I traded for a copy of the base game and several of the expansions a while ago.  The Mounted Knights (from the Scottish Wars expansion) came with a brown gloss undercoat/spray on them.

Does anyone have any tips for the safe removal of this sort of thing?  I don't really want to re-prep the minis to paint, as I have other projects to finish painting right now (perhaps if FFG run a Battlelore painting contest I'll change my mind Though I can only imagine I would score poorly!

Ideally I'd return the minis to a similar condition they were in before they were sprayed...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Cheers,

Giles.

I'm unaware of any way to remove paint from plastic minis w/o doing more damage to them.   

Just to clarify, are you referring to the base was painted or the whole figure?

The whole miniature was sprayed with a glassy brown colour.

I am going to give Simple Green a go - but I'll try it out on one before trying the whole lot.

Cheers,

Giles.

or at least on the base - since if memory serves, some of those bases (don't think the knights were) had a green base.

Giles -  I'm a long-time miniature nerd and professional artist.  What you need is some "Simple Green".  Your local hardware store should have some - Home Depot, Ace, True Value, etc...  I would mix it with water at about a 1:1 ratio.  Let it soak for a couple of hours and see where you are.  If the paint doesn't come off easily, as is sometimes the case with glossy primers, you can bump up the amount of simple green in the mix and give it some more time.  It will strip paint from plastics without the detrimental effects you get from oil based solvents (mineral spirits, turpentine, etc). 

Battlelore does use a soft plastic and I haven't stripped any of the figures personally, but I've had great success with Simple Green on many other soft plastics. 

It might be safer to just go the route of re-painting them grey.  If the chems you use to strip the paint turn out to damage the plastic, you likely won't find out until you have already ruined a mini or two.  Besides, I've never seen a mini stripped of paint that looked anywhere near as good as new anyway.  With a nice clean coat of grey, at least you can fake it.