One of those long untended areas here at the Lead Gardens is my project to paint up the plastic figures of my Battle Cry game. But I recently got re-energized by an ebay purchase of a second copy of the original Hasbro/AH game and doubled my figure count and opened up the possibility of doing more ambitious battles like Gettysburg in a more "grand manner".
I finished the first set of Rebs last night and was pretty happy with the result. Though they are still a bit too shiny in these pics...I think another coat of flat spray will do the trick.
I also think I managed to find the ideal solution to the plastic figure painting problem. I did the usual soap wash and then followed with an undercoat of black acrylic gesso mixed with "Weldbond" PVA glue. Weldbond is very tough and flexible and dries very tight to the surface and I think enhances the already great adhesion of just straight acrylic.
I followed with a classic triad of base block colors, plus ink wash (I use "Didi's Magic Ink" from "The Warstore"), followed by a light drybrush of white. I coated the figures with Krylon triple thick gloss which gives the figures a very durable top coat. I then made a pass with Krylon Matte spray to get the shine to "flatten", but with only some success in getting to a satin finish. I'm going to try again tomorrow but I think the figures are at least a bit better than unpainted.
You can see in the pics that I have to go over the bases again because pulling them off the paint sticks peeled the paint around the edges of the bases but that should be easy to fix.
I think in general these guys came out too dark so in the next set I'm going to try to lighten the colors so when the wash is applied it should not darken things too much.
I also replaced the game flags with paper flags downloaded from the various free flag sites.
Ultimately I want to be able to throw these fellows back in the box and not loose any paint to chipping...so we will see...
...But, I may eventually base these guys up and go to marking hits on a stand instead of the individual figures.
3 comments:
I own both the first and latest editions of BATTLE CRY, and have been tempted to paint my figures as well.
I own the larger boards that you can buy for MEMOIR '44 and they would be very suitable for larger ACW battles.
All the best,
Bob
Nice job. They're looking good!
Quite a nice and effective paint job, Bob, for troops that get chucked into a box like that. Looks (sniff) sad, somehow... (choke)... But in a way I suppose it's a more compact method than most alternatives!
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