A May Workbench update - just preparing some miniatures for painting

I've been finishing off some few small projects that's been on my workbench for a while, and they will show up in an update later this month. This month I'm also involved in a 'modelling project' that's not on workbench it self, which I will describe closer in a blog-post on friday...

It's a battle to get time for doing my hobby-things right now as daily life is quite busy. But in busy times I find panting miniature quite therapeutic, and it's been a while since I've been painting miniatures. So I found some figures I've been laying around for a while and started to prepare them so I eventually can start painting them. I thinks it's nicer to game with painted miniatures rather than those without.

Being China-copies they were made with small bases which made them wobbly. I've 3D-printed some bases when making the 'Ape Army' and had som spares which I superglued onto these figures.

I made minor changes to a couple of them by trimming a hat down, and adding some 'green stuff'. This is the very first time I've been using green stuff.

Next I'' wash them and they will be ready for some priming. Earlier I've been using Mod Podge to sealing miniatures, but this time I will follow a tip from James at Quantrill's Toy Soldiers and use Mod Podge for priming as well as the plastic they're made of is very oily and soft.

I've got some few ideas how to paint them, but suggestions to get me further inspired are welcome in the comment section below.

Recruiting new super cheap troops to the collection

In most countries, but Norway, the spring time seems to be 'the season' for toy soldier markets, swap meets, toy soldier conversions and so on taken all the different adds popping up on Facebook and reviews posted on blogs and YouTube. As earlier mentioned in this blog, this is not a big business or market in Norway anymore, so 'finds' are rare and often 'over-priced'. So I was really surprised when visiting our local toy shop earlier this week and saw they were offering super cheap bags of army men. They are clearly 'china-copies', but not to that worst sub quality often found. I decided to grab a couple of different bags to have closer look at them.

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Bag 1

For only £5,2/ $6,4 or €6 you get 100 army men in 2 different colors (50 each side) close to 54mm size in 8 different poses. Enough troops to form 4 Platoons or a Company. They are molded in fairly hard plastic, and the details are fairly crisp. The mold lines are not disturbing and there are no flash. They are not as 'flat' as many 'china copies' often are, but the 'sculpts' are typically china-copies though. Anyone recognizing the originals?

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The army men seems to decipts 'modern' US soldiers with 'old' kevlar helmets. They are armed with AR-styled rifles, and one has a SAW machine gun and one seems to have a shotgun (with magazine?). One rifle is undefined, and a couple of the troops looks to have older paratrooper M1 helmets.

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Bag2

For only £2,2/ $2,75 or €2,6 you get 72 army men in 2 different colors (36 each side) in 40-45mm size in 12 different poses. Enough troops to form 3 Platoons. They are molded in the same color and fairy hard plastic as their bigger counterparts, and ok details. These are more what you can expect from cheap Chinese copies and are flater, stranger propositions, have larger mold lines and more flash, and have useless bases. Due to their size and they're are so skinny, they feel small. They have clearly poorer quality than their bigger counterparts.

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They clearly decipts some kind of modern troops of more generic type. They're mostly armed with some AR-looking rifles and there are no heavy weapons in this set either. One is armed with something appears to be a 'butter knife' (!). What's nice about them is that of the 12 different poses 4 are equipped with boonie hats, 4 with caps and 4 with kevlar helmets of the old type. I have not seen these poses before, so I wonder if any recognize these origins as well?

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Conclusion

I'm currently busy with other modelling and gaming projects, and have no plan how to use these figures yet. -But as the availability in Norway are very limited, not buying them for this reasonable price was actually not an option. 
Time will show....