Injun Interlude

See! It's NOT all WW2 and not even all Lard (that's a technicality - more of which later).

 

After a recent visit to Maximum Bob's for an intro/educational game of the excellent Muskets & Tomahawks against Martin, I was inspired enough to forage in the garage on my return to seek out the box with my French & Indian Wars stuff in it. This was another subject which I has rushed head-long into when M&T was first published. Having always enjoyed the film Last of the Mohicans and spent hours viewing all the blogs which were suddenly festooned with beautiful pictures of Indians, colonials and the armies of Wolfe & Montcalme, I promptly marched out of my stockade and "went large" on yet another new period.

Savage & godless. Heading to a settlement near you soon?

Back then Warlord Games had just negotiated a deal to supply the exquisite line of Conquest Miniatures, thus making their comprehensive range easily and readily available over here for the first time. Another very comprehensive range was available from Redoubt, but the figures were quickly discovered to be quite large and therefore incompatible with any other lines whereas I found that the civilian types and Woodland Indians offered by Foundry & Perry's would combine very nicely.

I was unsure at first on painting war paint. In the end I just dived in and was pleasantly surprised I didn't ruin the test batch of figures.

Within no time at all I had done my usual trick of accumulating an appropriate lead-mountain, visited Amazon for some histories, snapped up the relevant Ospreys (including a rare copy of Montcalme's Army) and used up some credit at Grand Manner for some log cabins. Then the project fell flat on it's face until recently.

I'd acquired some autumn leaves too

Realising I'd racked up quite a large number of figures for a skirmish game I decided I'd experiment with the painting to try to speed up my glacial turnover of 28mm sculpts. I decided that I'd settle for a look that "did the job" rather than being overly fussy. There would be opportunity to jazz things up with the basing and the war paint. As there was such a prevalence of browns and earth tones I decided I'd give the figures a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone and matt it down after.

"Here among the undergwothe"

Using Foundry's triads and Citadel reds & yellows for their vividness, I managed to paint all 20 of my first Indians from quite a limited palette. Fortunately it's left me with enough enthusiasm to tackle the next batch almost immediately without the anticipated immediate  return to WW2.

Using the points system in M&T this still leaves me with some way to go.

I've really enjoyed the change and combined with the knowledge that there's a Sharpe Practice adaptation for this too I know this little project will run and run.

Between compiling Americans for the recently released "29 Let's Go!" CoC supplement, preparing everything for the Winter Storm project and now a renewed vigour for this, I predict a busy winter ahead.........

I blame Bob.