The winner and new Alzheimer poetaster!

Stand high for grand Duchy,
Fight for King, and ne’er abate!
I am the very model of,
A petty German potentate.

Marching ‘cross yon battlefield,
Exchanging volleys ‘o lead.
Through fire we go, ne’er to yield,
Fighting for Duchy ‘till dead!

'Top our mighty steeds ‘o white,
With saber’s we go slashing.
Foe run when we come to fight.
Round the field we go a-dashing!

Stand high for grand Duchy,
Fight for King, and ne’er abate!
I am the very model of,
A petty German potentate.

Bombing forts with well aimed shot,
Or whiffing foe with bags of grape.
Through whole campaigns we have fought,
Though hard, we always escape.

Confident we always are,
To fight and die for Royal King.
Where fight is thick, we’re ne’er far,
Through trials we come out winning!

Stand high for grand Duchy,
Fight for King, and ne’er abate!
I am the very model of,
A petty German potentate.

Norris, please drop Herr Bauer a note at bloggerator@gmail.com with your address so that your wreath may be sent you post haste!

Urban Sprawl 4

A progress shot of the Spanish Farm. Please forgive the blurry shots - they were taken in haste!

You may not be able to make it out, but the building is modular, breaking down into four parts - the two wings, the larger house to the rear and behind that (unseen here) a small lean-to outhouse structure. Additionally to this are the two walls I built earlier that just happened to fit.

The next step will be to detail the buildings with card "stonework", dors and windows and the plastic card roofing. Following that I will do the texturing with the watered down plastrer and finally the painting.

I'm going away on holiday for the next week and a half, so the Duchy will be going quiet for a little while - unless I can get my hands on an internet connection.

Happy New Year.

Urban Sprawl 3

I've just about finished off my little hovel and additional walling, and am in the mood for something a little different. I have done my usual meticulous research (5 minutes googling at work) and think I might do a farm house.

The images I came away with were quite interesting, especially from this website:

http://www.spanish-inland-properties.com/farm-houses-spain/

It's amazing what prices are being asked for tumble-down ruins with no services whatsoever, but that's another story.

The accompanying picture looks rather interesting, and I think the farm could be built in the form of a number of boxes that could be basically butted up against each other and re-arranged to form a number of configurations. You seem to have a large house to which have been attached a number of newer buildings with the single-plane sloping roofs that then form "wings" and thus a yard which a stone wall has been built around.

Note the terrain. It's not quite the lush, verdant sward depicted in the touching History Terrain book on the Peninsular War!

I am also considering building an "L" shaped house - not as flexible perhaps as the "modular farm" but nice as eye-candy. I'm conceiving of it as being a high status house that might be at home in a town or in the country.

Urban Sprawl 2

I added another wall to the collection last night. Tonight I would like to add another with a simple gateway and to start work on a low-status house. I'll design this one to butt up against another structure or wall, so I'll leave two of it's walls innocent of any features.

It struck me also that I ought to loop-hole some of the walls I create. I might also do one with an embrasure cut in it.

Urban Sprawl

I had a few hours to myself yesterday so I went and built a few lengths of wall and the tower you can see in these pictures. Again, the materials are foam-core board and railway accessory windows. I'm out of windows! You really get through them quickly in these buildings.

I like the walling, I played around with it last night and found it's very flexible. I'll make a few more longish sections, some short ones and a gateway. I like the idea of being able to create a walled garden that I could use in the Duchy.

As ever Sean Bean's Rifles are vigilant in combing through the village and have been joined by Major Astin who is seeing to the placement of one of his precious 9-pounders. Major Astin needs a shot of varnish to finish him off.

Peninsular House

Construction materials - foamcore walls, balsa strip, platic card for the balcony and doors, model railway windows, pantile effect plastic card for the roof. A few matchsticks to construct the roof of the balcony.

A few of Sean Bean's Rifles are included for scale purposes.

Write a song - win a prize!

Here's the deal.

Write me a song to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern Major-General". I'll help with the punchline - "I am the very model of a petty German Potentate". Indeed, you can play with the chorus:

Hurry up there Bauer;
The hour it is getting late;
I am the very model of;
A petty German potentate!

Or words to that effect if you please!

This will be the national anthem of the ancient and noble Duchy of Alzheim.

That's right, the National Anthem!

Madness indeed, you might say, but His Serene Highness has deemed that it is to be so, and it was only with difficulty that he was dissuaded from offering the hand of the fair princess Mathilde to the sensitive soul who sufficiently moves His Majesty.

This competition will be open until a winner is found.

Aside from the laurel of victory and the honour of becoming the Duchy of Alzheims' poet laureate, you will also win a handsome prize! Not as handsome as the Princess Mathilde, but handsome nontheless!

Marvellous, aren't they! 1/72nd Revell Austrian artillerists, freshly and pointlessly won on eBay* by yours truly. Meister Chanticleer Schwartz, you would seem well qualified in many respects to enter this competition; nonetheless, come one, come all!

*thanks to bangorstu, 100% positive feedback - quelle homme!

Am I being anal? You can tell me...

I posted this on the 7YW Yahoo Group today.

Gentlemen,

I wonder if anyone could perhaps clarify for me whether or not the Saxon Infantry wore collared coats during the 7YW?

If I may, let me take you through the reasons for my confusion.

Older visual references (Funcken, Mollo and the Knotel(?) cigarette cards on the Grosser-Generalstab website*) all show the collarless coat. This might be fair enough, but I think that they might all be working from Knotel. I do not know this for sure, but this is my feeling. My Knotel, Knotel and Seig does not confirm this one way or the other.

Newer visual references such as my Pengel and Hurt and my copy of Sapherson show the Saxons in a collared coat. Again, I think Sapherson is relying on Pengel and Hurt for his information which in turn seems derived from an illustration from 1753.

My most recent and up to date reference is Wolfgang Friedrich's "Die Uniformen der Kurfurstliche Sachsischen Armee 1683-1763". It shows collars appearing on the Infantry coats from 1742 onwards, appearing in the plates describing the uniforms for 1756 and 1760.
Is it true that there was generally a collar on the Saxon infantry uniform that did not appear on the uniforms issued to the newly reconstituted corps of infantry after Pirna? Was the collar re-introduced when the uniform changed (ie, bearskins were added) in 1760?

Is Knotel (and those who have used him since as a source) wrong? Or was Knotel right and relying on sources that may not have survived the destruction of Dresden in WW2?

Is it even possible to be so precise at two and a half centuries distance?

Any light that could be shed would be most welcome!

Best regards,

Greg Horne

*possibly the most popular, referenced and readily available visual reference available on the Saxon army on the Internet!

Illustrations from the French 1755 Drill Manual

In no particular order and just for interests' sake.

Sean Bean's Rifles

Over the past few days I have been staying busy painting these Elite Miniatures Riflemen. I love the quirky style of the sculpting which repays a fairly careful paintjob. I painted these fellows in my usual Vallejo acrylics from a white dry-brushed black undercoat. The bases they are on are their temporary "handling bases" (GW plastic ones), and are not their final bases at all. I think that the three figure vignette on the larger base looks quite nice though and may form the basis for a later grouping.

I've nearly finished painting five gunners, too and expect to have them photographed in the next few days.

I'm thinking of writing a "Sharpe" parody and calling it something along the lines of either "Sharpe's Pastiche" or even "Sean Bean's Rifles". I have been using the phrase "whoreson motherless rogue" an awful lot in the back of my head lately..!

Painted Figures - comparison

Here they are then. From the left, Mr White Undercoat, then Mr Black Drybrushed white undercoat and finally dull old Mr Black undercoat.

Personally spraking, I think the two blck undercoats look to work the best for this type of figure. I'll try three of my RSMs next and see how they go.

The Gardes Francaises need a new draft of troops.

Undercoats

I decided to do a little experiment in the past few days to try out the competing “undercoat” models we have available.

I took three similar miniatures (WW1 Russians from HLBS) and undercoated them. One I did in white, one in black and one in black, heavily dry-brushed white.

I painted all three using exactly the same techniques – base-coat, first and in some areas, second highlights. Some areas got a wash of my favourite brown ink.

The HLBS castings are heavily undercut and have many a nook and cranny.

The black undercoat and the dry-brushed one let me paint the “visible” detail, while the white undercoat made me want to stick my paintbrush into every semi-accessible crevice in the figure. This is for me always a frustrating exercise and I wound up washing those areas with ink to hint at painted detail. The dry-brushed undercoat let me wash over raised strap detail without having really to paint it. I followed this up with a thinned wash of brown ink again to define the detail and it came up looking pretty good.

For comparison purposes, I ought to paint three RSM figures for comparison. They are much less heavily undercut and would make an interesting point of comparison.

Images of the HLBS figures will follow in the next day or so.

Touching History Terrain Book review

I received in the mail of a copy of the first volume of the Touching History series on terrain making last night, the Peninsular War one.

It’s a magazine format book with a great many illustrations showing the buildings and terrain. I was greatly impressed by the quality of the photos, but not too impressed by the information presented.

I did not feel that the book really presented me with tips on making “Spanish” terrain. The section on making the terrain boards while nice enough presented some nice grassy scenery that might not have been out of place in any generic European layout. There was no discussion at all of the differing terrain and climate conditions that one might encounter in the Peninsula. I always had the impression that Spain is rather diverse, and a bit more arid!

The buildings as describes are very nice to look at, but the emphasis seemed more on describing the finishing of the buildings than on the techniques used in making them. That’s fair enough – it’s always seemed to me that war games terrain is mostly about the finish, but a few more tips might have been useful. Some tips that were mentioned were new to me – using brass sheet to represent pantiled roofing for example – but most were pretty unremarkable and frankly could have been gleaned from the Terragenesis website or past issues of White Dwarf.

The book contains a great deal of padding and irrelevance – double-page spreads of scenery layouts, close-ups of single miniatures, close-ups of scenery layouts from irrelevant periods and an astonishingly self-indulgent couple of pages on re-enactors of the 95th Rifles. Surely some of this wasted space (and surely there’s not much space to waste in a 75-page publication) could have gone towards fleshing out the descriptions on building some of the more complicated buildings.

The problem today with this sort of publication is that there is so much material available on the internet. This material is filled with excellent, well-illustrated articles on virtually every aspect of terrain design. To produce a book on terrain building that is actually worthwhile, you may need to pitch it as being someone’s “master class” with perhaps tips on advanced techniques, perhaps some material on designing buildings from conception to execution.

I think that if you wanted to take a more useful look at creating the terrain of the Peninsula War, you might be better off hanging onto the GBP18.50 this cost me here in Australia (and spending it on some Connoisseur miniatures) and go here instead: http://www.fusiliers.net/wargaming6.htm

West Melbourne Regiment

I'm taking a little time off the Seven Years War to paint up something a little different.

I have a small cache of Britains recasts from Soldier Pac and got around to cleaning up one of these already pretty clean castings. They are very light on detail, so most of what you see (buttons, piping &c) are all painted on. I'm fairly pleased with the result, but think I'd have benefitted from a brush with a better point! He represents a private from the West Melbourne Regiment c1882-85. I will do a few more in the next couple of days to go with my gun crew.

At the same time I am painting a dozen Mahdist cavalry in an attempt to cut into my lead mountain. I bought these in January at CanCon and I think they look very promising so far.

Feathery Hats

Odd title for a post?

I suppose it is. I was looking at some of my 7YW miniatures the other day and was struck by how well the feathery hat edges I'd added to a couple of mounted officers looked.

I'm the sort who likes sometimes to repeat what he regards as a success, so I started thinking that I'd like to do a few more and began casting around for a couple of units where I could have a shot.

I started thinking of the Cuirassiers du Roi in the 1740s and thought, "good, I'll do them - got a good collection of miniatures to represent a troop or two already". Then I remembered some chit chat on OSW or 7YW about Prussian IR15, the King of Prussia's own regiment. The Officers and NCOs wore feather edging in their hats.

Aha! thinks I, let's take a quick trip to Osprey-land.

One trip later and I'm a little confused. Don Fosten's magnificent plates show effectively two uniformsThe first battalion (of three) had a lapel-less coat - as some Prussian regiments did. Battalions two and three who saw a fair old bit of action had a coat with red lapels and white buttonhole edging.

Here is the question(s):

Battalions two and three can be readily modelled using RSM miniatures which come with the lapels and cuffs appropriate to battalions two and three, but did their officers and NCOs have the feathery hat edging, or was that confined to the gala-uniformed lads of the first battalion?

If they didn't, do I care and will I give them their feathery hats anyway because they look so good? Heresy!

HE/RSM Comparison Shot

Interestingly, the two look much the same size. I had always had the impression that the HE were the smaller figures.

If anything, they are pehaps a little taller and lankier.

HE Infantry Figures

I finally got around to photographing some of the sample HE infantry I promised for Stokes.

Npt the best image, but they do get the "look" of them across, I think. I'd say they were as close to a "true" 25mm as you are likely to get. They look very slight against Foundry, and by comparison the detail is very unrefined.

But beautiful to me.

One for the Kids

I'm currently painting some more Prince August homecasts for my nephew Max. He doesn't know it yet, but he's getting some Great Northern War Saxons and Swedes to bulk out the tiny force of Saxons he already has.

I decided to write some simple rules so he can do more with them other than line them up an roll marbles at them. After all, I painted them, and want them to stay unchipped for a while yet!

1. Move
Guns – 1dice in inches
Men – 2 dice in inches
Riders – 4 dice in inches

Men or Riders with an Officer or a Drummer or a Flag Bearer get to add another dice to their move.

2. Shoot
Guns – throw 4 dice. Each 5 or 6 is a hit.
Men – throw one dice. Each 6 is a hit.
Riders – throw no dice.

Each figure that is hit but has not fired is laid down on its side and may fire once before it is removed. Riders that are hit are removed. A gun needs two men to shoot.

3. Fight
Guns – throw no dice.
Men – throw one dice.
Riders – throw two dice.

Highest score wins.

4. End of the Game
The first player to lose half of his soldiers loses the game.

von Bruhl Ensign

Converted from the RSM casting of a Prussian officer with a walking stick, he's had the walking stick cut away, that arm has been bent into a new pose, the hand drilled out and a wire flag-pole inserted. I also drilled a hole in the base to take the butt-end of the flag-pole for extra strength.

The flag is by RSM. That for the British Officer in yesterday's post is from the "Warflag" website; I chose a generic English flag and hand-painted the rose wreath and inscription. Our man is from the 51st Foot who fought at Minden.

RSM Ensigns

Over the weekend, I decided to convert a couple of RSM Officer figutes into more appealing ensigns than the "Cadet Standard Bearer" currently on offer.

I took the English Infantry Officer and cut his arm away from his body with a sharp blade and repositioned his arm (just a gentle bend done with my fat fingers) to take a piece of wire that would be a flag-staff.

I'm nearly finished doing another for the Graf v. Bruhl Saxon infantry regiment - I'll get an image up tonight or tomorrow.