And the cart project keeps rolling along...

By fits and starts, anyway. Work's been busy lately, plus I'm painting wooden latticework for a garden fence - which is a lot less exciting than it sounds. Still, I have made progress on the carts. The drivers are done and the bases are now underway.

Ieremius Clarksonius, Centurion Slowimus and Hamstericus wait impatiently for the course to be laid. No sign yet of Stigimus Maximus.

I did think of using plastic card for the bases, but James Wappel happened to be working on a road-making project which used wood filler. As he points out it doesn't shrink and can be worked easily. I have some wood filler handy so gave it a try using rectangles of basswood, and it works just fine.

I'm a bit further along than the photo above, but it's late and I'm pie-eyed from painting latticework, so I'll delay putting the anything more up until I have finished the lot.

Lords, Comanipulares & Champions

We're still in a state of hurry-up-and-wait with the house sale. A flurry of interest in the past two weeks came to nothing, so...

In the meantime I decided to get on with painting the Comanipulares, the elite troops of the Romano-British army, along with the Lord they fight for and his champions.

It's a bit blurry, but it shows I'm making progress.

The majority of pigment is on. I just need to put a few more touches here and there. Because they're wearing chainmail I'm going to forgo using the dip on these as it'll cover too much detail. Instead I'll apply a black ink wash over the armour then clear varnish.

Because the paints I use have settled over time I'm getting a sprained wrist shaking the pots for long enough to mix the pigments. Thinking I could use a mechanical means of shaking up the paint pots I looked online and found a few useful devices -including this one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZqGEhpnws

ECW casualties

I spent much of this morning getting the garden tidy so we can leave it in good condition when we move out. It's a little depressing, seeing all the plants we've established in the time we've spent here coming into full healthy leaf and knowing some will be left behind - especially when we suspect the person buying the house isn't a gardener. We will be taking a number of plants with us, and hopefully we'll have time enough this year to establish a garden in the new place. Fingers crossed...

So, enough of that. On with a bit of modelling stuff. Having some time off this afternoon I thought I would paint up the 10mm/N-scale ECW casualty figures I cast recently from resin. The pieces have been washed thoroughly and have had plenty of time for any remaining volatile vapours to disperse.

Top two rows, from left to right: Sir Alan Apsley's, Earl of Essex's Lifeguards, Bolle's, Montagu's, and a quartet of Parliament cavalry. The bottom four have yet to be assigned.

I painted up two figures for each of my current foot regiments, and enough for the (eventual) two regiments of Ironsides. Royalist cavalry casualties are to follow.

In the Victory Without Quarter rules, a casualty marker is placed if a unit suffers three hits from firing in a single turn: It represents a significant amount of metal tearing through the formation. Once the number of casualty markers equals the number of bases in the unit, that unit is destroyed. Since my foot regiments have three bases, any markers over two are redundant. In a similar vein my cavalry regiments have five three-figure bases, so any casualties over two are a major depletion in strength and the regiment is destroyed.

Edward Montagu's Regiment of Foote

The first unit to roll off the new painting block is done and ready for the base-work to be applied. Here's Edward Montagu's Regiment of Foot, of the Eastern Association.

 

These are Pendraken Miniatures 10mm figures. I did think the russet uniforms would make for a boring-looking formation, but on the whole it works en-masse. I did mix musketeers in caps with those in broad-brimmed hats, and painted a few figures with britches of muted blue, black, greys and so on. The armoured pikemen break things up some more. The pikes are mounted on one base for convenience, and have a first and second rank of eight figures. The command is in the rear rank along with two unarmoured pikemen. I stuck with a musketeer to pike ratio of 3:2, which was fairly typical of the early war.

Next up on the painting block is a Royalist regiment of foot. I'm thinking of making it Richard Bolle's (later Sir George Lisle's) Regiment. Their flag was white, but details on their coat colour vary - some sources say red, others blue. As they were part of the King's Oxford Army, I will plump for blue.

The Royalists had a hard time recruiting and equipping their troops. A Royalist foot regiment would typically have a musketeer to pike ratio of 1:1 if they were lucky - some units went into action with clubs and billhooks. I'm going to noodle around with the number of figures and see what looks good. I want to reflect the period, but I don't want to make Royalist regiments too small to take on their Parliamentarian equivalent.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Day once more here in the US. We'll be heading over to friends soon for the traditional meal.

Wargaming-wise, I'm making progress with painting the ECW figures. As mentioned before I'm building up the Army of the Eastern Association, and I chose to begin with Edward Montagu's regiment of foot. The musketeers are now finished and in the early basing stage, and the pike and command element are on the painting block and undercoated.

I did put an officer with the musketeers, but decided in the end to keep with just the one command element, which explains the missing man space at the rear of the right-hand base.

Montagu's regiment was issued russet uniforms. Now, I always thought russet had a lot more of a reddish tint than it subsequently proved to have...

Let's face it, it's bloody near khaki, and not the most exciting colour for a uniform. I decided to break things up a little and have some figures wearing muted blues, greens and rusty black here and there, and it seems to have worked.

I did toy with the idea of having the command element as a separate base so they could 'lead units into battle,' but decided for convenience to base them with the pike block. The pike block itself will be a single base and have a frontage of eight figures three ranks deep, with the commander, standard and drummer in the rear rank where they'd naturally be in the course of battle. In the ECW the better armoured troops were placed in the first two ranks and that's what I'll do, with a couple of unarmoured pikemen in the rank with the commander.

Painting block for 10mm figures

We have a dusting of snow on the ground and the garden is put to bed for the year. Having a bit more spare time now I thought I'd make a painting block suitable for painting 10mm figures, specifically my shiny new ECW collection. The block I already have is best for 15mm-28mm figures, and those poor little 10mm blokes look lost on it.

It's a simple design, based on one a friend of mine uses. Take a block of scrap wood, drill a series of holes in it, fill holes with a number of galvanized nails, and glue the figures to the nail heads using a hot glue gun. The nails make it easy to grip and maneuver the figures to get at all angles with your paintbrush. Bob's your auntie's significant other!

This block will take 45 nails, but I'll typically use fewer than that to allow a bit of handling space. The inaugural batch of figures to grace the block are musketeers for a Parliamentarian regiment of foot. These are Pendraken Miniatures.

I'll paint these up as Edward Montagu's regiment of the Eastern Association, which was raised in Cambridgeshire and issued with russet-red coats. Being early-war Parliamentarian they'd have roughly a 3:2 or 2:1 muskets to pike ratio, which I'm going to represent with 24 musketeer figures to 18 pike, including the command element.

Doctor Doctor!

Milder weather is here and I will be able to reclaim my table for gaming again soon. At the moment it's still playing host to trays of seedlings ready for transplanting once the frost risk is over, which should be around May 15th. My next planned game is from my Darkest Africa campaign.

In the meantime I have a batch of Doctor Who figures ready for the painting block...

The figures are mostly Heresy Miniatures from a recent special offer, with the Third Doctor and Sarah-Jane (plus pterodactyl!) from Black Tree Designs (North America). Thanks to Shadowking's blog I was led to a wonderful source of cult TV figures at Crooked Dice. This company produces a treasure-trove of figures suitable for skirmish gaming and Pulp games. They even have stone angels - Don't blink!

(Almost) the end of the year report

Instead of gaming, Friday night was a painting spree at the New Buckenham club, a successful feature which might be repeated in future. It offered members a chance to chip away at the lead mountain and demonstrate their painting techniques. My wife and I weren't able to go in the end, but Amanda painted her first wargames figure. The consensus of the club is she did a good job of it. We're so proud! ;) 

Farther poking around in my shed turned up the naval component of the Early Imperial Roman force I mentioned previously. These 1/300th scale galleys are home-made, being cast in resin from a latex mold. 

All are basically of the liburnian pattern, a light war galley used for patrol and coastal work. The model at the rear-right is an incomplete trireme intended for use as a flagship. 

I made space on each deck for a couple of stands of Roman marines, the classiarii. For those current and ex-Marines out there, note I didn't use the proud upper case M in describing the troop-type for a good reason! To quote from the Military Analysis blog, "Being in the Roman 'marines' (the milites classiarii) didn't convey the same prestige as being in the modern US Marine Corps does now [British Royal Marine Commando or Russian Marines for that matter either!]. The Roman marines were provincial or foreign auxiliaries that could fight on or off boat."

My intention is (eventually) to add a Germanic equivalent force equipped with something like the Hjortspring boat, the Iron Age predecessor to the Saxon boats and the classic Viking longboat. Unlike the longboat, the vessel really was suited only to operating in relatively sheltered waters, along a coast or in the Baltic. Quick and nimble, it would've been great for raiding parties.

 The Hjortspring boat, showing the curious double-prow and stern. Purpose unknown, these disappeared in later versions of the boat in its gradual progress toward the Viking longboat design.

Darkest Africa

The latest issue of Wargames Illustrated, #292, has a number of original articles on Darkest Africa by Chris Peers and Mark Copplestone. Only the other day I was wondering if the age of the hobby magazine was passing, since there's so much information available online. It seems there's life in them yet!

One article, In Darkest Africa, deals with gaming encounters between natives and European expeditions. I'll use this for Willoughby Pond's foray into the bush in search of a site for his new trading post. Hopefully, I'll be able to play out the game using a mix of Chris Peer's and GASLIGHT rules sometime this week.

The latest batch of figures to clear the painting block are shown below. Africa's curse was/is slavery, with the Zanzibar Arabs being very active in the evil trade just about everywhere in the continent during the 19th century. These figures are by Eureka Miniatures.

New characters & a tembe

We've had a quiet couple of weeks, looking after my mother-in-law during her illness. My model-making, gaming and figure painting has had to take a spell on the back burner, but I found time to finish the figures I bought on eBob a while ago. 

I also completed a tembe for sale on eBob right now. I'll make another one for the upcoming game once I get my gaming room/studio back.  Here are a couple of photos showing the external and internal appearance.

 Colonel Trollope watches Private Lewis in action. 

 Zanzibar warriors garrison the tembe against upset natives.

Both doors to the courtyard open. I omitted the interior doors, as this is a gaming model.

And now, a few pics of the newcomers to Daftest Africa.

They're all Wargames Foundry. I've seen most of these in more than one collection over the years. My favorites are the red-bearded sea captain in his pea-jacket, holding a pistol behind his back, and the gentleman with the walking cane standing next to him. A few names for these folks are suggesting themselves to me already...

I did write earlier that I planned to use the linked scenario idea, as published in one of the hobby magazines. This I'll do, but a prequel suggests itself in the form of Willoughby Pond's latest scheme. For this scenario, I'll give the GASLIGHT rules a try. I hope to play it out in the next couple of weeks.
 

Raising standards

Here are another couple of additions to my Africa Station collection, again from the figures I bought on eBay.

Certain rules have provision for standard bearers to act in the historical roles of rallying points and morale-raisers for their units. The eBay figures had these two fellows in the batch.

The one shown below (which I think is Foundry) had hands poised as if holding a spear or staff, but the hands were solid. I drilled these out and inserted a length of stiff wire to make a flagstaff. The device on the flag is a piece of free clip art found online.

Since this guy is going to be the standard bearer for Sunny N'Sher's mercenary band, I decided to give him a flag that has European influences while still echoing African traditions. I chose the emblem of a bull's head since cattle were - and are - a valuable resource in Africa.

The clip art had to be re-sized to fit the scale, but this was easy enough to do with the basic PC Paint program. I then printed it off and trimmed the paper to size. A wash of Pledge/Future/Klear mixed with a drop of sepia ink gave it a weathered appearance. The polish is a good medium to use on any materials printed from a computer since it doesn't cause the ink to run or smear. A small rectangle of tinfoil was inserted between the sides before they were glued together to stiffen the flag so it can be curled in a realistic way.

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In certain African tribes it was traditional for chiefs to direct combat from well behind the lines. Not for them the undignified rough and tumble of warfare! Some chiefs used umbrellas or parasols as personal standards, and the eBay batch had a figure which I could use for this.

It turned out to have some problems though. Although touted as suitable for Darkest Africa, it appeared to be more a candidate for an ancient society. He has rather chunky legs, which led me to suspect the sculptor may have intended the guy to wear greaves. If so, they were badly rendered, and so was the staff for the parasol he clutched in his right hand. It looked more like a rough-cut plank! Another hint as to his ancient origins lies in the satchel of scrolls he wears over his shoulder.

The parasol staff went right away, the hand being drilled out to take a length of wire. There wasn't a great deal I could do for his legs beyond a little filing, so in the end I left them. The parasol itself turned out rather well, being painted in a fetching shade of pink. The new standard bearer is shown in action above, shading his boss while showing his location for all to see. He holds a satchel of scrolls so the boss can indulge in a little light reading between his onerous duties.

A dirigible model for GASLIGHT - part 5

Some better photos of the dirigible, now I've sorted out the camera functions. The model itself is complete. All that needs to be added are the two crew figures. The national marking on the rudder has the right number of stripes but there was no way I was going to paint 35 or so stars without going "batchy" in the process. In the end I settled for a representative trio.

The stand is made from a pair of craft sticks glued in cruciform pattern, with a length of plastic tube stirring stick set vertically to take the end of a kabob skewer. I wrapped paper around the tube to reinforce it and add stiffness. It also takes paint better this way. As a further reinforcement and extra weight I added a rough cone of modelling clay around the base.

So there we have it, a two-man scout dirigible attached to a cavalry command somewhere in the Old West. The craft has seen heavy use, judging from the weathering of the gasbag fabric, but the stars and stripes are kept bright and fresh!

Some thoughts on construction. I think the model turned out okay. It was a learning curve - after all, this is the first dirigible/airship model I've made. There are some things I would (or will) do differently on a similar model. The fins would be about as long but turned 45 degrees to run along the rear of the gasbag, more like historical prototypes. I would also come to a better arrangement for the engines and mountings, as this one is a little weak for a gaming model. The only other thing I would do differently is to make provision for the stand to be inserted in the gasbag. Food for thought - for another time.

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Below are four characters from Dixon Miniatures' Old West wagon train collection. The two guys with shotguns are train guards, but the duo of "Cookie" and customer for coffee are my favorite.

Off the reservation!

I've got a heap of Western native figures, mostly Apache as seen above. Far more, in fact than I need for my own project, so the above lot is up for sale. I have a lot of unpainted figures, both mounted and dismounted natives and dismounted US cavalry for sale too. Contact me for details.

20x Apache Indians on foot, 25mm Dixon's Miniatures (no huge heads!)

Off the painting block - 3

Lt. W. W. Cooke leads the way to Greasy Grass.

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The mounted figures for the US cavalry I've been commissioned to paint are now complete. I have to say, the task was much easier to paint than most of my previous attempts at painting cavalry, all thanks to the painting block method. I'm not too keen on the Dixon's cavalry mounts, as they seem to resemble shire horses rather than ponies. Only the Lieutenant's mount and that of the guy with his hat folded into a bicorn (at the rear-right) seem to have the right proportions. The photos show the figures shinier than in real life due to the flash. No guidon is fitted; my client will supply his own.

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Next up, various dismounted figures of Custer and supporting cast. Someone close to me, who has Blackfoot and Cree blood in her veins, says it's nice to have a dismounted figure of the General. That way the good guys will be able to get at him... ;)

Off the painting block - 2

US Cavalry riders - undercoated

Cavalry horses ready for riders.
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Some further progress on the current project, the US cavalry. My method is to undercoat riders and mounts seperately with a coat of black paint into which I mix a few drops of Future/Pledge/Klear floor polish. This has exactly the same properties as an acrylic gloss varnish, but comes in 27 fluid ounce bottles for the price of only two or three ounces of commercial model acrylic varnish. It also mixes with ink and acrylic paint. Adding a couple of drops helps the paint spread easily.

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Once this coat is dry, I paint the horses and riders as usual using Vallejo acrylic paints, then attach the riders to their mounts using crazy/superglue. I complete the process with an ink wash and a coat of matt varnish. With luck and a following wind, I should finish these in a couple of days.

The Cavalry horses

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With the first set of US cavalry dismounted figures complete I'm now making a start on the horses. A spot of Aileen's glue on each rod is enough to hold the beasts in place while I work. I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of painting cavalry, but this method does simplify the process for me. I'm using black undercoat for chestnuts and black mounts, brown for bays. Hopefully I'll have these done by the weekend when I'll make a start on the riders.

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Wargamers all over the world tend to have that "Ooh! Shiny!" reaction to new figures in new periods. I'm no different, except the period I'm tempted by is one I've already got. I'm talking about Colonial gaming, specifically the Sudan.

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I first went Up the Nile at Peter Gilder's wargames holiday center back in the mid-80's. I was hooked from the first moment I saw those huge tables set out with desert terrain, scrub, low hills and occasional villages. The sight of the lonely square of khaki and red-coated troops proceeding through the wilderness toward the town where they would rescue the Governor was quite stirring, especially when the Mahdists began to gather just out of rifle range. The Incident with the Egyptian Garrison: The Governor in the Rowboat: The Little Gunboat that Could - all fodder for fond memories.

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Not being able to afford the 25mm ranges at the time I opted instead for 6mm, and built up quite a collection of British, Imperial and Mahdists, along with terrain and gunboat. Now, having seen Peter Pig's range I'm tempted to start all over again in 15mm...

Off the painting block - 1

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The first sixteen figures out of sixty-plus dismounted US cavalry are now painted and varnished. Foot figures never take that long for me since I began using the block system. I also paint to the "Three Feet Rule." In other words, if a detail can't be seen from more than three feet away, it doesn't get painted. It's much easier on aging eyes this way.

Next up are the mounted troops, and they're horses of a different color.

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I will replace the guidon staff shown with brass rod. I have no quibble with Dixon's miniatures on the whole, but their white metal alloy is rather soft. Practically breathing on flag staves causes them to bend like a willow rod.

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Incidentally, does anyone know of a US source of horses compatable with Dixon's Miniatures 25mm Plains Wars range? I've tried Wargamesminis.com but they've sold out. Any help will be appreciated.

On the painting block - 1

Plains Wars - US cavalry. Painting under way

A view of my painting block

Almost finished
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Here's my current project, a batch of 25mm dismounted US cavalry of the Plains Wars era, which I'm painting up for a fellow gamer. The sharp-eyed among you may spot two versions of General George A. Custer lurking somewhere in the middle!

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The figures are on my painting block, an idea adapted from the test tube racks found in laboratories. Each figurine is glued to a dowel rod using Aileen's Tacky Glue or similar. This allows me a firm grip, prevents paint dribbling onto my fingers, gives me the ability to reach any part of the figure at any angle, and I can also dip the figure into Pledge/Future & ink mixture for shading without mess. Once the figure is complete, I simply cut it free of the rod using a box cutter knife. I chose a sixteen rod configuration simply because this is a number I can paint in one go without growing tired of the process!

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Next up will be a batch of US riders and horses. Painting horses is something of a chore for me, but since only a dozen are required it shouldn't be too difficult this go around.

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Since I have a number of figures in this period, I'm going to use some of them for GASLIGHT games set in the Old West. The rest are up for sale, so anyone interested - contact me for a list!

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Amongst the figures I have is a wagon train camp set depicting a rather nice "cookie," complete with coffee pot and ankle length apron, and a man holding out his mug for a refill! These are just begging to be used in a game. I aim to build a steampunked Connestoga wagon and chow wagon, along with another Explorer vehicle to tow them. As for the natives, I have something in mind for a "force equalizer/multiplier" to take on the US cavalry. Watch this space...