Royal Artillery but smaller

    As Operation Panic Paint started to draw to a close and I lost what little focus I had and started to just paint whatever came to hand*, I did manage to tip some more useful units onto the desk to keep myself at least in sight of the right track. As I mentioned with the Napoleonic French cannon, I felt like a gun a side would make for a more interesting regular table top game, so I wanted to make sure I finishe done for the other side too.

*Yeah . . .

   This Royal Artillery cannon plus limber and crew came in the same order as the French one, from Essex Miniatures and I painted it in the same colour recipe as my 28mm one.

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ECW Dragoons - No Added Dragons

    Carrying on the Dragoon theme to get a cheap joke, I thought I would finish off the last figures I had for my Parliamentarian force for my 15mm English Civil War army. As I mentioned last summer when I painted the infantry, I bought myself two small starter forces so I could test the theory, but only got as far as painting the infantry for one side. If my painting time does entirely dry up like I'm half expecting it to, I won't be finishing the second side for this force any time soon, but I've got them prepped ready for any spare moments as I would love to see them on the table this year.

   The figures are from Essex Miniatures and I've given them a dark red jacket so that they don't match any other unit I have planned. While the colonel and horse holder are in slightly more generic clothing.

While this is the last I've bought for my 15mm Parliamentarian force, I'm not counting it as complete for my tracker as I will be buying more at some point soon - especially if I can get the other side painted and on the table.

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6th Light Dragoons

    The final push of Operation Panic Paint went much better than planned, however, as my old job wound down and my new one started up what I forgot to get done was the photos of units as they were finished, so nothing new made it onto the blog. I've had a spare bit of time so I've gone back and tried to line up some posts to show what I finished towards the end of March.

   In this post we have a mix of fictional units from two very different sources. If you've read the Matthew Hervey series and the Temeraire series you'll know where I am coming from.

   First up are two units of British Light Dragoons from the fictional (at this point in history) 6th Light Dragoons from the Matthew Hervey series of books, which I am only a few books into currently. In the novels they were at Waterloo, so I figured it would be cool to have some units to represent them. The figures are from Essex Miniatures.

   Last up is a Light Dragoon Dragon rider. Let me explain. The Temeraire series is set in the Napoleonic wars and the author likes the idea that even in alternative history there are events that need to happen, however, what is different is that there are dragons. Without giving any plot away, there is a dragon corp as an extra wing of every nation's military and I've wanted to do something with this since reading the books a few years back. I've gone for a light dragoon on a small dragon (from Alternative Miniatures) to represent one of the messenger dragons rather than a front line battle dragon. I'm pretty sure the dragon riders in the books wore different uniforms, but that's not something that I was worried about in my army.

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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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The Nassau Question

    Being a bit* of a butterfly in all aspects of my life, be it hobby or historical interests etc mean that the subject that I am reading everything I can find about and making detailed plans for how to make it part of my hobby one week, could be a barely remembered idea a few weeks later. That includes the subject of this post, the Nassau.

*Understatement

   When I initially planned to do bits of the Waterloo conflict in 15mm I had made plans on which units I needed to represent units at different points for different scenarios and it became clear that I needed the 2rnd Nassau. A regiment's worth were ordered from Essex Miniatures following my company as a single unit method, bases were magnetised as place holders and put into my "British" box and the figures were put into my backlog. Move on a year and with the French origins of the regiment firmly in my head, there is a very confused Mike trying to work out why I was putting them in the wrong box.

   But back to painting; I'm a tad surprised that these have been painted and are being blogged about at this point as there are at least two other Napoleonic projects that I've marked as higher priority, but I was sticking figures to lolly sticks and fancied doing a quick test unit to see what they looked like and I got carried away.

  There is a minor risk that these are the French era uniforms and not the British but I'm not an expert in spotting the differences so I'm not 100%, the key thing here is that the unit is recognisable for what it is and won't be mixed up on the board.

   I've painted a command figure to represent the Colonel or player, a unit of Grenadiers (with an extra 2 elements simply because I had the figures and it made no sense not to paint them while I was going through this project), 4 units of line and 2 units of voltigeurs (with extra elements as well).

   If I can get a cannon for the "British" and some horse painted for each side I'll have more than enough to do a test game. Back to the painting desk.

I'm also counting this as my second finished project of the year project of the year.

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Answering Napoleon's Call

    Carrying on with what I have named Operation Panic Paint, is another big project that I wanted to get finished off, as it feels like the win at the end of each batch is a lot smaller than you get with other projects, and I really want to see them on the table asap, the 15mm Napoleonic Waterloo French. These are the last figures that I need (if the plan works) for my planned La Haye Sainte scenario, which will now mean I have representatives from 2 regiments (with a unit representing a company*) of French line, vs a regiment of KGL 2rnd Light holding the farm itself.

*Although I am wondering if I should double up the figure count

   This post is another one of those ones where the figures I am blogging about have been supplemented by figures finished previously that didn't get their own post at the time.

   First up is a whole regiment's worth of men**. I've been slowly putting finished models on the shelf behind me in a less organised fashion than this so seeing them all lined up properly feels really good. Represented (and subject to change as I'm not sure if I'll end up adapting anything) is a command figure, command stand (which will probably replace a stand in the grenadiers), the grenadiers, 4 units of line, then 2 units of voltigeurs - totalling 77 men in a painted regiment.

**Using the analogy above

   While I was working on the new regiment, I also included the last figures needed for my first one, and to be honest, I'm not sure why I didn't just suck it up and finish these before. Once you get past the white step, they aren't actually that hard to paint. These were painted just before the Goths and include the first dog that I decided needed to be on a unit base.

   This is also a post where I admit that Operation Panic Paint encouraged me to get carried away and add new stuff to my backlog, in this case, a cannon, with associated crew and limber and the pair of mounted colonels to act as commanders for each regiment as I am toying with an idea, seen above. The cannon will make regular games a bit more interesting as my French collection was just infantry at that point***.

***barring an experiment in cavalry I am going to carry out

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Ere The Sun Rises!

   Following quick on the tail of the big Goth project is a smaller batch, mostly because I needed to keep my motivation up, of Riders of Rohan. I think I'm right in saying this is the last box worth that I need for my planned game, but as I have 3 more boxes worth to go, it won't be the last you see of regular riders.

   Nothing hugely exciting to say other than I tried a new horse colour recipe. 

   Next I probably should have started on the Royal Guard for this force, but instead I've gone headfirst into finishing off two more fairly big projects . . .

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