Returning to the Hobby Part Two.

The enjoyment of building and painting two regiments of foot and a regiment of horse, plus the fantastic book that also came with the set soon had me ordering more troops. I now was seriously looking at building an army for each side of the Civil War and using them to fight battles on the table top.

I ordered two of the box sets shown below, though I seem to think the contents of the starter army was a little different back then. No Saker cannon and something like 120 pike and musket infantry instead, but no matter, one box was designated for each side and would give me the basis of two reasonable sized armies.

As the armies grew, terrain and buildings were also purchased. My first ever experience of resin in the form of period type buildings. They arrived unpainted and I thoroughly enjoyed painting them up.

At this point another new innovation for me, metal figures! Until this point I was a purely plastic soldier painter, metal figures had always scared me off for some reason. However, if I wanted to add artillery and named leaders to my armies then metal it would have to be. Below a regiment of the Trained Band, in a mixture of clothing.

The first metal figures were bought, cannon and crew. They also proved to be a fantastic material to work with and produced excellent results. My fear of working with metals proving to be unfounded.

Pretty soon lots more figures started to arrive as reinforcements, and the two armies grew and grew.

More resin buildings or rather bits of buildings were purchased based and painted. A ruined church being arranged on a piece of MDF.

Lovely detailed pieces.

Painted and base flocked, the wet PVA glue can still be seen.

Finally, completed and being defended by a battalion of infantry from cavalry attack.

More figures would arrive including King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and others, also a first battle would be fought. But more of that in part three.