Imagineering

Hey, I’ve been uncommonly quiet over the past week and a bit.

I’m sort of in between orders from RSM – having run out of Dragoon castings to paint - so I’m painting a few other bits and pieces.

Speaking of that latest RSM order (which went out on June the 15th), it looks like a very cavalry-oriented time is coming on for me. I’ll discuss them in a little detail:

3 x S1-105 English Trooper Charging (I like to use these as my squadron-officers these will be for the Bavarian Dragoons)
12 x S2-109 French Light Dragoon (I’ve finally caved in and admitted to myself that I desperately want a squadron of Schomburg Dragoons)
4 x S5-022 Prussian Gunner in Waistcoat (I’ll be painting these as some Infantry regiment or other to assist a couple of gunners manning a battalion gun – a bit of an experiment, we’ll see how it goes)
6 x S5-101 Prussian Hussar in Mirliton (I decided I wanted to paint that snazzy-looking Prussian Hussar Reg’t who were all dressed in black)
11 x S6-104 Austrian Hussar in Busby (re-inforcements for the Croats, and the first of two squadrons)
8 x S6-105 Austrian Dragoon Trooper (to become the residue of the second Squadron of my Bavarian Dragoons)
26 x LH-005 Galloping Horse - Legs Spread (I’ll be painting a lot of horsies!)


I have alluded to this a bit in my previous post where I seem to have a lot of French odds and ends on the table. I’m working up toward a commitment I made to Bill P to get some troops painted for a 1:10 Fort Ticonderoga game that he and some other fellows are putting together for 2008, being as it is the 250th anniversary of the battle.

This project will let me paint up a whole pile of castings that were just gathering dust and give my French and Indian war collection a bit of a kick on – which it has been needing for ages now. I’m quite excited by this one, and I’m thinking I really ought to get the new troops blooded before they climb into a big cardboard box and fly to the US!

I’ve really been looking closely at my RSM French castings. I think they could easily stand in for some Spanish and Italian regiments of the Italian phase of the War of the Austrian Succession. Just thinking and imagineering as I flip through the pages of my Stephen Manley booklets…

New Recruits. Breakers of the peace beware!

Alzheim troops experiment with the newfangled three-deep firing line while the Grenadier Company of the Languedoc Regiment practices it's bayonet drill.

Some of the men appear to be training in their waistcoats only!

For shame! Whatever next? Gunners shedding their coats in the Service of their Pieces?

Dragoon Horse

I'll make another and pop him (her?) on the same base for my horse holder to - er - hold while his mates are off playing.

I'm getting just a little better at manipulating the greenstuff. I hope!

Introducing Friedrich August 2

Kurfurstin Dragoons - progress report

It's been a while since I'd gotten my new Dragoon regiment out and "played" with it.

Here they are then as they stand at the moment; the dismounted "B" Squadron is skirmishing on the outskirts of Strudelburg whilst the mounted "A" Squadron surges past them to drive back the enemy Croats (out of the picture) who've been attempting to worm their way into the village.

At least, that's what's going on in my imagination.

Kurfurstin Dragoons Drummer

Finished him off last night while watching a really bad horror film - "Descent". Six women go caving and fall foul one by one (naturally) to a bunch of devolved troglodytes. One accidentally injures another and in her turn is vengefully wounded and left to die.

Nice ethics, I have to say. Another play on the torture agenda that "24" is so keen to push?

Certainly it gave me the motivation to concentrate on painting.

Strange to say, I have no information on Bavarian Cavalry musicians, so I just painted him in the same uniform as his fellows.

Teaser

Here's a little teaser for you. I got bored tonight watching TV, so I chopped up a Dragoon at last and turned him into a drummer for my Kurfurstin Dragoon regiment.

He has since been undercoated.

Almost completed those French

It's been a slow painting week so far. I'm nearly finished with these French troops who could as well be from the Compagnies Franches de la Marine or from the Languedoc Regiment. I like the idea of them being the picquests and Grenadiers of the Languedocs quite a bit. Time will tell.

Just to throw out a query, who thinks that any French regiment in north America had it's Grenadiers in Bearskins? I know of one re-enactment group that does this, and that there is a description of British troops plucking the "plumes" from the hats of French Grenadiers after Quebec, but it seems that this is too early in the Seven Years' War for many of the French infantry to be wearing this king of head-gear.

Opinions?

Painting White 2

This afternoon, I've gotten the white painting completed, and I've just finished off the facings. Next will be the remaining belts and the muskets.

I am resisting so many of my regular painting habits at the moment..!

I hate to do this to you all, but they look much better in the flesh!

Painting White

I'm gearing up to run a small side-project over the next 12 months that ought to see me painting about 72 french infantry. It's for a demonstration game in the US - basically I'll be sending my troops to stand in for me! So, keeping in mind that they'll be representing me, I thought I'd try to give them a better-than-normal paint-job. My goal is to more accurately portray the gris-blanc coats the French wore and to do more justice to the surface detail sculpted into the clothing of my favoured RSM miniatures.

This image gives a pretty fair indication of what I've acheived to far and how the figures look at "life-size". Click on the image for a much larger (and less flattering?) picture.

The effect was acheived by first undercoating in white from a spray-can, washing over in thinned black ink to provide all the shading and then highlighting. My first highlight shade is an off-white done with Vallejo "Buff" and white in a roughly 1:3 ratio applied from the top of the figure down as a heavy "damp-brush with a large brush. The next highlight is the remains of the first shade still adhering damply to my palette with an additional squirt of white mixed into that. This is then more lightly damp-brushed down the figure again from top to bottom. The final step will be to take a little white, slightly thinned, and applied to the most prominent "tops" of details.

The overall effect I hope will be to produce a figure that will appear to be lit from the top. The dry/damp brushing picks up the surface detail quite nicely. I'm fairly confident the final highlight will tidy things up and make the final effect look less dry-brushed, as too will the more conventionally layered painting effects that I hope to obtain painting the smaller areas of facings, belting, faces and so on.

I am tossing up matt or at least satin varnishing these. With the gloss varnish I normally use, you do seem to lose subtle detail.

I ought to be able to get the first eight finished today - along with some Strudelburg bits as well - and get another picture up tonight.

Painting and Converting

Well, last night I finished off the last couple of figures to complete my dismounted dragoons. I’m painting an extra one to be a horse-holder. Once that’s done, I’m going to make sadlery for a pair of horses in more static poses from Green Stuff and mate them up on the one base to represent the rider less mounts of the company.

On a related thought, I’ve been looking at the Austrian grenadiers with a mind to turning them into dismounted Horse Grenadiers (yes, I know I was only going to have the one dismounted troop, but my mind wandered…) and I think with a bit more Green Stuff I could sculpt false boot-tops. The protruding gaiter-top could be painted white and passed off as a boot-stocking. I’ll have a fiddle and see how it goes.

Speaking of converting things, I really MUST have a go at producing a mounted drummer for the dragoons. Is there a nice online picture "somewhere" that might give me an idea how such an instrument might "sit"?

Painting. I have become a firm convert to the black undercoat method. My painting seems to go so much easier when I do it this way. This is especially true when I am painting with blue – my Bavarian Grenadiers have been a breeze to paint so far. Three to go. Red is more of a problem, but I find that by the time I have finished putting the highlights on, the patchiness of the base-coat has become rather a non-issue.

Again on painting; does anyone here paint for hours at a time? I’ve tried and failed miserably. I’ve gotten enthused at the idea of having a day off work where I sit down for eight hours and get huge amounts of work done on a huge number of figures. I always wind up getting bored and going out to buy a book or something.

For me the most productive painting time is the 30 minutes I take while I’m getting ready to go to work in the morning. I just put 2-3 colours on 2-3 figures and things seem to move along quite nicely.

What’s your experience?

Kurfurstin Dragoons

Dismounted Dragoons from the Kurfurstin Regiment stand to in a picket line with the Horse Grenadier Troop in close support behind them.

What I've been up to recently.

Just so you don’t think I’ve become a complete Roman, I thought I might let you know I’m still here slopping paint any old how onto miniatures.

So far this month I’ve finished painting 9 grenadiers and an NCO for the Bavarian Leib Regiment, 5 dismounted Bavarian dragoons, a Grenzer, five infantry to round out a French regiment whose name escapes me at the moment and a single Garde Francaise – I suppose he’s the first figure in rounding this regiment out.

I’m constructing another house for Strudelberg with another still in it’s box. I’ve another half dozen or so infantry in various stages of completion who I hope to finish this weekend.

I’ll spend the rest of the month on the Saxon LeibGrenadiers, and throw in the odd Roman as I go on for variety!

I’ll try to get some photos up soon.

I promise.
Really.

OT - Carry on Up the Tiber

I decided to create a new blog in order to keep a journal of all my doings Roman and Wargames-related.

I do have a tidy mind, sometimes.

If you want to take a look, just click here.

I've put the first post up today.

Your comments and feedback are most welcome.

"New" Reviews

I've neen updating my "Rants and Raves" blog today.

You may be familiar with a couple of them if you've been reading "Battle Games".

I finished another building for Strudelburg on Friday night, and bought a couple more on Saturday. I ought to be able to put a big tick in the "completed" box for this element of the Strudelburg project soon.

Purchased a couple more cans of spray-paint to finish the buildings - they just don't paint themselves, you know! Also bought a couple of fine brushes; all my others were worn out from slapping paint onto the Leib Grenadier Garde and were useless for doing any black-lining. A most distressing situation which had stopped me painting for most of the week!

Leib Grenadier Garde - fluff

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a long while will know that one upon a time, I started to build the Saxon Leib Grenadier Garde.

I've been home sick the past couple of days and being bored, was rummaging about in the moderately-large piles of RSM miniatures I have had stockpiled here. Well, what should I unearth but a pile of RSM Prussian Grenadiers. Enough to do the LGG at a strength of about 60 figures. Nothing loath I began.

I spent all day Friday cleaning, priming and basing the figures. Odd moments I've had spare today have gone toward painting the yellow bits on a few of the figures.

I just had to have a parade. So here we have the battalion of the Saxon Leib Grenadier Garde marching past in column of companies.

UPDATE: Progress pic added. I've painted all the yellow parts on the figures and am well on the way to painting their red coats. Next I think will come the black-lining followed by some tidy-ups.

UPDATE 2: It's a public holiday here in Australia (ANZAC Day) and I have managed to wangle things so I am home alone and can spend the whole day painting.

*sigh*

Here's hoping I get the coats painted and lots of black-lining done.

I'll add a progress picture tonight.

Horsies

Here's a picture of the Kurfurstin Regiment as she stands at the moment - Stokes; this one's for you!

No more pictures of this regiment until it's a lot more complete. This week I'll be working on a conversion to a trooper to turn him into a drummer for this regiment.

The other troopers are undercoated and ready to go as are the other eight dismounted troopers. I've some horses in more sedate poses standing by to represent the ... er... discarded mounts.

Strudelberg

Here is a picture of Strudelberg as she stands today. Another couple of buildings ought

to round things out a bit.

Dismounted Dragoons

Well, this weekend I didn't get around to a solo game, but I did manage some painting and photography.

First up we have fromt and rear views of the RSM didmounted dragoon. The one on the left is the Austrian (or in my case the Bavarian!) figure - that on the right is a Prussian who I'll be painting as a Bavarian anyway as he is what I have handy!

Alzheim History

I'm amazed at the moment by the number of mythical countries that have sprung up on line in recent times. It is beginning to seem to me that you need an atlas more than a search engine to navigate their variegated terrains.

Alzheim is one such mythical country.

It's funny though that the Duchy never was conciously conceived as being a blog with a country name and a map and carefully worked out uniforms. I really admire the people who have the disciplined forethought to plan their countries, create gorgeous maps and design beautiful uniforms. It's not something that my scatterbrained thinking has ever really lent itself to, more sadly for me, I sometimes think!

Before this blog there came a name.

Once upon a time I was a member of the SocDaisy Yahoo Group and for some reason names of mythical countries came up as a topic. I (cleverly I thought) stuck up my hand and mentioned Alzheim. Why not? It sounded appropriately German, contained a clever pun that brought to mind a land forgotten by History. Genius!

It was lovingly launched into the mysterious places of the Interweb and promptly vanished without a trace.

Hey ho, I forgot about it, sort of. I still liked the name.

There things pretty wel were left until a friend introduced me. He's a follower of the Lubavitcher rebbe. He's got a blog (AussieEcho) about all things Lubavitch which he showed me.

This got me thinking that this would be a great way of getting my hobby-based materials together in the one place and to try and find a way of imposing some order upon the chaotic mess that I'd created for my self over the years. This came together at about the same time as I had started participating in the OldSchoolWargaming Yahoo Group. The OSW people have had a great deal to do in terms of feedback early on that really made me want to keep regularly at the blog.

At this point the Duchy was still a collection of tidings from my note-book or workbench. I'd not really decided on any detailed characteristics for it - for example, the name of the place is German, but most of it's early doings were those of French-looking troops with French-sounding commanders! I'm sure there are still many contradictions there.

The Duchy took on a more German tone with the introduction of the noble Elector Augustus, his ignoble, Blackadderish manservant Bauer and the dear, doughty, brave and stupid General von Browne who in my mind bears some resemblance to the Graf von Grunt.

Still no maps, though, although for a while though I did toy with the idea of using a map I found online of Alfred the Great's Wessex. I still toy with the idea. I really should do something about that one day.

As it stands though, I'd still characterise the Duchy of Alzheim as a hold-all for my projects in process, random thoughts and occasional pretty pictures. I think it will yet continue to ramble on and hopefully take new und unlooked for turns and sprout unexpected excrecences.

Most of all, I'd like it to be a place where we can meet and talk about our own varied projects and experiences.