a browser tab for months, but never pulled the trigger. Fortunately when I went to Vapnartak in February I managed to find them and snapped them up straight away.

Painting a batch of 6 Napoleonic figures brought back memories of the 1980s wargames club in my senior school where we were painting masses of plastic riflemen with humbrol enamels, perhaps that’s why I prefer small batches of mixed miniatures when I paint.

When I was poking around looking for Sepoy miniatures for my Silver Bayonet East India Company unit, I stumbled upon these on the Perry Miniatures site. I was immediately taken with them and they became an itch that I had to scratch. I had the page for the Perry site open in a browser tab for months, but never pulled the trigger. Fortunately when I went to Vapnartak in February I managed to find them and snapped them up straight away.

Painting a batch of 6 Napoleonic figures brought back memories of the 1980s wargames club in my senior school where we were painting masses of plastic riflemen with humbrol enamels, perhaps that’s why I prefer small batches of mixed miniatures when I paint.

This was a pleasure to paint. I think that resin might be becoming my favourite material for miniatures.

There’s no particular reason for the colour choice: I liked the bright contrast. Dulled down here with a mix of washes attempting to recreate ‘marine juice’ rather than straight nuln oil.

In my head he’s a mercenary for use in Mordheim (I will be surprised if I ever play Mordheim).

I keep on looking at the official Silver Bayonet figures longingly, but I hadn’t taken the plunge : I think I was scarred by the Napoleonic Wargames club my school ran in the 1980s. So much humbrol enamel.
I remembered that I had a box of figures for the long forgotten ‘In Her Majesty’s Name’ languishing at the bottom of a drawer. ‘Lord Curr’s Company’ is also by Northstar and contained a couple of miniatures in uniform, so an ideal test for me painting pseudo historicals.

The red coats were actually a pleasure to paint, a mix of Vallejo game colour, Monument Pro Acryl, and a dash of Citadel contrast as a wash on the trousers. I’m sure I could use them in Silver Bayonet.

The miniature in regular clothes is sufficiently neutral that he could be used in a variety of games from a bandit in Silver Bayonet to a partisan in World War 2.

Mohan Singh is a puzzle. I think it’s a great mini and it’s always nice to see some representation in our hobby. However his ridiculous weapon makes him almost unusable, and the muscle bound Sikh is a bit of a tired cliche. I wonder where it started?

However it did send me down a Google research hole where I discovered that there were East India Company troops in Egypt in 1801. So there’s a new project : a Silver Bayonet troop of Indian soldiers.

I’ve liked this mini since I first saw it. For some reason it reminds me of Peter St. John/Mandala from the 2000AD story Zenith. It’s probably simply the suit.
Talking of which, I was intimidated by painting so much white. I think it turned out OK.