Sunday, September 8, 2013

"Reclaming" some old ACW figures


Hi all!

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, there has been discussion in the local gaming group of doing a "Longstreet" Grand Campaign!  What fun!



Now, I don't have any 25mm ACW (well, not many at least)...



... and honestly my current 15mm ACW collection is just not large enough to do a campaign.  That collection is nicely painted and all, but just not big enough.

So, I decided to take a look at my OLD 15mm ACW collection, to see what I could do with those!

Now, they are not great figures.  They are painted cleanly enough, I suppose, but you can tell that I painted them when I was ten:)  Also the bases are just huge; 1 inch x 2 inches, which is just awkward.

So I decided that I would try to reclaim them to use for the "Longstreet" campaign!

First, I would cut each base in half.  That leaves them a nice 1 x 1, which is just a more pleasing base size.  The downside is that there will only be two figures per stand!  That is pretty stunning, but you know, I think I can live with it.  Yes, the units will be small, figure-count-wise, but the game will play well, so I think I can live with it.

But regardless of how many figures there are, they are VERY simple to look at!  Here are four stands of my figures as is.
 



So I decided to do a touch of work on them.  I blacked out the edges a little better, dipped the figures, and did a bit of work on the basing.  Then some matte varnish, and voila!


Here they are, after being worked on.  For two minutes of work, I think they look MUCH better.  Sure, they are not beautiful, but I think they will work.  There is a LITTLE bit of dip-drip under their feet on some of them, but I think it isn't that noticeable... it almost looks like a shadow. I have something like four hundred stands of Rebs and Yanks, so more than enough for a big 15mm game.

So... that's that!  Now I've got some work ahead of me:)

3 comments:

Stryker said...

Not bad for 2 minutes work! They look like 'Stone Mountain' figures, a really nice range that you don't see much of these days...

MiniWargamer said...

I recognized the Stone Mountain figures right away! I have two plus brigades worth of them for each side and just got them painted after owning them since the early 80s!

Author said...

They are indeed Stone Mountain... you can tell that I painted them 20+ years ago, right?:) They are very, very old school. The ones on the right are from the Ragged Rebs pack, which I *think* was a newer pack. Newer in that it was only 20 years old instead of 25:)