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.

Thanks for reading

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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Medieval Wagons

   Have a called a post this before, I feel like I have? My drive to add wagons to every army hasn't diminished in the slightest as I think they add so much to the feel of a game even if they aren't part of the game itself.

   I've had an open basket with Colonel Bill's for a good few months that changes weekly as I have different ideas. In it I've had a couple of wagons for my crusade era armies to allow a escort scenario, ACW wagons to boost that project, various other medieval or dark ages wagons, then at SELWG  a couple of weeks ago, I noticed Colonel Bill was there, so I had a quick look at the shelves while my little boy was distracted by his grandad and made some decisions.

   It was the agricultural loads that really got my attention and with a bit of going back and forth with what wagons sizes each era had to match loads (sadly I couldn't fit the looted goods into a medieval wagon) I picked up an ACW wagon*, a pair of mules and a pair of medieval carts.

*future post

   It was only that night as I unpacked my bag that I noticed I had forgotten to buy any animals to pull the vehicles and another order had to be made online. . .

   I decided to mount the mules on a single base rather than separate figures like I tend to do. I think this makes a better looking scene and probably makes them more useful in game too, so it's something I expect to do going forward with any others.

I have my eyes on more wagons from Colonel Bill's now that I've had some in my hands. Maybe something for my Ancient British to add to the Laager, or those crusade wagons I had an idea for. So many ideas.

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Special Delivery?

   These three wagons are from a couple of different companies, the 4 ox drawn wagon is from Perry Miniatures, while the other two are from Front Rank.

   Again, like the last wagons I've made a conscious effort to fill them up with things that either an army might need on their travelling or stuff that might be going to market and the armies that they will share the board with are coincidental. The loads are from 3 or 4 different sources by my reckoning, although I couldn't name most of them - I tend to add anything that looks interesting like these onto the back of orders for other stuff.

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Delivery!

   I've been spending a bit of time on my hobby spreadsheet since starting my new role as it seemed like a perfect time to really sit back and take stock as I'm not gaming every week and painting had slowed right down. One of the things I noticed is how many wagons there are on the list - I suspect from my every army needs some baggage aim in 2020. So, I decided as a nice mini project over the next few months or so, I would spend some time digging out as many of the wagon kits as I could and get them off the painting queue.

   I've gone through my backlog and dug out the vast bulk of my wagons, most* are now built and sprayed, so now it's just a case of painting them in batches.

*I ran out of space on my shelf to add more

   First up are the nominally dark age wagons. It's two packs of Gripping Beast's wagons - so a pair of handcarts and a pair of small horse drawn wagons. The one big thing I have done with these that I plan to do going forward is actually filling the back of the wagon up, it sounds like such an obvious detail but a fair few of my earlier baggage trains aren't actually carrying anything. 

   For these I put an important box on one hand cart - maybe a relic or the army's pay(?), the second has some axes, while one of the wagons is full of apples and the other is a mix of pots and crates.

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Undead Supplies?

   In a bit of a tangent, I've painted a few of my 15mm Undead army, again an army I'd like to get on the table, but not one that was particularly urgent. I've had the knights and command figures on sticks for a while with no real motivation to get on with them, while the wagons were a more recent buy.

   

   The necromancers and knights are all from Alternative Armies and were bought in one of their spring sales - which they've just announced another one of . . . - the knights I bought as a pack and then loads of singles to get enough regular guys rather than too many of the standard bearer. It would be nice to have a bit more variety but as there are only 2 units its not too jarring.

   The necromancers were sold as wizards and I scoured their whole range for my favourites. The photos look much worse than they look in person. I've based them as per my future proofing theory. Big base for the army general, medium bases for sub leaders - useful when splitting a collection between players - and smalls for magic users in Sword and Spear. I've got a real urge to buy another figure of the male wizard on the single base to paint red and write WIZARD on his hat . . .

   I'm not sure if I NEED a civilian wagon and baggage element for my undead but it seemed like fun so I did it anyway. Now that I've found somewhere that sells 15mm undead farm animals, I'm tempted by a  few bases of them now too . . .

   The big wagon is from Essex Miniatures and was the first one I bought, with added horses from Alternative Armies. Then about a week after I built it ready to go, Alternative Armies announced their own corpse wagons, so I ordered 3 (was only supposed to click 2) and ended up with a small fleet of undead wagons.

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15mm Gothic Infantry

    One of the things that I stopped to work out, once I realised that my new job would mean less painting time, was not which projects were more urgent and should be prioritised but which projects gave less little wins. One of the biggest ways of keeping myself motivated is splitting projects down into 'little wins', usually in the form of limiting the number of models in a painting batch so that I can finish, for example, 5 models in an evening instead of 10 half finished and then once a model is complete (inc basing) I add it to my notebook with a date*.

*and then a spreadsheet but lets not go there

   So by looking at projects without these little wins I was trying to avoid hitting the project when there wouldn't be much spare time and killing what motivation I had. My 15mm Goth army was the thing that came to mind immediately. Unlike my 15mm Romans, who I could paint a whole unit, base and count as a win, my Goths wouldn't be in a uniform, as I had been sticking them to wooden sticks in mixed batches so I could paint a whole row of identical colours, then mix them in units later on. The downside of this is that as I don't count a model as complete until it's based, I could have weeks of painting without a 'complete' model. Effectively I would be completing 6 units of infantry on the same day even if I had been "finishing" batches every few days over the course of weeks. So this became my biggest priority even though there are other more urgent projects.

   The infantry I painted was mostly from Forged In Battle, but the slingers are from Essex Miniatures. There are 3 bases of regular infantry that I can use as the base of an army or auxiliaries for my Romans, then a unit of archers and 2 half sized units of slingers to add some skirmishing elements.

   Early in to this mass batch painting I remembered I had some civilians from Essex Miniatures**, so they got added to the ends of a few sticks where there was space as it made the most sense for getting stuff moving. Then*** I remembered my plan of having at least one of the civilians on the base of a cart, so two carts got built**** and added to the queue along with some dogs and a cat that I bought at Salute from Pendrakon as I wanted this army to look like families on the move rather than a professional army.

**In another case of project creep

***See above

****I'm not really sure how much time I thought I was saving by not doing the 3rd in this batch

   The downside of this and in an attempt to make real ground, I painted the clothing in small batches, then went back and did all 126 figures skin, hair, wood, metal and shield in one go over for each colour, and I have a new found respect for those people who paint in big batches, it might be faster but I am never doing that ever again.

   I've got at least another 5 units of cavalry, some generals and another cart to paint for this project which I'd like to get on with at some point soon but first I'll be looking at getting some other projects without little wins, or for more immediate games, moving before my hobby time dries up. However, saying that, as I typed that it has very much dawned on me how stupid it would be not to get on with the last bits of this project . . .

Thanks for reading

Small Romans

    One of my main targets this year was to play some 15mm games to test my theories to do with the scale, which meant I needed to organise said games and paint some more models. With time to organise games being difficult so far this year - nearly a 6th of the way through the year and I'm a game and a half into my targets - so I got an opponent in place, booked a table and with the deadline looming, I got painting.

   With the last bits that I needed for the game being two units of auxiliaries (regulars and archers to balance sides), a general for each side and some scenery was a nice to have. Ultimately, as I started getting the last few units that I needed for the game moving, I got a bit carried away and started on what it may be said* was too many other figures, ending up with every flat surface within arms reach with a 15mm model in some stage of being painted**, so this post is what I actually managed to finish. . .

*by those with too much sense

**Most of which weren't strictly important

   The first units are the last Middle Imperial Roman Auxiliary and Auxiliary Archers units as these would allow a fairly even game with about 6 units a side and now mean all my Roman Infantry is painted**. Like the rest of the project these should cover me for the early 200's, but with a few allied units I don't see why they can't get me as far as the late 200's as well, so that I can play all the battles in the crisis of the 3rd century. As I think I have mentioned before, this might be one of the best periods for a wargamer to build armies around****, not only do you have constant Roman on Roman fighting, you've got the Palmyrenes, Goths and later the Huns all to add as allies or enemies depending on the period or game.

***Until I buy more?

****Plus it's historically one of the times the empire probably should have fallen which makes it interesting

   Next up and not hugely exciting but really useful are the Roman Generals. The figures are from Essex Miniatures and are all the same sculpt (although I added Forged in Battle figures to the big general's bases). These are not only to give each side a leader for Lion Rampant games, but also to future proof the collection for games like Sword And Spear (for later this year?) where you need a lead general and smaller Captains to relay orders. Again, I'll be adding 'captains' or generals for my allied/enemy armies so I doubt all 6 will be in the same game very often, but I figured it was better to be covered than missing a single figure later on.

   Weirdly, these 8 figures have been sitting on my painting table for about a year and have been in the category of where do I even start painting these, but, as it turns out, they've been a really nice mini project.

   The next thing I started painting, and I suspect it was because they were easy and I wanted quick stuff to put at the edge of the battle, was a flock of sheep with shepherd and some wagons, pack mules and associated workers. The small wagons and sheep are from Forged in Battle along with the shepherd, while the workers, big wagon and mules are from Essex Miniatures.

   Last for the actual romans is the start of my 15mm Roman scenery collection. I've still got another 5 or so buildings to do, but this was the point where the deadline really started to loom, so I've got together what I felt was a minimum villa complex to put on the edge of the board and more buildings will be done in the future.

   Lastly I have two units of Gothic cavalry. I could gush for hours about how interesting I find the Goths as a race, but that can wait until I start on that army properly. Suffice to say for the moment that in this period they are both the biggest external threat to the Roman empire (if you treat the competing empires as a single unit) and, arguably. the biggest source of man power with whole tribes fighting as mercenary armies and Goths being inducted into the legions themselves. So I wanted to get a couple of units of their cavalry painted for this game, partly to get their presence in early and partly to bulk out my cavalry and make the game a bit more interesting, with 7 units a side instead of 6.

Now all I need to do is play a game . . .

Thanks for reading

Working on the periphery

    It's about this point where I've really started to worry that my hobby plan for 2021 has already gone out of the window. I had planned to spend the first few months of hobby getting my War of the Roses projects moving well ahead of the May deadline, however, it seems that my head is stuck in a 15mm (ish) space. More on that in another post.

   This post is about the extra bits that I decided I needed to add to make the two sprues of 'Epic' scale figures from Warlord Games into a full game that could be played when games are allowed to resume. I felt it was obvious that I needed limbers for the cannons that came on the sprue, a unit or two of cavalry for each side and I wanted some scenery.

   Going in the order listed above, here are the limbers. I went with Kallistra for all my extra figures as other reviews seemed to suggest that they scaled well and I have to say, I am convinced they are the same scale - if you ignore the single horseman who comes on the sprue and is a bit bigger than the Kallistra horsemen. I mounted the limbers on bases that matched the cannon's base from the warlord sprue and I put the cannons that came with the limbers on their own bases, so they can be replaced with a set up cannon.

Kallistra Confederate Limber with Warlord plastic cannon

View from behind the Union Limber

   Next up are some cavalry. One of my main problems with historical gaming is the issue of basing. Normally I solve this by mounted 28mm figures on separate bases and having a variety of movement trays to fit either different rulesets or different opponents, however, with 12mm figures this is a tad harder. I toyed with making a unit two smaller bases of 4 horse as it looked really good, but in the end, I went with 6 horse on a base the same size that the warlord infantry are mounted on. The more I thought about it, the more having a more standard base size for my games made sense. 

Union Cavalry

Confederate Cavalry

   Last up I have some scenery.  Looking online the best option, for what I was after, seemed to be Hovels, so I ordered the farmstead set and some tents.

   The tents I just based up as simply as I could as it is supposed to look like the edge of an encampment. The farmstead, however, I spent a bit more time building. Each gap between buildings is big enough for a stand of figures and the end result is that you can have 4 units defending the farm with the command unit in the centre. The haystacks came with the farmstead and aren't glued down, while the wagon was a test order from Irregular Miniatures which seems a bit large but without the oxen and crew I don't have a problem with it.

   As ever, my painting at 15mm doesn't survive the close shots from my camera, but I am really pleased with how this stuff looks on the table. I've got enough for a decent 2 player game as I had planned for my small table, but now I think the theory is sound, I still have more coming in the post to try and make it a bigger battle game for when we can meet up with the club again.

Thanks for reading

British Laager

   I've definitely mentioned this before, but my Wagons, Carts & Civilians* label is probably my favourite option in my blog side bar as it lets you do some really fun things, although it was in writing this post that I realised I have a lot less wagons than I thought I had - something to rectify. This post was particularly fun to get ready and will hopefully address the balance a bit..

   Laager was not a word in my mental dictionary until I sent Simon Miller from TheBigRedBatCave a message asking where he got his Celtic Wagons from as I couldn't see any mention in his Celtic label search of manufacturers. At the point I asked, I'd bought 3 wagons from a couple of different sources** but wanted a bit more variety and my google-fu was failing me. Simon's very helpful response included where he thought they had come from but also told me to search Laager on his blog and it was an eye opener.

   A few of orders later (that escalated somewhat) and I had bought another 9 wagons from various sources for this project and for a couple of other projects. For this project I ended up with; 2 from 1st Corps, 2 from Front Rank, 1 from Redoubt Miniatures and 1 from Wargames Foundry along some screaming women for heckling purposes. This ends up being just less than 2 foot of Laager if you are using the Simon Miller method of counting wagons - must try harder.

*Slightly amended  

 **One of which was later requisitioned by the Romans

Front Rank

Redoubt Miniatures

Front Rank

Wargames Foundry

1st Corps

   I am now in the weird position where I can rank different companies wagons in a single post and while I don't think there are any bad kits in this batch, some deserve a bit of praise. 

   The 1st Corps wagons are my go to place when I first decide I need a wagon, but I do think the lack of variety is a bit of a shame, saying that they go together really nicely. The Redoubt Miniatures wagon was a dream to put together but the other wagons I picked up for my ECW project - coming soon - were a bit more of a puzzle to get built, although, as some of the cheapest wagons on this list, they definitely rank highly. The single Foundry Miniatures wagon went together fairly easily and is a really good basic wagon, but it is the Front Rank wagons that I want to really single out as they were a dream to put together and left me wishing I had bought another one or two**.

   The figures are a mix of the Foundry Germanic women (heartily recommended to me by Simon), a couple from Crusader Miniatures and one or two from Warlord Games. The woman holding a baby in one hand and a Roman helmet in the other was a limited edition figure from Warlord, I think you got free when you placed an order, and I knew I had one somewhere - it turned out I had a few of them. I've still got a few more non-combatant type figures to do for this project but if I keep waiting for everything to be finished I'll never post this up.

**I did but that's a story for another day

Thanks for reading

The rambling post about warmachines and distractions

    I've been building up to this post for a while with multiple bits needing to be finished to make it work. 

   It all started when I had a bit of a tidy up and found I had bought two Black Tree 100 Years War ballista*, these were added to my spreadsheet of unbuilt models and pushed to the top of my to do list, but didn't get any further than being sprayed before they got left on the side.

   I've painted them pretty roughly to match the rest of the collection - it turns out my painting style has got a lot better since then. I doubt these will ever see the table and I still have no idea why I bought them but they are nice to have.

*Still not actually sure when these were actually bought.

   Then just before lockdown I had placed a Gripping Beast order and I added a Scorpion for my Arthurian-British army partly to get into the free postage bracket and partly as a nice stand alone project, this didn't even get to the building stage before I got distracted. 

   The extra character on the left with sword and round shield turned up in my pile of potential a while back, I suspect he is from a Gripping Beast Roman-British command pack I bought a while back but I'm not sure, made sense to paint him at the same time as the crew for the scorpion, though.

   Lastly, we have the plastic Warlord Games Scorpions for my Early Imperial Roman army and it was at this point when I was sitting in my man cave building them ready to slot into my painting backlog and I saw the ballista on the shelf behind me and this weird thought in my head told me to do a post with all 5 warmachines in.

   So off I went and got on with them, until another thought jostled in for attention. One of the things I wanted to do with my projects this year was make these small armies look more like they could be able to move through the landscape, so my cannons (nearly) all have limbers now** and are starting to get ammunition wagons too etc, and the early imperial Roman scorpions shouldn't be an exception (he says ignoring the other 3 weapons for the moment). I've been buying wagons for a Celtic wagon train (Laager) / battlefield obstacle (think Wattling Street) since the first order I placed while in Northumbria and one of those wagons was the Warlord Games Roman/Celtic wagon which looks like a perfect fit for a Scorpion, so the Roman army requisitioned the one I had and got a second in my last order, with a suitable replacement wagon found for the Britons elsewhere. 

**More sitting on my painting table

   I added the auxiliary instead of a slave on the first base as I wanted to emphasise the Roman feel of these units and not make it look like I'm just using a few of my Celtic wagons on the Roman side for a game and while it is a legionnaire unit, it felt more appropriate to have the wagon guard be auxiliary than legionnarie. I plan to paint a few extra auxiliaries to have scattered around the wagons too.

   While the second wagon I left a bit plainer and left a bit of the wagon off to make it look a bit different. I had planned to put a pack mule on the base but found I just didn't have the space, so that will end up being painted at a later date - I have a new plan for it now anyway. 

Thanks for reading