A while back I painted some settlers and their cabins, and these are the second half of that batch. They’ve been languishing in the lead pile for a while, so it’s nice to get some paint on them and bring them to life.

Civilians

As before, these are from Redoubt and while the sculpts and casting aren’t brilliant they’re good enough. The main issues I had were some very heavy mould lines and some of the faces weren’t well-formed, with casting defects or general wonkiness. Some also suffer from the same malady as the earlier batch, resulting in stumpy legs and giant noses. Something in the water out there on the frontier? Definitely not inbeeding, no siree.

Apart from that, they’re actually quite nice to paint and they were cheap at £7.50 for a pack of six. Civilians are a must-have for many Muskets and Tomahawks scenarios, so I’m happy to bring my stocks of them up to par.

Wagon

This is a 4Ground kit in MDF obviously. It’s got that iconic “North American settlers” look to it, although I didn’t realise until I started building the kit that the hoops are optional and you could actually build it as a generic flat wagon which would look fine in another setting.

There are quite a few parts in the kit, but really most of the complexity is around the fully articulated front axle and draftgear. The front wheels pivot and the bar which the animals are connected to (which the internet tells me is called a tongue?) can move too. However, I find the whole thing quite flimsy so once you get it into position I’d suggest gluing it there. As you may be able to see I also found the hoops quite fragile and broke one of mine during assembly. I’ve not bothered trying to be too seamless repairing it, things break in the real world after all. To give the wagon a bit of sturdiness I’ve based it on an offcut of MDF.

I coloured the wagon using inks and a little bit of paint for the metal parts, but nothing too fancy. Hopefully it’ll give those civilians a bit of cover when fending off raids on their homestead. They’re going to need it!