Painting my Warlord English Civil War Plastic Musketeers

I purchased a Pike and Shotte Infantry Regiment plastic boxed set of miniatures from Warlord Games a few years ago with the intent to use them for a swashbuckling style D&D campaign but that campaign died after a few sessions and I shelved the minis among my vast hoard of unpainted minis.  Recently my son has decided to get into wargaming but he is primarily interested in historic.  I have an 11 year old "Old Man" wargamer it would seem.  So I dug these out and we put some together. 

The kit is pretty nice but it does have a few flaws.  There are exactly enough heads for the miniatures in the kit.  Not one extra.  Don't drop one.  There also aren't many arm/weapon options.  You have to figure out which ones work with which bodies and not mess that up and there aren't a lot of options or left overs when you are done.  Also the pikes on the pikemen break if you breathe too heavily.

I primed these with Dupl-Color Sandable Automotive Primer in black because it's my favorite primer for metal an hard plastic minis.  I then drybrushed them with burnt umber.  I've found as I get older that I can't see details very well when I black prime so this helps me pick up those details.  Also I left some of the areas with just the burnt umber layer.  Mostly the boots and leather gear.  The brown also set a nice tone to paint over for these models.

When I painted their coats I used three different colors of red.  One a darker cool red, one a cool brighter red, and one a warmer bright red.  This works well for figures of these era because troop uniforms carried more than in later periods.  

Here you can see more of the details with their base coats painted in.  You can see how leaving the burnt umber saved me time on some of the details.  I washed the flesh with Games Workshop Reikland Fleshshade at this point.  No highlights at all because these are rank and file minis.  

I used Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade over the rest of the figure trying to avoid the flesh areas.  This tied the colors together and provided subtle gradations.  

I did some basic highlighting on the coats, pants, and hats but allowed the shading the provide gradation for the rest of the figures.  I really like a more basic paint job for rank and file historic miniatures.  Not only do you usually have to paint more of them but they just tent to look a little nicer on the tabletop with a basic paint job.  Notice I didn't paint the eyes in for the same reasons.