If you’re interested in the French and Indian War theatre of the Seven Years War, chances are you’re going to need some Indians. In Muskets and Tomahawks they are a handy irregular force that can move through the trees, so even if you’re playing with stiff-shirt regulars there’s a good chance you’ll want to have a few along as scouts. Of course they’re a perfectly playable faction in their own right.

These guys are from the Perrys’ AWI range, and as you’d expect from the twins the sculpts are excellent. I was much less impressed with the quality of casting. There was a lot of flash, and in a lot of case the mould lines ran right across the faces making them very fiddly to clean up. I actually had to have two goes at it because some flaws didn’t show up until they were undercoated.

Speaking of which I went a bit experimental with these and undercoated in a flesh coloured spray from Army Painter. I’m a slow painter and have very little free time to paint so anything that could save time for me is worth a crack. So I just painted the details on in block colours, applied APs gloopy Quickshade (by brush) and a matt varnish before putting some highlights on. I really like the Quickshade way of painting, but you do have to figure out how to work it into your own painting style. Personally I find it’s best to use the Quickshade to take care of the shadows and then do some highlights by hand. If you don’t do highlights on the lighter/brighter colours the figure looks a bit murky. I also find I sometimes have to clean up where the shading has pooled excessively towards the bottom of the miniature. Often this is just a case of drybrushing the base colour back on.

I’ve painted 10 so far, as that’ll be enough to act as scouts for either a French or British force. I’ve got about another 20 Indians in the lead mountain so that I can go all-Indian if I want. That’s a viable option. They have a different fighting style to the European troops (don’t send them into the open against loads of fire) but the mission generator in M&T means they should only be given missions they can actually do. Indians may not be able to hold open ground, but they excel at moving fast and stealthily through cover, raiding and burning settlers farmsteads before disappearing back into the woods. A bit of black powder guerilla warfare, basically. Sounds like fun!