Warlord Epic ACW project

[Ray Rivers]

So I am currently working on a new project and this entails using Warlord Games Epic ACW miniatures. For me, this is great news, as I haven't painted any miniatures now for 2 years due to problems I encountered after a double cataract operation left my short vision totally screwed.

During these two years I have watched Warlord Games publish their epic series of miniatures. I found the ACW release very appealing, yet there were issues concerning the release that kept me from pulling the trigger and buying them.

The first issue was the miniatures themselves. While I loved the way the little dudes looked painted and based, I had this inner feeling that the 10 man width of the sprues was just too many men and too wide a frontage. If they had been 5 men each, I would have bought the game the moment it was released. There was a guy who published a video on YouTube where he cut the sprues to 5 men and then used 3 bases for each regiment. So 10 men a base times 3 bases for 30 men in a regiment. THAT, I thought, would have been the best way to go.

The second issue I had with the release was that a regiment was composed of 5 bases of 20 men each for a total of 100 men. Yikes! I could never see myself painting that many men per regiment in any scale. I think lots of folks had trouble with this and that is why you can buy the command sprue (which is in metal) separately now and have regiments of 3 bases totally 60 men. The availability of the command sprues is what eventually led me to buying into the game.

The third issue I had with the release was that Warlord essentially defines a brigade as 3 regiments. While there were in fact 3 and even 2 regiment brigades during the ACW, these are very rare and the normal brigade consisted of at least 4 up to 6 regiments per brigade. This issue was solved by selling the command sprues separately. Having said that, it would have been nice if the Union flag sheet had more that 20 flags.

The sprues themselves consist of men wearing both kepis and slouch hats. Some men have bed rolls, but none (except for the Iron Brigade) have back packs. I understand that this was done to keep the price point as low as possible, but it is a bit irritating, although, in and of itself, it wasn't a major issue for me due to the scale.

Thus, for me, the best of all worlds would have been 2 separate sprues (one for Yanks and one for Rebs) with a frontage of 5 men per base and 3 bases per regiment.

So anyway, about a month or so ago, I ran into a place that had the original Starter Set with 24 regiments, 24 artillery pieces and 24 officers. (This set is no longer available for sale.) It was heavily discounted and after a conversation with the guy, he dropped the price even more to get rid of it, so I bought it!

With the miniatures in my hands, I decided to try and hack and slash my way to the army I wanted to construct. Unfortunately, I found it too much trouble to cut down the 10 man sprues down to 5 as the men overlap in such a way as to make that option for me not worth the effort. I believe the Napoleonic miniatures are far easier to cut the sprue into half. I also tried to cut the slouch hats into kepis. The problem here was that the brim is mated to the musket on both the front and back and once again I felt it just wasn't worth it. This isn't a problem, though, with the artillery figures and the slouch hats are easily converted into kepis.

Thus, my concept for how I was going to approach this project kinda just blew up. Undaunted, I did find a solution to my problems, but I will reveal this later when I post a couple pictures.

The next problem was painting the miniatures. I watched pretty much every video that exists on painting the miniatures and the one tip that stood out was don't put a lot of effort on the back of the front line or the front of the back line. After I completed my first base, I understood just how relevant this was to painting the miniatures because the two lines are so close to each other. In another video, I have recently watched, the guy also didn't bother with filling in basing material (sand) inside the two ranks and only put about a half inch of basing material into that area near the edge of the base. When he applied his grass, he simply filled the inner "hole" in between the lines of infantry, and, yep, you can't notice the difference.

Overall, there were, at least for me, a lot of obstacles in making the Epic miniatures "work," if you will, but I have managed to find ways of going forward.

So I am currently finishing up the fourth regiment of a Union brigade. The brigade commander and 2 guns are also finished. When the fourth regiment is complete, I will post some pictures.

If you have any thoughts concerning the Warlord Epic line of miniatures (for whatever period) and want to comment, feel free. Personally, I would love to see them come out with a line of ancients, but they need to make some major improvements to get me to bite.

That's all for now. Will get some photos up in the near future. Hurrah! 

[Norm]

I have both ACW and Napoleonic, but am yet to get the ECW.

I too would have preferred smaller strips and like your good self, found the pain of cutting them not worthwhile.

I have dropped from 60mm bases to 55mm bases to reduce that gap between bases. Between the ranks of each base, i glue in a small sliver of card (looks like a very thin match) and this fills the gap between the strips without having to pack in my basing filler. I then just put glue down that gap with PVA and a paint brush and it gets a sprinkle of flock.

Overall I found most on the painting articles in mags and on YouTube to be ‘attractive’ but unhelpful as they seem to go in for painting all the fine detail, which is there, but takes longer to do than I think is justified and once on the table a lot of that detail disappears.

I have units of 2 bases in most games, but have used 3 bases to a unit. For my 28’s, I have 18 ACW to a unit and in Napoleonics, 20 figures per unit. Doing 3 Epic bases ends up being as wide as one of my 28mm unit and the painting speed per unit compared to 28’s is closer than I would have hoped, say 5 -6 hours for 3 Epic bases and 11 to 12 hours for my 28’s, so the saving is not huge, as I actually like the appeal / visual of the 28 and I will end up painting more Epic battalions than I will 28mm battalions.

The Epic do look nice on the table and using 10mm buildings helps my domestic setting for size of table and storage capacity, compared to my 28mm scenery, plus the Epic are very light and robust.

I am at a point of needing to go one way or the other as I don’t have the space to collect in 2 scales across the various periods that I enjoy and I think over time, Epic releases will cover a lot, though likely all keeping with that 60mm basing.

I suppose I should also say that as I hate putting together multi part figures, the one piece Epic do come with the advantage (for me … as I have an aversion to the glue) of the figs being in one piece ….. but I still get a greater joy from handling my 28’s ….. I am going around in circles 🙂

[Ray Rivers]

Hi Norm!

I understand exactly what you are saying and agree with your overall assessment.

My first army that I ever painted were 15mm ACW by Kriegspielers way back in the 1970's. Though no longer manufactured, I believe this line of ACW was the best ever created. I had a division worth of both Yanks and Rebs. A regiment was represented in the rules by 5 bases of 4 minis each for 20 in total. Our gaming group used a house rule which linked unit size to morale. So an Elite unit had 3 bases (12 figures), Crack had 4 bases (16 figures), Average had 5 bases (20 figures) and Green had 6 bases (24 figures). That worked quite well on the table top. 15mm has always been my scale of preference for both ACW and Napoleonics because of the number of units that you can put on the table.

As for painting, most YouTubers do go all in, but the ones I found most interesting were using contrast paints (which I don't have but appear to come out quite well) or washes. I went with the wash technique, though I am not very accustomed to doing so, but in general I like the way the minis have come out.

My unit size is pretty far out there when talking about Epic minis, and I will reveal what I am doing when I finish this last regiment for my Union brigade.

I can't say much more really until you see a photo and I probably should have waited to start this thread when I had photos to show.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I think a lot of folks are pretty much on the same wave length concerning the Epic line of miniatures. Great concept but unwieldy execution.

[Ray Rivers]

Silly of me not to start the thread with at least 1 photo. 

Pulled out my camera and found out the memory card was corrupted and had to buy a new one. Been awhile since I have taken photos of my minis, so my first photo shoot didn't go well (most of the close up shots were way too bright).

Anyway, here is a photo (crappy as it is) of my 1st Brigade for the Union army:



I'll try again tomorrow to get some close up shots.

As you can see, I've really gone way off the path when compared to Warlord's Epic concept. I wanted to be able to get at least a division (3 brigades of 4 to 5 infantry regiments) on a 4x4 table. This is why I would have preferred that the minis where manufactured 5 to a strip and not 10. To figure out how to do that, I broke out a very old copy of ACW rules published in 1978 called "Rally 'Round the Flag." The basic infantry unit in these rules is 5 bases of 4 men each for a total of 20 men.

In Epic terms, that is one base. 

So that is where I'm heading with this project. I'll update it with more photos as my collection grows. Anyway, I'm so pleased with painting again and actually building an army from an era I really like... the American Civil War.

Cheers!

[peachey_c]

They look great, and nice basing too 

[jambo1]

I like your idea on smaller regiments and I may go down this way too, look really good. Nice painting as well.

[fred]

I like what you have done there. The units look good - but you will need a lot of command strips!

The original Warlord concept of 3x60mm bases is quite odd. It gives some very big footprint units. Which will look good on the table, but take up a lot of room on the table, and take a lot of painting. I suppose they do give a feel of the actual long thin nature of the units. But then you need a ruleset that works at that level (that isn’t black powder).

I like how you have gone with a much high representational scale - you should be able to get a really big battle on a small table.

[Harry Faversham]

I'll take the bait and go for these munchkins...
If they ever do Crusaders and Saracens. I've regretted selling my enormous collection of 15mm figures, Epic would be a nice way of replacing 'em.

 

[Ray Rivers]

Thank you, gentlemen!

Much appreciated.

Fred, you are correct, I will need a lot of command strips, but I have 24 from the starter set and have bought a set of 5 from Warlord. Probably need one more strip to do what I want, which is a division of Rebs (3x5) and a reinforced division of Yanks (4x5), or there abouts.

My wife took the grand kid to the pool... which gave me a chance at another photo shoot.

Again, not the greatest photos, but some closeups (look at all the dust... Yikes!).

Union General:


Union Artillery:


Union Infantry Regiment (front):


Union Infantry Regiment (back):


I kinda went all in painting them with a limited pallet, and I wasn't too fussed with minor errors. For the infantry, I put a lot of work on the rifles so that they would pop... even at 3 feet.

The bases are minimal. I may add a tuft here of there later on, but right now I am concentrated on getting them painted.

Next brigade will be Confederates.

[Captain Blood]

Ray, they don’t look bad at all. Quite appealing in fact (which is more than I can say for the ‘epic’ ECW stuff).
Glad to see you back onto it 

[Ray Rivers]

Ray, they don’t look bad at all. Quite appealing in fact (which is more than I can say for the ‘epic’ ECW stuff).
Glad to see you back onto it 

Cheers, Richard!

I used the technique of block painting, nuln oil wash and then highlight. I much prefer priming black and then highlighting the different parts of the minis. Unfortunately, my eyes don't let be do this anymore as I just can't pick out the detail of a black primed mini and they really are too small for black lining, at least for me. Some of the parts of the figures really don't have the molded detail I would like, such as the hands which look like they are wearing mittens. 

So if you look at them very closely, they are pretty okay, but if you look at them from one foot or more, they look quite nice.

Been watching over you and waiting for you to post a picture of a new yacht or car with the profit from your company, which, appears to me to be doing fine. 

[Norm]

Very nice Ray, just enough pop. I know from painting my own that you will have spent quite a long time on these, but it shows and it is rewarding.

[Ray Rivers]

Thanks, Norm!

Yes, they actually do take a bit of time to paint. I suppose if I had gone for larger regiments, I would have had to cut back on the detail. But by going with just one base, it allows me to add a lot more to the minis.

When I took the close up shots I was amazed at the amount of dust on them. It is really, for my poor old eyes, difficult to see. I guess that should be expected because I haven't stored them properly and they sit just next to me where I can look at them at any moment.

And yes, every time I look at them, they make me smile.

BTW, there are quite a number of YouTube channels covering Epic minis, but my go to guy is called Leon T66 wargaming. He is an avid Epic painter of all 3 of the periods available and his output is amazing. His basing is also quite amazing and unique.

You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@leont66wargaming31

[jon_1066]

Looking great.

I think it is a good idea to go with a single base initially for each battalion.  You can always add more without any command figures at a later date if you want to zoom in a level.  You can also zoom out a level with each stand as a brigade.

[Ray Rivers]

Looking great.

I think it is a good idea to go with a single base initially for each battalion.  You can always add more without any command figures at a later date if you want to zoom in a level.  You can also zoom out a level with each stand as a brigade.

Cheers, mate!

Yes, I have thought some about expanding the regiments later on (and how to do that), but for now I want to concentrate on getting all the command stands finished. Given that I am able to complete my 2 divisions, I think first I would like to add some wagons and limbers. I'll go with Kallistra for that.