How to get 'a head' with Epic ECW

Recently I've been painting up some of the Pike and Shotte Epic miniatures from Warlord Games. The minis are made from injection mould plastic and look very good. There are two plastic sprues, one for infantry and the other for cavalry. I have chosen to concentrate on the cavalry for this blog. 

Injection moulded hard plastic can be very good, but the manufacturing technique has limitations. As each miniature comes from a process where two steel dies are pressed together as the plastic is injected under pressure, the best and most crisp features are where the model faces the die. 

Naturally as the medium is plastic, some parts have to be thickened in order to withstand the injection process, so any weapons will be slightly larger or the horses' legs thicker. Where the two steel dies meet, a mould line will usually appear and the detail will not be as crisp. However, this is nothing new for wargames and cleaning up a miniature before painting is part of the process.

The cavalry sprue consists of two guns with crew (one light and one medium), 2 Cuirassiers, 10 cavalry (half with hat, half with helmet), 3 mounted dragoons, 5 dismounted dragoons, 6 commanded shotte, a mounted battalia commander, a mounted ensign and an ensign on foot. Warlord have been clever, providing a lot of options onto one sprue, so players can build a varied collection of minis.

One issue with covering such a variety of different models is that you'll end up with several models of the same design in a unit. for example there are only three variations in the dragoon models. For this there is a simple solution - CUT THEIR HEADS OFF! In my next blog, I'll look at doing just that - head swaps in 15mm. The good news is it is really quite easy.