Assembling and painting Polish Winged Hussars part 6

Final part. Yeah - no cheating or cutting corners on this process. It took me six sessions to get them done, which is a bit longer than my last attempt (which was 1 session shorter).

Picking up where I left off, time had come to paint the boots, leopard furs, lances, sword sheaths and such. But what I was least excited about, but which had to be done, was the making and painting of pennants and the flag.

All Wargamer boxed sets for By Fire & Sword come with flags, flagpoles, lances etc. However, the stuff you get in the Winged Hussar box I personally was unable to put together. The pennants and flags look great, but the pennants are very slim and they are made out of a sticker that you cut out and double fold. Folding the pennant perfectly is extremely hard to do , at least for me, I gave up trying during my first attempt a year ago. So with these last three stands I made paper pennants and flag just like my previous three stands.

This is simply done by cutting a regular piece of paper with scissors and make a tiny fold to wrap the flagpole. I check if the wrap is big enough to envelope the flagpole before painting the paper with watered down PVA glue (on both sides) and glue the banner/flag onto the flagpole. This is a bit messy and you have to be careful not to get glue all over your miniatures.

As the flag is still moist I take a pen and use my hand to bend the paper over the pen to make the waving look. The PVA dries quite fast, but the 1 hour or so break is welcome at this point. Once the paper has dried you can still bend it further if you aren't completely happy yet. However it is worth noting that once you start painting it, the paper will bend even further along the already marked areas.

The flags are painted with two layers of paint of each color. Red is painted Scabb Red followed up by Mephiston Red, the white is painted Bonewhite followed by Skull white. I googled for Winged Hussar flags to find an interesting motif and pattern, and settled for the one you can see.

Once the flags are finished i glue the riders to their horses, and it's all finished. Two companies (or one full squadron) of Winged Hussars ready for battle against the invading armies and Cossack rebellions.