English Civil War units .

Here is the two thirds finished unit.

 In the few odd moments I get to actualy paint soldiers for my own collections I've been trying to complete some more units for the ECW collection.
 One of the more radical things I decided to do was make my small and rather bitty Les Higgins 30mm "Jason"  collection into something I could actually use. Now these chas have beeon out of production since the mid 70s so are a bit thin on the ground and prices have shot up , Nevertheless I've amassed around 70 or more- including 7 cavalry- which are even more scarce than the Foot . Now being on average over 40 years old some of these lads needed a good bit of TLC - parts missing  and complete repaint jobs in many cases- some had been painted by a bloke who not only used a yardbrush but had a bag over his heard too - but others needed only there merest fidddling about and basing .
 I decided to make them into an impression of the White Regiment of the London Trained Bands simply because they looked closest to the well equippend London Militia  than to any other Civil War soldier. After all these are  late 60s designs and our knowledge has moved on rather more than somewhat in the intervening half -century ! . It still remains to finish another dozen or so Musketeers and maybe 3 or 4 pikemen. There are a very few interlopers- a single Stadden pikeman and 3 figures  of whose manufacture I have no idea. I'll post a separate pic of those as I'd love some more.

the completed Musketerr division- there remains another of these to complete.

Some of the Broken figures needed  the damaged weapons replacing- so broken halberdiers were made into pikemen and officers had new Partizans and leading staffs.

All of these are the same figure but the two central ones had no heads to thier halbards so became pikemen .

The two ensigns have metal flags that came in one of the lots but bothactual ensign figures were origonally pikemen. The Less Higgins  standard bearers are by far my least favourite figures- fringes on ECW Foot Colours !  Also the posing is rather uncomfortable.
I've also been dishing out a bit of TLC to more of the stuff I got from DC.

A bit of basing up and restoring paint chips and there you go. 

You may note that all of these have nice shiny varnish. I even re-varnishes some of those that had been "matted" at some time over the last 40 years . Shine on Dudes!

More From Les.

As regular readers will know I'm something of a fan of the work of Les Higgins who died almost 40 years ago. This makes his figures hard-ish to come by. His 20mm are available again both the ECW and Marlburians as are the 25mm Naploeonics- or at least some of them . However my favourites were always the 30mm Jason range- Marlburian and ECW. as A sculptor Les could show the modern dudes a thing or 3 though uniform knowledge was not as it is now and production was more difficult then than now as well . So all in all Les'gear was pretty special and back in the day they were far too pricey for me.
However I've now collected a good few both painted and unpainted- and By God were not 1960s painting styles... er well "different" some indeed very good but some of my Jasons will be going in the stripper. I have about 100 figs now perhaps a few less mostly ECW but with a very Few of the Marburians- including Marlborough- already on this blog.
These are one of the very few ranges of figures I can actually paint faster than I can buy!!
The 2 pictures show a couple of Roundhead officer types from the same basic figure and what is almost unit.Painted as the Guards in 1660 which is more or less how they looked despite being "ECW" at the time.As I said uniform knowledge was not then as now.
Nevertheless I love the delicacy of detail and proportion so absent in many of todays models. Also of course like all "proper" figures they are metal not 2nasty plastic" - Yes I'm a metal snob and proud !!
Andy

Les Higgins "Jason" 30mm

Les Higgins was always to my mind one of the finest makers of Miniatures. His best work being the Jason 30mm range- The first picture shows some of his ECW cavalry. The painting is modern - by me - but all of the figures are at least 30 years old. They stand very favourably with many of todays miniatures in so called "28mm"
The second picture shows some of the ECW foot figures- again the painting is modern . By the standards of the time these were expensive- when Minifigs S range infantry were 6 or 7 p each these were 24 pence.
As well as ECW there was a Malburian range which I have a very few unpainted examples- though I will paint 'em in time.
The final picture for this post shows a few more of the foot figures- the Lady in the hat is actually from the Malburian range while most of the others were bought painted off ebay- bit of luck there- despite their age these are still some of my favorite miniatures- despite their inaccuracies- in the light of more modern research- they still look fine to me.