Painting the masses

    I've got myself back onto the painting bandwagon and spent the weekend painting again. This weekend I managed to knock out a couple of full units, the first of which is another unit of Ancient Britons. I checked the rules I planned to use over the weekend and realised I had misread the unit size for Celtic warriors - being a unit size of 16 and not 15 as I thought - so I added an extra couple of Britons to my painting table to make up this unit and the last one I finished.

   While I was at it, I thought I would paint the first chariot from a planned unit of 3. The standing crewman is a two part kit, so I swapped the top of his body for one from the normal sprue as I might get another unit of chariots in the future, but I am unlikely to be doing those chariots at the same time as more troops and variety is the spice of life and all that.

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Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda and the Roman Army Museum - the dangerous day out

   This is the last holiday blog post, which has purposely been left back until I had something painted to add to the bottom of it.

   Mid way through out trip we had tickets booked for Vindolanda and the Roman Army Museum, While I definitely recommend a trip to Vindolanda, it was the Roman Army museum that was the really dangerous part of the day. The museum is more of a kids interactive job than in depth analyse of how the army worked, but the uniforms and videos going on everywhere do help to immerse you.

   Then the rest of the day we visited bits of Hadrian's Wall, a small mile fort and Housesteads fort before settling down at Twice Brewed (a micro brewery/pub that serves roman named beers*) and before I knew it, I had a Early Imperial Roman army on order with Warlord Games** and then within the week or so, I'd ordered an Ancient British army as an opponent for it.

*Very much recommended

**Full confession this is the 3rd Roman army I have in my stock pile***

***I have no regrets

   With a bit of painting mojo having returned ****, I got stuck right into my first few units for my planned Boudiccan revolt period armies. All figures are from Warlord Game's range and I plan to use Lion Rampant but with the Rule Britannia modifications from Natholeon's empires as he allows for slightly bigger barbarian units.

****and a distressing amount of Osprey's ordered

As I have a lot more painting to do and a lot more confessions to build up to in the future, that's it for now.

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The Second Skirmish at Much Dithering

    The weekend following the last game at Neil's house, I had a bit of an ECW buzz on the go, between the game and reading another couple of books in Michael Arnold's Civil War Chronicles (sold as an ECW Sharpe which it basically is), so I decided to put the motivation to a good use and crack open the 3rd box of ECW infantry that I had recently bought - the trip to Marston Moor was really dangerous for my wallet.

   This regiment would be painted as the Earl Of Northampton's Foote, a second Royalist unit as I have a second Parliamentary unit already bought as well. The Earl's greencoats fought at Hopton Heath which features in the second novel in the series and one that has given me a few ideas.

   With a new regiment of foote painted up - although missing their banner currently - it made sense for them to take to the field instead of Apsley's foote. This game saw much more combat than the last one with both flanks being hotly contested, but by the end of the game the Royalists had lost more men, but due to reinforcement rolls had more units on the board when we called it, so it's hard to say who actually had the victory.

The Royalist cavalry on the right flank did very little all game except move to hide behind their infantry when the Parliamentary troops moved up.

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The Skirmish At Much Dithering

    A couple of Wednesdays ago saw the first game of English Civil War using the Pikeman's Lament ruleset. The Earl of Essex's regiment of foote lined up against Sir Allen Apsley's regiment of foote at the village of Much Dithering. Both sides had 30 points, but with slightly different make ups based on getting sides to feel right - Royalists feel more right with an extra couple of units of cavalry - which left the Parliamentarians with the field gun and guard.

   In the build up to the game I had been frantically painting and these are what I got finished in time for the game;

A pair of mounted dragoon units - I still have the foot versions to paint and banners to put on.

A unit of flintlock armed shot - but using regular shot rules as I doubt on the scale we are looking at there would be much difference. The jackets match those worn by the cannon crew, so are from the same unit.

Something I've started doing - stolen shamelessly off my mate Neil - is do separate command for armies. While the rules say that one model in a unit from your army is nominated as the leader, some periods make more sense with a leader slightly detached from the fighting, e.g. a Napoleonic Colonel with aide du camp directing from behind while captains and lt's push units forward.

So I built a base for each side and tried to make each look like the right flavour.

   Then the skirmish itself. The village of Much Dithering is a quiet village, but as it is situated between two Royalist and Parliamentarian strongholds, it seems doomed to see action.

While we didn't get very far into the game we decided we enjoyed it enough to arrange another game the week after.

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Irish Reinforcements

   After nearly a month of barely picking up my paint brush, I've started to get a bit of motivation to actually paint stuff rather than just ordering new toys. I've got a few new projects to admit to at some point soon but first lets stay positive with some painting, in this case another couple of units of regular troops for my Dark Age Irish warband.
   I ended up ordering a second box of the Atlantic Miniatures plastic dark age Irish as you get two and a half units worth of figures in a box (for Lion Rampant) and ideally, I wanted 3 or 4 units worth and with them being so nice to paint that wasn't a hardship. With this box, I am now up to 4 regular units, a few extras to go with the wolfhound units and then a few extra spares in case of breakages in the future.

   Not the most exciting post ever but now I have stuff moving on my painting desk this blog should become a bit more active, like I said, I have confessions to make. . . 

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