Shewing a method for ye Construction of ye Fortificationes.

 Moslem and Christian assail each other. It was always thus between the two. So the culture warriors tell us, anyway.

 Oh, for a Kingom of Heaven. Especially one with Eva Green in it. Ahem.

Painting Challenge

Spencer Smith "Classic" Franco-Prussian War French

 It does one's painting genie good to subject it on an irregular basis to the gentle rigours of a painting challenge. A challenge between friends with no pressure other than a deadline and one's own commitment to meet it.

Imperial Regiment Saxe-Coburg Gotha

 On that basis I present the photographs here as proof that I have dismally failed in my aim of two brigades of SSM Infantry and Cavalry and an admission that I am indeed a hopeless butterfly.

French Marines defend a cardboard box to the last man and the last round

Funny Little Wars

The Field Artillery. Not quite "75s" but not too bad either.

 I have recently been bitten by the "Funny Little Wars" bug and have started a small collection of 54mm toy soldiers.

"Grande Berthe"

 But which army? Army Red? Oh, everyone does one of them. Army Black then? Oh, spare me the cliche.

The Flying Artillery? Deadly with a matchstick at six feet.

 Army Light Green? What? Montenegro? Never!

Musketry practice for the men in the red trousers.

 Army Horizon Bleu. What else could it be?

The new experimental uniform with the shrapnel-proof helmet. Will it ever catch on?

 More as I continue the build up.

"I note that the back lawn is exceedingly well-mown at the moment", says Amy. "Any reason for that?"

Me: "Oh, no, just one of those little jobs that needed doing, dear."

The Shape of Things to Come

Water Sports

 I've spent a little time this evening making watery terrain for some projected games here at the Duchy of Alzheim. Above is my swamp and below a picture of the full collection of ponds. Both are cur with my jigsaw from 3mm MDF before being painted. the painting was largely wet-on-wet to allow a degree of blending. the swamp/marsh/wetland was basically black with some stippling of green while the ponds pretty much speal for themselves.


Erin gets in on the act: "What you doin' daddy?"



I feel as though they sit pretty well on my table insofar as they are relatively heavy for their size and dead flat. I've chamfered the edges with a sanding block to blend them "down" to the table surface. At worst I think this only looks as artificial as the riverbank that is like a little speed-bump at the edge of a water-feature and a good deal easier to blend away with a few strategically-placed model trees to soften the transition.

It might be nice to make a great big lake.

Bits and bobs

 Just a few bits and bobs today. As you can see from the picture above, I've taken delivery of some Amera vac-formed terrain. In my case, five straight and two curved sections as well as a nice little bridge and a forked section. They all butt up neatly against each other so, so far so good. All the work will be in the painting I'd think, so I'll see how I go. I've probably got something like two metres of river - surely enough?

Side-note - I wonder how they'd paint as roads?

 In painting news, I'e finished glossing the heck out of these Spencer Smith "Classic" Franco-Prussian War French. The coats are a bit darker in reality - blame the flash photographer! I have decided to paint the rifle-toting arms seperately before fixing them to the torso in future.

Apart from that they were lovely to paint - surprisinly unencumbered by extraneous detail and a nice subject. I used a semi-washed style with these on a white undercoat again, but was unable to resist doing some highlighting. Some habits are very hard to break. I felt the black lining worked quite well to firm up the definition of the figure.

The Demise of the Jaeger

Newsflash, Zichenau Central:

Caught in the open, a company of ineptly led Stollen Jaeger was caught by our brave hussars and slaughtered almost to a man and, we are glad to report, without suffering a single loss in reply.

The lone survivor was last seen scuttling back to the Village of Eispicke. Little safety there, however as our brave Artillery reportedly caused a couple of casualties among those Stollens who chose to cower within.

Not for nothing is Stollen known as "A Piece of Cake".

With basecoat and acrylic wash...

 Just an early experiment with some Stadden Zulu Wars British converted with paint to represent French Marines.

 I'm quite pleased with them the unifors are nice and bright and the black equipment makes for a strong contrast.

French Marines defending the Legation from "Boxers, mon Capitaine, 'ordes of zem!"

Eyes Only - de Latte's Inner Life

Or, A Day At Sittangbad

Stokes - do not read the following. Otherwise I will creep into your house at 2 AM and re-arrange your troops to my advantage.

General de Latte sipped his favoured coffee with hot milk and surveyed the sketch map one of his disgracefully sweaty roaming aides had slapped with grubby hands onto his portable campaign table. Mistress Ophelia* stirred resentfully among the disordered sheets and bolsters of his campaign four-post bed and mumbled something about the annoying cannon fire.

Ignoring her he smoothed the paper and glared at it in his best military fashion.

*Thinks*

I can either launch the Hussars into von Tschatschke's**  gunners before he can deploy to fire, OR thow them into the flank of those Leib Grenadiers. I could take the light company of the Mittau infantry, put them in open order and discomfort the gunners anyway whilst throwing the remainder of them at the Leib Grenadiers after they have been disordered by the cavalry melee.

Hm.

Or, radical thought, send them through the gunners, and have them make for the bridge. The rest of the army could pin the Stollens frontally. Mittau could follow in support.

And what of O'Malley's Irish Grenze? A target-rich environment for them, as they say. At the least they could cause the enemy cavalry casualties. At best, who knows? Once all the Zichenauer Infantry get stuck in, we could in potential see a double-envelopment of the Stollen main force.

Note to self - must preserve sufficient force to break into Sittangbad proper.

*More of her anon.
** How on Earth do you pronounce that name? Shats-key? Germans, eh?

Alzheimer Artillery

 Artyillery has always been a bit neglected in  my armies. I can't explain why. I like cannons. They're good. I like painting them - I have a large collection. I think it's because I don't really like painting gunners. Easy enough to see why as the Spencer Smith gunner is easily the most misbegotten, flat, flash-encrusted, two-dimensional creature ever to roam a war games table.And why is the bloke with the rammer carrying a hanky? Anwer me that!

Still, I was pleased with how the guns came up. They are Battery 'C' (Howizers) of the Royal, Loyal and Efficient Train of Alzheimer Artilery. I will now embark (cursing no doubt) upon Battery 'B'.

Now, in other news, the recent sad attempts of certain bloggers to drum up interest in their paltry blogs* has made me do a little counting and I have realised that, with another couple of gun crews and some infantry subbing for engineers/ponooniers that perhaps I might just be able to put on something similar. Perhaps this weekend. I may need to use the odd house brick instead of some bulildings, though. How Old School is that?

*What? :^)

Another Flag

I thought it might be nice to have a more generic "French" flag for my French Marines to bear whilst defending the Legations in Peking.

Amy stripped the detail out of the FPW flag for me.

A Good Impression

I'm currently building a small force for French for a Franco-Prussian War demo game at CanCon in January of 2013 and was casting around for some flags for the two Infantry Regiments (times three batalions each) which are to be my contribution.

I'd just about decided on these from Warflag:

http://www.warflag.com/flags/fp/fpf1corp1d.shtml

which are a very nice offering. Then I found myself remembering these from the Vintage Wargaming blog:

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com.au/search/label/flags

I turned to Amy, source of many of my flags, and asked her to re-do the former in the style of the latter.

She's good, my missus is.

The Collection Rationalisation

Sounds like the name for an episode of The Big Bang Theory, doesn't it?
I have somewhere in the region of 250 Eureka Saxon infantry and 40-50 of their Arquebusiers de Grassin that I have decided to move on as they are no longer really fitting in with the Spencer Smith/Holger Ericson direction in which I am taking my collection.
The figures are mint and in "as new' condition.

I'd be looking for $AU1.50 per infantry figure or $AU3.00 per mounted figure (there are a few).

Some pix here:
http://mavisming.blogspot.com/2007/07/painted-eureka-saxons.html

and here:
http://mavisming.blogspot.com/2007/07/review-of-eureka-100-club-saxons.html

If anyone is interested, please drop me a line at : colonialwargamer@gmail.com

Making Hungarians

For no good reason the conversion bug hit me last night and I felt the desire to start working up some RSM Croats for the seven Years' War into Hungarian infantry for the 1740-45 period of the War of the Austrian Succession.

As may be seen in the Knoetel print above, there were decided similarities between the uniforms of the two, especially that of the Kokenyesdi Regiment, so I decided to proceed on that basis.

The raw material, RSM Croats. The similarity between these and the illustration is obvious. Note how good they look in three ranks! Just like the real thing!

Step one. Cut down the Klobuk (the tall felt hat) to a size more in keeping with the Hungarian template. Step two will be to add the red 'bag top" to the hat. Time for some Greenstuff.

Regiment Sachsen-Gotha

A bit of a quickie post this evening. I wanted to show off the first few figures of the latest of the Saxony-inspired Imperial Regiments.

Based on Sachsen-Gotha's Regiment of the Seven Years' War, they depart fropm the original in the headhear of their Grenadiers; those of the real thing being more in the Prussian mode.

Completed Regiment "Markgraf Lubomirsky"

Showing off the Grenadiers' hats.

 Has it only been twelve days since I completed my last regiment? This one has had me by the throat and I've not been able to let it go.

 

This regiment is based on the Saxon one of the same name.

 The drummer is rather anachronistic, being accurate-ish for the War of the Austrian Succession, while the rest of the unit is painted for the Seven Years' War.

Just another view showing off the Ensign. This is the seventh Spencer Smith unit I have painted for my collection and the first I have done without lapes for whatever that may be worth. I'm intending to do one more with pale blue Lapels for the Imperials and then turn to Cavalry.

Sometimes it's not worth posting a comment on a blog!

I've been called a lot of things on the Internet before, but this is a first!

Salm-Salm-Salm Regiment now complete

 As ever, I am posting in very great haste as I am about to shoot off out of the front door, but I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the now-complete Salm-Salm-Salm regiment.

Regimental flag is by the ever useful WarFlag.

In the background lurks the finally completed Obrist of the Alzheimer "la Rosee" Regiment, finally back from leave!

A couple of Landsknechts

 I've spent the past couple of painting sessions working on a couple of Willie Landsknechts. I've carried on the theme of the past fgew months and these two fellows hail from Alzheim and the Empire around 1500-1520 - at least, that's what it said on the woodcut.

 These figures were an absolute delight to paint, and their anatomy, posing and animation are a sight to be seen. I think these are some of Surens' finest.

Looking back and looking forward

Sleepless at a quarter-past-midnight, I've decided to get out of bed and write myself to a standstill.

Looking back over the past 12 months, I am as ever somewhat amazed at how much I have acheived on the one hand, and how little I have actually finished on the other.

On the credit side of the ledger, I have been very productive; taking the Spencer Smith project, I have either bought or painted nine regiments of foot, six of horse and a pair of batteries all of which are in a state where I would not be ashamed to put them on a table and play a game with them. On the debit side, I have yet to do so! Likewise the "Old School ACW" project - I spent most of 2010 getting theresources in place and have so far played exactly one game with them.

While I am being hard on myself, there is the "1565 Project" which in my usual style got off to a flying start and is now little more than a disjointed collection of (albeit nicely-painted) bits.

I suffer from a lack of an opponent and a regular close peer group (sorry online world, but you're just not the same as the real thing!) who would keep me better stimulated. I'm sad to report that I find solo gaming both a bore and a chore. Note - join a club! This is a state of affairs that I really need to address to move forward.

On the positive side (and looking forward) I am currently involved in a group project to put three (!) demonstration games on at CanCon 2013. They will be Isandalwana, 55 Days at Peking and a yet-to-be-finalised action from the Franco-Prussian War - the last I am especially hopng to be deeply involved in as I want the chance to paint some of the Spencer Smith "Classic" FPW figures.

Equally on the positive side, I am fizzing with enthusiasm for my Willie Landsknechts just now. Whether they will develop into a "proper" army or just a collection of stuff I like... well, let history be the judge of that. If nothing else, at least they will tie in with the figures I have for the "1565 project". Or maybe that may morph into some sort of Wars of Religion beast.

Again, on the plus side, I have just about finalised a deal on some old Ral Partha Renaissance/Condottiere figures. And, yes, I do realise that this is doubling up something terrible. Nonetheless, these are really lovely sculpts and do I really need a reason? True 25mm by Ton Meier. They look like Swiss and Landsknechts for the most part that I have an eye on to mess about with for the early Italian Wars. I am seriously thinking of turning them into DBR armies as they would fit the basing really well. The small army sizes for DBR mean that I could create 3 or 4 factions should campaigning appeal.

A final mooted project would be a Willie Old West Cavalry versus Indians grand skirmish. Again, I love the figures and I am certainly NOT thinking of the Little Big Horn. Really. Not.

No, really.

Salm-Salm-Salm Regiment

 Happy New Year to all, and as the painting round starts to crank up again, I thought I'd post a couple of work-in-progress pictures of the latest regiment of the Imperial Army. Thirty figures down and another 23 to go to finish up the current painting challenge.

Regiment Salm-Salm-Salm is the personal plaything of the Imperial Minister to Alzheim, Herr Salm-Salm-Salm. A wily minister, he will play no little part in the dramas soon to unfold.

Hoka-hey! It is a good day to fight; a good day to die!

 Among my small pile of Christmas lead were a few Willie bits and bobs including this rather splendid Apache.

 I have painted him as Crazy Horse as he may have appeared on the day of the Little Big Horn with white spots on his body representing hail. His horse has been painted as though it has lightning bolts on it's flanks.

You'll note I had to use a piece of brass rod to prop up the horse as the one leg actually attaching it to the base was sagging under the weight of horse and rider!

I also got a few other Apaches and Comanches as well as a few US Cavalry. not to mention a half-dozen Landsknechts in Pluderhosen who would not look out of place in my "Siege of Malta" project.

The Gestalt Dragoner Regiment

 Today I applied the last coat of spray gloss varnish to the Gestalt Dragoons of Colonel Zigmund Freud.

Hurrah!

Progress Report

I was wanting to post a brief update on the latest of the Imperial Cavalry Regiments I was working on.

 Just to refresh your memories, this is one of the "before" shots of the unrenovated figures.

 Here are the latest "after" shots. As you can see, I've completed 17 of the Troopers and three of the Officers. Only 7 Troopers and the Regimental Colonel to finish off and then I can start on a regiment of Imperial Foot I have been thinking about. I guesstimate there is about another day and a half's work to do on them before I'm done.

I'm open to suggestions for a name for this unit.

Doings

Hello there. I've not dropped off the twig entirely, just been a bit quiet.

I've about finished off the last 18 figures for the la Rosee Regiment - if you remember from the "Grand Review" they were 17 fusileers and a mounted officer short-handed. That has now been remedied; the colonel needs a bit of paint and we'll be all done there. Photos to follow.

I am currently working at freshening up the paintwork on one of the dragoon regiments Gary donated to the project. The troopers glory in a mid-blue coat with yellow turnbacks, a red shabraque with a snappy yellow and black lace edging. I'll post some 'before' photos this evening.

Unlike the Comardo Dragoons, these will not get a full repaint, but more a bit of a touch-up and re-modelling. I will post some images of the test figure I am doing as soon as it's complted. These lads will be joining the Imperial forces. Has anyone a suggestion for a name? Perhaps something inspired by the Austro-Hungarian Army?

UPDATE: The first two test figures have been completed.

The officer - only the face, coat and lacing on the shabraque are original.

 I finished retouching the first two of the Imperial Dragoons this evening and was quite pleased with the result. I think that the fairly simple "tarting up" serves to bring the figures in line with my own painting style whilst remaining pretty true to the spirit of the originals.

The trooper - untouched at the left and re-touched to the right.

 Took about 40 minutes for the pair of them. Most pleasing!

Kalnocky Hussars - Finished!

 Not much more to say, is there?

Absolute agony to finish up all 28 figures in one go. Imagine painting 28 faces, 28 pairs of breeches, 28 swords etcetera, etcetera...

The Kalnoky Hussars

For my next Imperial regiment, I decided to build a Hussar regiment and eventually settled on the Kalnocky Hussars on finding this portrait by David Morier in the Royal Collection (available online). I have been painting madly for the past week and a half and can report that the bulk of the work is done, up to and including the (much simplified) yellow lace and frogging. I'm painting in the rest of the fur detail tonight and will be knocking off the final details of betls, glove muskets and so on this weekens if all is well. Pics on Sunday night?

Afther these chaps are finished, it's on to the last 18 figures of the La Rosee regiment.