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.   

 

Brigadier-General the Marquis de Lafayette

I'm not going to attempt a biography of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette (what a name!). He was born in 1757 into a family with a long tradition of military service (one of his ancestors had been a companion-at-arms to Joan of Arc) and commissioned as an officer in the French army at the age of 13. By this time Lafayette had already become quite rich, as a result of inheritances from various relatives. Six years later he headed off to America to fight for liberty and glory (possibly encouraged by a hatred of the English born of his father's death at the Battle of Minden), and he was given the rank of major-general. This caused a bit of scandal at the time, as Lafayette's uncle-in-law was the French ambassador to Britain and at this stage in the war the French government's official position was against its officers heading off to America and doing anything that might provoke a war with Britain. Lafayette was undeterred and bought his own ship to take him there.

Lafayette began his war as a member of Washington's staff. He was wounded at Brandywine whilst trying to rally some Pennsylvania regiments. In June 1778, when Washington planned to attack the British during their withdrawal from Philadelphia, Lafayette was put in command of the reserve. However, in light of General Lee's reluctance to engage with the British, Lafayette was given command of the vanguard and he hurried after the British column as a presage to what quickly became the battle of Monmouth. He returned to France in February 1779 where, after a token week of house-arrest for disobeying the king, he began to agitate for a French invasion of Britain to support the Americans. That plan came to nothing, but Lafayette does seem to have been successful in persuading the government to send more men to America. He wasn't given another active field command until the siege of Yorktown in 1781, acting in various staff roles.

In the Caliver/"British Grenadier!" scenarios, Lafayette appears as a brigadier in the "early Monmouth" and Yorktown scenarios.  So when I found him in my Old Glory lead-pile I thought it was time to add him to my collection of personalities.  This is an, er,  interesting sculpt.  I can see what Old Glory are trying to do, and the figure does have the long, oval face that one sees in contemporary portraits.  I think they've captured a youthful look, but I can also see how others might think this sculpt is a bit odd.  I assume that it's a map he's not quite carrying (it looks like it's just resting on his thigh) - also a bit odd.  Anyway, here he is.

This is the last bit of AWI for a while.  I'll be filling the time until the next lot of AWI stuff by posting about the various other projects I've been working on, some of which aren't even historical!  That should increase the rate of posts a bit.

1 figure. Painted September 2024.