6 mm

One of the better things to come from the Covid pandemic is that people have felt free-er to ask each other about their mental health. Shallow person that I am, when friends raised the subject with me I took to saying my tendencies towards OCD were growing: "This is a picture of Kutusov," I would say, "he had a glass eye. I keep getting bothered I have not painted it in the right place...."

Fixed with the concerned expression I have grown accustomed to, I would reply "He's THIS big..."

Six millimetre figures are small - really small, and I do genuinely question my sanity whenever I consider painting them. Nevertheless, as with all gamers, once hooked on a project, I am with the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.* 

More seriously, I have painted 6mm figures from three manufacturers - Adler, Baccus and Irregular. The first thing to note is that, as in other 'scales' 6mm does not necessarily mean 6mm.

                  From the left these are untreated Adler, half painted Baccus and undercoated Irregular. 

Secondly, bases and how to approach painting such challenging, tiny things to put on them.

The wonderful people at Baccus encourage all-comers to paint their figures not as individuals, but as units. They are, of course, completely correct. Their [infantry] figures are based on the frontage you would expect to base them on, and this makes things decidedly simpler. Irregular Miniatures take this a stage further and supply some of their figures in blocks of four ranks of six figures. All good, I hear you cry, and dead simple to base, but try painting the trousers of the the rankers who are not at the front... Adler's figures, meanwhile, all need to be separated from each other and stuck to bases individually, which entails lots of delicate and difficult work.

Then we painted these.....

This is an army of Bastarnae (Dacian Celts who by all accounts put the wind right up the Romans) and it is big! The central infantry blocks come to almost 1,100 figures, and for all Baccus' good advice - the figures are from Baccus - the problem is that every one of the little bast...arnae has his own face! Similarly, these were not uniformed regulars - each of them would have designed his own shield even with such a huge number of figures we didn't want the units to look repetitive. This meant they took a while.... but that did provide an opportunity to time how long these things take.

The upshot of all this is that our 6mm prices are Infantry 50p per figure; Cavalry 75p per figure and other things, for example infantry blocks and vehicles/baggage we quote and negotiate.

* ("We're all mad here...")