Photodump Vol.1: Historicals

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Oh hey there, did you miss me? No.... Cool.

If you don't visit Instagram, here's some of what I have been up to.  The intention was to keep the blog for things that require a bit more depth, but to be honest, I never sit down and write those things up at the minute anyway!

So here's the round up of Historical/quasi-historical miniatures from the last few months:

Two more 15mm Bavarian Battalions; IIRC 3rd & 4th fusiliers

Col. Adam Muir of the 41st; Upper Canada 1812

Imagi-Nations Gebrovian Regiment.  15mm Warrior Miniatures

US infantry platoon.  Italy 1943-44.  mixed 20mm.

The Stuart is a rescue of one of a pair I've owned since childhood!

Stug III G.  PSC kit in 1/72 with full treatment of techniques!

So having got the Biblical stuff put to one side, I went off and blasted out some uniformed troops and added to the WW2 collection from mostly the leftovers pile.

However, I am intent on starting a new front for WW2 in 2022, and going down a different early war route.  In a somewhat related regard, I produced a little diorama for an online painting challenge; which gives a clear indication what I have in mind:

 

Figures are proving a little hard to source, but things are progressing.  This aside I have a couple of historical ideas to start in 2022, and no end of projects to try and finish!

Next time, all the Fantasy stuff.

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Through mud and blood, for Turnips...

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I got introduced to the weird world of Turnip28.

And momentarily I dismissed it.

But under the first impression, the soil was good.  After a little more investigation, I discovered a fascinating world of kitbashing, freeform creativity, in a bizarre post-apocalyptic, post-Napoleonic world.  The opportunity to build skirmish sized forces using the contents of my extensive bits box eventually proved too much to resist.

Consequently, I am here so far; the bulk of two different regiments: 

Chaff of the 51st Parchdale

A Stump Gun of the 27eme Oignans Blanc du Pied

Fodder and a Toady for the 27eme

Rootlings of the 27eme

Grogs of the 51st

Bastards [Heavies] accompanying the 27eme

The models above feature a range of parts from more or less every Perry & Victrix set I've ever bought, alongside some Fireforge & Northstar bits, as D&D Cannon barrel, bits of wood, card, sprue, lots of Greenstuff, grass tufts, UV-cured resin, and foraged roots and plants from my local woods!  When the rules are simply make what you like to no more than a general theme, the world is your oyster.  It's like 40k back in Rogue Trader times!

As to the painting, we are in rather more uncharted territory.  

The paint palette here is very limited.  I chose to try a thing called the Zorn palette; in essence restricting yourself to an extremely limited range of colours; in fact ideally only four: Black, White, Red and Yellow.  Other than metallics and weathering that is all I used; except that the 27eme got a small amount of Prussian Blue added, as that is one colour the other four cannot make, and I did add a basic Green for doing the foliage.

It is remarkable what you can achieve this way, and tonally it pulls everything together.  But what really kicked it up a level into a 'Grimdark' look, is Oil paint.  Everything was finished with a number of oil washes, which can be applied and then selectively removed to give a subtle, grimy look.

Nonetheless, I've ended up, after all my griming, dusting, and weathering, with what for the genre are still rather 'Poppy' models.  Not as grim as many.  But they've been a fun diversion.

Another 20 or so models and I 'll have two full forces.  Some of the remaining pieces will be rather more wacky; but that therefore means they'll take rather longer to finish.  Still maybe in the new year I can actually put them on a table...

Something to work towards.

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26eme Regiment: 1811

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The 26eme regiment is the latest addition to the Napoleonics collection, bolstering the French forces to near parity with the allies:

Perry Miniatures

This regiment appeared in many of the major battles of the Peninsular War, including Sabugal, Fuentes d'Onoro and Salamanca, before being sent East to serve in the campaigns of 1813-14.  

Attempts at randomness

Using what was available, these are dressed for somewhat inclement weather.  They were intended to be a quick and easy job - by Napoleonics standards.  How wrong I was, these seemed to take far longer than intended.

But it brings the French up to 13 foot units now.  Which is real progress.

More hopefully to come this year yet!

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General Ferey and the Guarde Artillery

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One thing I was determined to make progress on at the start of this year, was the 28mm Napoleonics.  I felt I'd pushed them to one side in the last few years, and whilst there was always an aim to do a couple of units a year, that had reduced to a trickle of maybe one in the same timeframe.  

This year will not be like that!  So here we add another unit, and an additional commander to the French, who were definitely feeling outnumbered, so this is mainly their year.

Claude François Ferey, Baron de Rozengath (21 September 1771 – 24 July 1812) became a division commander during the Napoleonic Wars and was killed fighting the British at Salamanca; prior to this he commanded a division at Fuentes D'Onoro and prior to that he was a Brigadier at Busaco.  Given the available spare figures he is presented by here, and my leanings to the early phase of the war, I've presented him as a Brigadier:

Claude Ferey and chum.

Particularly pleased with the horse...

These are just a pair of Hat Industrie hard plastics, that were to hand, and made up for a nice command base.  Ideally he should be in a Bicorne, but I am plain out of suitable spares, so you make do with what you have.

Speaking of which.

In the bottom of the Napoloenics box of shame, a pile of metal had languished for a good nine years.  An old friend had gifted me some French Guarde artillerymen, he had intended for a Warhammer army (!?!), and I just had to add guns to them to make a unit.  Well I got that far; and then nothing.  Still, to each, his moment in the sun.

The Queens of the Battlefield

The whole are Front Rank models, some of my favourites, for good clean sculpts, chunky details, heft, and a fair price.

Ready...

I think the guns are the best part of the work here however.  Always pleasing objects to paint.

How accurate the Imperial Guarde Artillery is for the Peninsular, is not clear to me presently.  I should probably do some research!  But it at least now means the French have parity with the Allies, each side now sporting 6 guns.

So that gives me 3 new Napoleonics units so far this year, but there's more in the pipeline too.

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Napoleonics on Two Continents

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A little bit of a painting update, At the start of the year I'd sort of promised myself to get some more Napoleonic troops done, and in the last month I've made a fair bit of progress; with more to come I'm pleased to report.  But for today its a pair of smaller units to begin with.

First of all, a section or platoon of the 41st Infantry for the Detroit campaigns in the War of 1812:

 

Research showed these were in coats without turnback colours, but that the musicians wore white.  These provide authentic regulars to stiffen my Canadian militias.

As ever, doing British uniforms made me wish I was painting anything else, and these being a predominantly Victrix meant that there was no end of fiddly details, and in the case of the torsos, weird vague attempts at details.  They've come on a long way from these.

But as I cobbled these together from a pile of spare parts I shouldn't complain; I got more out of the leftovers than I expected.  

Whilst in lockdown, I've had the time to sort through the plastic backlog, and figure piles, and in doing so found quite a few things I'd forgotten.  And thus the next unit out of the traps was the altogether more pleasurable (to paint) Catalonian Light Infantry, below:

 

These are slender Eagle Miniatures casts, not terribly dynamic, but crisp, decent value and a good match for Perrys'.  The bag I found was of 12 models, good for a couple of companies of skirmishers in Black Powder.  A nice uniform to paint too, though most accounts of Spanish light infantry suggest Blue coats, every illustration of this unit at least displays a rich green.  Given the Spanish circumstance, I think making do with what was available, or following the whims of the commander is doubtless the case.

Time and inspiration are such that I'm getting plenty of painting done, but as Britain risks coming out of hibernation, the possibilities of face to face gaming are beginning to resurface.  Whilst I'm still personally wary, and will be taking fair precautions, I think actual games are on the horizon.  

It's been a while...

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13th Light Infantry - 1879 ....

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Finding I've finished a couple of projects, and wanting a bit more variety around the epic that was the Corvus Cabal.  I dipped into the inventory and found a long overlooked army to do some work on.  in a completely different style to my current standards.

the 13th Light Infantry were part of Wood's northern column in the Zulu War, present at Kambula and other major engagements.  I already had one company painted for them, but decided to add two more.  The painting style here is much more of an old-school look for me, one I've not painted 15mm figures in for several years, but easy to pick up again.  Essentially its painting to the edges of a black undercoat, and retouching as necessary; and because I'm a show off there's some blended highlights on the jackets and other big details.

B & C Companies

Now, flags.  Blame Essex Miniatures for that.  I like Essex Mini's 15mm's; they were some of the best in their day, but research was not always the best, and their horses looked like nothing so much as:

true story...

Anyway, Regimental and National standards as my reading has indicated were not used in the Zulu War, at least not unfurled.  So the Standards here are simply as I need every miniature I have to build the units.  Consider them artistic license.  This brings my British forces up to 84 infantry, not many, but they do only represent two battalions in strength.

Aside from these, I've churned out a few other bits.  Firstly another unit for the Imagi-Nations project; another Mounted Grenadier unit for the Gebrovians:

 

And a selection of critters from the Conan box; we're down to the last dozen or so models now:

 

Also, I've had the time to go through the stash of unbuilt plastic, and assemble a lot of models, like well over a hundred!  One of the most interesting for me was being able to assemble a bunch more French dismounted Dragoons for the Penisular War.

Easy to spot the conversions

These will be painted to match the dismounted skirmishers I already have, but will be regimentally mounted, to represent the many times Dragoons were obliged to fight as regular infantry, such as at Talavera for example.  I'm looking for some Napoleonics quick-wins for the second half of this year, so these may hit the painting table soon.

Anyway, that's enough for today; but more to come soon.

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Yes, I played a Solo Game: Vilgertshofen - 1808

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Yes, I cracked.  Lockdown got to me eventually.  It is not as if I'm completely alone, me and the good lady have played a fair few boardgames, and she's become quite a fan of Magic: The Gathering; but by mid-May I was Jonesing for a miniatures game.  

So I buckled and set up a simple 15mm Napoleonics game, to christen my Bavarians, and give my Austrians only their second run out.

Well I didn't want to fuss much so these old bones settled on the ground, and I laid out a 5x3 foot gaming cloth I made a while back.  Onto this I set up two roughly equal forces, though with different compositions.

 

4 Regiments of Austrians in 8 Battalions with 4 regiments of Cavalry and two batteries of Artillery, faced 5 smaller regiments of Bavarions deployed en-masse with similar support to the Austrians.  The Bavarians were tasked with holding the line.

 

I've never had a problem with being 'both sides' in a game, though it of course tends to mean each side plays equally smart/dumb, unless you go in with some form of written orders to work to.  But that sort of thing is easy to do.  Any way, I don't want to get too embroiled in that.  Lets get to the action.  

  

The Bavarians rashly led their cavalry against the Austrian left as it advanced on the village of Vilgertshofen.  One Austrian Cavalry Regiment was quickly broken after a sharp fight.

  

The Austrian advance struggled to get going, and soon advance elements were becoming isolated.

 

Meanwhile the Bavarians had to do little, the onus being on the Austrians to attack.. Already however the Austrian left was turned by the Bavarian cavalry.  Oddly the Austrians found themselves with the interior lines early in the battle.

 

On the Austrian right, some confusion led to Austrian cavalry attempting to charge the Bavarian Guns, without any real support.  It went as badly as one might imagine.  In the centre, Bavarian Light Infantry had advanced through the woodland in the centre, but savage fire from several Austrian battalions met them.  They soon broke.

 

The Austrians began to form a more ordered line, and were able to repel the Bavarian threat to their Left.

 

With support moving through the woods, the Austrians advanced on the Bavarian choke point.

 

Here the battle came to a head, with a smaller but determined force of Austrians facing the Bavarian foe.

 

With initial success.

 

But the Austrians were suffering losses too and sustaining the momentum was becoming difficult.

 

Bavarian Artillery was able to smash the centre of the Austrian attack saving the rest of its line from the pressure.  And by this point the Austrian forces were exhausted.

 

They had held off counters from the Bavarian cavalry attacks on each flank, and did their utmost to force the centre but with two Brigades spent they admitted defeat and began an orderly withdrawal.

A nice little game; not only solo, but with a set of one-page rules I wrote on the day as well.  Essentially a stripped down blend of Black Powder and Rebels and Patriots, based on treating base elements as the core of operations.  When I get round to it I'll write them up properly and put them out in the ether.

A pleasure to shove some models around, but if I can minimise the need for solo games, that's alright by me.

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Upper Canadian Militia - Volunteers

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Back last year when I did my first batch of Canadian Militia for the War of 1812, I suggested I would produce another batch, but was stumped as to what models to use.  Well I eventually made a decision and bought a bunch, which sat and waited on the modelling shelf for months for their moment.

Of course, these days, every painting projects' moment is here!

This image from the old Osprey book on the British and Canadian forces in 1812 was to serve as my inspiration, there are only a few images out there, and few if any contemporary, but the look is typical of English dress of the working classes in that period:

   

What did I choose in the end as a base for the project?  Well, after looking at all the options, for simplicity of kit and value I went with picking up a couple of Sprues of Perry Austrian infantry off the eBay:

About £4 for 6...

The benefits of these models are the relatively simple, clean uniforms, and have the advantage of some likable elements to the present kit for my purposes; but there would still be a fair amount of work, in short:

1. cut away all the straps for the knapsack, as I decided I wanted them without it.  This means a lot more work in conversion and assembly, but much less hassle in the painting.  This was a job for a fresh craft knife blade, as steady hand and a lot of patience.  Personally though I've always been better at carving away than sculpting on.  Alas; we'll do some of that too
2. cut charge pouch, canteen and bayonet from the knapsacks and attach to the backs of the models
3. sculpt replacement webbing onto the backs of all the models, connecting up the new kit and rebuilding the bread bag and charge pouch straps.
4. trim the buttons off the gaiters and soften (scrape down) the edges of the trews.  now the gaiters will simply paint over as relatively skinny trousers, which were at least the fashion of the time, even if realistically a bit less likely for the hoi-polloi!  If you really care you could sculpt up baggier pants I guess, but at that point you might as well spend £2.50 a figure on some Knuckleduster Miniatures on import.
5. cast up some homebrew top hats (see my post on Blue Stuff from last year too).  Trim some of the Austrian heads and mate the two elements, add them and we're good to go!

Only took a few hours once I girded my loins to the task.  I also took a couple of extra bits to make one figure stand out as probably a Sergeant:

In the raw from the side where most of the work is 

So the next task was altogether quicker and more fun, given the general lack of a fixed uniform, as can be seen in the header image.  I went with a good range of browns, creams and washed out blue-greys/blue-greens.  For the kit I decided for simplicity that they would have Quartermaster issued equipment.  This meant that using my typical subtle three-four highlight paint job these came together in just a few hours of painting

We're Canadian, ey?!

The trews more or less painted out okay, and the rest of the models looked exactly how I hoped:

Let's all stand aboot

I decided not to add the armband, so they can do double service as American militia if required.  All wrapped up these are a tidy little addition to the 1812 forces.  I now need to finish another 8 Natives, and some American Cavalry and it's another project I can pin a tail on for a while.

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Neuchatel Battalion - Spain 1811

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On review I find I haven't done very much for the 28mm Napolenics for a while, and really I like to get a couple of units added each year to steadily build the game options.  The main detractor from such output is the obvious size of any such task, infantry units of 24 or cavalry units of 12, in this scale do not pop on and off the painting table in a week, especially with my more constrained output these days.

Still I wanted to get something done, and so just after Xmas I began a new unit, to bolster the somewhat lacking ranks of French infantry.  6 weeks later they were finally finished.

The Neuchatel Battalion came from the French speaking Canton, which had been allied to Prussia until it was ceded to the French in 1806, after that date and until 1814 it supplied a battalion of infantry to the French.  The Canaries as they were known wore a yellow uniform faced in red; though there are many descriptions of the uniform that make the precise colouration open to debate.  Some suggest bright yellow, others more of a buff colour, others at all points in-between.

A classic illustration of the unit 

The above is one of the browner renditions.  I decided to go for  more of a chamois-yellow colour in my version, my personal bet would be that the non-chemical dyes for the uniforms faded over time from a bold yellow to a more subdued brown, and so all authors could be right.  The fact that prior to the second half of the 19th century there was no such thing as permanent dyes is something that escapes many 'button-counters', and allows wriggle-room in uniform colours!

Using Perry 1812 Infantry means that the battalion has more of a campaign appearance.  The new French from the Perries were a long way off yet when I assembled this unit, some two years ago.  That's how far I work ahead/procrastinate!

The Battalion in column 

The flag is a placeholder too, I've yet to find any indication what the standard of the battalion - assuming it marched under one - looked like, so the safest bet for now is that one was bestowed on the unit by France.  In the images you can just make out a company Guidon, which is completely hypothetical but based again on French archetypes.

Close up on the front, Command and Voltigeurs 

I decided to go with white Pompoms for all the fusilier company's, including the command, which is again based on the illustrations, but could be very wrong.  The cut-off plumes for the Voltigeurs and Grenadiers may not sit with purists, but it seems plausible for campaign once again.

Some speculative details to the rear

The unit went on to serve in Austria Spain and Russia, fighting the British in Spain at Aldea de la Ponte, and in other actions against Spanish Geurillas.  After Napoleons' doomed Russia campaign only 8 men survived, and though reconstituted in 1813, a year later the force had ceased to exist.

They'll provide some great colour to my Napoleonic forces, and help even up the French deficit in numbers, they now have 12 regular formations of formed infantry, as compared to the Allies 14.

Still, could do with some more, hopefully not in another 18 months though.

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Grand Manner Spanish House

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As far as I can understand, Grand Manner normally only sell their models painted, But James S scored a couple of their models a little over a year ago in a sale, at a fair price.  Fairer still he passed them on to me, on the condition that I paint and use them in any future games we manage. 

Those may yet be some way off, but at least I have finally had time to put brushes to one of the models:

Front - Stan for scale

 This is a heck of a chunk of Resin, weighing in at 1.4 kilo's!  As you can see from Stan, the 28mm man, it has a significant footprint too.  Given GM only appear to sell these painted, it puts their £174 asking price into perspective.  I feel very lucky now to get this, even conditionally, free.

Rear

The painting here was simple, After a black undercoat I base-coated the whole model in a light pinkish-tan (flesh-tone really).  After that the stucco was dry-brushed sloppily up to white in about four graduated layers, which also covered every other detail except the roofs.  Then glazes of colour were applied to the exposed stone and wood work, dealing with most of the rest of the work.  The roof and ground were both simple dry-brush jobs, in my usual fashion.  Mostly craft paints were used.

Despite the cheap materials and quick work, I'm pleased with the results.  There is one careless error, but I didn't spot it until half way through the painting process, and as I'd assembled the model with epoxy there was little hope of reversing it.  See if you can spot it!

I hope I can get it in a game soon, though it will tower over my other Spanish buildings.

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