Painting 28mm ECW

I decided to paint up a 28mm Warlord Plastics Regiment I had in my to do list. Mainly this was due to being enthused by King and Parliament rules from to the Strongest. We played these the other day and they gave a great game. Also my collection was slightly lacking a Parliament Regiment compared to my Royalist forces. So which to paint? Well it has to be something from the early or mid-war with a distinctive uniform. So you can guess I went for Lord Brooke’s Regiment of Foote with their distinctive Purple Coats which I have always found interesting. With their unique purple coats they would fit in nicely with my Trained Bande being raised in 1642 and having formed part of the Earl of Essex’s army. They fought at Edgehill and then at Brentford against Prince Rupert (who along with his Regiment of Bluecoate Foote forms part of my Royalist Force).

Painting Guide

I do not have too much time now for painting and they sat quite a while betwixt stages so I needed a quick way of getting them done and to the table in a good state.

I used games workshop paints. The old ones for the most part as I have a collection of these in a grey games workshop carrier I bought once upon a time when I had some money!

I base coated them black with GW spray. I could maybe have used purple or brown.

I then painted in the flesh using the high pigment base tallarn flesh.

I then did the purple coats liche purple.

Next on to the leather and brown parts with a mix of different ones. Brown , high pigment browns mixed to be darker or plain black.

Trosers either a high pigment grey darkened with black or a dark or red brown.

Shoes left black. Socks either a grey dark or light mid brown (dun).

Next I added metal colours usually gun metal or citadel chainmail or boltgun metal. Occasionally I used dwarf bronze on a hilt or a buckle.

Officers got buff coats using a high pigment yellow brown mixed with brown.

Facings and lace coloured in with bleached bone.

Hair brown or black and hats a mix of browns. Woollen hats I did grey and hats just in purple.

This is now the mid stage. As you can see I am deliberately limiting my palette to create a distinctive uniform regiment look with enough variety to fit the English civil war. The officer and ensign I did black and purple with feathers in blue and red again to limit the colours and try to look suitably parliamentarian.

Next everything gets a good coat of army painter strong tone painted from the bottle ink wash (not the dunk one).

Finally everything gets finished off and highlighted. So a second coat of highlighting using liche purple on the coats. I decided this time not to do a third purple highlight for time which I often do, however this is a regiment and did not seem necessary. Black for the armour. Dwarf flesh for the skin. Various browns for satchels, “apostles” , straps and so on.

Next on to basing. Always difficult to choose how to bae figures with various rules out there. I stuck to my 20mm square per figure for both the foote and pike. Sometimes I put the pike closer but with these figures that would not have worked any way. I decided to go for big bases to fit six figures on each, thus it would be 60mm x 40mm and that is looking fine plus it fits with the number of figures. I can get two companies for my Regiment of Foote using For King and Parliament in this way for example. Or one big wide regiment using a different rule set.

Here they are ready for the next stage. Better photos to follow hopefully when that’s completed.