Bloody Miniatures: The Squire's Men

 Another fantastic pack from Bloody Miniatures: BM006, The Squire's Men. 

On the one hand I see them as loyal, down to earth folk with Parliamentarian leanings...

... on the other hand, rural communities tend to be fairly conservative, suspicious of new ideas...

... so perhaps they don't see the need for change: they have a good life, their employer treats them well.

Then again, maybe their lord, eager to improve his standing, supports Parliament. Otherwise indifferent, their loyalty to him ensures their loyalty to parliament. 

One thing is for sure, they do not appreciate belligerent cavalier types intruding on their lord's property.

New Direction: 15mm Sassanid Army

 Generally I like to paint and collect 28mm miniatures but quite a few of my fellow wargamers collect and game in 15mm. So I decided to branch out and purchased a second hand 15mm Sassanid army a few years ago. I say an army but it was about 22 stands of cavalry- no infantry. So as part of a group order I picked up some levy spearmen and some archers from Old Glory. First off the painting desk are the spearmen.

 I have to say I didn't take my time with these; there was no reason to rush, I just wanted to get them painted (I even shirked on the prep as you can see):

                                                                                  

 

It turns out I had purchased a handful of Sassanid spearmen from a business that was getting out of historical figures; I am not sure what make, possibly the now defunct Corvus Belli historical range.

Here is a shot of the two different manufacturers side by side (Old Glory on your left):

Most of the Sassanid shields I have seen follow Angus Macbrides excellent depiction in Osprey's MAA 175,  Rome's Enemies (3): Parthians and Sassanid Persians, but I chose to mix it up a bit. 

Also in the Old Glory order along with the aforementioned archers were a couple of elephants. I hope to get to them this fall some time. Worst case scenario they will be prepped and primed for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

 

Bloody Miniatures: First Wave Painted

 As my busy work season presses on I continue to pick away at painting figures in what spare time I have, working my way through the Bloody Miniatures catalogue (as there are only 48 figures in the range so far it shouldn't take long...right?). I have completed the first wave of releases from BM; after a brief side track into 15mm ancients, I hope to get started on wave 2 shortly.

As part of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I painted BM 001, The Mortuary Men. Here I have BM002, The Forlorn Hope:

BM003 is The Pistoleers:

BM004 is- my favourite of the first wave- The Dismounted Troopers:

As with the first couple of packs I painted these were a delight, though I still seem to struggle with the faces for some reason; I can't seem to be able paint them to the level they deserve. I love the way the clothing is sculpted and the details are perfect. I look forward to the next batch as there are some fantastic looking figures in it.

ECW Cuirassier

 I picked up some painted Perry Cuirassier off of ebay last month. 

Although not in bad shape, they were sloppily painted. I chose not to strip them but just tidied up the paint job and gave them a standard.

I opted to give them a Prince Rupert's Lifeguard of Horse standard from Wargames Designs. Was Rupert's lifeguard cuirassier? Probably not, but it gives them some distinction on the games table.

Although there are 8 troopers on 4 bases in Pike And Shotte I would only use 3 bases and they would count as Small.

And The Weeks Turned Into Months...

 This past winter, since December 20th I have concentrated on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (for those unfamiliar with it, see here) and the bulk of that time was spent painting my rather excessive collection of GW's LoTR plastic kits (not really historical material...).  However, to give myself a bit of a break from my main drive I did complete a few ECW figures, mainly from the Bloody Miniatures range.

The first group are from blister BM001, The Mortuary Men:

As has been said elsewhere these are wonderful character models.

I did a second blister, BM009 The Moss Troopers from the second wave released last year:

From the BM webstore:

    "A rapacious gang of brigands, freebooters, broken men, or discharged and destitute soldiers turned to banditry and ambuscades."

Perfect for skirmish games; really suitable for low figure count games such as Fistful of Lead or an adaptation of the incredibly flexible Pulp Alley rules.

My final entry of the campaign was a command stand for King Charles I.

I broke what some seem to consider a cardinal rule of building wargaming units and used figures from different manufacturers here (5 in fact!). The sergeant with the halberd is from Avanpost, the Cuirassier with the standard is from Horcata, King Charles is from Warlord Games, the dismounted Cavalry officer from Bicorne Miniatures and the horses by Front Rank.

The Horcata figure comes with a saddle sculpted to the rider as they were designed for the Front Rank horses but I had to sculpt a saddle for King Charles:

Aside from Charles' large head (seems historically appropriate...) all the figures fit together well enough . The King's standard is from Wargames Designs.

I chose to paint Charles' horse as a dun like Van Dyck's 1637/38 portrait of him as opposed to a grey as in the 1633 portrait in part because the grey is an almost exact replica of other mounts in Van Dyck's other portraits of European nobility so was probably his default portrait steed.

Customised Warbases Church

 It seems a necessary piece of table top dressing for any ECW campaign is a little old English church. For some time now I had the intention of building or buying one; in the end I settled for a  MDF kit from Warbases, although I have added quite a bit to it. 

I essentially used the MDF kit as a starting point, a frame onto which I added 3 main  extras:

• Slaters Plastikard 7mm dressed Stone for the walls
• custom made and cast slate roof 
•  quoins and window trim sculpted from grey stuff

Here we have it before the customisation:

And after:

I didn't use the windows that came with the kit but instead I glued drywall mesh to the inside of the building and painted it black.

For the front of the entrance I glued sheet styrene, textured with a craft knife to represent wood, to the MDF. The walkway is foam pavers.

The tree is a plastic Woodland Scenics armature with my standard foliage recipe. The most time consuming part of the build was making the roof. I wanted something that was a bit more 3D than the paper offering and although the slates did come out a smidge fantasy I am quite happy with them. I made two moulds so I will be able to make them up quickly should I decide to make a similar roof later.

 I'm not 100% confident in my colour choice for the quoins; in the end I am satisfied but I think If I was going to do it over I think I would go with something a little more tan, a little less yellowy orange.

I cannot recall where I bought the statue; I originally bought it for my Mordheim project and had forgot about it- I just remembered it yesterday- but it is a beautiful little piece of work.

What's a church yard with out grave stones? These ones are simply made from XPS foam.

One of the reasons I chose the Warbases kit is that it has a small footprint on the table. I think if I was building it specifically for skirmish gaming I would have gone with a bigger kit, like Sarissa Precision's church.

Hopefully there won't be such a long break between posts through the next few months. Works slows down during winter and I have some ECW figures lined for the Analogue Hobby Painting Challenge which starts in about two and a half hours.

18mm Crimean War French

After what seems like a very long time I have completed the Eureka 18mm Crimean War French.

Eureka's French come in 3 different poses, in 2 types of head wear; shako:

And Kepi:

Conveniently the French uniforms have essentially the same colour as the Turks; this project did finish off my bottle of Army Painter red.

I would say that these figures were better sculpted than the Turks; I'm not sure if it is the same sculptor or a different one.

I found the faces and the hands to have better definition, easier to paint, . This officer chose to wear his optional 'steel grey' trousers instead of red: 

The French also have a very nice little cannon to accompany them:

I see that Eureka has an Army Commander pack for the French so I may order one of those and pick up another gun while I am at it.