Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Armies In Plastic Egyptian Infantry in Sudan Figure Review

Some of the AIP Egyptian infantry that I recently painted.

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE


AIP Egyptian Infantry in Summer Uniform
A week or so ago,  I received my first two boxes of Egyptian infantry in summer uniforms, from AIP. I wanted just a small order ($9.00 per box won't break the budget) to get a first hand look at the Egyptians before committing to a larger number of figures.



AIP 54mm Egyptian Infantry in Summer Uniforms

The Egyptians are not as good looking as the Dervish, primarily because some of them have a 2-dimensional look to them (see the officer on the far left in the picture below) that reminds me a bit of the 40mm Prinz August home cast figures. (Well, the AIP figures are a little more rounded than Prinz August, but you get my point).


Armies In Plastic Egyptian infantry in summer uniforms.
There are two each of ten different poses in each box, total of 20 figures per box.

The figures all have flimsy bayonets that should be cut off and replaced by a piece of wire. When I use the word "flimsy" I only mean that the end of the rifle and bayonet bend rather easily, which would eventually cause the paint to break, chip and flack off. Replacing the bayonet gives the weapon a little more stoutness that should withstand the wear and tear of play.

I did a test sample on the two charging figures, reasoning that if I screwed up on the hole drilling and decided that the figures didn't have enough plastic to convert the bayonets, then at least I hadn't messed up any of the other figures that I wanted to keep. Fortunately there is just enough plastic in the bayonet to rifle join to accomodate the drilling of a hole.



I'd say that about 8 of the poses are useful. There are two charging poses that look
rather silly being in a box of figures poses in a firing line.

One of the boxes included a British officer for the regiment.



Last evening I painted three samples (pictures to be provided later) - the officer, standing firing, and standing at the ready. The figures are easy to paint with no difficult bits to paint. I used Krylon grey primer to prime the figures. One nice thing about these figures is that you need not glue them to pieces of card so that you can hold onto the figures whilst painting them. The plastic bases are large enough to suit that purpose.

I did a test painting using a cream/ivory scheme on the left and a more traditional white on grey scheme.
I decided to go with the creamy white version for my Egyptians.




A couple of silly poses: using rifle butt and charging.

I like this figure very much. I have another version where I did a head swap and gave him a head with a fez.
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On the whole, I like these figures and plan on painting a 32 to 40 figure regiment of them to use in my Sudan Project.



4 comments:

  1. That British officer in very easy to convert. I have one in a slouch hat for my Australians and one with a Mauser C96. Still not my favorite AIP British officer pose but by far the most versatile.

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  2. I've found that head swaps are easy to do with these figures because they all have the same neckline resting on the uniform collar. So just cut the head where the collar is the new head will fit nearly perfectly.

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  3. Really effective Jim. I love the white effect you have used.Well done.

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  4. these look very nice! I would be happy with either scheme - the white on grey or the white on creme. They look quite different, and could be used to differentiate units or forces that were clothed from different sources.

    Did you trim the mold lines, or just not bother?

    To "harden" the bayonets, I put a few layers of glue on anything that might bend. There's a cheap craft glue called "Nicole Super Tacky Glue" that is much more flexible than Elmers [which is brittle]. That seems to work.

    For primer, I asked around a lot, and ended up using a car vinyl spray paint, Dupli-color, which is quite flexible and therefore less likely to flake.

    I haven't done any head swaps yet - do you use a wire support and super glue?

    Your force is looking great!

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