Bastille Day Parade

It's been a busy past couple of months and I've neglected this blog appallingly.  I am sorry.  However, I'm pleased to say that recently I've managed to photograph everything I've been painting over the past .4 months and this means I'll be able to post regular updates from now on.  For various reasons I've been finding it difficult to take satisfactory photographs.  I don't claim that I've resolved the best place and time in which to take them, either in my garden or the kitchen, but at least I have somethig I feel able to post.  Painting has proceeded apace - my ACW Reb army now stands at 6 completed and based regiments and I have lots of First Carlist War stuff finished and on the workbench.


Something I've been meaning to do for a while is take a look at my 25mm French Napoleonic collection.  This is something on which I have been working sporadically since early 2007, when I painted various French and Dutch-Belgians things for Loughton Strike Force's Waterloo game at Salute.  The nature of 25mm Napoleonics has bene revolutionised since then by the introduction of hard plastic figures.  That makes it cheaper to build large forces in 25mm, but of course the time required to paint figures is the same irrespective of whether they are made of plastic or metal.  Seeing all these figures together made me realise what an undertaking it is to collect Napoleonics in 25mm.  Whilst appreciating that I've painted lots of other things over the past 5 years, a total of 8 infantry battalions, 1 cavalry regiment, 1 gun and a few command stands is not particularly impressive.  But it's a start.  In orbat terms, what we have here is Bachelu's 5th division from II Corps with some other bits and bobs.  And Napoleon, of course.  Most of this collection has never seen a dice rolled in anger, so it was fun to set them all up.  All the figures are from Perry Miniatures save for the gun and crew, which are Foundry.  

 
Incidentally, the equivalent AWI parades I did a few years ago (and which are both rather out of date now, given the AWI stuff I've painted since) can be found here and here.  Over the next few weeks I'll post some First Carlist War and Napoleonic items.  I've delayed "ACW week" a bit while I finish off a couple of "extras".  I'm also pleased to say that I've started painting AWI again :^)

PS: Photobucket continues to be most irritating and it's way of dealing with photos is rubbish.

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American Civil War wip

I mentioned before that I'm planning an "American Civil War Week" along the lines of my "New Zealand Wars Week" of last year.  I have 4 ACW regiments finished and am working on the final one.  There are a couple of vignettes to polish off too.  I haven't taken any proper photos yet - the dire weather in the UK have prevented that, as I need to go outside and it just hasn't stopped raining since (I think) late March.  But here are a couple of "teasers" of the Jackson's 1862 command so far. All are 25mm Dixon Miniatures, with 3 GMB flags and 2 hand-painted ones.  There is an interloping Alabama regiment, but otherwise the brigade is Virginian.  About two thirds of the figures were painted over 10 years ago and the remainder since March this year.

Something I've noticed since Blogger unilaterally decided to change the format of their blogs is that placing photos is now much more confusing....

  

Cabrera's Guard

I've fallen very badly behind again - apologies.  This is another Carlist unit for the First Carlist War, but is a bit removed from my other ones.  There were several Carlist armies, the most effective of which were the Army of the North and the Army of the Centre.  The former is the one I have been concentraring on so far, as it engaged the British Auxiliary Legion in the north of Spain and this is the theatre I'll concentrate on.  However, the Army of the Centre, led by Ramon Cabrera and concentrated in Aragon rather than the physical "centre" of Spain, has some interesting units and last year Perry Miniatures released these figures for Cabrera's Guard.  With their dark blue coats and black top hats, these men certainly had one of the most unusual uniforms of the war.
This guard unit was very small - only 100 men, attached to Cabrera's staff.  At my general scale fothis period I would need 3-4 figures, but Perry make one pack of 6 figures so I've used them all.  Essentially this unit is an elite group of skirmishers and are based as such on standard "General de Brigade" skirmish stands (actually those supplied in the Perry plastic Napoleonic infantry sets).    

These were painted in February.  Since then, I have painted up several more First Carlist War units, a brace of ECW command stands, more 1815 French and lots of ACW.  I also have 2 regimental museums to blog about, so I'll make a bigger effort over the next few weeks. 

6 figures. Painted February 2012

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Salute 2012

I'm rather late in posting pics of Salute last Saturday, and the photos of the games are widely published now on various blogs and fora.  For reasons I can't put my finger on I was rather underwhelmed this year.  The socialising was particularly good, as I met a couple of people for the first time and had good catch-ups with several others (although unfortunately I missed chatting to the Perries, Nic Robson at Eureka and John Fletcher at the Liberators! game).  But whilst there were some excellent games and clearly a lot of work had been put into them, I thought the overall standard was lower than previous years.  It's also clear that each year see more fantasy/sci-fi games and fewer historical ones; that's not a criticism, as the hobby's a broad church, but it's the impression I have.  I had a quick look at the painting competition, but the historical entries appeared to be the usual things (ECW infantry, Napoleonic cavalry) by the usual painters - again, not a criticism, but perhaps it explains why I felt I was shrugging my shoulders quite a bit.

Purchases were rather more extensive than I'd anticipated, once everything was totted up afterwards.  I collected a large pre-order from Eureka of more AWI Continental dragoons - I'll be ploughing into these over the summer - and another pre-order from Empress of the new Maori Wars packs.  I bought a few more Dixon 25mm ACW figures, a battalion's worth of Perry 1861 Rebs for Bull Run, which I think will be fun to paint, and two more boxes of Perry plastic 1815 French infantry.  I also picked up some cheap Don Troiani ACW books, a couple of magazines and that's about it.  Anyway, here are some photos of the games that caught my eye.  Apologies to those I didn't catch and a huge apology to the Warlords for completely missing their Liberators game - I don't know why, but I just didn't see it (the same happened with Dave Imrie's and Andrew Taylor's game), which is a great pity.  Perhaps that's a problem with Salute now - it's so big that you just can't see all of it.

Corunna by the Essex Gamesters.  I'm not sure if this game was actually being played, but it was certainly a stunning set-up and won the "best in show" award.  The toys were from a variety of manufacturers, and it was good to see various figures from the Perry First Carlist War being used as Spanish irregulars and civilians.













Skirmish Wargames had a Mount Tumbledown skirmish game. The good guys seemed to win here:





Chemins de Feu had a 2009 NATO v Russia "what if" set somewhere in the Baltic:





The University of Wolverhampton also had a "what if", the time the Royal Navy attaching the Union fleet outside New York in 1864:



One of my favourites was White Hart Wargamers' Shangani Patrol game using North Star Africa figures.  Beautiful terrain and figures:









Loughton had their usual 15mm GdB Napoleonic slug-fest, this time Aspern-Essling:









You'll see much more of this Crimean Sevastapol game in ther next couple of issues of Wargames Illustrated. Terrain by Dave Bodley:









Pegasus Bridge in 6mm by Maidstone Wargames Club:



Victrix had a beautiful 54mm Peninsular game:







I appreciate the blog has been rather silent over the past couple of weeks.  I'll post some more First Carlist War figures over the next day or so.  I'm then off to Cornwall for 2 weeks much-needed holiday (my last proper holiday was the trip to Australia and New Zealand last February), but we're taking the lap-top so I might catch-up with a few posts I've been meaning to do.  I've spent most of the past 2 months painting ACW figures and now have 4 Reb regiments finished and a couple of other things.  More on those when I return.

Camp Frenchmen

Sorry, couldn't resist the title; no doubt many bloggers before me have thought of it. This is a Foundry pack I bought during their last sale. The figures are typical Perry sculpts of 15-odd years ago - compare the anatomy with the Perry Miniatures interloper, the chap eating some cheese (who is a left over from the Young Guard First Voltiguers that I painted a couple of years ago). These figures didn't take long to paint. By pure coincidence I've realised that I have painted them pretty much the same as some other people (Roly Hermans for example), namely grenadiers of a battalion's second company. However, I did look around at other uniforms, and decided that I could paint one of the figures as a member of the artillery train (i.e. the chap in the slate grey tunic holding a mug). Dinium painted a rather fine version of the standing greatcoated figure here. The set comes with some muskets that I forgot to paint!

7 figures. Painted January 2009 (Young Guard voltigeur) and January 2012.