British Auxiliary Legion / Isabelino mounted officers

These are mounted officer figures from two Perry First Carlist War packs - two are from pack ISA37 (British Auxiliary Legion staff) and the third, on the grey, is a Spanish colonel from ISA2.  These aren't supposed to represent any particular people; they are just generic figures to use as brigade commanders.  The Duke of Wellington and the army command in general were opposed to officers on half-pay heading off, in effect, to act as mercenaries in a Spanish war.  So the commander of the British Legion, George de Lacy Evans, had to look to his army friends and soldiers in India to fill his senior appointments.  

Two of de Lacy Evans' friends who were given brigadier-general rank were Charles Chichester and William Reid, who otherwise had very little to do.  Chichester went on to command the 81st Foot in 1839 and died in 1847, apparently with a reputation as the best regimental commanding officer in the British army.  Reid became governor of Bermuda 1839 and of Malta in 1851.  Another brigadier was Duncan MacDougall, who had fought in most of the major battles of the Peninsular War and then in the War of 1812, in which he served as an ADC to Major-General Robert Ross and then Sir Edward Packenham after Ross was killed (Packenham was himself killed trying to rally his troops at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815).  He was colonel of the 79th Highlanders when he resigned in March 1835 to join the BAL as its quarter-master general.  However, disagreements with de Lacy Evans over strategy led to MacDougall leaving the BAL a year later and resigning from the British army at the same time.  When the UK's national militia was revived in 1852, MacDougall formed the Royal Lancashire Militia Artillery, which eventually became part of the Royal Garrison Artillery.  I thought these thumbnail biographies are useful in showing that despite the original reservations of the likes of Wellington, service in the BAL does not seem to have had a particularly negative effect on the careers of its officers. 

3 figures. Painted August 2021.

Alava infantry - 1st battalion

Time flew away from me during December and January, so apologies for the lack of posts. It's also been very dark and taking photos has been quite difficult. But I have a flurry of First Carlist War and Napoleonic posts with which to start the new year. It's been a while since I last painted up some Carlist infantry, so here is a battalion from Alava. As you'd expect with an area sympathetic to the Carlist cause, Alava is a province in the Basque country in north-west Spain. It is also one of the provinces that makes Rioja wine. Carlos seems to have recruited at least 6 battalions from Alava, all of which served in the Army of the North.

These are rewarding figures to paint - very quick and easy to do.  This brings my Carlist forces to a total of 5 battalions - a pretty poor effort for a project that I started in 2009.  But I suppose that's what happens when you're not under the pressure of painting things for particular and/or regular games.  I think my camera may now be on its last legs - I find getting things in focus is becoming harder, although that may of course be me rather than the camera!

18 figures.  Painted November 2024.  Flag by Adolfo Ramos.     

7TV - WW2 (1)

7TV as a system breaks down into "genres", each of which have their own sub-rules and terminology.  These genres are currently undergoing a bit of a revamp, but historically they were "Spy-Fi" (i.e. classic post-1940s/50s films and TV), "Pulp" (i.e. the 1920s-30s) and "Fantasy".  "The 1980s" has recently been added, and I had a lot of fun earlier in the year painting up figures representing the characters from "Die Hard", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and things like that.  I'll post about those when I've taken better photos.  One of the scenario packs is called "Vlad's Army", which sees a bunch of German undead under the command of a SS vampire count invade Warminster-on-Sea and so take on the local Home Guard.  I painted the Germans earlier in the year, and this is the first batch of Home Guard.  If you want "Dad's Army" personality figures, you have a choice of Foundry and Warlord.  I do like the Paul Hicks sculpts for Warlord, but they are very expensive (£29.50 for 8 figures).

 

7TV Home Guard "cast members"

The figures here are a mix of "Dad's Army" personalities and generic rank-and-file.  These are Perry sculpts, and must be quite old as they are smaller figures than those in the Perry Miniatures ranges: probably more 25mm than 28mm.  These are the first proper 28mm WW2 figures I've ever painted (Nazi zombies don't really count...).  I used Foundry triads for these figures: the main uniform is "British Uniform Brown 100", the webbing "British Blanco Green 91", the gas mask cover "British Equipment Canvas 90", and the helmet "British Denison Brown 97".  These seemed good matches based on the various Ospreys I looked at (and the names of the triads help), although the brown triads don't provide much contrast between the 3 paints.  But, in any event, I'm not after 100% historical accuracy - these are designed for ridiculous 7TV fun rather than a meticulously-researched recreation of Operation Sealion.  I found these very quick and easy to paint, apart from the faces which on some figures lacked a bit of definition.  The hardest face to paint was Corporal Jones, as his glasses are below his eyes and pretty tricky to paint.  I think if I'd had another go at these figures, I paint the glasses differently - a lot of painting guides on the internet say "paint them dark blue with a bit of white in the corner", but that's not really how glasses look - I think painting them much lighter is probably more realistic.  Anyway, here they are.  

This is the first of 3 Home Guard posts, and then I'll have another on the Nazi zombies. I bought all the Foundry Home Guard packs, save for the cycling figures, even thought you don't need this many for the "Vlad's Army" campaign. The final battle sees what's left of the Home Guard holding out in a church, seeing if they can survive until dawn against the zombie onslaught. So I need an English church!

18 figures. Painted October-November 2024.

"Dad's Army" characters 

"Don't panic!"

7TV - Fantasy (3)

 Today we have Crooked Dice's Kobold Tribe, an 8-figure set of "diminutive reptilians" for the 7TV "Valley of Dread" scenario pack.  Again, these figures were painted up as part of "Orktober".  They are pretty small - below is a comparison shot with one of the Citadel goblins.  These are nice little figures.  One of them looks like a chief and the others have a variety of weaponry.  I painted the skin with the Foundry "North African Flesh 124" palette, and the clothes with a variety of Foundry brown and drab palettes.  I think they've turned out quite nicely.  Next up will be my first ever WW2 28mm figures!  

8 figures. Painted October 2024.

7TV - Fantasy (2)

Here's my second bunch of fantasy figures for 7TV.  Some of my hobby mates and I set ourselves the task of painting something suitable for "Orctober" (geddit?).  I do have some bona fide orcs in my leadpile, but I decided to go with goblins instead.  This is because (a) I need them for a particular 7TV campaign, and (b) they've been sitting in my leadpile for what I reckon is about 35 years, and I thought that if I didn't paint them now I probably never would.  So here they are - very, very old, pre-slottabase Citadel sculpts (with one exception).  These are from the early/mid-1980s, when the castings were almost black, not the bright shiny metal you see nowadays (and of course were real lead, not the zinc alloy that is now widely used).  Looking at the Stuff of Legends website, these figures were originally marketed as "Great Goblins" and Night Goblins", the latter being noticeably smaller than the former.

It was very satisfying painting figures that I've owned for so long.  I wish I could remember why these weren't already painted, as I tended to paint most of the stuff I bought as a teenager.  Most of my gaming in those days was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, as opposed to large battles; so maybe I just never needed these for any actual gaming.  The figures do show their age - and I bet the sculptors had a lot of fun seeing who could make a nose which looked most like a....different part of male anatomy.  Some of the Greater Goblins have beards, and one has a rather odd moustache (unless it's supposed to be rivulets of snot).  Of course the key question for painting goblins is whether to do green or brown flesh.  I decided to go with the more traditional "Tolkein-esque" leathery brown, mainly because I thought that would be easier to paint (although I do have some green goblins in my collection).  I used a triad of Coat-d'Arms paints: "Chestnut Brown 219", "Hairy Brown 120" and "Barbarian Leather 116"; and then a very light final highlight of Citadel "Balor Brown".  

The only non-Citadel figure here is a bona fide Crooked Dice 7TV sculpt, the "Goblin King".  He sits on a throne, which is itself a very detailed resin sculpt.  Crooked Dice make various packs of goblins, which I assume are a better match in terms of size and style.  The king is bigger than the Citadel sculpts, and a bit more "human-looking"; but I don't think that matters and he makes an excellent "boss".  He is part of Crooked Dice's range of figures for their "Valley of Dread" scenario pack.  Also from that range is a "Goblin Gate", which acts as a backdrop. A couple of the photos are a bit crappy and out of focus - sorry about that.  I expect there are some more of these critters lurking in the outer reaches of the leadpile, so there may be a follow-up post in due course.

13 figures, 1 throne and a gate. Painted October 2024.

The reverse of the throne.

"Goblin Gate" and guards

7TV - Fantasy (1)

I'm going to go backwards with my 7TV collection. Largely because I have photos of the more recent stuff but not much of the earlier stuff. For those who don't know, 7TV is a game that allows you to recreate your favourite scenes from films and tv, particularly classic tv series of the 1970-80s. But the conceit is that you're actually playing the making of the film or tv episode, rather than the scene itself - so your faithful re-enactment of Dr Who v the Daleks is played out like an episode of a tv series, rather than a "straight" skirmish game. The idea is that immense hilarity ensues.

Anyway, at the beginning of the year the boys and I watched the Indiana Jones and the Mummy films and I spent much of the next 6 months building up a "pulp" collection that covered these movies, Beau Geste, and a number of other things. That's coming next. These skeletons grew out of the idea of a guard for a mummy character - rather than the standard Egyptian-looking skeleton guard, I wanted skeletons that looked as if they represented the dead of the Middle East over the past thousand years - so a mix of armour and weapons. Most of these figures were bought off ebay - I was having a bit of an "Oldhammer" moment but did enjoy painting these. I think they are a mix of Citadel and Marauder Miniatures. I base all my 7TV figures on grey bases - this is largely because the figures will be used in all manner of settings and I've noticed that a lot of 7TV players use grey as a "neutral" base colour. The figures can also fit in very easily with my "Frostgrave" collection. This is the first of a trio of fantasy postings I'll make over the next few days.

9 figures. Painted May 2024. 

Gaslands (1)

 And now for something completely different..."Gaslands Refuelled" is an Osprey game that I've been playing with the boys.  "The game of vehicular mayhem" is, I think, how it's marketed, and it's a sort of Mad Max meets Car Wars (or Battlecars - does anyone else remember that GW effort?) game.  It's mainly about building tooled-up cars and racing them; but here are some terrain items and 20mm "punk infantry" that I bought off ebay.  I haven't quite worked out how "infantry" feature in the game, but these were fun to paint.  Next on the list will be some punk figures that hang out of / stand on the cars themselves. I also bought a similar set of, er, armed nuns... which I haven't painted yet.  I have a lot of cars that I've picked up here and there (usually while the boys are looking at the latest PS5 games or whatever - if they leave a toy shop with something then I'll usually have at least one Hot Wheels or Matchbox car I think will be good for Gaslands).  Hugo (who turns 15 in 4 weeks - crikes) is very into DC comics at the moment, and has decided that his new Gaslands "fleet" will be various Batmobiles. 

The 20mm figures and bikers come from The Summoning Circle, and the terrain items are from The Artificer's Forge.  All these items were 3D-printed and easy to paint.  The punks reminded me of the adversaries in "Mad Max 2" and I deliberately painted these figures in a kind of uniform.  The black body armour is highlighted with GW Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk. I also used GW flesh paints rather than my usual Foundry ones - just a base of Bugman's Glow followed by highlights of Cadian Fleshtone and Kislev Flesh.  I tried to give each figure a different colour mohawk to ease identification.  This isn't the end of the punks.  I also have to do a couple of motorcyle/sidecar combos and the figures which go in the cars themselves. I really enjoyed painting the terrain, which I think is well-sculpted and quite clever in terms of the stuff they've put together to make the ramparts.  In fact, part of the fun is working out what it is you have to paint - whether a fridge, a toilet, a traffic cone, a sofa etc.  I used GW technical paints to show rust, dirt, water damage etc.  I believe these items come in both 20mm (as here) and 25mm/28mm.  So the larger size would be suitable for games like 7TV Apocalypse.  I recently bought some more terrain items; so when I've painted those I'll set up a Gaslands game and take some photos of the whole collection in action.

My next posts will be a run of 7TV miniatures (including "Dad's Army") with some Maori and Napoleonic French and Ottomans.  I'm then thinking of spending December back on the AWI, with two versions of De Lancey's Brigade.

5 motorcycles, 5 infantry and various terrain items. Painted August 2024.