English Civil War - Cuirassier or Heavy Horse or "The Lobsters"

A mighty gift from Jeff (of Saxe-Bearstein fame) for Yule in 2014 was a Warlord Games set of Cuirassier, for I was working on the Army of Parliament and Jeff was doing the Royalist muster.

The Cuirassier unit of most note in the ECW was Heselrig's Lobsters, which performed field duties for Parliament.

It has taken me many years to finally break them out from the box again and this year I was determined to have them finished.  For now with Rob of Codsticker's Historicals we are continuing the English Civil War project that Jeff and I started.

Enough of the background now onto the work:

bare metal

mounted on fender washers, the plastic horses were then put onto wood spacers that I use to hold the minis while painting, the riders are mounted onto cut card, then 'combined' once ready for the (now) matte coating

after grey base, the mix of black & brown paint is liberally applied

a white 'damp-brush' layer on everything to pick out highlights

reds, oranges and yellows for the horse and equipment 'under color'

inks to capture the details

second inking for the horses and cloths are colored, as the riders get more attention to detail, for many of the riders in the armor, I did a mix of 'black' and 'burnished' metal looks along with a brown 'rusted' look that was achieved historically by actually exposing the bare metal then using a varnish 'polish' to lock in the red-brown coloring - I did it with a mix of thinned out silver with lots of brown ink.

horse blankets get details and the riders get final highlights

transfer to horses for the matte coating

final product now on the magnetic stands (flash photo)

 
At long last my heavy horse is ready, just in time too as Rob and I will be moving forward this spring with the ECW war in the west campaign.  A battle coming that calls for none other than Heselrig's own!