Heckenfeur

Getting the painting wobbles…

I’ve spent most of the past week painting a few old Willies and some Stadden command for IR 35. I had been wanting to be doing a really good job on these figures; not only do they cost an awful lot of money, but they are also my beau ideal for toy soldiers.

The upshot of the whole experience has been to convince me of a few things.

Firstly I’m a choker.

You know whaen you want to do a really, really, really good job painting figures and then just can’t? This happens to me every time I lay my hands on some particularly beautiful or coveted or expensive castings. All of a sudden I am a sausage-fingered idiot with a four-inch brych trying to paint the cross-belts on a 30 millimetre figure.

Sure, and I can paint just fine on any figure I have decided I don’t care about. Perhaps a solution lies in this direction? Perhaps I ought to get good and drunk before I touch my next Willie?*.

Which leads me in a near-perfect segue on to the new Willies.

I have only briefly seen the new ones – incautiously ripping open the mail one afternoon last week to discover my birthday present (roll on March 22nd!) – and admit to some mixed emotions on seeing them.

I have always really liked the older Willie castings for the light and graceful style of their design, but was getting very tired of trying to repair some really shocking imperfections in the castings which for the asking price were really unacceptable.

To me the new Willies are very much based on the old masters, changed somewhat and improved in terms of the research behind them and the fact that the old moulds look to have been re-made from the “new, improved” masters.

That’s all to the good, but (and this is going from a five-minute peer through the plastic baggies) it looks to me that the castings still have certain faults. These are not as bad as in the old range to be sure – I have a couple of French Infantry with lower arms attached by a metal “thread”, and British drummers with no fore-arms – but I saw at least two castings of the 32 I bought with significant pits in the backs of the figurines.

At GBP12.95 per eight castings (or about $AU31!) I’m not too sure as to whether I ought not just wait on Minden Minis or even just buy RSMs!

Has anyone else bought any of the new Willies and seen this problem? I’ll do a more thorough review when I can get my hands on the figures toward the end of March.

UPDATE: I recently bought and started to assemble some of the new customisable GW movement trays.

Initially, I thought that these were a great idea - customisable movement trays that you can size in 20 or 25mm units. Then I started to assemble them. Why (oh, why) are the edge pieces that you glue onto the traysides and front not themselves made in lengths corresponding to multiples of the 20 or 25mm units that make them up? Am I being obscure/silly? It makes sense to me to make the "edges" in - say - 75 or 80mm lengths.

Oh, and instead of providing "corner" pieces, why not just bevel the ends of the "edges"?

Is it just me, or do they seem to be quite bad examples of design?


*fnar, fnar, fn-a-a-arrrr!