English Civil War - Royalist Cavalry

Royalist "blue coat" cavalry - front

This is the first unit of English Civil War troops I have painted, and the first Warlord Games product unit that I have completed. As noted in an earlier post, there are advantages to plastic kits, and in this case, that is mainly in the variety of heads and hats that you can put on the 12 cavalry figs that come in the box. For a basic assortment of horses and bodies, the various sword and pistol arms, along with the heads, give a good variety of different poses. The figures themselves are good quality, with adequate detail, and are easy to paint.

To paint this unit, I did a slight variation on the method described earlier on my experiment with painting a "Rider of Rohan" Lord of the Rings fantasy figure. Without going into great detail, this was to block out the basic colors, wash the figure with a brushed-on coat of Army Painter "strong tone" (aka Minwax), spray it with matte varnish to knock down the gloss, and then do some simple highlighting to brighten the colors back up. Much of my painting over the last bunch of years has been medievals, so much so that I always really enjoy working on something that has some uniformity to it and can be at least somewhat assembly-lined.

Royalist "blue coat" cavalry - rear

As usual, basing still to be completed...