Here there be Dragoons!
/More for my ECW armies: a unit of Dragoons.
In For King & Parliament, my chosen ruleset for the period, Dragoons are small unit compared to a standard infantry battalia: effectively a cavalry unit dismounted less a few chaps to hold the horses. I’ve already decided a Forlorn Hope as being eight figures strong, so given your standard battalia is 24 figures strong, the Dragoons are somewhere in the middle at 12 figures strong.
I’m not actually going to paint up mounted versions or horse-holders because, as I understand it, there was only one encounter where Dragoons fought mounted, so best to avoid ahistorical fielding by not having any on horseback. That’s my excuse anyway!
These are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted (quickly) with GW Contrast Paints. Note the chap next to the purple flower in the picture above. He’s a good example of something you have to watch out for with Contrast Paints: missing a bit! Because the paints flow like a wash, it’s often easy to forget to use a proper brush (i.e. not a wash brush) and work the paint into the relief (the creases) in a figure. If you just dab the paint on like a wash, sometimes it will run away from where you’ve dabbed it a few seconds after you’ve done the dabbing, which if you’re painting multiple figures on a lolly-stick can mean that you miss what’s happened because you’ve moved on to the next figure. I shall have to re-open the box and fix him!
Incidentally, I had started thinking that I’ll never finish this English Civil War project, but then I realised that the reason it was taking me so long to complete, the reason why I had painted so many figures compared to other armies, was that I was painting enough of the same sort of figure (as the sides are relatively homogeneous) for to field both sides in a game…so painting two armies or one double-sized army. Doh!
Finally, today, regular visitors will know that I’ve set myself a task of interspersing my new project painting with clearing some of my rather sizable lead mountain. Here’s what I did - to do my duty! - just before painting the Dragoons:
It’s one of those objective markers the size of a Battlefront large base. Don’t know why I had it, or what I’ll use it for, but that (tiny) corner of the lead mountain is now flattened!
