Skirmish Line in the Trees

    As ever, while I should be focussing on getting a single project ready for the table, I'm instead bouncing around like a crazed grasshopper, but I scrounged a few hours of hobby time and wanted something fairly simple I could enjoy painting in that time, so the two units of 15mm French Voltigeurs, ready sprayed, fitted the bill.

   The figures are from from Blue Moon via Old Glory (I think?) and are, in my opinion, the nicest 15mm Napoleonic sculpts out there. It's just a pity the range isn't a bit bigger. I also had a spare flank company figure from my grenadiers, so I decided to use one of the officers from the command pack and create an extra base - as in a few cases coming up, I'm not sure how this will be used, but it solves the problem I'm starting to have with 15mm of the spare figure.

   As ever, I apologise for my photography, 15mm isn't my friend for close up shots.

   Sadly, I'm now waiting on a back order for the rest of my French troops - I gather Old Glory UK ships over figures in bulk, so I'm waiting on the next shipment - which means I'll spend a bit of time painting the other side while I wait for the rest of my order to arrive.

   However, this gave me an opportunity to look at another recent purchase. One of the things halving my scale has done, is it has meant most of my scenery now looks a bit daft next to these new figures, so I'd been on the hunt for ways to bulk up my scenery collection fairly cheaply.

   The roads in the top photo are part of a big set I bought from eBay and are better than I imagined they could be, so I'd tempted to buy a few more just to make sure I always have enough matching roads. Then I got an email from Warlord games saying they had partnered with The Model Tree Shop and were offering their N Gauge tree collections as scenery for the Epic ACW range. Now, I've bought loads of trees from them in the past for my model railways, so I knew they would be good and I put a basket or two together but didn't know how many trees I would realistically need, then it dawned on me, I had loads of Warlord medals to use up. . . Two heavily discounted boxes later and I was on my way.

   24 trees has made me 10 bases of various densities and I've painted an over sized base without any trees on that I can put the clumps on during a game to represent wooded areas and move trees off as figures move through. I plan to paint another couple of big bases so I can have 3 big woods, and I have since placed a little order with the model tree shop for 2 or 3 small bases worth of trees just to keep the numbers up.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the terrible photography

The Union Boys Keep Marching On

    I've got to stop giving myself to much to paint in one go as it kills motivation, but here is my last* big batch of ACW 15mm(ish) figures and its more for the Union Side - thanks to Paul from my club for posting me his sprue. 

*planned

   Not much to add for the painting as you've seen it all before, but I've stopped doing anything with the mounted officer from the sprue as it just doesn't fit the scale of the other cavalry I'm using. I've swapped out the command section for metal figures from Kallistra like I did with the Texans I painted recently and I also replaced one regular trooper on another base with an officer calling orders as I've recently watched Glory and I wanted to recreate a moment in that.

   Also in this post are a couple of extra bases of figures I've added to make the game look a bit more battle like, namely a horse holder for one of the company/regiment's** officer's horses and a command scene with whatever the senior officer of this army is. The more I think about it, the more I should have a base of horse holders for each command base of infantry, so there is a real risk I'll paint at least one more base of them per side in the not too near future.

**not entirely worked out how much a base represent yet

   I've still got a few bases of cavalry to paint for each side, an extra base of infantry for my Union which I just couldn't face painting in this batch and I've just pre-ordered some wagons from Warlord as it's the one extra Kallistra doesn't do. Now if only the new warlord Zouaves were sold in packs of 5 and not 15, I'd definitely get some of them too. Also, do I need some bases of Native American irregulars?

Thanks for reading

15mm french

    Like I said a few posts back, this 15mm thing has really gotten me thinking about my hobby and while the conclusions I am starting to draw won't be the same ones others might come to, I am becoming convinced that 15mm might be God's True Scale etc.

   With that in mind, I was on the Hovel's website and I noticed they sold resin models of the farms at Waterloo. I would love to have a miniature version of Hougoumont sitting on a shelf but I doubt it would see much table time as I'll never be in a position to refight Waterloo as is. But it was when I saw La Haye Sainte that I really got thinking, why can't I refight a set piece from the battle? So instead of playing the whole day's worth of action at a single farm, we refight one bit - in this case I am planning on a scenario based on the initial infantry attack, if the King's German Legion can hold then we can work out a winner and loser from that, without getting complicated and adding the 5th battalion trying to relieve them or the French cavalry's attack which will complicate matters.

   So with that in mind, I researched the King's German Legion* and ordered an army for them and for the French. As is my normal practise, I then started painting the biggest side, although I have been hampered by running out of black spray.

*A story for another day . . .

  I'm still toying around with how I am going to represent troops numbers, but as a first go through, I plan to paint a Rebels and Patriots size unit to represent each French company - although I might double up in the future. This first batch is the Grenadiers, the 2rnd and the 3rd, with the 1st, 4th and voltigeurs left to go. The figures are from Blue Moon, I think, but sold via Old Glory UK at the very least.

Thanks for reading

A Walled Village

    My mate Neil always says that ideas are dangerous and should be stamped down, but I had an idea that I left to grow - sorry Neil. A few years back when I was playing a lot of Lord Of The Rings the guy I played against and me starting chatting about creating some scenery for the scenarios that needed something to work a bit better. For example there is a scenario that I am sure was called King of the Hill, where you measured out a 2 foot circle, which was the hill, and you got victory points for having the most models within the circle at the end of the game. So I asked my dad to cut me a circle of mdf about 2 foot wide and I got as far as drawing on it what I was going to build before I put it down to carry on working on another day.

   Fast forward to November and I had an idea for a walled village for my Ancient Britons - a defensive wall rather than defendable wall, which was an important difference in my head. This isn't a fort, its a walled village. I decided it would be a nice project I could get on with once my son was born, but in the end I got carried away with it before that could happen, but as I needed to clear some space to get a photo of the model, it didn't make it onto this blog.

   The basic structure is pink foam on an MDF circle, covered in plaster and painted. The walls are made from wooden cuticle sticks snipped to slightly different lengths. The fences are Renedra and the buildings are Hovels.

    While the end result is historically suspect at best, I wanted something big to put on the board as the project it goes with was getting out of hand. I just need to get some games in with it now.

   Lastly, and very much tacked onto the end is a quick stone circle. Not a huge amount to say about this, other than the stones are from an Arcane Miniatures order I made a few years back, on an MDF base.

Thanks for reading

Desert scenery Pt 1

   Carrying on with the WW2 desert theme, I had a pleasant evening in front of the tv painting up 5 buildings from Hovels that I plan to use with this army, that I ordered at the same time as the 15mm ACW farm. Buying scenery was a bit of a late thought for this project as the idea had initially been to use the Flames Of War scenery at Wayland Games, but as the pandemic went longer and longer it became obvious and sensible to have my own collection at home, I think I just need a better desert mat now.

   I've still got walls to make and paint, but getting buildings done at least means I can get a game in without a plan board. I'd better start on the vehicles now.

Thanks for reading

Back to an Older Project

    I'm back to bouncing around projects in a way that Tigger would be proud of and I don't see that stopping any time soon. With potential indoors mixing dates announced in the UK, I've had a proper sit down with a notepad and worked out exactly what I need to finish to play some of my planned games - both at home and maybe at Waylands, with the aim of only working on units on the list. For example, if I bought 6 units of an army for a game but I only need 5 to get the game on the table, I'm going to try and get the 5 done before moving onto the next project that needs units painted. It's more important for me at the moment to get games ready for the table than every unit for them painted.

   With that in mind, I've gone back to my 15mm WW2 game. I'd painted almost all of the German Infantry and built the British, but that didn't make a game, so I went online and bought the units I was missing and sat down at the weekend and batch painted the whole lot in one go.

   First up we have a German MMG and Medium mortar, which I was missing from the infantry I already owned. 

   Next up we have 3 units of British infantry - with SMG armed sgts and a LMG in each squad.

   Lastly we have the extra bits for the British, Platoon LT, AT rifle, light mortar, medium mortar and MMG.

   All the figures on this post are from Forged in Battle and while it's not an exciting post, it is a productive one. Just scenery and vehicles to go then it's ready for some games.

Thanks for reading

Distracted or Genius?

    One of the unfortunate results of me painting a unit of 15mm Romans was realising that I might be onto something amazing in terms of where my gaming needs to go and it left me doing a lot of thinking at times of the day where thinking is probably to be discouraged - I'm looking at you 2 in the morning when your son is drifting back to sleep.

   I knew that 24 Romans looked good on a base, but did that carry across to other genres too? So when I stumbled upon Alternative Armies I threw caution into the wind and ordered myself the bits to make a standalone base of skeletons (complete with a necromancer in the middle so the unit could be allied to other armies). Again, my short term plan is to use Lion/Dragon Rampant rules for these element bases and have wound makers behind them to show their strength until I really get my head around Sword and Spear (I need to buy the fantasy version still) and give that a try.

I've really had some ideas for this army now . . .

Thanks for reading

The Texan's Arrive

    I've been painting a few bitty things recently, so it was nice to settle back down with a big batch of figures again. At this point my plan of what order I am going to paint has completely gone out of the window and instead of another unit of Romans to get that project onto the table, I've gone back to my ACW project.

   While I have now painted up everything I needed to get this game on my home table, I want to add the bits that will make this a 4 player game on a 6 by 4 board, namely another sprue of Warlord figures per side and loads more cavalry. Chatting with my regular gaming group about each of us painting a sprue of figures for a big game when we could meet up again met with muted support at best, but when it became obvious to the guys that I was pushing ahead anyway two of them offered to post me their sprues.

   The first sprue was designated for the Confederates with the request that it be Texan. This is the first unit that I tried copying some other hobbyists I've seen online and I've cut the command group out of the Warlord plastics and I've used a command group from Kallistra.

The next thing, for this post, is the Confederate Command and a unit of horse holders. I want the battlefield to look messy with all the gumpf that comes with marching armies. So the army commanders won't be standing in the ranks, they will be on horses at the back and unit officers will probably have left horses with a subordinate behind the lines and this is stuff I want to model. Again, all these figures are from Kallistra (bar a guy on the general's base cut from a warlord cannon crew) as they fit so nicely.

   All I need now is wagons but I think I need to wait for the Warlord ones as Kallistra don't sell any, which is a right shame.

Thanks for reading