Friday 31 March 2023

Irish Picquets, Regiment De Lally

   With the anniversary of the Battle of Culloden coming up fast, I thought it made sense to try and get the bulk of this project finished, if not complete it entirely. All I have left are a pair of units from two different regiments and some odds and sods, which feels doable.

   This post is about the Irish Picquets from the Regiment De Lally. I had a choice between them or the Manchester Regiment, but as the other regiment I plan to paint wears blue coats, I chose the red coated one of these two for a bit of variety.


   The figures are from my mate Neil's backlog, and I am pretty sure he said they were old Front Rank models which have since been replaced in the catalogue.  

I really need to take my own advice and not batch paint in these sort of numbers.

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Wednesday 29 March 2023

Kratos

   It's been a while since I did any work on my 30k projects but my two heresy opponents (and podcast co-presenters) from before the lockdown have started to get some free time again and are trying to arrange games, while I am unable to put the time in to play them regularly, I thought it would be good to try and get some games in when able.

   One of the models that I lusted after when the new edition was released was the Kratos battle tank - a sort of middle child between a Sicaran and a Fellblade* - but the lack of games and price made me do the sensible thing and walk on, until now.

*which are no longer on the forge world website - plastic release possible?

ultramarine kratos colour scheme

#MarchForMacragge

That went about as well as expected

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Friday 24 March 2023

The Dwarves Are Hitting

   The last unit bought for this army is the heavy infantry, again in the style of the old warhammer dwarves, so I've given the whole unit double handed weapons. I have also put shields on their backs to emphasis their elite nature - maybe they can stow their big weapons and use side arms and a shield? - but also so I can put the army colours onto them as they don't have much cloth showing.


   At this point the army is done, as everything I own has been painted, however, in the future I'd like to add a bolt throwing war machine to the list, maybe a king on shield bearers and some dwarf berserkers if I can find any that I like the look of - old trollslayers go for silly money online.

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Friday 17 March 2023

The Dwarves Are Ranging

   This post is about a unit I hadn't planned to do - archers/rangers. Something that I am fast beginning to think is a sales tactic by NannyOgg on eBay is to send out the wrong box/sprue then when you email to ask them to correct it, they give two options, 1. send them back and they refund the postage you paid to do so, or 2. they let you keep them at a slightly reduced price and send you the stuff you ordered afterwards. I've had this 3 times now if I remember correctly.

   This unit was bought as heavy Dwarf sprues and the light sprues turned up instead. Then the classic point that once you have something in your hands and sending it back looks like more work than you can be bothered with, paying the price seems sensible.

   I purposely did something different with this unit and painted them in the colour scheme I use for my Rohirrim, albeit with the green underneath the armour instead of on top, to show that this isn't a unit of archers but rangers and scouts who use bows. As there are 16 instead of the normal 12 (why leave a few figures unpainted for no reason) I can swap the 2 handed weapons and banner in and out as needed.

oathmark light dwarves rangers

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Tuesday 14 March 2023

The Dwarves Are Marching

   As always I have a lot of projects on the go - its a problem that I just can't seem to focus hard enough to solve - and this means that I flitter between them on a regular basis depending on what I fancy painting/playing or is just annoying me sitting unpainted. Why I am getting on with painting my Dwarish army, I can't tell you but I am making strides through it, so lets focus on that.

   This post is the last of the warriors I bought - in a mix of a box from North Star and some sprues from eBay. I built one unit exactly as per instructions but I used the other to test out a conversion idea and used Fireforge foot sgt crossbow arms to make the missile unit I always think of when I think Dwarves.

oathmark dwarf warriors dwarves crossbows

   I toyed with giving the second warrior unit a different shield design but decided against it - I can always add something in the future - and I decided against a banner for the crossbows, although in hindsight I'm tempted to add one in the future.


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Saturday 11 March 2023

Lots Of Horses

   This post is carrying on my ACW push with the wagon train and some generals/leaders for the armies. The figures from this post are much more of  mix from different companies with Perry Miniatures, 1st Corps, Warbases and Colonel Bills all represented in one thing or another.

   As in a lot of other cases, mostly from last year, I always figure if you plan to paint some horses, do loads at one time so that you can mix the colours in without wasting time.

Two wagons - one from Warbases and the other from Colonel Bills.

A cannon limber team for my last two cannons

A caisson for the Union forces

Commanders for my forces - as we are trying to have a separate leader for each army.

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Thursday 9 March 2023

Confederates?

   I've got an ongoing project to try and get my club to play a single big game as a group - as we seem to split down into little groups on club nights and not mix as well as we once did - for which I picked the American Civil War as the theatre for the game, using the Rebels and Patriots rules.
   With this in mind and the year starting to get away from me already, I thought I would put my money where my mouth was and make sure I had enough troops for both sides to make a decent showing*.

*the idea being that the game is more about getting guys to participate than demanding hobby from those who might not be able to, I want spare troops I can lend out if needed

   The first thing to cross my desk is a unit of Confederate infantry as this is one of the areas that I have been planning to bulk my collection up, plus it never hurts to own an extra unit of two of extra infantry. These are Perry Miniatures plastics and have been painted in a quick and dirty scheme to match the others I already have.


In the future I have the rest of my Perry order from last year to paint - mostly limbers and wagons - then I plan to bulk up the cavalry of my Confederates and lasting a quick addition to any part of either collection that I think is lacking.

Thanks for reading

Saturday 4 March 2023

Roman Archers

   I've been meaning to add archers to my Early Imperial Roman army since I started buying it, but while I was happy to place orders for pack after pack of metal Celtic archers and slingers, I wasn't so sure I wanted to do the same for the Romans. Then I saw a scenario in the most recent Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine that called for a unit of them and it made me rethink my plan. A few evenings with a unit of Warlord metals in a basket and looking at the price made me remember that I've seen Victrix did a set instead, so I went and had a look for that. I could do 2 units of plastic archers for less than a single unit of metal archers, I was sold.


I've got the other unit of archers built and sprayed, plus I've sprayed up the rest of the Roman forces that haven't made it onto my desk since I started the project. Lets see how that goes.

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Thursday 2 March 2023

German Heavy Infantry - K'47 Again

   Another one of those posts where I can't really justify myself. I doubt these units will see much of a board but I'd like to try out some Konflikt '47 at some point and these figures felt like the easiest in for the Germans.

   The block of men in the photo builds 2x 6 man squads with LMGs and a 2 man HQ - if you are going to have heavy infantry, why not put your commander in it too?

Konflikt '47 German Heavy Infantry

I'd like to give the Americans a unit of their jump pack airborne troops but that's not a short term idea as it can wait.

Thanks for reading