Heatwaves! Don'tyasjustluvem?

Well, unsurprisingly the answer here in GHQ is a resounding no! We arrived home this time last week from our jaunt Oop North, from breezy mid 20's to stifling mid 30's! Not really the kind of weather conducive to time spent wielding the Brush of Doom, hunched over my painting desk. Despite all that I have managed both to finish the baggage wagon set for my Wars of the Roses collection {see my previous post if you missed it, Paul😉} and to make a start on my War of the Spanish Succession project. Naturally following on from my conversation with Matt I decided to start with the Danish Livgarde til Fods, the famous Custard Men! 

It has soon become obvious that research has moved on exponentially since my Minifigs Franco-Bavarians of yore! My recollection of Phil's chaps is that their uniform coat was yellow, quite bright I expect back in the day. Surfing the net I came across the same unit painted more recently for one of his customers. The yellow is a much more muted straw yellow. Looking around others have chosen a similar shade also, some using Foundry's Boneyard triad. After mulling it over I have opted to go back to the future and chosen their Ochre, Shade and Mid. You will no doubt have your several opinions on my choice, but for me its a compromise in honouring their predecessors. As I asked before, where are they fighting now? Anyway, I have one completed base to tease you with ~

One complaint about the figures - missing buttons, especially on the cuffs, due to poor mould making or poor casting, but either suggest poor quality control.

The figures are from Wargames Foundry, sculpted eons ago by the Perrys. They are generic figures in the main which would have necessitated painting on the red ladder effect lace. You will have noticed I'm sure that I didn't take that route. They will do for me. Their range comes with a mixture of informal round hats and later tricorns. I have mixed the two in each of my first two units, though these sport a majority of tricorn hats, they are the Guards after all. Out of interest, I'm just the texturing, colour washing and vegetating the base away from completing the second base, hopefully later today when its cooler...

I have a second Danish infantry unit all ready to face the Brush of Doom along with a command base for the brigade. I will need to order a third battalion at some point to round out his brigade but first I need to replenish the warchest! On that point some explanation is due: I have orders in place with Warfare Miniatures for a cavalry squadron and some Staff officers and with Ebor Miniatures for my first British infantry battalion. They should help keep me busy for a couple of months...

At Last!

Back in the early Spring Phil and I tootled over to the Newark Showground to attend 'Ommer'ead. We'd actually resolved not to go this year, but the unexpected cancellation of WMMS lead to our plans being reappraised. One of my purchases there, from show stalwart Dave Thomas, was the Perry Miniatures baggage wagon set from their Wars of the Roses range. It has sat in the Lead Pimple ever since, the very definition of an impulse purchase if ever I've made one! Well last month I finally resolved to assemble the kit of parts and spray undercoat it ready for it's encounter with the Brush of Doom! It's not been exactly plain sailing I have to say...

Phil would tell you that my patience, in respect of hobby stuff at least, is not the greatest. Instead of thinking ahead about the painting process I moved right ahead to cleaning up and assembling the cart, the load, the oxen and the figures! Partly I confess because Superglue and I do not enjoy a disaster free relationship...

You'll hopefully recall this picture from an earlier post! It neatly leads me on to cataloguing my problems at the painting stage, starting with the oxen. The beasts' heads needed fixing to the bodies, but that meant fixing in place the yokes first. I assembled each pair, only later realising how fiddly painting them would be once I'd glued each pair onto their bases. Similarly with the cart, I glued the resin cast load into place on the cart bed and then glued the side pieces to the bed and load. I never thought about the painting stage at this point. If I'd left off fixing the cart wheels and fittings painting would have been more straightforward, but hindsight is a mixed blessing.

There was a good deal of overpainting, repainting and accompanying curses along the way either side of our trip Oop North and liberal washes of Agrax Earthshade to disguise the myriad mistooks! Most difficult at the end was painting the two civilian cart passengers as I fixed them in place again without considering the painting process on small pieces firmly attached to the whole piece. You can judge for yourselves, it would look good 'to a blind man on a galloping horse' as my late father would surely have remarked ~

I added the musician figure to create a bit of interest, its probably from their 100 Years War range. It was in one of Aly's packages for the deserving poor!

Agrax Earthshade covers a multitude of sins. It also helps the figures to stand out and look a little better than they really are!

As I hope you can see in the final picture, the musician adds a point of interest and colour to the mostly dull look of the baggage set.

Still, its done now, so on to other things in due course. I thought I'd round the post off with a couple of holiday snaps, à la Matt ~

Pagecroft Cottage, near Haydon Bridge and handily placed for the more accessible parts of Hadrian's Wall.

And the view from our cottage's front porch. It takes a lot of that to make you ill!

Finally, a  bit of Wall...

Hadrian of Wall fame!

At Chesters fort museum, a bronze tablet, the reward for 25 years service gifting Roman citizenship!

The wall from Housesteads Fort...

...bleak does not even come close to describing its location the day we climbed up to visit!

Reconstructed sections at Vindolanda,  both in timber and in later stone.

Gladiators immortalised in glass. I find it amazing how it survives!

Adapting to the posting, evolution of the Roman soldier's appearance on the wall.

The different styles of armour shown at the Roman Army Museum, a twinned visit with Vindolanda at £20 each for both. We split our visit to each over two days.

And finally, we never did encounter that ghostly Roman soldier though...

Something New?

 Well now, yes and no would have to be my honest response to any enquiry. Back in the day, when the world was young, Phil and I had a collection of figures for the War of the Spanish Succession. Of course back then they were Minifigs 25mm figures with hand painted flags and standards. As was the usual outcome in time they were sold on to finance a new project - first if I recall correctly to a South Wales gamer and then I believe on to the late John Tuckey. I wonder where they are now? But I digress: we hhave chatted over time about revisiting the period, madness you'd think when I already have a decent sized SYW collection. But then, I'm a wargamer, and when did common sense ever deter any of us from starting something new?

The first parcel I received was from Caliver Books and brought C.S.Grant's classic handbook on armies of the period. I think in our previous venture we might have had access to some of this research - via Military Modelling perhaps? I shall spend some time on planning from where and how to set about collecting and painting units with the help of this book. But first I thought that I would buy just a few figures, enough for a Foot regiment, and a few commanders. I did consider revisiting Minifigs for this, but in the end I sent my order to Wargames Foundry as you can probably see~

Ordered on Monday, received on Tuesday, cleaned up and spray undercoated on Wednesday! Ready for painting on our return from The North on Friday!

In its first incarnation, a joint project between Phil and me, I painted the Franco-Bavarians and Phil the Allies. Units then were 12 [or 16?] figures, I confess I can't remember clearly, but this time I wanted to eschew those sizes in favour of slightly larger looking regiments. I've provisionally settled on three 80x60mm bases and infantry regiments of around 20-24 figures.

As an aside, it was around the time of the original collection when Matt first got involved in our games, throwing the dice for us and generally joining in the fun. When I mentioned the new venture to him his immediate response was to demand the return of The Custard Men, as the Danish Life Guard in Phil's Allied army had been christened! I'm obviously obliged to follow my son's request, so these chaps will form the Den Kongelige Livgarde til Fods.

Flags of War, who have a decent range of flags for the WSS, don't currently offer an appropriate set for them, but happily David via his splendid Not By Appointment blog has come to the rescue and has downloadable versions of their flags. You can get an idea of the look of them and the regiment from the picture below which I've borrowed from the net!

These are Warfare Miniatures I believe, which will no doubt figure in my collection in due time, though in a different guise of course. But all that lies some time in the future for now, first I have to paint the figures I've shown and start to plan out future purchases over the coming months...

Something Old...

...Something New, as the saying goes. Well, after the title for this blog entry I'm confident you might be expecting  an exciting reveal, something new for an old project perhaps?Never mind, its hardly new or for an old project, so you may simply put any confusion down to my age! In the last post I mentioned that I had assembled and spray undercoated the Perry Miniatures Wars of the Roses baggage wagon set, which I had purchased from Dave Thomas at 'Ommer'ead back in March this year ~

Here it is before the spray undercoat was applied. For those interested in such things, I use Hycote Double Acrylic white from the local Home & Motor store, just under £5.00 a can! I think I have mentioned this before now I come to think on it.

Before travelling Oop North I had some unplanned time at my painting desk and so I've made a start on painting it. So far I have finished the four oxen, the drover, and an additional figure from Aly's earlier gift parcel - you'll have to wait to see him though! I've also applied the base colour to the woodwork of the cart ready for the application of a colour wash or two. 

But first we are spending some time with Hadrian...starting in Hexham Abbey and this memorial tablet for Flavinus, a standard bearer in the Petriana Cavalry Regiment, on display at the foot of the Night Stairs.

Going off at a tangent I recently received in the post a copy of the new edition of my rules for the Anglo-Zulu War, Washing the Spears.  These are published by arrangement with Partizan Press via Dave Ryan at Caliver Books and are priced at £17.50. If sales go as expected then there may at some point also be new editions of my other C19th rules, for the Sudan and the Indian Mutiny.  I had seen the layout during the design stage but nothing beats handling the finished product in my opinion.  The graphic designer has made a splendid job of the layout, so I hope that you won't mind if I modestly recommend them to you if you are interested in the period. Like all sensible rules they are scale and figure agnostic. 

Heroes & Heroines...

...separated though they are by the centuries. Two small additions to two of my ongoing collections: a Saxon Hero for the Age of Arthur; and a Victorian Heroine taking tea, no something stronger surely, to stiffen her resolve in the face of perils unknown in The Heart of Darkness collection. In truth they were all I found in the Lead Pimple ready to face the Brush of Doom!

The Saxon hero comes from one of Gripping Beast's character packs for the Early Saxons. You can just make out the head he's resting his foot on, another luckless Post-Roman came off a poor second!

The Honourable Alice Malaband and her trusty manservant in camp. She is anxiously awaiting a spot of tiffin it seems, or perhaps a something a tad stronger. A gal needs a nip of Dutch courage now and then out here in the Heart of Darkness... The figures are from Wargames Foundry, well over 30 years old but still excellent figures to work on.

I've no further figures underway as we are off Oop North for a few days R&R soonish. Next up should be a baggage wagon set by Perry Miniatures for the Wars of the Roses project. I cleaned it up and assembled it yesterday and spray undercoated it this afternoon, so that will occupy a week I'd think later this month. Then I hope to make a start on the first figures for a new project...

Another of those Friparies!

Well, actually three of them, but let's not be picky. You may have noticed that it was a tad warm last week, almost warm enough to tempt you to take off your vest perhaps? Not the sort of weather here in GHQ conducive to painting much, even less for cleaning up new figures and such? A good job then that rifling through the old Lead Pimple I found these bits ready for the Brush of Doom. Six mantlets from Wargames Foundry and three figures from Perry Miniatures which I have wrangled into three bases I can use in Italian Wars or Wars of the Roses games to afford some cover for the smaller guns, or combined with Chevaux des frise to provide defences in a seige game ~

Not as striking as those which come as a part of Perry Miniatures large bombard set - which you might recall I bought by accident - but a useful addition to the tabletop battlefield ephemera of two wargames collections ~

I thought that I should add some closer pictures of each base/set just for completion ~

I think the figures are sufficiently generic to pass in both collections. We just need an excuse to get one or other of them out on the tabletop battlefield here in GHQ for a game in the coming weeks...

The Lost Remnants!

A while back now Phil gifted me a few Gripping Beast Late Romans, which had originally been passed to him by Norm! They are well travelled! I put them to one side until I had finally painted all the figures for The Heart of Darkness project. It's fair to say that the recent heatwave temperatures hereabouts have not been conducive to long sessions wielding the Brush of Doom, but working in short early morning sessions I have managed to complete them! As there were a dozen of them I've opted to base them on a single 60 x 80mm base, as I have previously done with Hearthguard or Warband bases. I see them as descendants of the remnants of a Roman unit who somehow were left behind when Roman units were withdrawn in the early C5th. Perhaps their orders never reached them? Or perhaps they simply chose to stay behind? Their backstory and basing choice are sufficiently loose to allow me to field them as a small Warband or as a Warlords Hearthguard. Enough blathering on, here is the Lost Remnant of Rome ~

As an interesting aside, the spears are plastic, a free gift sprue in an order from North Star a while ago.

The shield transfers are from LBMS via Victrix as is the vexillium device. The latter is from a Helenistic sheet, but it will do for me in this instance!

These are venerable figures, their design easily predating the arrival of LBMS shield transfers I'd guess. The transfer sheet option here 'fits' the large shields on Gripping Beast figures. If you look carefully that is rather more accurate for the rank and file figures' shields. In the case of the two officers figures from the Command pack that is not so, as you can clearly see on the lead figure and the officer on the far right. Its a minor irritation, but with cast on shields there is little you can do to ameliorate the effect. In a game though I'd venture few would notice, or care?

As with The Heart of Darkness project there are no more figures remaining in the old Lead Pimple to add, so I need to order up a couple of units to boost the Post-Roman element of the collection. A unit of infantry from Crusader/Artizan via North Star, and some Light Cavalry, either from 1st Corps or from Gripping Beast. Not forgetting they have no archers as yet! These will needs wait though until next month as we will be off Oop North for a few days in early July taking in the sights along Hadrian's Wall and hopefully various castles and Abbeys too!