Der Unbemalte Stapel

Well, I seem to have finished off my 25mm (ha!) Romans, with a unit of cataphracts, so time to dig out some more unpainted lead.

One thing I had been working on before we moved house in October & all got reduced to confusion, is trying to undercoat and brown-ink all my unpainted ancients, and base them (i.e. de-flash, file the bottoms flat, and loosely glue to bases). This has gone pretty well, and most of them at least have had this treatment, so are available to use at home, if not outside! This also - of course - makes it much more likely they will get painted eventually, as all the boring bits have already been done.

Time to move on to my SYW pile*, so I had a quick scan (ha!) last night, and found a pile of Brits, a big pile of Prussians, and a big pile of Austrians (memo to self: must buy some more Russians). As the Austrian (Skyrian) contingent is woefully undermanned, I thought best to start on these**, so extracted 4 large bags of lead as a place to start.

Hmm, these were all bought off eBay (some year or 3 ago) as Foundry Austrians, but looking at them now, I'm not at all sure. The Grenadier bearskins look suspiciously AWI-British, and a lot of the cavalry look far too underfed*** to be Foundry at all. Still, I'll undercoat them and see what they look like. I have to admit, with the diminishment of my painting time, ability, and general concentration, anything 2nd rate is more likely to get sold off or binned than painted - with limited time resources, why invest it in rubbish? Money isn't as scarce as time nowadays (a radical change from 30 years ago!)



* it should be piles, plural, but thats too subject to misinterpretation!

** Fear not, my beloved Prussians, I shall return to your ranks! Funny how your favourite armies always massively outnumber the opposition, though :)

*** Not to say Foundry figures are as overplump as many wargamers, but every blister should probably have a Nutrilife sticker on the back