A few flea markets ago, I purchased some worn English Civil War figures. The price was right because of the worn paint condition. Some months later I started doing some paint touch-up. A little paint here and a little there and they started looking better. The Musketeers all got new hats and the army had a whole new look. Yes, the hat makes the soldier. Lets face it, when you're at the gaming table, 95 percent of the time you are looking down at the hats of the little fellows. New hats makes the army look much better. Touch-up painting is a lot easier than starting from scratch. I recommend taking a second look at worn out flea market figures. At the very end of the last HISTORICON convention, a Mr. Simon and Mr. Hurst managed to purchase a very large 25mm ACW army for a modest price. At first glance, I thought the army looked terrible. The paint was in good shape but the basing was awful. After Bob Hurst hosted about 3 afternoons of basing and flocking, the army was ready. The change was miraculous! The only explanation I could arrive at is that the base makes up over two-thirds of the area the player sees. Seeing the nicely blended flock colors helped hide the so-so paint jobs. The most surprising event happened at the Simon house after he had attended one of Bob's "Flocking Events". Wally actually elaborated on the virtues of flocking the bases! It appears the Simon collection consists of almost no two bases of the same color, let alone any containing flock.* He was unaware that flocking can be done very easily. The simplest flocking method I am aware of is to not paint the base at all until after the figure is mounted. Then paint the entire base and dip the entire base about 1/4" into a box filled with flock while the paint is wet. The base should be set upright to dry after a light shake. This works best with thick paint. For a GEO-HEX type strength, glue can be mixed in with the paint. Terrain pieces can also be flocked using the same method. * A note from your friendly editor: Brian's comment on the quality of the bases of the figures I set out surprises me greatly. I thought that the people who appear table-side at my house come to "Oooh!" and "Aaah!" because of the rules systems I generate. I didn't even know anyone looked at the figures at all, let alone their bases. In fact, I, myself, didn't realize they had bases until Bob Hurst pointed them out to me. Back to PW Review February 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com