Our native allies in America

A big bag of them, Sir!

Not exactly thousands of them but a bag of 50 Old Glory 10mm American Revolution Indians supplied by Caliver. I decided to use Old Glory so the British native allies would look different to the French. I plan to use Pendraken Indians for my French forces. So it was open the bag, clean up the figures, and paint!

Both units arrayed in depth

How was it for you Hiawatha?

I have painted 30mm Indians for this period and found tattoos and war paint a mixture of fun and frustration.  On these wee fellows the smaller scale let me use the daub technique to give a quick impression of warpaint. That’s the aim anyway! I enjoyed painting these although one or two figures have very over scale muskets. I would recommend considering them for any North American eighteenth century conflict.

Sharp eyed readers will see I have used a Pendraken British officer to further identify these figures as British allies.

One from another

Eventually I will have three units of these chaps. So how to tell them apart?

Clever micro painting with distinctive war paint could be one approach. I wanted something I can see when standing or sitting at the table so testing my badger paws painting technique to the limit was not the answer. I settled on making each unit’s basing distinctive. The result is one unit with a plain base using just some Gale Force 9 forest flock supplied by Maelstrom Games, a second using Woodland Scenics twigs from a model shop, and the third one will appear in a later entry! You can judge the effectiveness of this plan from the image below.

Looking down to see the difference in basing

The flock and twigs were anchored with a mix of PVA glue and paint. The twigs were painted and washed with acrylics. The end result was then sprayed with Testor’s Dullcote – once we had a warm and dry enough day!