The Riders of Alzheim

 Forgive the very rough nature of these pictures. We got home from a day-and-a-night away in Castlemaine to find a big old cardboard box on the doorstep. I knew immediately what it was. I had to wait until dinner had been eaten and the children put to bed before I could open it though.

These are 11 regiments of Spencer Smith cavalry, three are painted as cuirassiers and the rest as Dragoons and other Chevaux-legere, very kindly donated by a US reader, Mr Gary C_.

More tomorrow.

The Electors Arms

 A little place I visit sometimes.

Building by Dapol, barrels by Rendra.

Alzheimer Jaeger

 Laid low though I have been these past few days by a pernicious cold, I have nonetheless completed the Alzheimer Jaeger. Above the NCO. Below, the whole unit.

Rendra came through yesterday with some 45x40mm plastic bases. I have used most of this sample batch up with basing up a couple of my units as a test. I'm pretty happy so far. The officers are on the 20mm circular bases. The CO is as yet unbased, but will probably go on a cavalry base before long.  I have left the bases unpainted as they are close enough to the base colour of the figures as to render painting them redundant.

Alzheimer Jaeger

Last night I got cracking on some of the Jaeger. In the end I decided on a fairly traditional look for them with their red-faced, green coats. I made a small nod at their Alzheimer origins by giving them white small clothes and red neck-stocks. Having done that I could only further compound the impracticality of the uniform by having each man wear his hair powdered. I mean, you just would, wouldn't you?

 The hat is a bit of a nod to the European light infantry as practised in central Europe; it's meant to be a leather casque. If you look closely, there is a bit of brass edging, doubtless designed to turn a sabre-blow. I'm sure it has saved many a trooper!

Note also (if you wish) the blanket-roll on top of the knapsack in Alzheim Blue. I did that to help tie them to the line infantry.

There you go. Next is another couple of troopers and an officer. I'm hoping to have a dozen or fourteen figures ready for the weekend.

IR#5 La Rosee

 As promised in my last post, a couple of pictures of my latest figures of IR#5 along with the new gunner who got snuck in at varnishing time.

I'm quite please with how the "white" metal fittings look on these as a contrast to the "yellow" metals of the other regiments.

On the subject of test figures like the gunner, I have started painting my lone plastic SSM Hussar. Dashing chap. UPDATE - pics below.

 
I am now (apart form about a dozen command figures) out of Spencer Smith plastic infantry and so as I while away the hours before payday and therefore an order from Spencer Smiths for the metal versions, I will start work on those Minot AWI that I'll be using as Jaeger.

Over the next few weeks I will be able to share some rather exciting news that I have had in the past few days about this project. But just for now, I shall remain a tease.

Artillery Uniform Test Shot

Nothing much today. I'm experimenting with the artillery and painted this fellow in what is a colour test for the rest of the Gunners' uniforms.

The observant among you will note that he is in the traditional Alzheim white small clothes with the red stock whilst his turnbacks are in the armorial pale blue favoured by the Electoral family.

I am ruminating upon the colour the gun carriages ought to be. Baggage wagons, pontoon carts &c would also be this colour. Yellow is out as this is the colour of the Imperial guns. Red contrasts nicely with the pale blue that is going to be the dominant colour of the army. Pale blue would at least go with the theme. Green would clash rather, unless it's a dark green.

Hmmm.

In other news, I've put paint to plastic for IR#5 "La Rosee". These chaps look simply delicious in their pale blue coats with the fuschia-coloured turn-backs. I've only a dozen or so and that will pretty well run me out of plastic line infantry types and I'll be starting to top my units up with metal figures.

However, this does bring me to the point where I'll be starting a light infantry unit out of some Barry Minot plastic AWI American light infantry that I bought of a certain magazine editor/graphic designer chap in a pub some years ago. I've not yet decided whether to paint them on traditional Jaeger colours (Green turned up Red) or to put them into a uniform like say the FreiKorps Lacy (White turned up Yellow).

A nice dilemma.

Converged Grenadiers

 From behind - you'll notice the Leib Grenadier Company has the bag of it's fur cap opver to the right, whie the others have theirs to the left. This is either a singular distinction accorded them as a mark of the status of the regiment or an error on the part of the milliner. You decide.

 From the front, a further distinction of the Leib Regiment is their blue trousers. More commonly, the Alzheimer Foot has white small-clothes.

IR#2 Leibregiment

I just finished blasting the Leibregiment with it's second coat of varnish and thought it was time to put a picture up here at the Duchy.

As you can see, the regiment's uniform is not dissimilar to that of the Bavarian Leibregiment of the Seven Years' War. No mistake there, although it varies in many details, not least the coat colour.

As you will also doubtless notice, the Regiment falls far short of the Grant organisation, being here only 29 figures. I will be rectifying this in due course with metal figures from Spencer Smith unless any more appropriate plastics fall (doubtless to shatter into a million pieces) into my lap.

Normally, I'd have trundled straight on to IR#1, but I've decided to use it's castings, of which there were really only a few, to bring the grenadier companies of Infantry Regiments #3 and #4 to their proper strength of twelve figures.

When they are painted, I'll do a little floor show of all three regiment's companies as a combined Grenadier battalion.

The Beauty of Old Paint

In recent times I have done a fair amount of work on older ministures.

These are usually items I've bought on eBay and decided for one reason or another to touch up. Most recently these have been the Spencer Smith pastics I've been basing my Alzheim army on, but in the past I had bought some old Tradition/Stadden Napoleonics.

These miniatures had all been painted in enamels, the Spencer Smiths rather thickly and the Staddens rather well.

What I did notice on both was that where they had been painted white, the old varnish overlying the paint had aged in such a way as to produce a rather nice "antique" effect as it yellowed. I liked this very much indeed and although in the case of the Staddens I decided to repaint them because I wanted a very 'clean' look for the collection, the Spencer Smiths I am leaving as was.

This will really only show to any extent with IR#2 "Leib" as I am leaving the gaiters and waistcoats white as they were originally were.

I like the effect. It lets me take the miniature where I want it to go while honouring it's past.

What a sentimentalist, eh?

So then, I've just finished all the blue coats for Leib, painted in the facings and am starting the laborious process of black-lining. More to follow.

The Empire

The first twenty-one members of Infanterieregiment Nr 4, "Von Prittwitz". Work will begin tonight on Infanterieregiment Nr 2, "Leib".

In my previous post I talked a little about planning my "Duchy of Alzheim" project. The post was largely about the Alzheimer forces. Now it's time to spend a little time on her old enemy, "The Empire".

First, a little geography and history. The Empire occupies a territory vastly greater than Alzheim, stretching over most of the Balkans which have mostly been won back from the Turk in the South-East, north through the lands of a people very much like the Hungarians of our own world, then west to take in a German-speaking people in the eastern part of Deutschtum whose sole pursuits are pastry-making and then north again to take in varying Slavic peoples in central-eastern Europe.

The period of the Thirty Years War saw Imperial (and Bavarian) armies ravage much of Alzheim more or less simply because they were passing through. Similarly, Imperial armies devastated the Duchy (or Electorate) during the War of the Spanish Succession whilst on their way to do much the same to Bavaria.

Now though, the old Emperor is showing signs of failing and his successor is a mere slip of a girl not yet even married. War clouds gather and unscrupulous Princes plot to tear her patrimony from her.

So then, the Empire is obviously a cartoon of Austria-Hungary. I am thinking of theming the army around the forces that raided through Bavaria in  (I think?) 1742 and thus would have a core of a pair of German and a pair of Hungarian Regiments with quite numerous units of Croats and Pandurs. Likewise, I'd avoid heavy Cavalry and Artillery in favour of a couple of Regiments each of Dragoons and Hussars and just a couple of batteries of light guns.

I have it in mind that the Imperial Commander could call on a couple more Regiments of Line infantry and a siege train if certain campaign events occour.

Build me an Army worthy of Alzheim!

I owe a fair bit to Phil Olley in terms of developing my thinking on war-gaming projects. Specifically I think i'm now thinking of the whole shape of the enterprise rather than just pursuing it on the basis of "ooo, shiny!".


In that spirit, I'd just like to take a little time to put down a high level outline of this Spencer Smith project for the Duchy of Alzheim.

As you are doubtless aware, dear reader, this began a few weeks ago with the chance purchase of a large-ish (about 90-odd figures) lot of Spencer Smith figures on eBay. These were easily arranged into four groups that I took as my first four regiments; something that 'lazy me' quite liked because in terms of figure purchases and painting I was already almost halfway there, so to speak. that's not really been the case, as I've been almost completely re-painting the miniatures, but for me it was an important early psychological boost.

Playing mind games with myself is very important when I am considering painting 'x' number of 53-figure regiments for "The Wargame" rules.

Also, having more or less four regiments to start off with has given me some guidance as to a basic building block of two- to-four regiments so that I may set myself milestones as I go on. I think two regiments is a reasonable level at which to set milestones or, as I like to think of them, "reward points". Work hard young man, and you'll receive your reward. In this case, painting a gun or a couple of command figures.

So now to timelines. Experiments over the past couple of weeks have led me to believe that I can push out about 20 painted SSM infantry in a week of easy-going painting - say about 6-7 hours of actual work. This leads me to think I can put out about one and a half to two regiments in a month. I'll stick with one and a half as I am wary of burn-out.

I think then I can set myself a reasonable deadline of Christmas to get a reasonable force together.

For the Alzheim Army, I've put together the following rough order of battle:

Infantry Regiments
IR#1 Garde (3 x 24 figure battalions)
IR#2 Leib
IR#3 von Browne
IR#4 von Prittwitz
IR#5 La Rosee
IR#6 Ehrbach
Garrison Regiments
GR#1
GR#2
GR#3
GR#4
GR#5 (Invalids)

Cavalry
KR#1 Kurfurst
KR#2 von Roth
DR#1 von Reuss
DR#2 von Waldau
HR#1 von Raabe
In addition an artillery brigade of two battalions each of three field and one howitzer battery. Oh and three light infantry units because I like the montagnards/ miquelets, pandurs and jaeger from the SSM range.
So the target for Chrismas becomes four Regiments, a garrison regiment, a unit of dragoons, some guns and a unit of light infantry. Pretty comfortable considering the Garde, Garrison and light infantry are all 24-figure units.
In my next post, I'll talk about the opposition - The Empire.

Just a quickie

IR#4, "von Prittwitz". These are some samples I painted up last night as a test for how they'd look. Not too bad, I feel.

I have a funny feeling IR#5 (la Rosee) may be the fortunate recipient of Rose-coloured facings.

A Painting Progress Post

 This is one of those "work in progress" posts.

This weekend I finished painting up that part of IR#3 "von Browne". As you can see I had enough figures for one and a half of the four "companies" I'll need for the regiment under the Grant rules. The rest will most likely have to be metals as I've not the plastics to go the whole hog.

 Showing off the drummer with his lace. One of the field officers marches alongside him. Note his deadly pin sword.

I have started work on IR #4, "von Prittwitz". Per "von Browne" it too has the light blue coat, but I shall be changing the small-clothes to white (this will be standard on all Alzheim Line Regiments) and the facings to yellow-buff. That ought to look just right with the pale blue of the coat. I'm very pleased with how the coat looks so far; it's a nice solid block of colour that comes out really nicely against the dark lining-in I've been doing.

The painting so far has all been simple block painting with some lining in to seperate and define areas of colour. It's simple to do and looks nice and bright and is not fussy in the least.

Painting Spencer Smiths

Painting the Spencer Smith infantry has so far been an interesting exercise. I had started intending merely to touch them up, albeit re-painting the dark blue coats in light blue in line with the inspiration provided by IR#2  - see my previous post. That went rather by the board last night as I worked on my first five and in the end, I more or less went for a full re-paint. Curiously, re-painting the miniatures was quite easy, something I attribute to the previous owner having done the hard work in blocking in the areas of the figure I'd need to paint. It was not unlike colouring in.

"Before" shot of a Grenadier of von Browne's Regiment (IR#4).

Re-touched Grenadiers. Note that I changed what had been a conversion with paint of a bearskin to a mitre back to a bearskin again. Just for the heck of it. The skirts of the waistcoat are merely indicated with a lick of black paint. Apart from the dashing light blue coats, I brightened up the facings with some GW Blood Red, overpainted the cartridge belts where the varnish had yellowed them over time and did a great deal of black-lining to try and pop the colours out and to define the rather blurry transitions between objects on the figure.  

There you go, the full 360-degree treatment. I painted on a white-laced 'flamme' on the bearskin and added a strap to the water bottle on the left hip.

I'll be basing them on the Litko laser-cut 3mm ply bases, painted plain old goblin green to protect the fragile pastics. When I opened the box, some of the figures had snapped at the ankles and the odd musket had likewise succumbed, so this was an easy decision to make. Superglue made good the breakages, but I'd not trust it to last forever. One thought that occours is to make at least one figure per base a metal and use it as a handle for those moments when gripping the base itself is inconvenient.

Onward and upward.

The Army of Alzheim

A little more than a week ago I jumped in on an eBay auction and managed to pick up about 90-odd plastic Spencer Smith infantry. They arrived in the post today in pretty good order despite a few breakages due to the age of the material which I have corrected with a bit of superglue.

I have decided that these will form the core of the Alzheim Army, suitably padded out with SSM metals where I can't lay my hands on the plastics.

With no further ado, please let me introduce above the Garde Grenadiers (IR 1). Spendid in canary yellow with red small-clothes and pale blue facings, there are the cream of the army and find their garrison in Alz itself.

The Leib Regiment (IR 2) with their black facings and pale blue coats and breeches are due soon to be issued new colours.

The Grenadier Company of von Brownes' Regiment (Infanterie Regiment 3) brigaded with the replacement Grenadiers for IR 4, von Prittwitz. Both are due to be issued new, pale blue coats per IR 2.

IR 4, von Prittwitz, is, like von Brownes' also needing white gaiters to be issued for parade. The armourers' Rotring Pen will be much in use lining in those elusive uniform features.

Alzheims' one and only gunner tending his guns. He is very likely to be uniformed anew in pale gray with blue distinctions.

UPDATE - The guns are metal SSMs that I've had for some time now.

A Gazeteer of Imaginary Places

Taken from the Journal of an English Tourist who as he rambled from Spa to Spa across the Germanies chanced to find himself on our own dear Alzheim.

One enters the quaintly-named Duchy or Electorate of Alzheim from Bayern via a hitherto unknown minor range of mountains. I was fortunate indeed to find myself in the delightfully inconsequential spa town of Augusts-bad. This was especially fortunate as mine syphilitics were plaguing me dreadfully. As I took the waters (and the wines and the cheeses and indeed the hams) I learned that this hamlet was the creation of the current ruler Augustus II, by all account a lesser son of greater sires. Still quite a pretty little town.

After sojourning there a day or two past the grim fortress town of Rosenthal by road, crossing the Mur Flusse at it's junction with the Grossehaber Flusse, then south on the old Roman Road all the way to Waldau, a medium-sized market town that sits at the foot of the Great Escarpment. I must admit to being a little surprised at how unlike a savage rampart of cruel cliffs this is, being more in the nature of a series of gradually rising slopes and terraces. Experience is the great undoer of Fancy.

Still, we did not stay there for long, just a couple of evenings; long enough to sample the local delights before setting out along the steeply winding road to Gehrkevale, principal town of the Alzheim uplands.

Gehrkevale is the principal arsenal and factory of Alzheim, and a grim place for that. it's people are quite unlike any of the others of the country. They are small and neuraesthenic, nothing like the hardy mountaineers of the alpine counties or the bluff, hearty peasants of the northern plains. We did not dally long. The beer was sour, the sausages small and the women best left undescribed.

Wishing we had taken the road that follows the course of the escarpment, we descended with all decent rapidity to the Capital of Alz.

This modern city was laid out by the Great Duke (or Elector), the current rulers' great-grand-sire in the Year of our Lord 1642 on the ruins of the old city, so greviously sacked and burned by Bavarian and Imperial troops during the Thirty Years' War. The work of the father was continued by the son and grandson, and now the City has much of the air of Versailles as was the fashion at the time of the Sun King. Nor did these wise rulers neglect the defences of their Capital, being as it is fortified to the last degree possible of the Military Art.

In Alz may be had ever sophisticated Entertainment or Vice and we availed ourselves fully. Doctor Smith took it upon himself to pass beyond apres un excess des femmes. As one does.

I myself was again laid low after stubbing my toe by the sheer variety of my sexual diseases and thus feared to travel east to Grunwald. I feared the doubtless damp marshlands and gloomy, spirit-depressing, forests of the region (and it's mysterious southern counties of the Uckermark) would have had a fatal effect on myself and at least two other members of our party.

Perhaps instead we shall make out way further south to the Princes' little summer place in the south - Sans Souci, he calls it. Perhaps then onto the Italies?

The journal breaks off at this point not to be resumed. We can only wonder at the cause.

The Military Geography of Alzheim

Alzheim is a medium sized, middle-ranking state in the middle of southern Germany.

It is approximately 400 kilometers along it's east-west axis and about 250 kilometres north to south.

To the west and south curve the mighty Alzgebirgs beyond which lie the realms of the Gallispania and of the Italians respectively. These are intersected by five mountain passes which the military geographer may divide into First, Second and Third Class roads. The first and second class roads are guarded by old fortresses that date back to the first half of the fifteenth century; the First class roads are guarded as at the town of Finke by latterly erected modern fortresses to M. Vauban's system of fortification. At the same time as these fortifications were built, the old forts on the secondary roads were graced with diverse outworks; Ravelins &c.

 The old Fortress at Finke.

To the North and East run the gentle loops and meanderings of the Mur Flusse. This river's great flow is fed by tributary rivers arising in the Alzgebirgs, the Themse and Grossehaber. Paralleling their course, but not joining the system is the Isar which runs it's course to the south and east, creating the Waldsee and the marshy, forested country in the hills East of Grunwald. This swamp eventually finds it's way via a network of small lakes into the Neider Iser which gently waters the Uckermark in the South-East of the country.

These rivers are the highways of the country and so are guarded as potential invasion routes by the bluff-built fortress of Prenzlau which guards against the sundry Princes of the Germanies, the small fortress at Rosenthal (which watches the Bavarians) and those of Grunwald and Gunzbad which along with the Grunwald marshes are the Eastern bulwark in case the Empire should ever attempt to replicate the depredations of the Thirty Years' War.

The singular feature of Alzheim is the Great Escarpment which cuts across the South-western portion of the land. This is Alzheim's national redoubt, which, although not seriously fortified since Mediaeval times, has nonetheless been the refuge of the people as recently as the 30 Years' War when Bavarian and Imperial armies ravaged across the land.

By Crom, Post Number 450!

 Reaper Miniatures barbarian-types. I think this one is meant to be evil...

... and this one's meant to be a Hero.

Never would have guessed it, would you?

These are examples of the black undercoat technique in all it's glory, usually with a base, mid and highlight colour. The skin on Mr Muscles up top has about six highlights on it, all very thin, to get the smoothest transition between highlights I could manage. Sepia ink glazes to tie the layering together.  Looking at them, I realise how much I owe Marvel Comics and Dark Horse (and Games Workshop) in the visualisation of these figures!

Noodling about on the Net

As in the title, I was poking about on the internet and stumbled across this:

http://martianchess.blogspot.com/2010/11/royal-armies-of-hyborean-age-1975.html

Which led me to the back of a 1985 issue of Marvel Comics "The Savage Sword of Conan" featuring on the back cover an advertisement for players to join the play by mail campaign "Hyborean War".  You could "Join the tens of thousands nationally who are enjoying the vivid interactive games only made possible in the last few years by recent advances in computer technology.

And then there is this:

http://conanvault.ign.com/wiki/index.php/Hyboria_Map

And this:

http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Webstuff/hobbies/armatihyboria.html

And to think I was foolish enough to plan on working on some of my French cavalry and Anglo-Prussian infantry some time in the near future.

Help! I'm all over the place.

I Explore My Inner Nerd

Small venture into the Star Trek universe - who knows where it might take me.

http://finalfrontiers.blogspot.com/

Once a Knight...

I'm taking a little break at the moment from painting hordes of ACW soldiers and putting a little extra time into painting up a few figures for my "Great Siege" collection. what you see below is my basic cavalry figure, a mounted Knight of St John. Visual references are few and far between, so I've gone with what feels like a reasonable representation based on an Osprey plate from (I think) "The Warriors of the Cross" or the "Knights of Christ" or some similar title and the cover of the issue of Practical Wargamer featuring the Siege of Fort St Elmo.

Note that the lance may well be just a little too long, but I think it looks better that way.

Willie Spanish Mounted Arquebusier from the Spanish Conquest range with added 10cm steel lance and a Castaway Arts shield.

Same guy, different view.

I am discovering a renewed interest in painting and will probably spend the next few weeks painting a few comrades for him. And some opponents.

In other "news" - Is it just me, or is the blogosphere irrevocably doomed with no hope of recovery?

Now I have your attention, I just wanted to ask what's the deal with these "Stylish Blogger Awards" people are nominating each other for? Do we realise that these are structured pretty much like chain letters - everyone nominated is invited to nominate a further four blogs for the award. Therefore, to get one's own award, one has to finger another four folks.

Let it go on for long enough and everyone will have one which rather detracts from the cachet, does it not?

Really, how can getting an award under these circumstances be anything other than meaningless.

Post Script, I do have other issues with the blogosphere that I may explore at a later date.

Constructing Fort St Elmo

I thought I'd put up a couple of WiP shots to let you all know how I'm going about building Fort St Elmo. As you can see, the main structure of the fort is just polystyrene that i salvaged from a construction site. It's 10 cm/4" thick. I've just cut it out with a thin-bladed saw I have and then carefully sliced the "batter" of the walls so they slope. That then gets smoothed off and generally tidied up with a block and 120 grit sandpaper.

The base and fighting platform are both 3mm/ 1/8th" MDF cut to shape with my jig-saw. I got the shapes right by tracing around the top and bottom of the balsa with a marker. Make sure that there is a couple of millimetres' overlap on the top layer to produce the "lip" that you see on many vauban-type fortifications just below the ramparts.

The sentry box is just a piece of balsa rod with a half a foam ball stuck on.

The figure is a 30mm "Willie" who is standing in for the whole Turk army.

Building Fort St Elmo

Havin some time to spare this weekend, I decided to start building fort St Elmo for a Great Siege game some day. You'll note it's main structure is made from large slabs of polystyrene used in housing insulation that I scavenged from various building-sites!

The figure I am using for scale purposes is a 30mm Willie from the Colonial "Dolly Grey" range.
A general view of the fort showing counter-clockwise from the left; the cavalier; the main fort itself; the original ravelin covering the main gate and; the hastily constructed ravelin of earth and fascines.
The cavalier. I'm intending to build this as a two-tiered gun platform. In it's final state it's going to be somewhat higher than the fort as was it's real-life counterpart.
The landward side of the fort. I have not yet decided whether to just cut a gateway in the curtain behind the ravelin or to put it in the recess behind the orillon of the lower demi-bastion. The former would be easier, the latter more accurate.

The next major piece of work will be to sand down the exterior faces of the fort to give the characteristic "batter" of these kind of works. After that I will need to cut out the interior courtyard of the main fort and line it with some foamcore in which I am going to be cutting numerous arches to simulate the forts casemates.

The whole work is about a metre long (or a little longer depending on how you space out the outworks) by about 60 centimetres wide.

Terrain and Undercoats

Big terrain as it is made on the exhibition circuit as I know it tends to make bulk use of polystyrene as a keleton with any number of different skins and finishes. One similarity they all seem to have is the use of a black undercoat and then sucessivly lighter coats of base colouration put on with a four-inch brush. Has anyone ever done their terrain on a white undercoat and then used progressively thinner and darker washes to get their base effects? I'm going to repaint some earthworks over the next few days as an experiment.

Fort St. Elmo

Where better to start than with Fort St Elmo? It seems to me that there have been some misconceptions concerning its' trace as reported by Ernle Bradford in his book on the Siege.

The fort is described as a star fort with three outworks in the shape of a pair of ravelins (one built in some haste of timber and earth) and a cavalier. Now, how are we to interpret this?

Take the image above, an engraving of a fresco of Matteo Perez d'Aleccio. The fort under siege is St. Elmo. Note that it is simply a star fort. There is a structure to the side of the fort closest the peninsula-tip, and another to the left of the fort.

The image below is a modern interpretation of this image and others. I believe that what we have here is a star fort with a ravelin at it's left, another "ravelin" or more properly a "rivelino" (see the great "ravelin" at Sarnzello) oriented at face the tip of the peninsula. I'm not yet persuaded one way or the other that the tower-like structure is in fact a cavalier (or raised battery - the battle accounts don't read that way to me) or whether that might be the structure linking the two named outworks being pierced for artillery and arquebuses to command the ditch. Certainly I think that the tall structure still exists, having been integrated at a later date into the greater structure of the fort. Accounts of the siege do stress that once the Turks took it, they were able to dominate the interior of the fortification, as the Ravelin they captured was taller than the fort.

Discuss!

Snap Out of It

Time to set some goals here, people.

Time to put a stop to the drift.

Goals, then. Right.

By the end of 2012, I want to have done the following:

*Made real progress in the "1565" project.
*Re-started the "Old School ACW" project.
*Finished all of my outstanding French Cavalry regiments
*Built at least three British, Prussian or Bavarian Infantry regiments and a pair of Cavalry regiments to go with them.

Rough outline of the above as follows:

"1565" - to start with a skirmish-sized force to see how I go painting my assorted Knights of St John/Spanish and some Turks. Working out some appropriate army structures for them. Pausing and seeing if I am really interested in starting to build them. Building some anciliary bits to go with them. I would like to build some Renaissance artillery fortifications just for the fun of it. I am looking for an excuse to construct an earthern "star fort" from polystyrene. I am also itching to build some of the Langdon 1:1200 Renaissance warships. They look terrific. I have some experience building his Napoleonic ships, so I know what I'm in for. Where might this take me? I am pondering a loosely-based-on-reality solo campaign set in the eastern Med in that era. Might it culminate with a "Great Siege"? Who can tell. Certainly not me, but I have greatly enjoyed reading about it. I've also been daydreaming about Landsknechts, perhaps just as a painting/collecting thing, but again, who knows where the renaissance may take me. Maybe I also want some of the old Hinchcliffe Winged Lancers, too.

"Old School ACW" - I feel like a bad parent. So much effort went into the project, and I felt so bad when I ran out of time with only one undocumented game played. At the very least, I need to get a few games in, and at best, I need to follow the project plan I laid out in the blog to it's conclusion. I have at least enough miniatures in stock here to build the project up to it's divisional-sized milestone. Let's do it, eh?

"The Eighteenth Century" - This has been on a care and maintenence basis for longer than I care to think. Not good. I have one complete and six part-completed French Cavalry regiments. Surely I can finish off another three from my existing lead pile alone? Likewise a recent audit has revealed many many infantry who could fight my French Infantry - if only they were painted... My ambition is to get playable forces together to play some of the smaller scenarios from "The Annexation of Chiraz" and "The Raid on St Michiel".

At a rough guess, that's about 340-400 Olley-points over about 20 months. That's less than one toy soldier or horse a day; at my painting speed (900-milliolleys to one Olley per day), that's a pretty acheivable amount.

Part two of this post is titled "The Lonely War Gamer". I'll keep it brief as it is largely born out of a fairly large disappontment.

In recent months I had decided it was all very well to build these damn' huge armies but really, what was the point of it all if they just sat around in their plastic boxes in the car-port. So, I decided to get out there and join a war gaming club. Your actual, honest to god wargaming club. None of my friends here in Melbourne are war gamers, indeed, my nearest and dearest friend I am sure regards it as only a step above dressing up as a lady, although what's wrong with that I'll never know.

My nearest club dabbles in almost anything other than straight historical games, so I thought, OK, go with it and finally got around to painting/touching up the Riders of Rohan army I'd been slowly putting together after reading Mike Siggins review of GW's "War of the Ring". I read the rules, tried to become familiar with them and finally went along.

Well imagine that of all the people there playing the various flavours of Warhammer, only two were doing the Ring thing and they were about 14 or so. Nice kids, but, really, do I really want to be spending my precious spare time doing this? One of the other guys there told me that this was a dead gaming genre pretty much and that GW was only promoting it as much as it was to recoup the massive license fee they'd paid.

I was generally ignored as I wandered about the room, hopefully trying to insert myself into a conversation here and there... Fair enough, they all knew each other and were mates and I was just some guy, but I'm not sure it's how I'd have treated a noob.

So I'm thinking fuck it, I'll be a soloist from now on.

Might be selling some Riders of Rohan before long. Painted to a basic wargames standard. 48 infantry and 34 cavalry. Another 20 infantry and 30 or so cavalry unpainted.

The Great Siege of 1565

Over the past few months I have indulged myself to no small extent by buying old issues of Practical Wargamer.

No disrespect intended to any gentlemen publishing wargaming journals in these latter days, but I must nail my proverbials to the mast and declare this one of the finest wargaming publications ever.

There. I've said it. It's not without it's faults, but I think these are far and away outweighed by the general excellence of the content. Specifically, I am thinking of the regular columns and in particular that of John Treadaway's Fantasy Facts. Suffice to say, he was not one to hold back and call crap when he saw it. Count me a fan-boy.

Ian Weekly was a very regular contributor, mostly promoting his business which was fair enough, but every now and then he came up with an interesting article.

That could have been better expressed!

One that has really caught my eye was his account of the Siege of Malta in 1565 for which he built a model of Fort St Elmo, seemingly for his own pleasure. What I think I really liked about the project was his use of "Willie" figures from the Spanish Heritage (Conquistadores) range for the Knights of St John and various Islamic figures (to use a pretty broad description!) for the Turks along with some one-offs from John Ray which I think might have been the Turkish gun crews.

Now I don't know why, but this has really gotten the juices flowing for some reason. I mean, actual books have been purchased. Old magazines have been trawled for on eBay and bought. Money has been laid down with Spencer Smiths' for samples of Pizarros' men.

Now, I don't have the services of Mr Ray*, but I think that this might be a fun little side project. I don't recall if I've alluded much to my current situation, but I have really very little spare time these days with baby number two. Painting time is about 20-30 minutes a day as I get ready for work, and most of that is going into my Riders of Rohan**. Heaven knows, I'm abandoning precious sleep time to write this tonight.

The charm is there for me. Elizabethans versus Turks with fairly primitive artillery, early fortifications and a folorn hope. The thought of gaming or role-playing the corsair raids of the knights against Turkish shipping. Turkish raids on Christian towns for the purpose of slaving. There's a lot there for the wargamer. I'm excited at the possibilities of campaigning with the Knights of St John against the Turks, as well. The fighting could take me across the Med to North Africa, or across the Agean to Rhodes.

For figures, Eureka do useful ranges of Turk Corsairs as well as a nice mortar and Spanish and Portugese and Gendarmes who could easily stand in for any of the Christian players in the theatre. Just in case I go beyond a few "Willies"*** to whet my appetite. Navwar do Galleys and galleasses in 1:1200

Do I sound enthusiastic? I think I am. Now's a matter of honing down I think, and finding the central thread that I can follow through this period. Happy days.

*More's the pity!!!
**34 Cavalry painted or touched up from various eBay purchases. 20 infantry complete and another 28 on the stocks ready to begin...
***And of course, now I have a dremel tool, they will present no problems.

The Scrounger

I was in my facvoured hobby shop recently and the owner and I got to talking about the kind of customers he gets. It turns out he had a label for me, too.

I am a bargain hunter.

He has a table of cut price items at the back of the store which I always make a bee-line for as there is always something interesting to be seen. I always go there before I take in any of the more-regularly-priced items on the shelves.

I'm not particularly upset at ebing viewed in this way, because I am not just a bargain hunter, I'm more of a scrounger.

I have been quietly buying Lord of the Rings miniatures on eBay over the past year. I was interested in their mass battles rule set and wanted to assemble a large Riders of Rohan and an Uruk Hai army to have a go with. Add to the mix that my "local" games club only does GW games, I thought well, why not?

Long story short, I suppose I have assembled a pretty respectable Eored of about 75 mounted and 60 or so dismounted, of whom about half are painted to varying degress of finish. This has cost about a quarter of what walking in through the doors of my local GW barn and emptying my wallet.

Proud to be a bargain-hunting scrounger.

Got to go - I need more Uruks. I hope they're half-painted. Stops me having to assemble, clean and undercoat the buggers.

The Red and the Blue

More or less on a whim I went and bought some HE Artillery just to see what they were like.
I bought three - the Traditional Charles XII Gun, Light Artillery Gun and Heavy Artillery Gun which you can see here. The Charles XII Gun has the barrel cast in one piece with the carriage and although the detail is a little heavy in places is not too bad. The imaginatively named Light Artillery Gun and Heavy Artillery Gun are very fine. Detail on the carriages is very simple - for example whatever metal work there is i have simply painted on myself. Nonetheless all the pieces are very slim and fine. The barrel of the Heavy Gun in particular is really delightful. All three guns repay careful clean-up as there is some evidence of mould wear especially around the axles and on the muzzle of the Charles XII Gun. this is nothing you can't clean up with a jewellers' file, though.

By comparison, the SSM Field Gun recast from the original plastic weapon is a much more clumsy affair, nonetheless, quite a satisfying little model. I was very pleased how the gun tubes came up over a green base-coat. Once again, the detail on the carriage was scanty and I ended up just painting it on.
While I was feeling whimsical, I bought a load of HE sample infantry on the basis of a couple of blog posts from Mr Preece and Mr Schwartz. These are Swedish Infantry on the march and as you can see, they have a lovely dioramic quality. I am put in mind of vertain scenes that have been put together by talented flats painters like Mr Christian Rogge. Warning, this site contains images of pures wargamers' porn.
What to do with them, though? I have been tempted with my new copy of Anton Hoffman plates on the Bavarian Army of "The Blue King", I must say.