The Blue and the Grey

Rummaging about in the loft for me invariably involves moving boxes about and then this usually means opening them up out of curiosity to find out why they were so annoyingly heavy in the first place. Then yes, I get completely distracted by the contents until a querying voice from downstairs inquires what I am doing.

In the most recent foray I discovered my long lost ACW 20mm collection of Revell plastics purchased in about 1992. I acquired quite a lot of these as a model shop was selling off a lot of fire damaged stock (the unopened boxes were sooty). Approximately 20 boxes were purchased all told, 10 Union and 10 Confederate infantry, which roughly gave me 500 troops a piece.They seemed a bargain bumper at the time but alas for the majority of the soldiers the best I did was to get as far as basing them according to a rule set entitled "Stars and Bars". I still have these rules, but no I have not read or played them once in over 20 years of ownership. My ACW outings were always 15mm Fire and Fury (F&F) based and I could not summon up the stamina to consider re-basing the 20mm (and I seemed to be the only one who dared consider using this cake for ACW).

However in 2014 they (potentially) have 'come of age' and have hit the painting tray (see below, for my Conferates):

A relatively few stands (about here dozen), three figures on each, were painted to my "one-colour does it" mid 1990's uninspiring standard. (The three colour technique of  shade, base and highlight was unknown to me then). All told I have two dozen "base primed" Confederates stands (72 figures) and about a dozen Union stands (36 figures). In addition to the basic troops I also acquired Revell's "artillery" and "cavalry" but more of them in later posts. I think these Revell figures can be purchased from IMEX now.

I decided then and there in the loft that they deserved a better fate. Given a recent purchase of a "Vallejo brown dipping wash" I decided to use these troops to experiment on. As the figures were already based on long strips I could not do the full dunk, but more of a heavy uncaring large brush "wash". I decided to "wash them twice" for good measure and highlight, gloss varnish and then matte varnish. The six stands that were just at the undercoat black stage received a PVA gunking to strengthen them (I didn't fancy doing that on the painted ones).

To be continued ...