Saturday 20 June 2009

ECW Interlude (1)


In addition to the First Carlist War, I'm currently also working on a Royalist army for the English Civil War. This is the first completed infantry regiment. It's currently lacking flags, but it's going to take me a while to work those out so I thought I'd post these pics anyway. This unit is nominally the Marquis of Newcastle's Regiment, one of the whitecoated regiments that fought at Marston Moor. Being part of the northern Royalist army, a couple of the soldiers have blue scottish caps. The white coats themselves are in various shades to add variety, but I tried to unify the regiment by painting the caps and monteros light blue.

I painted the left hand pike stand back in August 2007 and always meant to finish off the unit - but in those days it was non-stop AWI. But now I have sufficient motivation to have a good crack at the ECW and I happily confess to really enjoying painting these figures. The toys are a mix of Renegade and Bicorne - the former are larger than the latter, but not dramatically so and I don't think the difference matters in the same unit (I wouldn't mix Perry and The Assault Group in with Renegade and Bicorne). The larger size of the Renegade figures means a deep base is required - the bases here are 40mm x 50mm instead of 40mm x 40mm, which seems to be the standard for many sets of ECW rules. I um-ed and ah-ed over base sizes for ages, and owe thanks to wargaming chum Timmo (highly experienced in ECW) for helping me resolve this and other conundra. My opponent, Mr Eclaireur who is collecting Parliament's forces, is going for the new Warlord plastic figures and Perry. I have recently painted gun crews from those two manufacturers and they mix together very well. I'm looking forward to spending more time with the ECW; the only problem with the period is that all the pikes make storage rather tricky...

24 figures. Painted August 2007 and May 2009. The rubber road was made by Kerry Thomas (aka NZ's "Valleyboy"), whose excellent "how-to" article is in issue 16 of Battlegames magazine.



12 comments:

legatus hedlius said...

Ah, ECW, that's a proper period that is!

Very nice. White coat regiments are always a nightmare to paint!

Behind_The_Wire said...

Absolutely beautiful! Congrats sir!

jmezz382 said...

Excellent work .... they look great

Sire Godefroy said...

Seconded, nice ones.
Not a fan of the bulky Bicorne/Renegade sculpts myself, but I like the look of the unit as a whole.

Cheers
SG

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

I like the shading on the coats very much. It's not easy to get subtle shading on coats of varrious colors. Well done.

Anonymous said...

Love the Renegade figures. A joy to paint (and nicely priced too).

I have the same problem with basing. Can't decide how to do it.

What rules have you decided to use?

Anonymous said...

Very neat job. Keep them coming-and remember "Junior Giles" will chew them if you do not keep them under (double) lock and key!!!

Matt

Anonymous said...

Giles,

I'm relieved to know that these additions to your interests do not herald the demise of all the AWI stuff.

Theo

valleyboy said...

Giles you look to be undergoing some sort of metamorphosis into a wargames butterfly! - first AWI, Naps, then Carlist Wars and now ECW

You're sliding down the slippery slope but the painting is as classy as ever

Regards VB

Bluewillow said...

Lovely Giles, I have a large amount of ECW to finnish off myself. Love your brown trousers what colour is it?

cheers
matt

old-tidders said...

Yummy ! I'm sure the regiment will appreciate gettting it's colours.

I wargame ECW as well but with 40mm figs (see http://cavalierecw.blogspot.com/).

Looking forward to more pics of your ECW troops.

-- Allan

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Your units look very nice.I want to do a Royalist army myself someday based around Rupert's army at Marston Moor.I'm not sure what rules I'll use.I have a copy of WHECW and 1644.Perhaps I'll take a look at Forlorn Hope.