Back in the 6mm groove.

For the last few weeks I have been working almost exclusively on the 2mm ACW project and prior to that on 3mm cold war stuff.  So I was not entirely surprised to find that I haven't painted any 6mm figures in months.  Looking back over blog posts suggests that it might have been over a year in fact!  Although there have been 6mm figures on the painting table I had just left them sitting there without actually doing any thing with them  However, as the 2mm ACW project has gone as far as it can until I buy more figures so it was time to do some 6mm painting again.  

The starting point was a no brainer; do something with the part painted back log.  I must admit to a wondering if the 6mm layoff would have impacted on my painting in a negative way.  The first figures in the queue were some Irregular Miniature Huns.  These paint up quite nicely but need more finesse in the brush work than more modern sculpts, the detail is there but it needs a bit more work to bring it out.  Once I started on them I realised why I had bypassed them.   I hadn't been fully happy with the initial work I'd done so I had put them to one side while I had a think about how to proceed!  But proceeding was required so proceed I have done.  I'm reasonably happy with the results and they have been mounted in a 10 man wedge formation on a 15mm DBA cavalry base (that's 30 x 40mm) because, well Huns often fought in wedges.

And here they are 'The Scourge of God'. Hun horsemen

I have had Huns as Foederati for my Late Imperial Romans since my 25mm days back in the '70's but I have never fielded a Hunnic army.  That is about to change as I'm looking at a DBA army based around the  attack by Atilla on the Western Empire as it will be a historic match up for my Roman troops.  Not a purely Hunnic army as there will need to be Franks, Burgundians, Alans and Goths in the mix too but it is close enough for jazz.  I checked the lead pile and found enough Hun light cavalry hiding in there for two more bases so that will keep me going for a while.

Keeping track of things

As you might have worked out I do like a spreadsheet.  My favourite for the purposes of this post is my figure control sheet.  This has values of my finished 6mm stuff for insurance purposes and an annual lead pile in and out page so I can see if I'm making progress in reducing the size of said lead pile.  Now the thing with a spreadsheet is they make you think you have things under control, while in reality if the data entered is out of date then control is the last thing you have.  Having looked at spreadsheet it appears I don't have control so over the next few days a bit of a 'stock count' will need to happen, (Boy but do I know how to have a good time!). 

What was interesting from the spreadsheet is how much value is tied up in my toy soldiers, not so much in the potential sale value (trust me that's never gonna happen while I draw breath) but in what it would cost in like for like replacement using a painting service.  For example one of my DBA bases of 6mm cavalry with 10 figures on a 2mm mdf base, painting and texturing the base would be around £15 (plus VAT if applicable) not counting postage costs.

It's not something I often think about but we do add quite a lot of value to our little lead warriors as we paint and base them, in fact I honestly couldn't afford to have someone else do it for me if I was starting from scratch.  Which begs the question how would you cope if you had to replace your collections?