Little Gallopers

   Back early in 2022, I put a post up with some 15mm English Civil War dragoons for my Parliamentary forces and made a passing comment at the end of the post saying I was looking forward to getting this project on the table later in the year - that was 3 years ago at this point and I am pretty sure these Royalist gallopers have been on their sticks with the horses painted that whole time judging by the amount of chips to the paint.

   Over on the social media app Bluesky there is a guy who is encouraging me to look at buying into American War of Independence in 10mm as the models do look amazing (although, I suspect if I do get into that, it'll be in Essex's 15mm), however, as I was sitting at a kids birthday party being tempted by the toy soldiers online a sensible voice in my head reminded me of two things; 1. Money, lets hold off spending money I don't need to for at least a bit. 2. I have so many 15mm projects that can't get onto a table due to not having even minimal armies being complete.

   I've been painting a real assortment of odds and sods, but this is a project I think I should focus on as it is close enough to being complete that its worth the push but also, I think it will look much more convincing that my 28mm project for this era, mostly just as the pike blocks look much more 'pikey'.

   These are the two units of cavalry I like as a minimum for these projects, a captain/general and a horse holder for the back field. I'm pretty sure the figures are all from Essex Miniatures barring the horse holder stuff as they are from Peter Pig.

   This is definitely a project that I always meant to expand much further than the initial 24 points or so of Pikeman's laments forces but to even think about that I need to get the infantry finished now.

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5th New York

   While on sick leave I had planned to give myself two or 3 big (ish) projects to do, mostly painting big units of things that I just haven't been doing in my normal painting time. One of those was an army of Warlord Epic scale American Civil War Zouaves that I picked up in a sprue sale last year. I had time while off to get some of the base colours on and have since gone back over them to get them done.

   I really like having Zouaves on the table when playing ACW as the reds they tend to have in their uniforms give a bright pop above all the blues, greys and browns that the Union/Confederates normally wear. I have a few units painted for my 28mm ACW in the form of the 72rnd Pennsylvania, Baxter's Fire Zouaves but for these I went for a more "Zouave" colour scheme and picked a unit that had the red trousers, this time being the 5th New York.

   I'm hoping to get more 15mm gaming in this year* and having these done gives me one more thing to put on the table and something else not sitting on a side next to me. 

   I need to get their other banner, but they have their US flag for the moment.

*although I need to actually game to do this

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Risen Like Immortals

   I've just had two weeks off work after some really minor surgery and I had thought I'd get some jobs done around the house, but that my hobby time would sky rocket. This was not the case, however, ,the first day I did hide down my hobby shed and paint some something easy just to ease myself in, and two units for my Necrons were the chosen project.

 

The two units are a Hexmark Destroyer and a 10 robot unit of Immortals. Like the vast bulk of my Necron army all of these models came from past issues of various Warhammer magazines, I can't remember if it was Imperium or Conquest, so were so much cheaper than buying at retail that it is daft. I do have one or two things left on my shopping list for this project that I do need to spend real money on, but I've really enjoyed the fact I have a decent sized force for next to nothing.

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Sweet, Sweet Caffine

   Every now and again I paint something that I feel the need to justify to myself, and this one is simple, because why not. As soon as I saw this model, I knew I had to have one for my wagon and baggage collection as I am currently a man who doesn't really work until I've had my first coffee of the day*.

*if I can even drink it before it gets cold

   This is a coffee wagon plus limber for my American Civil War Union infantry. It could do with a horse team like my other wagons, but as its modelled set up, I didn't have picking up the extra models as a priority.

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The Heraclean

   Every space marine legion in 30k has/had a named elite terminator unit of some sort which were seen as far more elite than even their regular terminator squads. For example these included such names as; the Blood Angel's Crimson Paladins, the Deathguard's Grave Wardens, the Nightlords had two being the Contekar and Atramentar, while the Sons of Horus had the Justaerin.

   I like the idea that, while my chaos space marine warband definitely doesn't include any Justaerin, they might have decided that their top tier unit would have a name, aping the legions of old. Hence the Heraclean were born.

   These guys are just the terminators of the warband, no more, no less, but they sit at the top of the promotion ladder for the regular troops of the army and that's an important thing to have.

   This is the first 5, I do have another 5 that I need to tidy up from an old army but they will be a bit more work.

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Chaos Space Marine Combat Patrol

   Speaking to my brothers about what games they want to play this year, they have both said that they would like to stick with Combat Patrol as their main way of playing as it allows them to dabble with armies and ideas without investing too much, plus neither has much painting or gaming time, so it keeps everything manageable. So I have been looking at my projects to see what needs doing as a priority and a combat patrol I should have finished a long time ago is my Chaos Space Marine one. This was supposed to be my big army for the year, so why was this basic part of it not done?

   The first model was the character - a master of possession. This model sat unfinished on my desk for ages as I just couldn't decide how to paint it. I'd finished the red armour but found myself stuck. Once I painted the bone detail, black coat and decided on grey fur (round the back) the bulk of the decisions were made and it went together much easier than my head thought it was going to do. I'm quite pleased with the blue flames as they don't look natural.

   The next thing was the squad of regular marines. I've got a fair few finished marines for this army but I wasn't sure I had the exact weapon options and as I had a spare set on the sprue, it made sense just to purpose build the right squad. This was also the first unit to get the new army symbol on their shoulder, which I am really pleased with.

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