2mm Colonial: Test Stands

A quick run-through, now, for the test stands that have just been completed to give a flavour of the 2mm Colonial/Land Ironclads Armies project. As I said in a previous post, it's been a while since I've painted this size of minis, and at first, I couldn't help but think "Wow, these guys are small", but the more I did, the easier things became, so hopefully I'll be back in the groove soon!

You see above an as yet un-based Egyptian battalion, led by it's commander as it leaves camp; as I was basing things around 1882, we see the lovely white uniforms and red fez, rather than the later khaki - gotta have that splash of colour.

The flags are somewhat speculative, in that the only information I could find was the use under the british of green flags with the arabic regimental number in white; so these are just approximations; particularly given their size!

I think the white and red combo is quite effective on the table-top, although I might augment it with some blue coated guards, or even Ottoman troops for some variety.

Next up, we see the battalion drilling in square, this time accompanied by the Irregular BG6 Artillery stands, that I'm going to use as the Egyptian Krupp guns - they have a nice single trail suggestive of these:

Not to be outdone, we have some red-tunic British next, again in square, and accompanied by a pair of Royal Artillery guns formed by BG19s.

Although routinely, of course, British helmets and equipment were stained brown on campaign, I kept the home service white to add some visual clarity - otherwise things would probably look a bit muddy at 2mm in size:

The flags are a bit of a fudge, in that a battalion is unlikely to have carried four! I just wanted to try out how the Union and Regimental colours might look; the national flag is o.k., but the colours turned out looking a bit like a modern Macedonian flag...oh well...

Later battalions will probably just have a pair, whilst the other two blocks will have theirs filed off.

Having painted in the red tunics in the first instance, I realised that something seemed to be missing, and the figures somehow did not suggest the Colonial era - when I realised I would have to bite the bullet and depict the characteristic webbing straps to contrast with the uniform. These ended up being a pair of vertical white stripes on the back of the figure; whilst on the front merely a suggestion of some were done, given that they are competing for space with the face, rifle, etc.

Similarly, the Egyptians needed a contrasting black webbing, which has turned out alright, although is rather 'busy' in appearance; I'd unusually gone for a black rather than a grey undercoat on these figures (Yes, I'd run out of my normal Panzer Grau!), so there ended up being a lot of dark contrasty areas on these blocks, so much so that I decided not to line in a few rifles on the front of the stands, as more colour/paint would have been too much to bear.

I think at normal viewing distances, it should give the blocks some granularity, and a look of shade and light portraying depth.....at least that is what I am telling myself!

Moving on, we have a view of some Royal Artillery, both Horse (BG28) and foot (BG25) limbered batteries making their way past an Egyptian line:

The blue of the RA uniforms rather makes the whole appear a little dark, what with the horses and compact sculpting; hopefully the spots of white for the solar helmets and the light grey of the gun carriages will help to lift them somewhat.

Finally, we have some blocks of khaki-clad Bengal Lancers, doing their duty supporting the Infantry:

These turned out quite nicely, although to be honest, the Irregular sculpting here is very compact and small, so I found it hard to paint - lots of letting the undercoat doing the talking here, and hopefully diverting attention with those colourful lance pennons:

So, a good little exercise in remembering how to paint figures this small, and luckily a reminder of how much I like the finished product - really evocative, even on the small un-based scale shown here, of real formations seen from a Wargamer's eye view.

Hopefully lots more to come on this subject in future posts, with various other unit types, and of course some based-up completed stands - so stay tuned!