Getting Back into Napoleonic's

After a couple of recent Napoleonic games to try and build interest in General d'Armee at my club, I decided to paint a new French battalion. There was a time when I use to enjoy painting French infantry battalions but that was when I was painting little 12 man units in 20mm. I'm not so keen on them now because 28mm battalions take a lot longer to complete because of the level of detail required. 

The thing is though... they look great when they're done. For my most recent battalions I've been including a mounted chef de battalion and that just makes them look even nicer. It really adds to the overall look. 

Normally for the French id give the figures a dark wash and follow that with extra coats of very thin white. I gives a very nice effect but it also takes more time. With these guys I opted for flat paints with a flesh wash for the skin areas. I'm happy with them.

The figures are mainly Perry plastics. Both officers and the eagle guard are metal as too are the two last voltigeurs. They were leger flankers but I sculpted new coat cuffs for them because I was short a couple of plastic voltigeurs.

Anyway, this is just a quick post. I have to cook dinner so I have to leave and get the salad made before cooking up some sizzling porterhouse steaks.

Goodbye.

Some Recent Games

Recently I've been posting about what I've been making and painting and I haven't posted anything to do with actual games. It might surprise you but I have actually played a few games in the past couple of months. It's just that I just haven't posted anything. So here we go: here's a few games from the most recent (last week) back to somewhere around early/mid October.

Okay, the most recent game I played was General D'Armee. I didn't take a command role in this game (but I did give advice to both sides) as I was introducing some other players and decided to umpire. This was the second game of GdA that I umpired recently but I forgot to take pics of the first one.

I like GdA. It has a nice feel to it. We played it pre-plague and had about half a dozen games and we were getting to know the rules quite well. So now that we're starting again we're not right back to square one but it is taking time to get to know the rules again and getting the game to flow quickly.

The troops below are Mike's Minifig Polish that he painted many, many years ago. They haven't been on a tabe for quite some time. Myself and most of the guys playing GdA use to play a home-brew set of club rules: Cold Steel, but we fell out of love with them (although they still have a good following at our club). Mike troops are still based for Cold Steel in little 12 figure battalions but I think he might rebase for GdA as I did.

Another club member, John, put on a game of Zulu Wars using The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. This was a great little game to play and has proved very popular at the club where John has set it up several times in recent weeks. Our game had 2 British players and 4 Zulu players (I was a Zulu and the pics are taken from the perspective of my troops).

John always puts on great looking games with really well painted figures and beautiful terrain. When I first joined the club (Nunawading Wargames Association or NWA) he was playing Lord of the Rings and made the most impressing Isengard and Orthanc that you'd ever likely to see. I have pics somewhere but I can't find them.

Oh, by the way... The British got hammered!

I put on two of games of O Group. The pics are from the second game which I umpired to introduce club members Veteran Neil and Young Harry.  As you can see this one was set somewhere in Europe. It was a pretty simple set up for the sake on an introduction. The first game (that I actually played) was set in the desert between the DAK and the 8th Army.

It seems a lot of my recent gaming involves playing the rules of Dave Brown. I do like the way that his rules work. His rules have a very clear emphasis on command and control and his combat mechanisms are simple and effective. I'm hoping to play more of both GdA and O Group this year. I've even ordered some 6mm WWII Germans to test how they might work for O Group. 

And last but not least, another game by the aforementioned John. This time a WWI game set in Gallipoli using Through the Mud and the Blood rules from the Too Fat Lardies. Again, this was a great little game with beautiful figures and terrain (3D printed I believe). This was a trench raid scenario and I played the Aussies. Maybe I should have dusted off my old slouch hat for the evening. 

So that's it. A quick post to show that I do play actual wargames and don't just collect figures. I'm currently taking a short rest from the Wars of the Roses and building up my Napoleonic French for GdA. I just need a couple more infantry battalions and another regiment or two of cavalry.

Cheers.

P.S. My old slouch hat on the left:

A Bunch of Percy's

There has been a bit of a slowdown in my Wars of the Roses output due to indecision and delving into Napoleonic's again. But I haven't been idle and I've finished a retinue for Sir Henry Percy the Earl of Northumberland. 

I've only done finished one band of retinue bill and bow and one of men-at-arms. However, because the Percy's were very active on the northern boarders I've decided to make some prickers (light cavalry lancers) for him too but they're still on the paint bench at the moment.

Included in this retinue are a couple of Empress Miniatures that I picked up from Eureka Miniatures. These are nice, well sculpted figures and they've been re-issued due to popular demand. I added this guy in the classic "rude archer" pose and there is another hidden elsewhere. These figures match very well with the Perry plastics.

I decided to make the Earl on a mounted command base. The figure on the right (as in the pic below) is the Perry's metal Somerset figure. I demoted him and made him a standard bearer because I already have a Somerset on foot. The Earl and the other standard bearer are Perry plastics.

I wasn't keen on attempting his tabard but the base would have looked a bit blasé if I just did him in red and black so I summoned up the courage and did it. It's not the best but it looks reasonable and recognisable at arms length. I wasn't sure about the flags either and thought about putting the coat of arms on the men-at-arms base. I painted an extra standard bearer figure for it but left him off in the end.

So there you go. I now have a Percy to add to my Lancastrian array. And speaking of my array, I decided to lay it all out to see what it looks like on the table. As far as I'm concerned they now look like an army. I don't know how many figures there are but there must close to about two hundred and fifty.

I like that there are plenty of banners flying because I thought I was lacking a bit in the banner department but it's not as empty as I thought.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers for now.

Baby Got Some Bad, Bad Gas...

A change of pace. I've been keen to get back to work on my zombie apocalypse game; Infection Z, for some time now. So I've been reading through the rules and decided to work on some terrain to get me into the mood. I already have plenty of zombies and survivors and don't feel like pianting more of either at the moment. I have about 80+ zombies and 40 odd survivors (although there's really nothing wrong with adding more zed's to the herd!).

As it is I've had a couple of Sarissa Precision buildings constructed and undercoated for a long while and decided to finally get them finished. First up is this little gasoline station:

This is a nice little kit but it was pretty fiddley to paint. That undercover piece and the signage on top was really awkward. As you can see the arrow at the end of "gas" broke off because it was a bit delicate and, despite how it looks now, I painted all the parts with a high level of accuracy. I knew I'd be messing it up but painting it neat and tidy beforehand really makes a difference to the final effect.

I decided to keep that front awning/undercover piece separate and didn't glue it in place. I'm hoping the slots for holding it will be strong enough to keep it in place during a game. Keeping it separate will make storage easier.

The windows are just thin acetate. Nothing special but they give the illusion of glass. The sign on the front is just paper. I made it on photoshop and painted the silly face and skull.

The interior is pretty basic. It only came with a door and a counter. I made the little shelf stack out of thick card. Unfortunately the front door is just etched into the outer wall and doesn't open. 

This will go well with my other terrain. When I finish a couple more buildings I'll have have more than enough to set up a little abandoned, dilapidated town. 

Anyway, it's about time we left the Atomic Gas station and it's friendly proprietor to their own business. Y'all come back whenever you want. Drop in and say "Hello," and try not to get your face eaten off.

A Fanfare for the King

I've had this figure of Henry VI for a while abut but I didn't know what to to do with it. It's the Perry figure that comes in the same set as Margret of Anjou and Buckingham. I wanted to keep Henry separate for a purpose but I didn't know what to do with him.

Last week, as mentioned in my previous post, I visited Eureka and found out that they have a range of Wars of the Roses figures that don't appear on their webstore. Because the horses in the plastic set are far too animated for what I wanted, I ended up using most of the metal Perry horses I had on my Margret/Buckingham command base. So I needed a few replacements for the King's base.

Eureka only had 2 horse options but I thought they would work well: and they did. They don't have saddles so I had to sculpt one for the Perry "Lord Wenlock" figure that I used and ended up with the rider and horse as a single figure. I pained this figure not as Wenlock but a more generic "Kings Counsellor." I like the way the figures work together. It looks like Henry is explaining some complex piece of theology and the "Counsellor" is rubbing his chinny, chin. chin and thinking..."Ummm... Okay?"

The standard bearer is from the Eureka range. I don't like this figure much. His pauldrons are studded and look like a fantasy figure and the figure itself is quite flat. I trimmed down the left pauldron and sculpted a cloth on top to match the plastic Perry arm that I grafted onto its right side. He already had a saddle which fitted perfectly onto the horse.

The musicians are from the Eureka range and as soon as I saw them I thought: "I know what to do with these," and what to do with the Henry VI figure. They are fantastic and I'll be getting another set of these to add to my Hemmingseatic League Imaginations medieval army. A great little set.

That banner on the trumpeter was tricky. Using photoshop I cut the actual banner down and then re-sized the image. Because the figure is hand crafted one side of the trumpet banner needed a 14mm square and the other side a 13mm not-quite-square, square. Both hands got in the way too so there was some micro-trimming required. Then I had to try and match the paint to the banner.

By the way, this base isn't supposed to be a command base. It's a King Henry VI base, meaning that it will mark on the table where he is if he's present. He could be in the custody of the Yorkist, or sitting under a tree with the battle rages all around him and the Queen takes command. Whatever situation he finds himself in, I really like how this base turned out. Lots of colour, pageantry and a little bit odd.

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I also made some other pieces. As you can see below I made some stakes for the archers and some Re-Load tokens in case they are needed for any particular set of rules. The stakes are individual little things on a base as are the bunches of arrows. Both from Eureka. The stakes are on 6" bases.

Some New Ordinance

Another day and another retinue for the Lancastrian cause. 
And a couple of guns.

This time Lionel Welles, 6th Baron Welles has turned up to lend his support to King Henry VI and brought a pair of cannon with him, one of which came to me unexpectedly.

I did Welles' retinue a bit different to my previous retinues. Instead of doing a unit of bill & bow and a separate unit of dismounted men at arms I've just done a single unit of retinue with a few dismounted knights incorporated into the central base of billmen. This way I don't need a separate command base with Welles on it. I just included him in the unit itself.

I'll do a few more units like this. One of the bonuses of doing more units this way is that I can include more variety in the livery and banners and therefore...More colour! I'm quite happy with Welles' livery. I's not great but at arms length is looks nice and stands out. At this point, I think I'll be doing Sir Andrew Trollop next.

The Ordinance:

This first one is a Perry model that I ordered a couple of months back. Most folks interested in this era will be familiar with this piece. It's a nice little model and came out looking okay. As with all of my cannon I've given them a sort of generic look livery-wise so that they can be used with either Lancaster or York (when the time comes to start a Yorkist army).

The other cannon came to me on a recent visit to Eureka Miniatures. I haven't visited for a while and I was chatting with Nic and I mentioned that my current project is Wars of the Roses. Low and behold! He pulled out a tray full of WotR's figures that don't appear on the Eureka website. I bought a few figures, this gun, some horses and some other odds and ends.

This is a great model. The gun itself is cast very clean with great detail and was very easy to prep and paint. The crew are of varying quality from great to average.

The Master Gunner is a lovely figure and my painting doesn't do it justice. The guy with the cannon ball (doing the shot put) is a bit odd but has plenty of character. I like the bloke with the sponge, he looks like he emulating the boss just like a true toady would behave.

There is also a figure with a hand bellows and a fire. A nice figure to add interest. I took 4 different photo's of this model because most people will not have seen this piece before. I'm sure if you emailed Eureka to ask for it, you'd be able to get one of these models.

Thanks for reading. I'm working on something special for my next post.

Bye for now.

Ian KH