The Blue and The Grey

This is not something I would have expected to paint, for a number of reasons, but here are two bases of 15mm "Epic Battles: American Civil War" infantry from Warlord Games. The single sprue (with a hundred infantry [five bases], a cannon, and a mounted officer) came free with a copy of Wargames Illustrated. So, despite not using the scale or doing much strictly historical wargaming, I decided to see how well they paint up.

Dr. Singh's shrink ray belittles the reenactors.

The sprue was in grey plastic, meant to be Confederate, so I first did the Confederate stand. I then did the Union stand so I wouldn't have some random insurrectionists without someone to keep them in check. As you can see, the Confederates look dingy and mismatched while the Union boys have slick matching uniforms and moral superiority.

Each base is 20mm deep by 60mm wide. Each holds twenty men (in two ranks of ten) and the rules for this game have five of these stands per full unit. The starter set that's available has over 2500 little men to paint. That seems beyond my powers, given that these two little stands took at least two hours each. Were I to get the full game, I'd likely leave the blue and grey plastic unpainted on most of the units, maybe with a wash.

In any case, while I prefer my 28mm figures, this was an interesting diversion and I now have two little groups of soldiers to putter around my shelves.