Painting Flags

 

Sir Allen Aspley's Foote, ECW

Acrylic on lightly varnished copy paper. Marked up with a pencil and then coloured.

The Society of Cavaliers

It was a cold day. Minus 3 Celsius. Father had driven us up to Oxford in his baby blue Hillman Minx. 

I still have the old girl in the garage.

We'd set off bright and early with a packet of ham sandwiches and a thermos flask full of tea which mother had put into a basket for us. Magnifique! Mother was a jolly good egg and proposed to crack on with some knitting that she needed to catch up upon. Good show!

We motored along at a good clip, and the car only broke down on us twice. Father did insist we stop at St Albans so he could get a good look at the Roman walls for a new Ancients project he was working on. Some rules called "WRG" - I knew nothing except that they came with a reputation for the recreation of historical accuracy that was unparalleled.  

I had a Transistor Radio on the back seat and it was playing "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. 

It was quite the jolly outing.

We were filled with curiosity as to what the Brig have in store for us. We had been sent a rather mysterious invitation in the post. We were to present ourselves at the Mitre Hotel in Oxford to hear a proposal.

Rumour had gotten about in certain circles that Mr Featherstone and Mr Bath (among others) had also been invited along.

Now, at the time, the Brig was a big wig -  the Head of Military History at Sandhurst. He had just published a smashing book on the Battle of Edgehill the year before. So, of course, speculation was running wild!

So, there we were. Father parked and we went inside the hotel and were guided to a private dining room. Mr Bath and Mr Featherstone were already there. Mr Bath looked a little nervous and was gripping his G&T tighly. Mr Featherstone was dapper as ever with a silk cravat and his inevitable cigarette holder. Father ordered a pint of Real Ale for himself and a lemonade for me.

Various others filtered in. My Bath was showing off a few of his latest War Elephants. Mr Barker shuddered visibly at the sight of them. "More of your horrid pachyderms, Tony?" 

But then from without came a terrible crashing, a jangling if spurs and a stamping of booted feet. "Damn it all! I can't see a bloody thing with these plumes in my face!"

The door was flung open to reveal a terrible apparition. 'Twas the Brig, red of visage, white moustache bisecting his face, flailing madly at the plume of a large hat the sat upon his head. He was clad in the costume of a Cavalier. All in pale blue with white lacing.

"Ye gods..." gasped someone. 

The cigarette holder dropped from Mr Featherstone's lips.

Mr Bath went a deadly shade of white. 

The Brig tore the hat from his head.

"Gentlemen, I have a proposition for you!

"We shall form a society called the Sealed Knot (or, indeed, the Society of Cavaliers).

"I shall be Captain General. Sergeant Featherstone here will be Secretary."

Mustering

Giving Fire

Appointing Mr Featherstone Sec'y

Well, the meeting was something of a blur as the Brig ordered VAT 69 all round. Goodness me, it was an affair to remember. I especially remember being given a couple of hundred Willies and being told to have them ready by Easter.

A Troop of Shew

There's no business like Shew business I whistle through my teeth as I put the finishing touches on my latest for the Brig.

It was different, it was a little out of the ordinary. I thought, oh it's a royal bodyguard for the Graf. Idly I wondered how they would go in "Charge!". A quick puff on my cheroot and I opened the window to let the smoke out and palmed down a mint so mother wouldn't suspect.

Whatever might the Brig be up to? They certainly didn't look like anything from the VFS.

Ye Sealed Knotte

'Twas the week (or two) before Christmas, and all through the house was the rustle of quiet industry.

Mother was creating plum puddings and mince pies and trifles of many kinds.

Father was busy converting Spencer Smiths into panzer grenadiers with two-minute epoxy and a straight-edge razor. 

I was fiddling about at the small desk in my loft bedroom with a number of half-pennies in a desultory fashion. I had just finished the Brig's 'The Cavalier Army'. What a cracking good read it had been; everything you could possibly wish to know about the Civil War. My brain was buzzing with the possibilities. 

I had had an idea of what might be achieved upon the tabletops of Mars with numbers of pikemen and musketeers in the service of the King.

"Eureka..!" I muttered and drew up the following diagram upon a sheet of foolscap.

You know, I pondered aloud... I wonder if the Brig would be interested in this. 

That called for a shot of VAT 69. And a small cheroot. I had to be careful not to overindulge as I had Finals coming up the next morning.

Whoever said Ed Suren did not have a sense of humour?

 

Surely this miniature was sculpted after the founding of The Sealed Knot?

Prince Rupert of the Rhine. And Friends.

For no good reason I have spent the past few days renovating some old Willie favourites; their ECW range

 I think my love for these figures comes out of reading Ian Weekley terrain modelling articles in Military modelling in the 1980s. There were areticles on making ECW fortifications and Manor houses, and the scenes were liberally dressed with Willie figures. Now, my old Airfix/Dapol houses are not quite at that same standard, nonetheless, they set the scene nicely, especially the thatched cottage.

More over the next few days as I put out a few more.

Christmas in Safi?

LCVP and crew

 That's the plan, at least.

LCVP and LCM III - both by Frontline

These landing craft are on the one hand cheap, and on the other a bit rough and require a bit of sanding and filling to bring them up to a decent standard before painting them. Recommended on the whole.

 Gunners. More are in preparation; I am waiting on more Raventhorpe heads to arrive here.

 About two-thirds of a battalion of Tirailleurs du Maroc. I need another ten and the batallion staff. Getting there quite quickly. The twenty figures here took only a week to plough through.

 The odd red chechiy'ya is left uncovered for effect. Very dashing!

 And of course, Pook's carbineers. I will be starting to prep up another ten light cavalry as my next batch for painting.

Ye Horse

 Stand fast! They're more scared of your pikes than you are of them! In hommage to Mr Gilder, I'm preparing my own King's Lifeguard of Horse.

 The Cuirassiers thunder pasw, trailed by their lesser bretheren.

 Colonel Pook? perhaps. He's a Hinchcliffe one-piece casting. I rather like one-piece cavalry. Quite easy to deal with. Now I think of it, I really ought to do a Peter Young tribute figure. Is that an assasin levelling his piece at the Colonel?

The horde. 29 figures. MAny pin-swords and minor bits of animation in the form of head-twists and arm-bends. This is a fairly ticklish business with the hard white metal used in the casting, but I am relieved to report that I've not yet had any breakages. I have another few in the stash which I'll get sorted out before I make another order to Hinds'.

Naseby Order of Battle - Royalist

I have spent the past couple of weeks banging my head against a wall rather over a Royalist order of Battle for Naseby.

The long and the short of it is that none of the sources I have looked at so far really agree. There are some units whose strength and location on the battlefield are known - like Rupert and Maurice's Lifeguards, or the King's Lifeguard of Foot. So far however, I am coming up with strengths which vary greatly. from 3300 to 5000 foot on the one hand and 4100 as many as 5000 horse.

Currently I am strongly tempted to split the difference at the lower end and guesstimate 3500 foot and 4500 horse. Note that this is a ratio of 7:9.

I am perfectly happy to be corrected in any of this; my reading has not been comprehensive.

Translating this to the table, and keeping in mind that I think I'd like to keep this within a 4' frontage so as to allow me to represent the Sulby hedges on the Royalist Right, I'm thinking of a maximum army size for the Royalists something like 164 foot and about 200 horse. Not perfectly at that ratio, but not too far out.

I'd break the foot down into four, thirty-two* figure units and one forty figure unit. Two of the thirty-two figure units would each form the first and second lines, whilst the forty figure unit would form the reserve.

The Cavalry I would like to see in two lines, each of five units of eight figures per wing. Of the remaining forty figures, twenty-four would be stationed behind the Second infantry line, whilst the remaining two units would be with the reserve.

This is not perfect, and again, I am more than willing to be debated on this deployment. Certainly I would like to have less cavalry!

*16 muskets and 16 pike

Pooks' Horse

The Lord of Hosts!

 Sir Samuel Pooks' Regiment of Horse. Pin-swords, bravely aloft.

All are standard Hinchcliffe castings, which range is fortuitiously being recast at this time. Good show, Mr Hinds. The only changes I made were to replace the cast swords with beheaded pins and a little animation of the castings with a pair of pliers whose jaws I padded up beforehand so as not to mark the castings.

For the most part I painted these with acrylic washes over the best white undercoat I could get onto the figures. A little lining in was done, just to tidy the shapes up. The metals were 1:1 black and GW mithril silver that I later gave a quick flick with a dry-brusk of plain mithril silver to catch the edges on their pots.

I so had to restrain myself from adding the little red hoops on the arms of the figures. Maybe another regiment.

I'm still looking for a design to paint onto Pook's trumpeter, and there are a few spots where handling has rubbed away the paint. The washes are really quite delicate like that. I found I needed to do an intermediate coat of varnich to protect the figures as I finished up the painting!

Painting Miniatures

Artwork by the Stig

A favourite for flicking through is the Blandford title "Warriors and Weapons of Early Times in Colour" by Neils Saxtorph, illustrated by Stig Bramsen. Mine is the first (only?) English edition, published in 1972 when I was four years' old and watching Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and maybe Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Sensibly concentrating mostly on European models the Danish Dynamic Duo have nonetheless made a stab at an Ironside and have sensibly done him in a rugger top with shoulder pads which as you will all know was wrong; this costume was worn only at Edgehill and soon discarded as impractical as the War progressed.

Smart-arsed niggles aside, and were one to choose to paint the legend, then the colour here is to my eye very attractive and worthy of emulation.

Naseby

It is always greatly exciting to plan a new project.

I am looking at how feasible it would be to put together Royalist and Parliamentary armies for the English Civil War.

My primary inspiration is the wonderful old (1978) Osprey on Wargaming Naseby. Indeed, how could one not be inspired? With text by Asquith and plate after plate by Gilder, the book is a feast for the eyes and the imagination. I have loved this book since I was a young fellow impecuniously browsing my local bookshop.

What shape then is this project to take? Well, as an indulgence, I feel that all I can do is try to tread the path of the great man. If you pop over to the marvellous Unfashionably Shiny blog and read Gilder's article on building a wargame army, you will see that he advocates using historical orders of battle to yield details for one's wargame units. This is good enough for me.

So then, which battle? Stick with what you know, I think. I shall go with Naseby. Both armies are reasonably small and will be not too onerous to build up over the twelve to eighteen month timeframe I'm currently envisaging. They are also fairly diverse; all arms are represented and there is plenty of scope for making vignettes and building the assorted bits and bobs we like to add to our collections. Furthermore, If I decide to slightly broaden my scope, I feel that the siege of Leicester might become a part of things and complete the picture.

So that decided, which figures? Hinchcliffe seem pretty well mandatory, I feel. Shall I try to emulate the "Gilder style"? We'll see.

How many figures? I'll work on that, but I think about 1:20 might not be too bad. Most of the cavalry units ought to be in the 6-10 figure range.

Next time... I'll start working on an Order of Battle.

Old School ECW

The References

Books

I have been mulling this over for a little while now. I think it was being able recently to view the "Battleground" episode on Edgehill that have kicked me off, and I do think I would like to do something around the English Civil War.
I received the old Osprey "Wargames" title on Naseby from my favourite ebay seller and have been poring over the pictures of Peter Gilder's collection both there and at various locations on the web*. I am inspired and have a few initial ideas.
So, what have I read? The Airfix Magazine Guide, the aforementioned Osprey (I have others in my collection, of course) and Haythornethwaite's book on the Wars. A few magazine articles by Ian Weekly.
What do I want to read? Young's "The Cavalier Army". I recall seeing it at university all those years ago and recall some lovely little drawings in the chapter headings.
What should I read? That I leave that to you, dear reader.
Shopping
Some people think that wargaming is all about being a steely-eyed warrior. These people are wrong.
It's really all about shopping. Checking the wargaming budget. Looking nervously at the lead pile. The squinting at low-resolution pictures of miniatures online. Yakking on about figure compatibility. Detail. Anatomy. Asking yourself if you really need to spend the money when you have so many unfinished projects littering the place.
Planning
Do this before you go shopping. Ho, ho, ho.
Nonetheless, try. I've not yet done the planning, but I think this will be quite a strictly limited project. Won't it? I hope so.
Probably Hinchcliffes, probably with a few Scrubies in the mix. Probably with a stab at approximating the Gilder style.
Two small, balanced forces with approximately a 1:1 ratio between the numbers of infantry and cavalry fielded by each side.
I think that's about the shape of it.
*C'mon Doug, help me out here!