Raising an army takes time

It has been since June 25th??! Really? Yikes!

During this time I have managed to play several games of The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game at the new GW store. Thanks to all involved, especially Charlie and Art. I won a game, too!

LOTR motivated me to finish a few figures to have a completely painted, 500 point army. I got four (4) whole figures done! What, you want proof?

I have also been plodding on the Prussians. I have to admit:  those of you out there that crank out dozens and scores of figures? I have no idea how you do it.

I don’t like painting, even though I love fielding a force that I have painted myself. I can even get into “the groove” on occasion and get some serious painting done. But not right now.

I tried to do production-line painting, but that was just depressing. So I am now working on the Prussians in 8 figure blocks. I have 16 complete and have just finished putting black on the next group, which includes the command figures. I had to stop because I was getting tired and sloppy. Still, I am progressing, if slowly.

I also took an evening to assemble and prime a box of plastic Warlord Landwehr. You can see them here with the completed Perry figures.

I primed them with ArmyPainter Navy Blue, as in the article on the Warlord site. I think they are not dark enough blue, but will see when they are done.

Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully more interesting stuff in the (near) future!

One down. How many to go?

So here is the first Prussian after his bath in white primer. I had hoped to use ArmyPainter blue spray, but it was not dark enough. I note, however, that they just came out with a darker shade that I might try for the Landwehr.

And here he is with basic colors blocked in. I can’t believe that it has been FOUR YEARS since I painted a figure! Let’s just say my brush skills are somewhat atrophied. Anyway, I decided on the unit will be the 10th Line (1st Silesian), so yellow collar and cuffs with white shoulder tabs.

And here it is with a brushed on coat of ArmyPainter Quickshade Strong. I am very pleased with how it looks at this stage, although these multi-megapixel cameras sure point out the spots you miss! It will need to be completely dry before I do a few highlights and the coat of Anti-Shine.

All in all, I’m quite pleased. I’ve never been a fast painter, nor a high quality one. But I will be proud to have a new unit from my own workbench for my games.

Cheers!

Part the second, or “He’s kept his focus for 24 hours…”

First, let me just say that the current score is:

• Perry Brothers:  46
• Ed:  0

It took four (4) hours to assemble the first box:

Even then, I still need to get the belly pouches onto the Jäger. You can see the pouches in the lower left of the pic.

My compliments to those of you who like to model with plastic. This was tedious work, made bearable only by the CWF interview with Henry Hyde that was my listening companion.

Anyway, I’m beat and my eyes hurt even though I was using my brand new, nifty Ott High Definition Craft Light with magnifier. So, now I’m sipping a nice Sangiovese wine that reminds me of our trip to Tuscany.

And then I remembered the REST of the lead pile. I completely forgot about the three boxes of Warlord Games Landwehr. I think I need to decide on which units soon!

Now I just need for all the new Perry and Warlord goodies to arrive at the US distributor, Architects of War, to REALLY put me behind the curve!

A new direction—to Waterloo!

Here it is, the 196th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. I have been fiddling around with various projects the last few weeks, but I have finally made a decision:

I am going to build a 28mm Waterloo Project, and I’m going to do all the Prussians myself.

There. THAT is a line in the sand table.

So, over the next few weeks I’m going to do some plotting and scheming here on the blog, while I also get started in the painting department.

“The WHAT department??” I hear you ask.

Yep. I have one other project that I have done all my own painting, and that is my Lord of the Rings project with the Games Workshop figures. The Prussians will be my second.

I already have a respectable amount of 28mm Napoleonics, including 24 battalions of French infantry, each of 24 figures. I have a small force of British, too.  Plus my good friend and gaming partner-in-crime Ray has more Brits, plus most of the Brunswick contingent.

The plan is simple, if daunting. I will buy and paint all of the new Perry Miniatures releases. I have three boxes of the plastic line infantry now, which will become the first regiment. Which regiment? Good question. I’m not sure yet.

The very first historical miniatures I ever purchased and painted were 15mm Minifig Prussians. I painted them as the Leib Regiment. For some reason, I have always been fascinated by that particular unit. Problem is, it wasn’t at Waterloo! Leib was in III Corps at Wavre.

So what units to paint for Waterloo? I have several books on the battle to help me decide, including Adkins Waterloo Companion, Bowden’s Armies at Waterloo, Haythornethwaite’s The Waterloo Armies, Hofschroer’s two volume The Waterloo Campaign, Linck’s Napoleon’s Generals, and Nofi’s The Waterloo Campaign, as well as Robinson’s The Battle of Quatre Bras and Uffindell’s The Eagles Last Triumph. Oh, and plenty of Ospreys.

My next problem is to decide how I’m going to paint all of these. I am interested in using the Army Painter method, as I’m not a very good or fast painter. However, based on some pictures I’ve seen, their dark blue is not dark enough for Prussian blue. Something I will need to consider.

Finally for now, I want to blame—I mean thank several people whose sites have motivated for this project. In no particular order:

The League of Augsburg, both for their interesting rules Republic to Empire and their forum with LOTS of great eye candy.

Martin Kelly’s Befreiungskriege blog, good for all things Napoleonic Prussian.

Martin is very partial to Calpe Miniatures’ exquisite Prussian figures. I like them too. They will probably be added to my force as well, especially if I can get ahead of the Perrys’ release curve and need cavalry.

Von Peter Himself, and his lovely and entertaining blog.

And the always amusing banter at the WD3 forum.

And of course Ray, whose fault it always is, no matter what is wrong.

OK. Let’s get this thing started. Here’s the “lead pile” so far:

A gaming table!!

There has not been a lot to report over the last few months, but hopefully I can start adding some interesting bits over the coming weeks.

Ray and I have been bit by the Perry plastic Napoleonics bug, and I've also been investing in the start of a French Revolution collection from the marvelous Eureka Miniatures range.

But the exciting news (for me at any rate) is the installation of a gaming table. A friend of mine built a rough 4 foot by 8 foot table for his children in their play room, but now that they are teenagers he dismantled it and gave it to me. For a couple years, I had it in the garage, where it was used for gaming purposes exactly twice: the solo run through of the BAR rules known as the Battle of Konigstor and then again when I paraded the troops for the Big Battle SYW game a couple years ago.

But now I rearranged our upstairs "bonus room" and found space for the table in front of the windows! Hurrah! A permanent game table:



I am going to set up the table to play some learning scenarios for the various rules I have purchased lately. I am going to use the scenario Clarence posted for Republic to Empire.

I don't have Spanish, so I will probably use my Portuguese brigade as a stand-in. The scenario is intended for a 4 x 4, but I threw out a table-full of scenery just because I could! I does show that I need to get some 25mm battalion-scale hills, though.

Here's a couple other pics for fun:

Creaking Along

I had hoped to have the entire SYW backlog finished up this weekend, but don’t. [Insert various lame excuses here.]

However, I did get the bases for all these fine fellows base-coated. My technique, shamelessly stolen from a White Dwarf article a few years ago, is:

1. Cover base in glue (white/PVA) or similar, then dunk in sand. I use Woodland Scenics fine ballast.

2. After thoroughly drying at least over night, paint with Apple Barrel “nutmeg brown” and again allow to thoroughly dry.

3. Drybrush with Apple Barrel “antique white.”

4. Stipple with white glue, then dunk in Woodland Scenics blended turf.

5. Optionally, add one or two tufts of static grass.

It ends up looking like this shot of Landgraf Bogey reviewing his troops:

What I’ve accomplished is up through step 2 for the following:

Dutch:

Musketeer Regiment Crommelin, 54 figures
Musketeer Regiment Walloon, 54 figures
Grenadier Regiment van Pallandt, 54 figures
Regiment te Paard Roncour, 24 figures
2 x 3pdr with 8 crew
5 mounted generals

Saxon:

Chevaulegers Regiment von Bruhl, 24 figures

French:

Arquebusiers de Grassin, 18 figures

Austrian:

Infantry Regiment de Ligne (IR 38, Netherlands), 66 figures
Infantry Regiment Fürstenberg (Swabian), 66 figures

Obviously, the Imperial forces are receiving a large reinforcement! So what does that work out to? About 320 foot and 53 mounted figures. So I’ve been doing something! Now I need to base my Napoleonic Portuguese brigade, too (another 120 infantry, 24 mounted, and 4 guns with 20 or so crew).

This week’s purchases were the new books by Charles Grant and company: The Annexation of Chiraz, The Wargamers Annual Volume 1, and Wargaming in History Series: Charles Grant's
The Seven Years' War Krefeld, Sandershausen and Lutterberg – 1758. My Eureka order arrived, with “Ragged Continentals” and the various new SYW vignettes—wonderful figures! I’m looking forward to the new Battlegames, which hopefully will arrive Monday.

Status Report

This morning saw the first figure-related gaming activity in months. I took a couple hours to start basing the figures that have been piling up over the last few months. Not exactly a thrill, but I was listening to the third installment of the View From The Veranda podcast.

This episode was about what is the inspiration behind wargaming. Some of the discussion was, as they say, “spot on” for me, while other parts were not the same as my experience. In particular, I came to miniature gaming from board wargames via Dungeons & Dragons. The first miniature game I played was a hypothetical post-Waterloo scenario using the rules Pas de Charge be George Nafziger.

So what have I accomplished, gaming wise? Not a whole lot, really, but today I got the sand glued down onto the bases for about 200 SYW figures for BAR. I have three regiments of Dutch WAS infantry, with two guns and two squadrons of horse, a regiment of the new Saxon Chevaulegers von Brühl, and a small force of Eureka Arquebusiers de Grassin all from Eureka Miniatures. I also have two regiments of Minden Miniatures Austrian infantry, one in pink facings and the other in red but painted as the Regiment von Fürstenberg.

Once this whole lot is ready, I’ll share some pics. The Mindens in particular look fabulous!

My reading stack has been piled with new rule books lately. I have Foundry’s Napoleon, Warlord Games’ Black Powder, and Sam Mustafa’s Lasalle. Hopefully when Ray visits over Christmas, we’ll give them all a test run.

On the technological side of the blog, this is my first entry using Windows Live Writer to compose the blog. So far it is very easy to use.

Ray and I attended Millenium Con XII in Austin, Texas in early November. The highlight of the con was playing in a Sharp Practice game by Faron Bell:

Ray and I definitely plan to play a few more games of Sharp Practice.

I have found what I think may be a “sweet spot” in my schedule: early Saturday and Sunday mornings. I hope to get in more basing, some painting, and weekly updates about them and whatever else is going on in gaming. See you then!