Monday 4 March 2024

AWI British 4th Foot

Having just recently finished the last of a batch of 216 English Civil War horses I needed a break before I start work on their riders. The next project I have in mind after completing the three ECW aremies is the American War of Independence which will encompass thirty or so British and Hessian units, and around half that number on the Continental side. I have purchased and actually read a copy of British Grenadier which seems like a decent enough ruleset for larger battles, but my immediate aim is to get enough figures and units done for a few games of Sharp Practice. 

The first unit I have tried my hand at is the 4th Foot, Kings Own Royal Regiment:











The figures are all Perry plastics. I have managed to avoid plastics up until this point but as the 'core' AWI troops in the Perry range are plastic I decided to take the plunge. I much prefer the weight of metal figures plus have an aversion to having to glue bits together, but after trying and discarding two types of plastic glues finally settled on Citadel thanks to a tip from Mark of 1866 and All That. This did the trick beautifully and, although it was still fiddly gluing the arms and muskets in the correct position, I found it to be less of a chore than I was expecting:





















The flags are from GMB which are a bit too large for the flagpole as supplied. Unfortunately the pole is cast on to the arm of the flagbearers, but it was a relatively simple task to cut and drill out their hands and replace it with a longer one:


 



















The basing is in fours to suit British Grenadier, apart from two singles and a double to accommodate casualty removal in Sharp Practice:











I also purchased a few dials from Warbases on to which I will place casualties, which should come in handy for keeping track of disorder or morale status:





















That's it for the first unit at least:











I'll probably try to knock out another two or three British units and a couple of American over the next month or so before returning to my ECW project for the final push there.

Thursday 8 February 2024

18mm English Civil War Artillery

With sixteen pieces in all, I decided to tackle the English Civil War artillery for the Royalist, Parliamentarian and Scottish Covenanter armies in one large batch. I generally do not enjoy painting the artillery pieces themselves; the crew are fine, but I find gun carriages and wheels a bit fiddly and uninteresting. However, the Eureka models are quite nice which took away much of the boredom:











I gave the Royalists and Parliamentarians six pieces each, comprised of two cannons, two culverins and two sakers:





















And allocated two culverins and two sakers to the Scots











I did half the pieces in plain wood, but gave the Parliamentarians and Royalists two red carriages and the Royalists two in blue, just to brighten things up a little. I put in a bit of extra effort to paint streaks on the carriages and wheels to give the effect of wood grain. The models themselves had a wood effect, but not enough that it rendered itself easily to dry-brushing.































Speaking of bright, the blue looks very bright here but thankfully is a little duller to the naked eye:











I also completed a few petard stands, one for each army. I'm not quite sure when these will be used, and received one from Eureka as a free gift anyway, but they might come in handy as an objective or for a siege game at some point:





















That is it for the artillery and I now just have sixteen regiments of cavalry and three of dragoons across the three armies to go. I have decided to paint the bulk of the horses first but, once that is done, hope to be able to roll them off the production line reasonably quickly.

Sunday 14 January 2024

18mm ECW Scottish Covenanter Regiments Completed

I spent most of December and the Christmas/New Year break working on six regiments of Scottish Covenanter foote, and completed the last of the basing over the weekend:





































The six regiments are comprised of Ker's regiment:


















The Duke of Hamilton's regiment of foote:


















Sir John Haldane of Gleneagles's regiment:


















Barclay's regiment:


















Home's regiment:


















and Lovat's regiment of foot:


















Of course this meant using a lot of grey, although I did mix in a few different coat colours to provide some variation:




































The pikemen offered a little more variety, and I also mixed in a sprinkling of armoured figures:




































I equipped two of the regiments with pikemen in the 'pike forward' position. Not my favourite pose as they are not easy to pick up and become quite easily entangled with the rank directly in front, but at least they look as though they mean business:




































The flags are again from Wargames Designs. I am very pleased with them and the size fits these larger 18mm figures well:




































Including 6 spare musketeer figures which will find their way on to some forthcoming command bases, that is 294 figures completed in total:


















Next up, the artillery. I have sixteen pieces to be painted, with the Scots to receive four and the Royalist and Parliamentarians six each. I have made a start on them and hope to have them all completed by the end of January, so I can then get stuck into the cavalry in February.

Thursday 4 January 2024

2023 in Review

Looking back on 2023 there were a number of aspects which were quite satisfying. 

On the figure painting front the final tally was 1261 figures, all 15/18mm comprised of 1241 foot and 20 horses. On top of this I also managed to complete 294 GHQ WWII ships vessels (to give a total of 319) across six different navies such as the Japanese and Italian fleets below:





















This was particularly satisfying on two counts. Firstly, I finally managed to paint my entire GHQ collection, some of which had been languishing in the pile for ten years, and secondly because the German, Japanese and Royal Navy ships actually saw some game time using my gaming friend Dale's Mediterranean sea mat (as opposed to my much darker deep sea mat for which the bases were intended):











Gaming with Dale every second Tuesday since around June introduced a bit more variety into my gaming regimen, and we also played several very enjoyable games of Black Sails and are aiming for our first game of For King and Parliament, hopefully by the end of February. To this end I have made a return to my ECW project and have now completed eight regiments each of Royalist and Parliamentarian foot, with six regiments of Scottish Covenanters completed over the Christmas/New Year break currently being based:





















Aside from the above, I also managed to complete a 15mm Medieval German army which I had started in 2022, and which also saw table time with my fortnightly Saturday DBMM gaming group:











Most of 2023 with my Ancients gaming group was however spent engaged in an enjoyable biblical campaign as we worked our way through DBMM Army List Book 1, with me deploying Early Carthaginians on at least four occasions and playing in at least twenty games.

As far as blog posts go, I note that I am fifteen posts lighter than 2022. This was mainly because I found myself getting so carried away with, for example, painting the USN fleet or four regiments of ECW foot, that I usually opted to just keep going and assemble them en masse. In retrospect this has been a mistake as I end up not liking the photos as there are too many long shots which I have had to angle in order to keep the towering boxes either side out of picture.

Which raises two uncomfortable realisations. 

Purchases for 2023 were much reduced, especially as I swore at the beginning of the year not to engage in any new projects. That however did not stop me from purchasing complete Kallistra 12mm ACW Union and Confederate armies, mainly because I have never done 12mm and this stuff looked and is good, and also some Perry 28mm AWI figures because my mind had then turned to North America and I enjoy any excuse to use a GMB flag.

Fair enough I can imagine some might say, but I have also made the mistake of cataloguing over the Christmas/New Year break where my projects currently stand:

  • 15mm Ancients - Xyston Alexandrian Macedonian; Peter Pig Parthian; Khurasan Korean, French, and English (more medieval and renaissance than ancient); Miniature Figurines Trajanic Roman, Successor Greek and Carthaginian (with Khurasan Tibetan, medieval Spanish, German and Teutonic, and Xyston Gallic, Spanish, Carthaginian, Numidian and Republican Roman armies completed).
  • 28mm Ancients - Gripping Beast Republican Roman; Miniature Figurines Ancient British (with Renegade/Amazon Carthaginian, Gallic and Numidian armies completed).
  • 1/600th Ancient Naval - Xyston Greek, Roman and Carthaginian fleets of around 50 ships each.
  • 15mm Renaissance - Miniature Figurines ECW Parliamentarian, Royalist, Montrose Scot and Ottoman Turks, Essex Polish and Ottoman Turks, Mirliton Condottierre Italian, Eureka Parliamentarian, Royalist and Scottish Covenanters (with Eureka Samurai completed), Khurasan Spanish, French and German.
  • 28mm Renaissance - Perry and Empress Miniatures Parliamentarian and Royalist; Perry Scottish, TAG Poles, Muscovites, Cossacks and Tartars (with TAG Ottoman Turks completed).
  •  28mm American War of Independence – Perry British and Continentals.
  • 15mm Napoleonic - AB Miniatures Russian and Austrians; Miniature Figurines Swedish, Essex Miniatures British, French, Prussian, Dutch/Belgian (with Essex Spanish and Portuguese completed).
  • 28mm Napoleonic - Murawski Poles; Black Hussar/Calpe/Eureka Saxons; Perry Miniatures Brunswick and a few regiments of Confederation of the Rhine; Foundry and Perry Miniatures French (nearly half completed); Calpe Prussian; Miniature Figurines Russian (mostly complete); Hinchliffe British (nearly complete); Front Rank Russian, Austrian, British, Dutch Belgian, Bavarian, Wurttemburg (with Front Rank Spanish and Portuguese completed).
  • 1/1200th Napoleonic Naval - Langton and Navwar British, French, Spanish and American fleets.
  • 10mm ACW – Kallistra Union and Confederates.
  • 15mm WWII - Flames of War British, German and Russian
  • 20mm WWII - Britannia British, German, Russian and US
  • 28mm WWII - Foundry and Warlord British and German for an operation Sealion campaign.
  • 1/2400th WWII Naval - GHQ British, German, French, Italian, US and Japanese fleets completed.
  • 1/300th WWII Naval - Cruel Seas MTBs
This is aside from a stack of unpainted terrain etc. In my defence, I purchased some of the above while living in the UK so did not have to concern myself with exchange rates and expensive shipping apart from when it all got put into a container with the rest of our belongings upon our return to Australia.

The main problem with this approach however is that there has been a noticeable rise in figuire quality which, for example, has already caused me to replace some of my old Minifigs collection with Xyston figures before the former had even seen any paint.

I have also resolved not to purchase any more figures in 2024, unless Lucas Huber brings out something exceptional (which no doubt he will).

Either way, I have reached the realisation that I have gone beyond the tipping point of what is now achievable in the remainder of my lifetime.

The other uncomfortable realisation is that my wife has recently informed that what I implicitly assumed would be my wargaming room once the last of the children had mived out is now going to be kept as a rumpus room for our grandchildren. When I say rumpus room. I mean a fully-tiled airconditioned forty by twenty foot room which also includes a separate break-out area. In other words, the perfect wargaming room.

On the plus side, I have been given clearance to put a granny flat in the top right-hand corner of our property. Something else to aim at for 2024.

A belated Happy New Year to all, and especially anyone who has managed to read this far.


Wednesday 29 November 2023

Last Four Parliamentarian Regiments of Foot Completed

I put on a bit of a push over the last couple of weeks and have completed the last four Parliamentarian Regiments, to make eight in total. The first of these is Thomas Fairfax's regiment of Foot, which I beefed up with an additional four elements of pike to represent a 'pike heavy' regiment if required:











The flag is again from Wargames Designs, and I used a mixture of armoured and unarmoured pikemen to provide some variety:





















Two more red-coated regiments in Onslow's and Birch's regiments respectively:





















And the blue-coated Aldrich's regiment complete the quartet:











Aldrich's regiment has three lions on its flag, which is a nice change from the usual simple white circles:











I also added a few more elements to the King's Lifeguard regiment, to provide a similar 'pike heavy' unit for the Royalists:











And added an additional command element and flag to this regiment as well, to lend it a little more gravitas:











Here are the four completed Parliamentarian regiments assembled together:































That is now sixteen regiments completed, eight each for the Royalists and Parliamentarians, with six Scottish Covenanter regiments left to go.