19th Century Wargaming and the next painting project

I have done limited painting since finishing off my Hundred Years War armies and building some Dark Age paper armies. Although the paper armies, while fun, did not really scratch the painting and creative itch.

Still remaining stashed away I have two sets of old miniatures still to paint up from when they were purchased way back in the mid 1970's and early 1980's. These are a Hinchcliffe English Civil War army and sizeable bunch of Spencer-Smith Plastic American Civil War.

I already have some ACW 15mm armies and have no desire to replicate the ACW period in another scale. After reading "Wargaming: Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878" by Neil Thomas, I have been toying with the idea of painting up the Spencer-Smith figures as imaginations armies. So I dug up the old figures from their box and started to see how many and what state they were in. The news was not good with a good fifty percent of the figures being brittle and breaking when tested.

Brittle plastic - such a sad sight

However, the good news is I have about 200 infantry and 50 cavalry all in a good state along with 20 artillery pieces and crew. They all passed the "bendy and break" test - a sad but necessary test. This number should allow me to create two reasonably sized imagination armies suitable for my 6x4 foot table. My next step is to start deciding upon some colourful uniforms by searching online sources. There are no plans to convert any of the figures just paint them.

Half were in a good state passing the bend and break test