The French Royal Scots - Royal-Ecossais

   With the anniversary of the battle of Culloden being the 16th, I'd planned to get my Jacobite Scottish army finished but with work being busy it turned out to be harder than planned, then along came a day of annual leave . .  

   The last real chunk of the project are 2 and a bit units of Royal Ecossais, Scottish troops in French service who came over to fight with their countrymen when the call went out. 

   As with the Irish Piquets from a couple of posts ago, these were also from my mate Neil's backlog and are from Front Rank Miniatures and the flags are from Flags of War.

I also painted up a Front Rank Scottish commander for the whole project at the same time. I have a Bonnie Prince Charlie to paint too, but I ordered the wrong horse, so he has to wait until my next order.

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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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A Lowland Bash

   Upon finishing the highlander elements of my Culloden themed army, I am pretty sure I admitted to having bought more infantry for the project but that I wasn't going to work on any of it. Well that turned out to be a lie. When the lowlander musketeers turned up from Front Rank/Gripping Beast I built and sprayed them within 24 hours and put them onto the to do shelf as part of the immediate painting queue.

   Historically, I believe these units should be much more of a militia than a raised unit and thus shouldn't have a uniform jacket, but the thought of painting different jackets, trousers and tartan sashes filled me with dread, so I went for a uniform for the jacket and mixed everything else up*. I've not gone for a banner in either unit to show they are more ad hoc than other units that will be coming. The tartan is mostly earthy colours as I want to show these guys don't wear tartans on a regular basis and have probably bought cheap cloth just to show allegiance, but there are a few of the more modern brighter tartans mixed in for variety.

*if I do another unit in the future I'll do a different jacket colour and mix them in

   Figure wise the bulk of the units are made of the 3 lowlander sculpts in the Front Rank back catalogue but once you get to the point you are ordering 8 of each of 3 figures for only 2 units even my lack of worry about variety started to get nervous. To remedy this I added a highlander officer, a single guy in a kilt and 3 government deserters. This bought the other sculpts down to a mere 6 each. . .

I'm now fairly close to finishing this project, so do I focus on more important stuff or just carry on?

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A Highland Quarrel

   The last bits I needed to paint from the 1st phase* of the Jacobite Rebellion project were the cannon, associated limber and an ammunition wagon for the cannon. The crew have already been painted, so at this point it's just the horses and constructed bits left to go. The figures are from Front Rank as they just do gorgeous limbers.

*can you tell it's escalated?

   So, I said 1st phase earlier as Gripping Beast had a sale a couple of weekends ago which included their Front Rank ranges, so a pair of lowlander units were purchased at a slightly earlier time period than planned - other projects should probably be getting priority after finishing these. Then not long after I had placed that order, my mate Neil, discovered he had too many troops for this period and has agreed to offload some troops that would be appropriate for the Royal Ecossais and the Irish Piquets. We shall see how quickly they get painted but the anniversary of Culloden is only 6 months away and on a Sunday, so a perfect gaming day . . .

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A Highland Squabble

   The last two batches of highland clansmen were always going to be in a more historically accurate tartan* and I had the batches split up on movement trays ready to paint, but in an extended session pushing Edward on a swing, I realised that if they were all going to be various shades of brown, it made more sense to just do them as one big batch and damn the consequences. I hate doing big batches**, but sometimes they just make sense, so in this case I set aside any notions of the speed in which the batch would be completed and knuckled down.

*earthy colours

**and yet keep coming back to them for some reason

   Finishing these means that all my planned clansmen are now complete. Four units of regular clansmen and two units of commanded shot for Pikeman's Lament or five units of "natives" for Rebels & Patriots. All I need to paint now to complete this army is a cannon and limber (crew being done in the clansmen batches).

   In the fullness of time I plan to buy a couple of units of lowlanders to provide a more stable shooting line and probably a couple of units of Royal Ecossais, although I am a tad nervous that if I buy, what are effectively French infantry for the Seven Years War, then all I need is a cannon and some cavalry*** and I have another army almost by accident****.

***Cavalry which would also be appropriate for this project . . .

****am I doing a 7 Years War French army?

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A Highland Brawl

   Hot on the heels of the last batch is another, this time in my attempt at Stewart Hunting Tartan, something our new king has sported himself on numerous occasions according to my research.

Again an empty flag pole as I'm waiting on the flags*

*on which note I might chase as they were posted 2 weeks ago

   I also ended up with a little Warbases order recently and I added a couple of packs of highland cows to that delivery, working on the theory that they will help place the game in Scotland . . .

   I'm well over half way on this project now with only two batches of clansmen left to go, but I can feel myself losing a bit of steam on it. The next two batches are both built and sprayed ready to go, but are going to be in a slightly more muted/earthy tartan as I have been painting (purposely) anti-historically bright tartans so far, I'd like to tone them down for the remainder of the project, so I might have a look at the other side for a little bit to have a break before coming back to finish this off.

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A Highland Scuffle

   With a week or so off of painting with a trip to the Lake District and Hadrian's Wall, I'm back to painting my Highlanders. My next batches were always going to include some sort of royal tartan but with the current news it felt right to push Royal Stewart Tartan up the painting order.

   So I said last time that I planned to paint each box in a different tartan colour, but looking at what I have left to do (4 batches from 2 more boxes*), I think it makes more sense to do each batch in a different tartan.

*ish - actually 2 boxes and some extras

   As with my first whole box, this batch of 12 will be mixed between different units and will be used as clansmen and commanded shot for ECW using Pikeman's Lament and mixed Natives units for Jacobite Rebellion using Rebels and Patriots.

As always, I have about 20 projects I want to be getting on with, so I'm going to just knuckle down and get painting.

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A Highland Loiter

   In a surprise twist to my painting schedule, may I present the start of Scotember, a month of Scottish themed armies*. I have 2 and a half Scottish armies to paint up and as I have been reading a series called The Rigante, which starts as a fantasy take on the ancient British and ends up being the Scottish Highlanders in the English Civil War, I thought I would take a look at some projects that have ended up being pushed right back due to a lack of deadlines.

*although, I might add some other stuff on if my attention starts to wain

   The first army is a Highlander army for ECW and for the Jacobite Rebellion. I need about 60 tartan clad highlanders for the 24 point Pikeman's Lament force, which works out at about 3 packs of Warlord Games' Highland Clansmen**. I had planned to paint them as a single clan army, but the more research I did, and sorry to any Scots reading this and shouting at the screen about the idiot Englishman, it doesn't seem like clan tartan was a thing in this period and it was more a range of tartans that were worn as part of the culture. So I plan to paint a mix of tartans - although based on real modern ones for simplicity - and then mix the units up, so the first box I painted in the same tartan as my Napoleonic Highlanders***, in the colours of Cameron of Erracht.

**plus change to make up numbers

***more on them later (hopefully)

   The bannerman doesn't have a flag on his pole as it is in the post. The plan with these (especially as I have more bannermen than I need for a normal army) is to have a mix of ECW/War Of Three Kingdoms and Jacobite rebellion flags so I can flavour the army as needed.

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