Those Scottish Cavalry are done...

As promised to my Facebook subscribers just after Christmas, I've been finishing off a dozen or so Peter Pig Scottish Cavalry to go with the infantry I finished back in November - and very pleased with them I am too.

This is the full unit - I bought two packs of 4, plus the command pack which only has three models in it, so I added an extra infantryman (who I think is from Essex) to round out the set.

The actual cavalrymen come in two poses, looking left and right

 These were all undercoated in white, and finished in Army painter Dark Tone to match the Scottish Infantry regiments I did earlier

 Unlike the infantry I also painted the straps on the back of each figure - the straps on the infantry were a bit thin and cast in a lower relief than these, and also I did the infantry in a bit of a rush to be honest.

 This chap in the middle is one of the officers and Generals pack (Pack 40 from the Regimente of Foote range "Scots Gens (3)")

 The pack also seems to have a chap in full armour - lucky devil really for the Scots of that era - unless he snuck in from another pack on my very messy painting table without me noticing...

Here is the final General, with a bit of a Puritan haircut and an Essex figure (I suspect from a Jacobite Rebellion range, but who's counting..?) to round them out.

The more of these figures I paint, the more I like them. The temptation to buy a whole army of them is growing stronger....

Donnington Scots Pikemen in 15mm

Another Warfare purchase was 8 Donnington Scots Pikemen to go with my existing Minifigs Scots musketeers - Minifigs sometimes being a bit variable, and with no pictures on the website I saw these chaps who looked similar and so picked up a set.

Keeping Scotland thoroughly Protestant ...

Some basic tartan patterns using my Tartan guide from another post

Simple but relatively effective

The command figures are generic ECW ones 

And here they are with the Minifigs musketeers - marginally taller, but close enough for wargaming purposes - the style is pretty similar which is almost more important

The interest in painting up Scots is not only for our club competition, I've discovered a lot about them from this book I've been reading recently on the whole Civil War(s), which I'm thoroughly enjoying.

Happy Christmas - it's The Three Musketeers !

On a day when everyone gets presents they don't really want and then tries to slope off to think about what stuff they might buy online that they would have actually preferred to get instead of those socks, this post is intended as a timely reminder that whilst there are some figures you "actually" need, some you just, well, "need" even though you don't really have an army list drawn up to use them in, and some that you kinda think "well, I could probably find a use for them and they are quite nice, so as long as no-one notices....", there is a whole, separate class of figures that fall into an entirely separate "lets throw reason out of the window, I just GOTTA have some of those!" category.

And the latest contenders for the Gold Medal in this regard are very definitely the figures in Blue Moon Manufacturing's new Three Musketeers range.

In the French army from the early part of the Thirty Year's War, Field of Glory: Renaissance
allows you to field the Kings Musketeers as part of a tooled up (well, Superior grade) Light Foot unit armed with muskets. So, everyone wants 4 bases of them huh?

The Blue Moon figures however come in packs of 10 - 5 mounted and 5 foote. So, whilst somewhere in Madaxeman Towers a unit of 5 mounted and one pedestrian are being painted, some spare Testudo infantry were quickly pressed into service to add to 4 of the Cardinal's Guard to create the almost-useless unit of 4 bases of Superior LF Musketeers

The Testudo figures - here in the slightly blurred foreground - are a smidge
taller than the Blue Moon chaps, and also styled rather differently to the fairly cartoonish but eminently lovable Blue Moon - but its a very  good match at wargaming distances

Where the Blue Moon guys excel however is in their deployment of quite phenomenal Depardieu-esque moustaches ... (Testudo on the right here)

I actually bought the Cardinal's Guard set in preference to the actual Musketeers set as I thought they looked a lot more like the Hollywood impression of the Musketeers. (Testudo on the left)

"Have at you Sir!"   (Testudo on the right - although you'e probably picked up the style now..)

They truly are very loveable figures - and in the spirit of Hollywood-ization, my choice of uniform design for this unit was inspired by a classic Hollywood version of the tale of The Three Musketeers!

Blue Moon stuff is also available from Old Glory UK in the UK. 

Go on, you know you want some.... 

New - Donnington TYW Flags

As trailed in a previous news item, Donnington are about to release some new TYW flags, and Damian was kind enough to send me a set of the Swedish ones.

They come as part of a sheet of 16 different flags including both Company and Command flags for regiments in the army of Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years War.

I quickly added a few to my (sorry Damian!) Lancashire Games Pikemen, who generally serve as Swedes in my armies, and this is the result.

The flags are printed on decent paper, and I stuck them together with my usual adhesive of choice, PVA Wood Glue - my carpenter brother-in-law once told me that PVA Wood Glue was stronger than the wood it joins, so that works for me.

The "rocket science" about Donnnington's flags is that they are printed with a larger-than-the-flag guideline, so you cut out along the guideline, stick them together and then snip off the excess on the three sides away from the flagpole. It's not rocket surgery, but it does mean you are gluing and folding a much bigger piece of paper, which makes lining up the two sides a lot less fiddly.

These are from the Red Regiment - which I suspect will be no great surprise to many of you TYW experts out there...The flags are printed with shading on them to suggest that the flags are waving in the breeze, which as you can see enhances what is actually some very limited "bending" of the glued flags in these photos.

The one I was sent was "Sheet 2", however I've been told that Donnington will be selling at least four infantry sheets and either or two cavalry sheets in this range. I did also paint the edges of the flags red once they were stuck together - because of the guidelines this was a lot tidier than with some other flags I've tried this on.

At £5 per sheet of 16, these flags aren't exactly cheap especially given the increasing numbers of free flags out there, but they are definitely better than the quality I manage to produce using my home printer, and are on better paper stock as well -and they may well see action in the new year!

The Jacobite 15mm ranges find a new home..

At Warfare today I discovered that the Jacobite Miniatures ranges formerly carried by Stronghold have found a new home - the moulds for the ranges previously sold by Stronghold have now been acquired by a chap who plays at the Wargames Association of Reading club, and are gradually going back onsale under the name Elite Wargames And Models.

Apparently they got basically a load of unmarked moulds from Stronghold, and so are gradually working through the moulds they have to try and piece together the ranges. They have no website as yet, but one is probably coming - in the meantime they can be reached at elitewargamesmodels@gmail.com. So, I guess email them for a list of the figures they are selling right now.

Here are some pictures of them in the bare metal:

Compared to Essex figures (below)

 Compared to Peter Pig figures (below)

 and compared to Old Glory Figures (below)

I've also updated the Renaissance and Ancients manufacturers directories with the new details.

Buono Estente Oxford 2012 !

There is a veritable flurry of activity on this website this week as two sets of photos get immediately followed up by FOUR match reports, where the Imperial Spanish take on Transylvanians, French , Swedes and more Swedes in a themed TYW competition in which I was the "Catholic" half of a pair - with my team-mate being the Protestant. 4 games against Protestant armies was the result...

See how the forces of the Infante did    in this near incomprehensible (other than to anyone who remembers the Fast Show) report.

Scorchio!!

Peter Pig ECW Scots

Just in time for the club competition I've snuck in a couple of units of Peter Pig ECW Scots. Here they are being painted in various stages

Based up, figure bases hidden by some wood filler, and sprayed with a Halfords matt white spray (that's a car and bike parts retailer for those of you not in the UK) 

After the undercoat, the figures have blocks of colour added at random across the two units. Here Brown and Green have been added - usually my stuff is a mix of Coat d'Arms colours and some other bits and pieces such as Vallejo

Here I've also added a lot of grey, as I found a good picture online of some Scots units and thought it was worth copying... 

 With most of the colours completed, the Piggy guys are almost ready to varnish and tint

 I paint the feet/shoes and also look to ink them before painting the earth colour on the bases so I can paint over the inevitable messy bits. But it's still a simple looking blocky paint scheme at this stage.

And moments later with Army Painter Dark Tone here they are. Normally I'd use the middle Army Painter tone, but I didn't have any to hand, and with the grey tunics on these guys the darker one works quite well

Not bad for wargaming standard

 Here they are with some colour on the bases, and a few bits of static grass added

And with varnishing - not as good as Testors Dullcote, but I'd run out. I will have to re-spray them later once I order some more.

Close up on the commanders

Peter Pig's Drums of Scotland!

The pikemen - one has a fairly simple bit of tartan

Musketeers - the shine on the bonnets makes them look like they have some sort of yellow patch on the bonnet, but it's just a trick of the light

I added some swordsmen to make the infantry into Musket/Sword infantry... pretty pleased with them for a rush job.

And here is my step by step "Tartan for tiny soldiers" guide:

Start with a plain blue background

Add a cross-hatching of yellow stripes

Finish with a thinner red line in the middle of the yellow

This is with a green background

Then yellow...

And finally red. Simple, but effective on 15mm figures. Nothing too scary ....