Husaria - Building a Polish army for the 1620s

The metal figures were fairly straightforward to prep. One slight pain was having to glue on the troops sidearms, a sword hung on the left hip from a baldric or belt. These look really nice on the figure, but I’m a bit worried about robustness in the long term as the swords are very thin and stick out in a realistic, but easy to bend way. If you expect to be heavy handed with your figure then you should consider leaving the swords off.

I gave the figures my normal, black spray primer undercoat. I then painted up a test figure to try out how I wanted to paint the figures. I combined a couple of approaches to try and speed up my normal snail’s pace painting speed.

After the primer was cured I gave the figures a very heavy dry brush in Vallejo Flat Brown (70.984). This helps show up the details on a matt black figure, and, as so much of a 17th century soldier ends up brown, this can provide a base coat for things like shoes, belts, bandolier, scabbard, musket, etc.

I painted up a base coat across the other, non-brown items, not being too precious about neatness as minor errors would be corrected by the next stage. Next I gave the figure a generous wash of GW’s Agrax Earthshade (the ‘magic part’).  This provides a shade and also neatens up the figure overall. When this wash was dry I highlighted the original base coats again.

This gave a nice impression of what I think a 17th century soldier on campaign might have looked like. (This approach combines techniques I’ve learnt from Matt at Glenbrook Games and also Sonic Sledgehammer.)

With the test figure done, I moved on to the rest of the unit. I used a fairly muted set of natural colours for the rest of the unit. Here they are, all based up. Front rank giving fire, and rear rank loading. A sergeant, with halberd, commands the unit.

I really enjoyed painting these 1898 figures, and I’m pleased with how they came out.  I have another 2 x 12 figures to do, before moving back to the mounted part of the force.  I am also working on some command stands for the Foreign Infantry, and should have some figures from another smaller manufacturer to show.