Thursday, July 2, 2009

I LOVE 6mm

And no that was not a dick joke.
I have in the past few weeks gone completely bananas for 6mm miniatures.
It started when I orderd just a few 7yw figs along with some paint suplys from scalecreep.
But I realy didn't want to go 7yw I had only bought the figs on impulse just to try.
Yeah well, those that know me, no it never ends like that.
I became a little disaluded with my 28mm GCH battle as it became aperant that I could not get all 320 28mm figs on the table and still be table to actualy move the figs.
Then I remembered people saying that you in theory could do some of the smaller AWI battles in 1:1 with 6mm. Well I couldn't do that but I came to the conclution that I could do GCH in 1:4
That is 1/4 or 25% Well turns out that is 1600 figs, with battalions ranging from 50 to 100 figs.
Well crap(not realy crap, but trying to keep the blog US friendly and I don't want the fucking FCC on my back) Anyway because of my extreme lack of impluse control(I might have Tourettes we are checking that out)
I ended up buying the whole 1600 figs from baccus, along with bases and flags.
I'll also try my hand at making my own rules, Or steal other rules from many diffrent places and getting them into a single rule that plays the battle(and hopefully other small scale AWI battles) well.
And then the waiting game started, I kept checking my bank to see if the order was sent and I started to get withdraw symtoms. And after trying to get help on TMP I ended up buying a nother 1000 figs form angelbarracks, and a few days later another 1400 more.
Thats 2400 figs pluss 1600 allready bought. Those 2400 are Napleonics from irregular for a BIG ASS project, that will total almost 3800 figs when done. Thats a big step from less then 320 28mm figs to close to 4000 6mm, this is thanks to a very small ground scale of 1"=100 yards.
Which is totaly diffrent from the tactical games I'm used to play, It infact took quite some time for me before I "got it" that I could infact have many figs on the table, I'm used to having battalions that take up 30cm frontage, and can shoot 20cm infront of them. this makes my table only a few 100 yards big. But with grand tactical you suddenly have a table that is 39 sqkm. Suddenly battalions had only 1.5" reach so you could have to big armies on the table and 4" is the only gap needed to make sure no close contact can be made(no musket or canister)
Anyway Those are my planes.
Today I got my 7yw 6mm baccus from scalecreep(I was expecting them togeather with the paints) But Mark has to wait for the paint so he sent the other stuff first, unexpected but a nice suprise as I REALY wanted to paint 6mm figs now.
Eventho 7yw was not on my project list I wanted to try and paint them. I painted and based then for a possible might and reason game I might take up later on(have basicly given up on the 15mm version of the project)
And I must say I LOVE 6mm, I paint them just the same as 15mm, just color in the parts of the model with the right color, it's nice not having to worry about straps for the muskets(which I never painted on 15mm anyway) And I must say it was fun to paint. I paint 4 at the same speed as 1 15mm, so I have quadrupled my paintig speed and doubled my unit production(if I paint for M&R basing.
That is, I use the same base as my 15mm only I get 20 figs on the base instead of 10, and as it is two bases pr. unit I get 40 figs or two bases in the same time as 10 figs or 1 base in 15mm.
When I painted 15mm 7yw I had to force myself to get though 10 figs a day so it took two days to do one unit with 20 figs.
I just did one unit with 40 figs in about two hours.
And they look good, not master works, but my 6mm look alot closer to master 6mm then my 15mm do. My 15mm have never looked good, and it kinda stops me from painting them.
But here I can paint 6mm on a good level and I can do it 4 times as fast as my mediocre 15mm.
So even at extremly lesiur pace of 2 hours a day I can make a 40 man unit.
If I set my ass down and realy do a honest day painting I'm sure I can get close to 100.
How often I do 100 in a day is ofcourse not known, but even with only a few hours painting I can get 40 done. says something.
So for the figs. 40 Britsh 7yw soldiers based on the 37th Foot which was at minden, all red uniforms with yellow facings. Thats it.





PS. Sorry for the long wall of text, for some reason it dosn't want to registere the paragraphs I tried to make

3 comments:

Michael said...

I am sure with a bit of practice you will do 100 a day.
If I can then anyone can.

Gunfreak said...

Well in theory I could get more then 100.

1 hour pr. 20-25

Så 100 in 4-5 hours, which is actualy a light painting day for me during the weekends.

So in I get up at 10 in the moring on saturday and just start painting, only stoping to change the dvd's in my dvd player, I can get 8-10 hours in day.

So in theory I can get over 200 done in a day. I have spent 10 hours painting before and I'm sure I will agian.
So in theory lets say 25 figs an hour, that 250 a day.
Thats 2-3 battalions for my 1:4 AWI project or 13 battalions for my napoleonic project or 1-3 Divisions.

Only time will tell

James said...

6mm looks to work well with your table top, apart from the roads which I guess can be used as rivers or the NJ Turnpike.

I can do four 15mm's in one hour. Most of my friggin' painting time though is spent figuring color schemes for Rebs.

Jim