"Retro Hinchliffe ECW collection - The Movie!" Topic

I featured some of my units in a previous post here, but thought I would post a link to my first YouTube video showing over 500 figures painted as of September this year. I have since added two more Regiments of Foot and am working to add a third rank of musketeers 'at present' in order to give all of the foot a more accurate 'period' look. Once done I will have 10 regiments each of 12 pikes, 24 muskets plus command (at rear of pike block). The Horse units range from 12 to 16 figures, Dragoons are 12 mounted and 10 dismounted. This collection will continue to expand and my plan is for a public demo game of Edgehill in the New Year.

Lee.

PS: sorry for the somewhat monotone voice over and a few descriptive errors, I should just let the figures speak for themselves!

YouTube link

Very nice!

These are great – thanks for showing them. I have a Minifigs collection that is similar. Are the figures broadly compatible? I've always thought the Hinchliffe cavalry to be more dynamic than the MF and they have some nice officers. The prices of new models is also good. I understand why but MF are relatively expensive.

The HC guns are amazing models even by today's standards. The only thing is their saker looks a bit small and weedy.

Some years ago Gilder's own figures were sold on eBay. I wished I'd bought them.

Great looking army!! I painted up plenty of them back in the day and still like the look. Still love Peter Gilders work and I consider him the father of the modern figures.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

grambo; nice collection and thanks for sharing it.

Timmo uk; the Hincliffe figures are a bit bigger and slimmer than the MFs. In my small collection I tended to use H for heavy cavalry and MFs for light cavalry. Also, for infantry guard or elite units were H and regular line were MFs. Some of the line units have H figures as the grenadier company.

BTW I have lots of unpainted H and MFs of the Waterloo era for sale.

Lovely to see all those great Hinchliffe figures. Great stuff.

beautiful work

Great work Lee. Love the Hinchcliffe lines. Thanks for sharing.

Ah, that takes me back! Thanks for sharing!

Nice to see that enviable collection. I've got a fair few myself and still buy the odd one but some aren't the same as the originals these days.

Lovely collection and a great video to show it all off. I returned to mine in my late twenties/early thirties after almost 20 years absence and filled out my remaining units with Essex and (I think)Redoubt figures which fitted in quite well.IIRC I eventually had 15 regts of foot and 10 regts of cavalry plus some dragoons and a few artillery, so very similar to what you have assembled there. I sold them at Vapnartak a few years ago to a club that was looking for a cheap army to mess around with, so hopefully they are still being used and enjoyed.

Thank you very much for all the comments above, obviously as I'm sure you can tell, I'm very proud of them! To respond to a few points:

The Foot are mostly from new moulds, Ian Hind – of Hinds Figures Ltd who now owns the range – has remoulded the entire Hinchliffe ECW range so the casts are sharp and crisp as I remember them almost 40 years ago. Many of the Horse however were bought ready painted and are original castings. When I bought them they were incredibly dirty, looked like 30 years of grime, but as I gently cleaned them with a brush and water the most amazing paint job emerged from the dirt, the images below show just how dirty they were and the before and after shots I think quite remarkable? It became clear to me that the cavalry had been painted by the same hand, many years ago as the style is so similar, I bought as many as I could afford at around just £4.00 GBP per painted horse and rider. They gave a massive boost to the collection and complimented my own painting style well, all I need to do after cleaning them was to rebase in my retro style.

On the subject of Peter Gilder, the ECW collection as used at the Wargames Holiday Centre and in the magazine shots was magnificent in it's time and many of those wonderful old units now reside in the collection of Andy Copestake of OLD Glory UK and they still look great.

Thanks for looking chaps, so how's this for Wargaming Archaeology :)

Figures on right after a clean and Left, as they arrived.

Same again:

The unit all cleaned up:

Dirty Dragoons!

Another unit after a clean up showing what emerged from the filth!

Some of those boys indeed look too long in the saddle. Great collection and work you've done.