Work In Progress: Pendraken Musketeers

I've started painting the first of two units of 24 Royalist English Civil War Musketeers for my planned games of “Pike & Shotte” by “Warlord Games”. These models are based upon the usual 20mm x 30mm green plastic stands I use for all my 10mm infantry. I plan for these ‘two wings of shot’ to be made up of a mix of 10mm models from "Pendraken Miniatures" codes EC3 Musketeers, Cap and EC14 Musketeers, Hat. In addition I'll be using the lovely models from their code EC5 Foot Command to represent the Foot Battle line’s officers, drummers and standard-bearers. I don't though plan to have them actually carry any flags. 

As with the company’s Pikemen, all the models are going to be predominantly painted using “Vallejo” Heavy Red and Heavy Ochre; the colours of the King's Lifeguard. So once complete these ‘Lincolnshire men’ will form the first regiment of the Royalist Battalia of Foot.

I'm certainly happy painting up the Musketeers 'at rest' loading or simply holding their Matchlock Muskets  upright, and have already managed to get a fairly reasonable factory production line painting process going for them. Indeed, with their different head wear breaking up the monotony I believe they're one of my favourite 10mm models to paint. 

Unfortunately I can't say the same for those leant forwards firing their muskets. I spent three nights painting just one of the little fellows (on and off) during the week, and still don't feel entirely happy with the final results. Unlike their fellow Musketeers, I need to concentrate on painting these miniatures one at a time, thus I've turned to some 30mm plastic models (see over at http://fantorical.blogspot.co.uk) to keep me going whilst I wait for their paint to dry. As you can imagine this is making the Foot Battle Lines somewhat slow going, although I have been encouraged in that I only need 9 such models per wing.