Another 28mm Prussian Infantry Unit

Another batch of 28mm Prussians from Wargames Foundry!

Here is a third unit of Prussians for my slowly-accumulating 28mm Franco-Prussian war project.  As with the previous two units, these figures are 28mm castings from Wargames Foundry, spiced up with a flag from GMB.  There are a total of 24 castings in the unit, with 20 deployed together on the main bases, and four individual figures to be used on the table to indicate the unit has put skirmishers forward.

Flag in the command group from GMB

The classic Prussian pose from this period - the great coat wrapped around the body, advancing into the teeth of French Chassepot fire!

Great sculpts by the Perry Twins - an old range now, but still fantastic, and the most complete one out there in 28mm

I really enjoy painting these lovely castings from Foundry - sculpted by the Perry Twins.  But every hobby has its frustrations, and for me the single biggest frustration is applying the black base coat.  This is most efficiently done by spraying it on.  While Vallejo has a very good primer product that you can paint on, I tend to only do that out of desperation when it comes to metal figures, as the primer has a tough time really sticking, and often creates little air bubbles.  A spray can, for all of the negatives, is just SO much faster and more efficient.

Hooped by the spray cans...F****************K!

But spray cans, in addition to stinking and making a mess, have their own challenges, in that every so often, they suddenly go to sh!t and start ruining figures!  This was the case with several figures in this unit, where the black base coat became scabbed and flaky.

Not a texture you can paint with...

On a few of the figures, some careful painting was enough to work around this.  But on several of them it got so bad the primer coat had to be scraped off, and then I had to use less-than-adequate paint-on-primer instead.

...and so it was scraping time...SUPER fun...NOT!

This is SO infuriating.  It usually happens in the change of season, so no doubt there is some aspect of humidity etc to it, but there really wasn't much change in the conditions, so I don't buy that so much.  Some cans are faulty, and there is no way to predict it...man is it frustrating!!! It's bad enough when it is too cold to spray (common in Winnipeg) and then too hot to spray (common in Winnipeg, or at least it used to be), but when a dud can nails you, that's even worse!!

At least you can't tell in the group photo!

Overall I find the "scabbed" figures don't stand out very much - the beauty of using figures in groups! A new spray can is in action, and the normal painting routine has resumed. I am continuing to slowly tackle my large pile of Franco-Prussian lead in the hopes of staging a "Black Powder" game set in the period.  Slow and steady wins the race...but good thing this isn't a race...

I have also noticed that the excellent "Eagles of Empire" now have Turcos on pre-order...so watch for those to appear this spring!!