Painting and Modelling – Page 12

Dragoons on Parade

It’s taken a few weeks to get around to finishing the basing of the second Fleurian Dragoon regiment (Wurttemberg), but I’ve finally finished. These are Minden Miniatures, painted for me by the very talented James Roach. I do paint most of my own figures but every now and then it’s nice to accelerate the finish rate by having someone else contribute to the collection. I’m hoping to have another arrival by the end of the year too..

I posted about these figures when they arrived last month, here: Link

So now that they’re based up they’ve had their first trot out, and joined their brigade partners (the Rutowski Dragoons) for some gentle evolutions under the watchful eye of their commander, Le Comte de Malbec.

Line Infantry Batch 1 Done at Last!

..And I am very glad to see them off the painting table, they’ve been there a while!

These are the first Fleurian line infantry, to go with the light troops I did in August and September. I started them in early October (I think) and although they haven’t been unpleasant to paint, it was a big batch and I struggled to keep my momentum up. That said, it may have been a good thing as over the same period I have fitted in some other painting and figure prep while avoiding them! The NCO and men are plastic Perry Austrian Napoleonics and the 2 officers are from their metal ranges.

20 done then, and plenty more to do, but there’s no urgency for those. I will need a handful more to make this lot into a regiment of 30 (including command) for next year’s Ayton game, but for now I have what I need: 2 groups of 10 and a few Big Men for Sharp Practice: Medetia vs Fleurie. I’ve finished a couple more Big Men as well but haven’t based them yet.

I hope to have a first solo game of SP at the weekend. Having made some alterations to the St Evian table from last week’s game I intend to play a small-ish scenario just to get used to the rules again.

A few more pics, taken with varied lighting as you can see:

Don’t Mess with the Clergy

Following on from the Warlord Games armed priest I painted a while back, I needed to provide him with some additional muscle for a particular game scenario (which I’ll post about next).

This led me to the Perry’s pack of armed monks and priests from their Carlist War range. They’re all really good figures, and I decided to paint up the 3 monks who’re armed with a variety of black powder weapons. These will happily do me for 17th to 19th century games and provide a bit of fun whenever there’s a church to defend or, possibly one day, some zombies to vanquish!

Steam Tank-tastic

As a bit of an aside from my 28mm efforts of late, I recently spotted a likely addition to my 15mm fantasy collection in Black Hat Miniatures’ Martian Wars VSF range. A few years ago I built a number of 15mm armies based on the Warhammer background, which to me is a decent blend of high fantasy and fun. I don’t play Warhammer itself and I don’t use GW figures (obviously, as they’re 28mm) but the races, armies and troop types have been absorbed fairly successfully into the rules I use.

The Empire army was the first one I worked on. It was one of those wargamer’s odysseys which involved looking for the right figures from across a wide spectrum or historical and fantasy ranges, and requiring lots of conversions to get the results I was after. One thing that I couldn’t find and didn’t fancy scratchbuilding was a steam tank. When I spotted Black Hat’s model it was a no-brainer, even though I knew there’d need to be some customisation to get the right look.

Here’s the model and the potential add-ons I’d salvaged from previous projects, alongside some of my Empire Halberdiers (Old Glory) for a sense of scale:

And here it is after being festooned with an engineer (who still needs a pistol and hat feather), extra funnels, Empire iconography and other decoration:

Once I’ve finished painting it, I guess this army will have to be first subject matter for my resuscitated of Army of the Month concept!

Dragoon Goodness

A pleasant arrival this week – I’ve just received a batch of painted figures from James Roach (Olicanalad to those that know him via his web persona). These are the second regiment of dragoons that James has painted for my 18th century Fleurian army, and I’m very pleased with them.

It’s a 12 figure unit, and I can pair it with another for the big Ayton games where 24s make a lot more sense on a 30ft table.

The flag took a bit of research as neither James nor I could find an illustration to go with the written description; eagle one side, castle the other. In the end James put his artistic talent on the case and came up with a very nice interpretation:

The figures are Minden Austrian dragoons, and they’ve been painted as the historical Austrian Wurttemberg regiment, although they’ll mostly do service under a Fleurian name. I chose this unit partly because their red coat/black cuffs match the previous Saxon Graf Rutowski regiment:

They look good in 12s but a double unit with 2 splendid red flags will work well together when the occasion demands. Now I just need to get the new arrivals based.

Legion de Fleurie Light Gun

The mid-18th century Legion is coming along slowly. I’ve managed to finish the small artillery component – leaving the 2nd light company, the bulk of the grenadiers and the commander still to do.

The crew are very mildly converted Royal Ecossais command figures from Crann Tara’s Culloden range. They’re by the same sculptor as Minden Miniatures, so are lovely well-proportioned figures. The pointing officer received a linstock and two standard bearers received the rammer, etc. Lots of detail to paint, but worth it. The uniform is basically the same as the Legion light infantry (inspired by the Royal Ecossais themselves) and the gun is in red to match, unlike the regular Fleurian artillery which has yellow carriages and equipment.

The gun is from RSM and the 3 crew denote it as a light piece.

Deployed on sabot:

Old school style:

All Ashore!

Although technically I’m currently focused on painting line infantry to bulk up my Fleurian forces for Sharp Practice.. I fancied a break and have painted a couple of samples for another small Medetian force – the marines. Medetia is a maritime nation after all!

These figures are from Gringos, specifically Austrian Jager from the Maximillian campaign in Mexico. I decided that the hats fitted in well with the tyrolean-type headgear worn by most of my Medetians in this period, and there are a couple of very nice command figures in the range that I wanted to include as ‘Big Men’. It’s only going to be a small contingent of marines – one that can be deployed as part of the naval landing party I have planned (those river and coastline terrain sections I made last year got me thinking you see..). They should get a run out at Ayton 2015 too, fighting their way across the dark continent with everyone else.

The figures are quite chunky but fit in fine with the Perry and Victrix that make up a lot of the rest of the collection. They received traditional Medetian colours; sky blue, white and red, and I think they look the part for what I had in mind. Now I just need to make sure I don’t get too distracted and rush to paint the rest before finishing enough Fleurians for a game!

Chasseur Standard

Quick post – I finished the flag for the Fleurian light battalion. It’s a simple design with the Fleurian deep red, the green of the Chasseurs, and the national fleur de lys symbol in black (I thought a muted flag was suitable for the light infantry) – plus the unit name below.

Naturally this was all done on the computer and highlighted with paint. I can’t paint lettering like that and free-hand fleur de lys are tricky!

Renedra Fences

Renedra have come up with some very effective plastic scenery kits in recent years and I’ve previously made up one of their wooden pontoon bridges and some of their barrels. This time I had 2 packs of their fencing, about 2 feet in all.

I based everything on strips of plasticard, mostly 2 fence pieces to a strip (making about 6″), with a few singles. I cut across the corners of the bases so that the fence ends could butt up as closely as possible. The usual basing materials (mostly sand and glue) were added to the bases (some time ago I have to admit) and everything got a black spray undercoat (much more recently!). Painting was super-quick; brown, grey and sand drybrush layers on the wood, and my standard green and brown bases. About an hour in all yesterday evening.

Nice and simple, but very effective I think – and a real bargain, especially when you’re bought them as a present! 🙂

Final Light Infantry

I’ve now finished the second batch of Fleurian Chasseurs a Pied. This gives me a further 10 men and 2 leaders (Big Men for Sharp Practice), making 3 dozen light infantry in all, when added to the earlier Voltigeurs.

They are the same Perry early ACW figures as before, including a command pack this time. When done, the flag will be a clipart printout and highlight paint job. The sergeant (who was originally another standard bearer with an empty hand) has had a plasticard and greenstuff sword added.

This batch:

Combined Fleurian light infantry (minus 1 figure which I foolishly left in the drawer). This makes 3 ‘groups’ for Sharp Practice, or 1 battalion (on magnetic sabot bases) for the big games at Ayton when we do 19th century:

Light battalion deployed with Voltigeur flank companies skirmishing out front on open order bases (as per Tim Hall’s excellent ACW rules):

On to the line infantry next.