Sunday, August 09, 2020

Pendraken 10mm FPW Bavarians

A couple months ago I finally bit the bullet and sent out orders for two 10mm Arab Revolt armies to be painted. Shortly after that, I realised that I should have ordered some German Asian Corps figures too, but by then the figures had been sent to the painter. I decided I want them bad enough to buy a pack of the figures and paint them myself (30 figures - how hard can it be?), and since I was paying postage, I decided to get a pack of the Bavarians to add to my FPW army - ironically, when I bit the bullet and had my FPW armies painted years ago, I left the Bavarians out too.

The Germans were a breeze to paint - I will show them once I have done their bases - and I was beginning to think that 10mm wasn't really that difficult to paint... then I started on the Bavarians.

Compared to the relatively sparse WW1 figures, FPW figures had a lot of details on them. A lot of *fine* details. I mean, the figures had facial hair, and there were cockades on the helmets, and straps on the canteens on the backpacks!
I painted 18 of the figures as line infantry, and the remaining 12 as jaegers - this gives me a battalion of each under the rules. Ideally I should have an entire division of them, but I don't think I can summon up the energy to paint all those figures myself.

2 comments:

Steve Holmes said...

The art of painting a new scale (Particularly the smaller scales) lies in knowing when to stop with the detail.

I set myself a "Looks OK at arms length" standard, which makes 10mm troops among the fastest to paint.
I know others who have managed to dot in the "dicing" on highland infantry headgear.
Each to their own.

Your Bavarians look beautiful, and the contrasting cockades on their headgear really stand out.
Some details, like sword knots, ammunition pouch insignia require similar levels of effort, but add far less impact to the finished figures.

I find I hit my ideal balance between painting speed and detail during my third or fourth painting session.

Finally, some troops are simply far faster to paint.
19th century uniforms with all their webbing, turnbacks and insignia are among the hardest.

ASTraveller said...

blogwalking here from Malaysia. Regards! :)