Proper-ish (Paper) Soldiering?

Looks descent despite my ham-fisted
 scissoring with common scissors. 

I decided to move forward with more appropriate ACW armies for my OHW games, while keeping my original "index card" armies for exploring the other period rules in the "One-Hour Wargames" book.

Having received some pointers from Norm ( http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com ) and Alex ( http://ecw40mmproject.blogspot.com ) about some sources of paper soldiers, I did a little web research and found something interesting on Peter Dennis' "Peter's Paperboys" site (always feel a little odd typing that into the search box...). Peter has an "18mm ACW" product line and provides a free "have-a-go" sample of some Union Zouave's ( https://peterspaperboys.com/collections/18mm-american-civil-war/products/free-presenting-the-american-civil-war-in-18mm-scale-with-have-a-go-sample ). 

Why would I be interested in 18mm figures? Part of my plan is to get to using the WarLord EPIC ACW plastic miniatures for my ACW Project someday; and since that will be after I have built up some paper Union and Confederate armies (and maybe some scenery too), I would like to incorporate the plastics with the paper and not have it look crappy (maybe wishful thinking).

But the EPIC scale is "kind-of 15mm" from what I understand - and maybe technically 13.5 mm ground-to-eye. Quibbling over millimeters at this level may seem silly, but one of the benefits of printing the armies is that I can refine the scale to my liking.  

So I did some test printing and measuring and discovered that if the printing of the 18mm sample is reduced to 75% then the ground-to-eye measurement on paper is...13.5mm! (or close enough for me at least). Keep in mind all this has been done without having any EPIC ACW figures to compare against.

Backside. Probably will leave a strip of the
 card base for some writing.

Instead of putting these on a proper base per the instructions, I just cut them out, glued them to the index card “handle” of an infantry card and then cut around them.

I am fairly pleased with my first go at it, though I'm not likely to use this unit in a game - consider it a prototype. I did the cutting with a large set of scissors I found in a kitchen drawer - this cheapskate will need to invest in some dedicated scissors for future cutting.

Another cost will be buying the "18mm ACW Army List" which should cover everything I need army-wise ($27) - but I can print to my heart's content (crap - paper and ink cost money too - maybe I'm not thinking this through...)

I might have gone with the free source over at Junior General. There are some good images there for printing (especially the top-downs IMO) but I want upright soldiers to mount on the index cards, and the upright ones I can find on JG are more of a profile than front facing (though there are some front-facing images).

Once I've built a couple of units for each side I'll post an update.

Cheers!

Resources:

https://peterspaperboys.com/collections/18mm-american-civil-war/products/free-presenting-the-american-civil-war-in-18mm-scale-with-have-a-go-sample

https://peterspaperboys.com/collections/18mm-american-civil-war/products/18mm-acw-army-list

https://juniorgeneral.org/index.php/figure/figureList/topdowns

https://juniorgeneral.org/index.php/figure/figureList/19thcentury