God save the King!

My Sitemeter counter seems to have vanished, so I have no idea how many people are reading this blog. I assume there are at least 6 readers, judging from recent comments, so my apologies to them and others for the lack of posts recently. Work has been very busy and things I have meant to do just have not been finished. The 10th Virginia still awaits basing and the 20th Foot is only half-finished. I am going to Prague for a few days tomorrow morning so these units are unlikely to be ready for photos for another week or two. Once the 20th Foot is out of the way I want to paint Gover's Marbleheaders. There's also the Hessian artillery I failed to paint this month, and ongoing Sudanese Beja.

But in the meantime I thought I would post some pics of something I've been working on sporadically over the past couple of weeks, Newcastle's Whitecoats. The English Civil War is one of a handful of projects that I keep meaning to get stuck into. I bought some Renegade figures a while ago and then some Bicorne packs at Salute in April, but never found the time to paint any of them. I have now started painting this Royalist regiment as a tester. The aim is to present Newcastle's Whitecoats as they might have appeared in the closing stages of Marston Moor. The regiment will have 5 stands with the figures based quite densely, 5 or 6 to a base. This confused, "in the think of it", look was inspired by similar regiments that David Imrie and Barry Hiton have done - I imgine this action-packed style has been copied many times. This stand is the second base and consists entirely of pikemen, although one figure had dropped his pike to get stuck in with his sword. The other stands will each have 2-3 musketeers and 1-2 pikemen. The front 3 figures are from the Bicorne range whilst the back row are from Renegade. I'm hoping I can finish off the rest of the regiment during September. It should like quite effective once all 24-odd figures are painted and based.