Painting and Modelling – Page 8

A Slow February

The dearth of posts this month hints at my lack of project and gaming progress. It’s not all been a washout, but some time away, being busy at work, and a nasty cold have all taken their toll on hobby time and energy.

I have achieved a few things;

A bit of a games room sort out, to create more storage space. Coupled with the loft being boarded out and a proper ladder being installed at the end of the month, this will give me a big boost in the flexibility I’ve got to store bulkier items like terrain, 28mm scenery and modelling materials. The trick will be to not overdo things and just fill up the new capacity!

Based and painted some old Irregular Miniatures 1/300 trees in small groups, just to get them off the lead pile.

Mostly painted a 1/300 Russian church – I’ll post a pic when it’s finished.

Made a couple of additional internal river corners from 12mm styrofoam (high density polystyrene) board, and I’ll make a couple more outer corners soon too. This will allow me to have a more meandering river, or a lake with a big island in it, etc. Here are the new with the old (which are made from marine ply) – no difference other than 2 of them being lighter and more fragile:

Made a 1 foot square terrain board for Frostgrave, again from styrofoam. This was a test piece, inspired by Goat Major’s excellent desert city terrain. I just used a biro to etch the paving slabs and cracks. This board, and the 3 others I’ll do to make a square area, can be used with my existing winter terrain boards to give me a decent base for setting Frostgrave (and other) games.

Done some thinking and prep for a few small campaign ideas. Some of this is around simple rules to link games for a variety of periods – I’m on at least version 3 but I’m getting there! I’ve also been doing some storyline work on my Medetian Wars setting for Sharp Practice, although I’m holding off a little until the 2nd edition of the rules come out as I’d like to check them over and incorporate any important or interesting changes they bring.

Re-visited my collection of 1/3000 sailing ships with a view to getting more of them painted and onto the table at some point. These are Napoleonic ships, but I think the wars of the mid-18th century appeal a bit more. No chequerboard paint jobs (impossible at that scale anyway!), less British dominance/superiority, plenty of campaigns, battles and settings, the C&C challenge of maintaining a line, etc. I’m looking for fleet battles, not frigate actions, so some simple rules will be needed too. A slow-burn project, but one I’ll come back to for sure.

Now, if I could just get some figure painting done too..

Figures Based for Frostgrave

With a possible opportunity to play some Frostgrave on Simon’s awesome ‘Sandgrave’ terrain, I thought I’d better finish the bases on the figures I painted (or in some cases re-painted) towards the end of last year.

It’s nice to get some of these veteran figures ready for action again, with not an ink-wash or fried egg eye in sight any more. 🙂

A motley crew:

More to do, of course, but one at a time isn’t so bad, and there are enough already done for a warband.

A Small Forest

I’m not exactly short of trees for my 6mm games, but the occasional foray onto a 6×4 foot table has left my thinking that a few more wouldn’t go amiss. I needed to borrow a few last time just to be sure – clearly not a long term solution.

Step forward Amphibmods and their eBay shop. 32 trees, each 50-60mm tall and coming with a nicely sculpted base, and only costing about 50p each.

Naturally I needed to give the shiny brown plastic bases the Medetian touch so that they blend into the terrain boards nicely. Not too much work, and voila! A small forest to help with those big battles.

Everything’s come out a bit pinky due to the light outside at the time of day the pics were taken!

White Christmas

I’m not the only blogger to use this title this December – great minds think alike Phil O. 🙂

Naturally this isn’t a festive reference (as I haven’t finished work yet and am therefore not fully in the spirit), it’s about the next batch of SYW Austrians I’ve completed.

These are the first brigade of infantry, which includes a couple of battalions of grenadiers and 3 of musketeers. I do need to paint a brigadier, who’ll be along shortly.

I’m building the armies in brigade-sized batches, so that they grow in logical proportions and so that I can keep my interest up by switching between infantry and cavalry, Prussian and Austrian, and add the relevant commanders at the same time.

Next, though, will be some Austrian artillery and elite horse grenadiers for variety.

SYW 6mm: a Re-start

After a long while, this is a project I am finally returning to – with an actual plan this time.

I have a lot of figures (all H&R), quite a number of which are already painted. But.. everything needs a minimum of a re-base and most need painting or at least a bit of touching up. A big project then, and naturally other things will need to go onto the back burner to accommodate this change of direction.

I’ll be using a heavily revised variant of the Realtime Wargames FPW rules, ie. retaining the core 6″ grid to govern unit positioning and movement, and unit bases to denote combat effectiveness. This will allow me to play some big battles with simple mechanisms, but of course I’m adding in the period flavour with specific rules for the SYW (and WAS).

The armies will be Prussian and Austrian, with a few Reichsarmee or allied auxiliaries for the latter, and to add a bit of colour and variety. After lots of thinking, prevarication and discussion with a fellow gamer, I’ve finally decided on the unit sizes and basing, which frees me up to get started. I’ve had many of the figures for over 20 years, and some for over 30. It’ll be good to get them ready for action again – hopefully there’ll be enough done for a small game or two next year. My initial target is to have enough to refight Mollwitz, or at least a SYW version of it.

Here are some of the first sample units, testing out the basing and the general look. Lots more to come!

The first Austrian Cuirassier brigade, regiments Stampach and Kalkreuth:

The first infantry battalions for each side, from the Prinz Moritz and Kaiser regiments respectively:

I’ll need some rustic German buildings too, for the villages of Bohemia and Silesia, and have plans to scratchbuild some basic cottages to add to commercially available churches, etc.

A Few Extras Painted

I’m happily lacking any hobby deadlines at the moment, so have been dabbling with whatever takes my fancy (ie. whatever is already prep’d and undercoated).

The latest minor additions to several projects include:

Two units of skirmishers for my 15mm Punic Wars armies. Numidians (Corvus) at the back and blurry Carthaginians (Strategia e Tattica) at the front:

A unit of 6mm Grenzers for my Seven Years War Austrians, which I might finally make a proper start on soon. Heroics and Ros figures.

The first 3 Austrian battalions for my 6mm 1859 army, H&R again. Two of these units need flags, which I’ll be making from pin and foil – so I can scrunch them up and not have to paint perfect double-headed eagles, etc! I’ve tried the Baccus ones and, for me, they suffer from being printed – the symbols are a bit pixelated and they’re faded rather than full of colour.

Who knows what I’ll do next, more soon.

Beef

Bought a few years ago, based and undercoated over a year ago – I’ve finally painted this very small herd of cattle. They’re 28mm (from Redoubt possibly?) and will serve as generic scenery in some games and specific loot-type objectives in others.

I took the lazy route and went with an easy colour scheme!
Not much more to say really 🙂

Cows (in skirmish order):

FPW Wurttembergers

I realise that many people (especially those who play solely in the larger figure scales) may not be able to tell the difference between the subject of this post and the previous one, but these are Wurttembergers as opposed to French 🙂

Although I prefer my armies and units to be ‘right’, there’s something nice about 6mm for allowing a bit of ‘fudging’ when it comes to figures, uniforms and flags. A wise man once wrote in a wargames magazine, “at this scale, who cares?” and, while I don’t completely subscribe to that philosophy, it’s something I do fall back on from time to time.

I wanted to add some contingents from other German states to my FPW collection and have decided to create a combined Wurttemberg and Baden division to join the Prussians and Bavarians. These pics are of the first 4 battalions of Wurttembergers, and there’ll be a few more to follow, plus Baden infantry and cavalry, and artillery from both. I’ve done the command bases too as part of this batch.

Of course Heroics & Ros don’t do specific Wurttemberg figures, and I was left with a choice of using figures with kepis (FPW French or ACWs) or… finally using up some packs of Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr I’ve had knocking around for a while. I was originally put off these because the headgear is a bit wrong, as is the equipment and pose – and they’re a bit bigger than the FPW figures. Then I thought, “at this scale, who cares?” and just got stuck in. Similarly with the flags, a shield, a crown and two heraldic beasts became 3 gold blobs and a black blob. I didn’t bother with the blue scroll at all.

All in all, I’ve decided they’ll do. Once they’re on the table they’ll look OK and the games are battle-level affairs so the players’ focus is on command decisions not button counting. That’s my excuse anyway!

More FPW French

Painting output has been a bit slow here lately, with the usual excuses of work and other commitments. However, I have tried to make some progress with my 6mm 19th century collections and have managed to complete a further (and possibly the last, although you never really know do you?) French infantry division.

This one contains some of the more exotic units that I fancied doing. Having already done Zouaves and Algerian Tirailleurs I decided that the Foreign Legion (present in the 1859 Italian campaign) and Marines (present in 1870) would be nice to add too. As my French army will be used in a variety of campaigns I don’t mind the fact that these two troop types weren’t really deployed side by side in either of the major wars.

The division is the 6th one I’ve painted over the years, completing 2 full Corps, and is structured the same as the rest. I use the To the Last Gaiter Button rules from Realtime Wargames, with a few minor modifications to formation structures. The French regiments are represented by 2 battalions instead of the 3 they actually had, to reflect the reduced regimental manpower in the field compared to the Prussians and Austrians. I also omit one of the brigadiers, to re-balance the command and control capabilities in line with the smaller number of wargame units compared to the actual OOB.

All in all, we have the following: 1 Divisional Commander, 1 Brigadier, 4 ‘line’ regiments each of 2 battalions, 1 chasseur battalion, 2 field batteries and 1 mitrailleuse battery. This represents about 9,000 men and 18 guns. This takes the French to about 60,000 in total, which won’t stop them losing on the table, but will help them look more impressive when they do!

All figures are Heroics & Ros as always. All but one of the flags are home-made (and a bit over-sized to look better) with pin and foil as I’d run out of H&R ones. I’ve also started giving some command bases a flag to help them stand out better.

Next up, a composite Wurttemberg and Baden division and 1859 Austrians!

John Ray AMG Vignette

At Partizan in May, where members of the ‘A Military Gentlemen’ forum put on their game, John Ray generously gave each of us a vignette he’d sculpted and had cast specially. This was made up of a superb pair of figures, with an officer being helped into his uniform coat by a servant, and naturally it was going to need painting so that it could get onto the table at some point.

I managed to get mine done towards the end of September, and here it is – presented as an officer of the Medetian Braganza regiment finishing his preparation for battle..

Many thanks to John for this gift, which I hope I’ve done justice to. Also to Jim Purky, who brought everyone a ‘Spirit of ’76’ vignette from his Fife and Drum range, which I have primed and ready to paint shortly.