Analogue Painting Challenge II - Prep time

More prep work for the painting challenge.  I actually will, almost certainly, not need these, but just to be on the safe side, they are ready to be primed.

A regiment for the ECW.

These guys were part of a bunch of boxes I bought from Warlord earlier in the year.  They were having a special on bulk purchases and I wanted to check out their ECW plastics.  I'm not going to be collecting an ECW army any time soon, but I've had an unreasonable desire to build a pike block for a long time.

The plastics are, in some ways, standard Warlord fare, and in others very different.  On the familiar side, they are the standard plastic that Warlord uses.  They clean up well and are pretty sturdy.  There was no flash and pretty minimal mold lines, though some are difficult to clean.  I found the match locks, especially, problematic as it was often difficult to figure out where the mold lines were.

A sleeve of shot.

The way that this set is different is that every single guy comes bare headed and bald but there are a ton of different hat options that fit on pretty well.  This is cool, except that I would like to have more options since if you want a uniform look you will have to buy a eight or nine boxes of these.

One of the shot with his add on hat.  Very dapper.

The other thing that didn't really do it for me was that there are not enough pikes, and some of them are horizontal.  I would like to have a solid sixteen pikes in the center and I would prefer them all to be upright.  Horizontal pikes get in the way when units collide.

The Ensign who came with the Pike & Shotte Book.

I also assembled the ensign who came with the Pike & Shotte rules.  He's a nice little model.  Three pieces, the body, the left hand and the brass rod flag pole.  I had to drill the hand but other than that the model was a breeze.  He'll probably end up on a command stand rather than in the regiment.

I like the box, but I think I'll have to buy my models differently if I want the pike blocks I've dreamed of.  I also have three models left over which will go into the bitz box for some later project.  This kit will make a good core of an army, when it comes time to build one, but it will need some augmentation, even in the rank and file, which is not normally the case with Warlord's kits.