Crimean War British Army for BBB

As part my expanding Bloody Big Battles expansion, I thought it would be nice to be able to run scenarios taking place during the Crimean War. No one in my group had any British to fight the campaign, so I decided to fill in the gap. However, I was not in the mood to paint 15mm British for the period, so I reached out to Old Guard Painters and ordered enough troops to field an army.

I waited a while and the figures arrived (minus the artillery, which will come later). They were bagged by unit and individually paper wrapped. I spent an evening watching a movie (Zulu) and unpacking everything. Everything looked good and I was ready for the next step.

I had ordered some magnetic bases from Shogun Miniatures to mount the figures some time back (this is my standard mounting for 19th century armies now). I pulled out the bases I needed and spray painted them with some Krylon camo dark brown.

I glued the figures to the appropriate base size for each unit with white blue. Once that dried, I applied Woodland Scenics Blended Turf to each base using Howard Hughes Geo Hex Green. I let that set and sealed everything in with some spray dull coat from Testors.

With that, I have another army ready to go. Old Guard is not as inexpensive as some other companies and not as fast. However, they have the advantage of not requiring any miniatures and painting instructions. They obtain the miniatures for you and do the research. You just need to tell them what you want and wait for it to arrive. A good option for those wanting to keep it simple and willing to pay a little more.

• Manteuffel