A suprise?

I depends on how good a memory you have and how much you have been following this blog,
I did a poll asking if I should do ACW and it was quite clear I should, and this beeing a sosial democracy I most follow the majority.

Long long ago I bought a large number of 40mm S&S ACW figures.

They have been in the package they came in since I got them before Christmas.

I finnaly felt inspirerd to paint some of them, and the inspiration came from a Dream, I dreamt I was admiering other gamers ACW collection, that was enough to get out the figures, finnaly I actualy had the figres I wanted to paint, normaly I have to order then and wait for weeks to get them, this time I only had to go 18 feet and pick up the package. and Prime them, the most boged down I got was when I had to glue the heads on and wait for the glue to harden.

I first did a test figure useing ink wash, it was to "ektreme" I've found that painting 40mm needs more neuance less drastic shades, infact some of them are so small it's hard to see, but they are there, the trousers and jackets all have 4 levels of grey, Uniform gry, mid grey, horse tone grey and light tank grey, on the pictures only the mid gray and light tank show up.



Look at this face, it's the best I've ever done, it turned out just the way I wanted, I can't take credit for it, it was all done by the sculpt, in esence I couldn't do it wrong. Even strands of hair is sculpted singely, Eyesocket perfect ect.




Also with 40mm, you can't just paint a surfes, all parts need sevral layers, so while I normaly only give blankets a single coat, here they have 3, main, shade and highlight. infact the brown blankets got two highlights so thats 4 shades. Same with haversack and canteen(those only got two. The black leather also got highlights but shading black is well kinda hard, so just one highlight there.

As I said all this is very subtile stuff, you kinda need the figures in your hand to see it all.


And in 40mm you need to make single soldiers not just aoother cannonfodder, so you got that wonderfully sexy blond guy with the beuty face, and then I got the old guy named scruffy becasue he looks to scruffy from Futurama.



Even the rifles got quite alot of detail, these are supose to be Enfields so the barrles is not quite black like the propper ones, but got a dark gunmetal coat, the bands have chainmail so they stand out, even small things like the pin that I assume is to hold the bands on the rifle are modeld and there for needs to be painted, they got the same chainmail.

There are for my Brigade sized rules I'm planing on writing, I've writen about them you can read the idea if you click on the ACW label it's the 4th down.

This is gonna be one HUGE FUCKING UNIT, It's gonna be 60+ figures over 50cm frontage.

60 40mm unit is goona be quite a sight, at 1:10 it's 600+ soldiers, it's gonna be the biggest regiment in the brigade. It's gonna be model on the 7th Texas regiment, the same I'm hopefully gonna reenact someday. These are gonna be very unifom, all of them are gonna have grey uniform, with only the hats and blankets beeing uniqe. At 60 figures I need 10 bases of them.

Me Reenacting?

Like I don't have enough stuff you spend money on.
But this is the natural step up from wargaming, after painting some hundred ACW uniforms it will be nice to have one to put on.

ACW is reenactment is the natural choice, it's a HELL OF A LOT CHEAPER then Napoleoinc, second Napoleoinc is realy a non option since there is only like two people doing it in norway and I don't know them. Since I'm allready doing Wargaming almost alone, I'm not gonna do it again with reenactment, espesaly since it would cost like 70-100 000 NOK to get a complete impression.

ACW lets you buy propper non Farb quality stuff online, no tailors needed. and you only have 4 big expencive parts, jacket, a propper jacket will run 250 dollars, same with leatherworks, and ofcourse the rifle and finnaly shoes. the rest is minor cheaper stuff.

Also besides the money issue, there is an active reenactor group, the 7th texas. They are on the level no farb stuff, got quite strict uniform regulations, now if they'll noly let me in.

Now I'm realy a northern man, but since they are doing rebs I have to be a reb, the also do the 15th wisconsin but it's vulantary if you want to do it.

So now it's only a question about finding stores that send to norway and have propper gear and clothing, I have found my leather works allready and it can be shipped to norway.
I have found the right jacket and trousers but I don't know if they send to norway yet.

I'll keep you updated as I fall into the depths of another expencive hobby.