Finally I can say my ECW project is complete. Well untill the next unit.

Well this post marks the completion? of my English Civil War project. 

I started painting units in April 2018 and was sidelined by the painting I needed to do for the Great Game staged in June this year. 

I intend to hold a grand review of the two armies I have completed and strangely I am excited by the prospect of seeing them displayed in their entirety. I say they are completed by I do have several troops of horse to paint, simply because I have them in my spares box. I also have some extra infantry that I will be painting again simply because I have them. 

I bought a small piece for the spare? artillery crew  on Saturday whilst at the Border Reivers show.This is now painted and based.

I have also completed the two extra units of clubmen using Ian Hinds pre painted stock which I touched up a little. Again they are made up of some real veterans of the wargaming firmament.

And now the piece de resistance my new Kings Lifeguard. Sadly I didn't paint this beautiful unit which puts my modest painting efforts to shame. I have been steadily selling off various spare figures and decided to commission a new lifeguard from a top figure painter, Dave Jarvis. Dave has done a wonderful job with figures from Gilder's Rupert's Charge range. I was in two minds whether to gloss varnish these beauties but finally decided that they needed to fit in with my other units and to be honest I like the effect.

Normally I paint or repaint all the figures I get but I knew Dave would do a brilliant job of these classic Gilder figures.Dave used the wipe off oil paint effect for the horses which was exactly what I wanted for them. Basically they are a 21st century version of Gilder's original Lifeguard and I like to think he would have been jealous of them.

So I now have four regiments of the figures from Rupert's Charge in my Royalist army which will be part of Rupert's command, and what a sight that should be. So thanks again to Dave for slipping this extra commission into his very busy schedule. Now if I could only win the lottery to commission a whole army or three.

Looking back I should have finished this ECW project several months ago and if not for my little Napoleonic project they would have been completed several months ago. I have enjoyed revisiting my wargaming past to put these armies together and hopefully they will become well used in the future. What I have really enjoyed is using figures that were originally sculpted in the late 1970's and revisiting them. They are still beautiful figures and in my eyes have stood the test of time. Yes there are a few knocky knees and that's just the horses but they have bags of character.