On Your Mark...

  I have spent the bulk of my hobby time since my last entry preparing for my rookie season of the Analogue Painting Challenge which gets underway tomorrow. The advised points goal for rookies is 300 pts (equals 60 28mm figures); I am pretty confident that I should make it but I have a couple of projects I want to pursue outside the challenge so I wanted a fairly low bar. This lot should take me to my goal:

It includes:

• the dock sections and boats from GW's Lake-town House Multipack
• 8 Crusader Norman Crossbowmen
• 8 Flemish Mercenaries made from Conquest Games' Norman Infantry
• 6 Conquest Games Norman Archers
• 8 Crusader Dark Ages Irish
• 6 Brigade Games Cowboys and Gunslingers
• 4 Blackstone Fortress characters
• 21 Blackstone Fortress baddies
• 3 mounted ECW characters from Warlord Games
• 3 ECW infantry from (2 Perry's, 1 WG)
• 1 Renedra North American Store

If I manage to get through that I have two bins of odds and sodds primed and ready to go including more ECW, Samurai, Anglo Saxons, 15mm Carthaginians, 3rd edition Genestealers, 3rd edition Stormtroopers and some 6mm GHQ Soviets.

I did get distracted from painting prep by some trees. On a recent shopping trip to London Drugs (a Canadian retail pharmacy chain) I came across some Lemax Butternut Trees in their seasonal section.

These are twisted wire trees set in resin bases. If you don't dig the bases the trees come out with a bit of prying. I was content to leave them in. For winter scenes they are perfect as is, but I wanted to make use of all those wire branches to get a nice canopy so I pulled them apart.

 After that I got a bit ahead of myself and I gave the canopy a bit of primer as I wanted grey branches. I had to go back and add some 3M Stripping Pad material to the canopy, prime again, and followed that with some Rustoleum Chalked Ultra Matte spray (Cocoa Bean) on the trunk, obligatory drybrush and wash.

Then I started the process of adding Scenic Express SuperLeaf:

In the end it was a little more work then I anticipated, but not as much as making the trees from scratch.

The trees were about $12 each, which works out to about $3.50 less per tree than Woodland Scenics premade large deciduous trees that I have (not the Premium Trees). On the one hand these trees are about an inch shorter than the WS trees and you have to add a canopy if you are not going to use them as winter trees; and twisted wire trunks are not everyone's up of tea. On the other hand the trunks are painted (if I had been more careful I could have avoided painting the trunks) and my method for adding the canopy presents a nicer, open canopy than the opaque canopy created by the clump foliage that comes on the WS trees.

Refurbished ECW From Ebay

 This past June I found a Canadian selling some second hand ECW figures on ebay. It's pretty rare to see such a thing. Although not a steal, the price was OK, and I knew I would have to tune them up a bit to fit them into my collection. It proved to be a little more work that I thought but in the end acceptable. 

The figures were from a mix of manufacturers; the picture below gives you an idea of the painting on the minis and the different ranges. Whoever painted many of the figures did very little to clean up the castings before starting; lots of mould lines and bits of flashing were painted over.

I believe we are looking at (from L to R) Old Glory, Old Glory again, Renegade(?), Redoubt (?), Perry. 

I think the bulk of the musketeers in this wing are either Old Glory or Redoubt, with a couple of Perrys  in the front rank and possibly one or two in the rear rank:

The rear rank of this wing is mostly Perry:

The pikemen are mostly Perry; I am unsure of the command figures :

One of the pike bases is made up of new figures. Just for shits and giggles I decided to put figures from 4 different manufacturers on one  40 mm base; we have - from left to right- 1st Corp, Avanpost, Perry and Warlord Games.

The large size of the 1st Corps figure and distinctive sculpting of the face makes it stand out when compared to the others at close range. The Avanpost figure is resin with sharp, fine detail but is quite fragile (I broke his scabbard when assembling him). I loved painting the smooth finish of the resin. I think that perhaps the Perry moulds are getting a little tired; the casting was a little rough in spots with flash, some minor pitting and, what I can only describe as, lead 'lint'.

However, at gaming distance the large size of the 1st Corps figure, the poor prep from the previous painter and any other minor issues are not even noticeable. 

Normans For Saga

 I got a bit side tracked here- for this post I am rolling back the timeframe a few hundred years from the English Civil Wars to the 11th century.

 Many moons ago I picked up some Conquest Games plastic Normans in part because 28mm plastic kits for historical war games was just starting and I went a little crazy (I still have several boxes for various periods I probably will never get around to playing).  Most of the Conquest Normans got some conversion work and ended up recruited into some petty kingdom in Al Andalus during the Taifa  period. Some of the leftovers are presented here.

The mounted Norman Knights kit was Conquests first plastic set and at about a decade old suffers from some of the faults common to early plastic kits- obscured detail, stiff posing- but still holds up well. In Saga terms these four horsemen are a unit of Hearthguard.

Conquests Medieval Archers kit is an improvement in sculpting from both their Norman Knights and Norman Infantry box sets. These 6 are a half unit of levy archers (the other 6 still under construction).

The only big problem for this kit is Conquest's head design. The head has a "foot" at the bottom of the neck where it is meant top be glued onto the torso. You get a good solid gluing surface but it looks weird as it only fits naturally if looking directly ahead, and not if you want the head looking in the direction the archer is shooting in. Some head /torso combos work better than others.

I had another set of Renedra's wattle fencing which I took the opportunity to paint up; very handy stuff to dress up the medieval or renaissance war games table.

Now back to tidying up that ebay purchase of ECW figures...

King's Lifeguard of Foot, pt 2

 After a long delay, I have finally completed the King's Lifeguard of Foot:

I started the regiment by putting together the pike block back in January of last year; it has seen duty in a variety of other regiments, and will continue to do so while we carry on with our campaign in the south-west.

Subsequently distracted by other projects and building other regiments the wings of shot have now been completed. 

The majority of the shot are Warlord Games plastic but one wing contains 4 musketeers marching from the 1st Corps. range.

Although taller and with distinctively larger features, they do not look out of place with the Warlord figures on the table top. Also in the back row is a figure that I picked up second hand- no idea the make (third figure from the right in the picture below).

Although described as being outfitted in red jackets and monteros I added a little variety in the head wear. With this regiment completed I will be putting together a grey coated regiment from figures I acquired through an eBay purchase...

English Civil War Dismounted Cavalry

In our Stoke Field game I fielded some dismounted cavalry from 2 different manufacturers and just finished painting some from a third. Dismounted cavalry were sometimes used to assault defended positions and, when required, to defend a strong point as well.

For the Stoke Lane game I painted up some Old Glory (OG)figures...

... as well as some Warlord Games (WG) figures from the Storming Party with Petard Team pack:

True to form, the WG figures were finished just a few days before the game and never made it onto the table, as they were trapped in their lodgings and captured.😒

Just this weekend I finished some Wargames Foundry (WF) minis from the Dismounted Cavalry with Carbines pack and the Officers and Characters pack:

Height-wise the three companies' figures match up pretty well although style-wise they are fairly different; left to right, WF, WG, OG:

The WG figures are more slender and better proportioned, and the detail is crisper as you would expect from a "modern" casting. Both the WF and OG figures are stockier have rather large noggins and hands with the sculpting of the OG figures being particularly dated. The OG figures come with separate right arms but they were in rather poor shape so I used arms from the WG plastic Harquebusier set.  Despite the fine detail and great casting of the WG figures, I think I enjoyed painting the WF figures the most; there is almost too much to paint on the WG minis, an issue I had with the metal dragoons as well. Although that may come across as a criticism, its more of a personal preference and they are still very nice figures.

An Outdoor War Game: The Battle of Stoke Lane

This past Sunday Murdock and I got together for an outdoor game at his place to play out another installment of our English Civil War campaign.

One of the interesting developments of the pandemic has been the interest in "long distance" gaming, and Murdock has been refining his broadcasting of his online war gaming over the past few months. In this case we had two players moving troops and making decisions from their homes, one of them two time zones away. Murdock's son (that's him behind the monitors) ran the cameras and coordinated the distant players, making sure everything ran smoothly leaving Murdock and I to move toy soldiers and roll dice.

The scenario we chose was The Battle of Stoke Lane from the Partizan Press book English Civil Wars Campaign Scenarios Vol.1 . This is a straight up raid or, as was contemporarily referred to, 'beating up quarters'. 

At this point in the campaign Sir Ralph Hopton had moved his army to Frome after spending nearly two weeks at rest, and had ordered his Maj. Gen. of Horse, Sir James Hamilton to quarter at the town of Beckington just a short distance north east of Frome, towards Bath where William Waller was then stationed. For some reason, Hamilton decided to continue closer to Bath, outside of the army's guards, to the village of Stoke Lane. Waller, having caught wind of Hamilton's poor choice, organised a raid comprising of horse and dragoons under the Frenchman Maj. Dowet.

The table set up from the south west. Dowet's raiders would enter from the north east at the top of the photo:

We would require quite a few buildings, using several from Murdock's collection, and the various building kits I had completed over the past couple of months would get their debut:

The game starts with Dowet's horse coming up from Bath along Mill Lane:

Royalist sentries rush along the village streets, attempting to arouse their sleeping cohorts:

The sentries rush to man a barricade as Parliamentarian horse gallop past, intent on capturing the pastured horses:

Dowet sends more horse swooping around to the south, to do the same:

Hamilton finally awakens from his slumber and stumbles outside with a bodyguard; he tries to stop the pilfering of his horses with disasterous results- he and his retinue are cut down except for one who slinks back to the Knatchbul Arms to hide:

On the south side of town, Royalist Dragoons respond early to the shouts of the sentries and make it to their horses before they are caught:

Others are not so lucky, trapped in their lodgings before they can respond:

Parliamentarian horse take a musket load in the face as they charge down Stoke Lane. Sadly, for the Royalists, despite doing great insult, it only enraged the enemy instead of stopping them:

Confused, swirling melees erupted as defenders tried to mount their horses and the attackers attempted to prevent their escape:

Some defenders were swamped by the enemy with one foot in the stirrup:

Only a few Royalists made it off the table:

 Royalist second in command, Lt.Col. Carre eventually made good his escape. Here he is last seen dodging enemy horse as his troops try to provide a screen :

All in all, the game played much like the real battle with two notable exceptions: both commanders were killed in melee! Also, Carre was actually captured whereas in our game he escaped to fight another day. The victory conditions meant it was a major victory for the Parliamentarians as they had to capture horses and enemy as well as take less than 50% casualties, both of which they achieved. For the Royalists to win they had to get more units off the table (not routing) than were captured or slain. As they only got 1.5 units off out of 10 it was a miserable day for them.

Tabletop Workshop's Barn and Stable

My order from Warlord Games finally made it and I was able to get the stable done. The barn I actually painted and finished about 3 years ago.

The barn has a relatively new roof- the thatch is still a nice fresh yellow.

The single storey kits all use the same roof pieces, short walls and floor - it's the long walls that make each kit different. One thing I regret is not filling in the tabs in the end walls with putty; they really stand out in the close up photos- not so noticeable on the table though.

With the stable I tried to replicate the daub colouring of the Perry's cottage (I should have wrote it down...); I think I got pretty close. A fancy stable like this probably belonged to the land owner in the nice house in the distance- too fancy for some tenant farmer.

The roof came out a little too light grey for my liking- I think I will give it a glaze with a dark brown just to warm it up a bit.

As Murdock and I have a game (the battle of Stoke Lane) planned for mid July I have a few things to tidy up for it including some more fencing and a small contingent of Old Glory dismounted cavalry we may need.