Seasons Greeting from the Officers Mess!

Wishing all my friends in Bloggerland a peaceful and healthy Festive Season and New Year. We will be having our traditional family Christmas dinner, there will be Thirteen of us around the table* including the five Grandchildren, to us it's everything that this time of year is about.

The hostilities in the Crimea have been postponed as I try to work out the solution to my basing problems and thanks to all who helped with suggestions. To be honest I may just bite the bullet and go back to 2mm MDF as the simplest solution, possibly using a finer grit this time but sticking with the 2mm static grass. Going to be a bit time consuming doing this but I have tested several bases and they practically peel off the existing plastic sheet with very little effort and no mess. I know it will be worth it as I'm still very keen on this project. I have plenty of newly painted units to share, but will hold back until all are properly based, just the shot of the 42nd Highlanders that featured half painted in the previous post. There is still much scope for expansion, the Sardinians entered the war in 1855 and the Irregular Miniatures castings look very tempting along with the Turks! The big plan for the New Year though is making terrain boards.

As my wife will be mostly in the kitchen today prepping and cooking I might indulge myself in a re watch of Charge of the Light Brigade** later, possibly with a glass of port. Cheers all.

* Handy thing about being a wargamer is that having 3 sheets of 2 x 3 ply makes a perfect 6 x 4 dining table when covered with suitably festive cloth, and the trusty folding card table also gets pressed into service as a side table!

** This is the 1968 version not the earlier Errol Flynn BW version of course, The early version was Ok but I have only ever seen horses race at that speed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, let alone a controlled charge. If you fancy a watch its available to rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon.

More Peter Pig ECW's & a 6mm basing issue!

It's been an interesting week with most of the family going down with various forms of coughs and colds and two of the grandchildren requiring  visits to A&E for treatment. I'm coughing and snuffling but at least we have all had negative Covid tests.

This weeks output has been the two regiments of foot you see below for Graham, one Royalist and one Parliamentarian. As usual I enjoy painting the Pig castings. Added the hanging match and the collars to the white coats this morning and they are all just waiting for varnishing later. IN addition I have added 6mm French cuirassiers, another Greek battalion, Russian Guard cavalry and a second British Guard infantry Regiment over the last seven days. I'll have a break for Christmas now before staring on more 20mm figures for John. 

Below: more Highlanders on the go yesterday, should finish them off today. Also I have had some issues with the very thin plastic bases I have used with some warping and basing texture peeling off here and there. With close to 1000 figures painted so far I need to decide what to do about it. I peeled off the two Guard regiments to play with a couple of ideas and must admit that I still like them like this. I'm not keen on using 2mm MDF as they just look a bit chunky to me with 6mm figures so the jury is out and I'll make my mind up over the coming days. Any suggestions are welcome.

6mm test game thoughts and Minifigs for John.

At last, I have a battle on the table again, I knew I could not resist for long!

I lost a few days painting last week with gastric flu which left me very tired. All recovered now so this week I have painted the 19 Minifigs French infantry (Regiment De Lassey) and 9 Minifigs Spanish cavalry (Cuirassier Regiment Morras ) for Old John's WSS collection. Enjoyed painting them and the contrast between the black cuirass ad white tunics with red facings makes for a colourful unit. The contrast between the grey base and highlight shades are not as stark as in the photos (as usual), and in fact the two shades are my go to colours for mid grey uniforms as they work so well together Vallejo Medium Sea Grey and Neutral Grey. Just a single Minifigs artilleryman pushing wheel barrow to complete that box before I get stuck into John's follow up box which I have had for a couple of weeks! Before that though I have two more Peter Pig 15mm ECW regiments foot to paint for Graham which will, I believe, complete the units for his planned Edgehill project. After Christmas I have 40 Soviet Naval Infantry in 20mm (Britannia Miniatures) to paint for Alister ( thanks for coming back again). After that in the pipeline are another 2 regiments of WSS cavalry for Tony, French this time I think, so plenty to keep me busy looking ahead.

I did manage to get the 6mm's on the folding table last weekend for a trial game to see how things looked and felt. I played for about an hour and a half using basic C&C rules with a simple average dice activation roll. It did of course throw up a few anomalies which have given me things to think about but I can see the potential of the game with some tweaks. I plan to write more fully on the rules ideas, but suffice to say I enjoyed myself and it was nice to roll some dice again and push some figures around. Going forward the main plan at the moment is for a fully textured board of 3 x 4 size. The green cloth is fine for testing but I really want the overall look to be improved.

Photos below show the test game in progress.  The micro dice are placed when a unit is activated, the 10mm green circles mark current strength (in blocks). 

Start 'em early!

Just had to share this picture of Oscar ('Ozzy') at the painting desk with brush in hand, he's making a start on John's Minifigs for me! 

 

A mixed bag of scales!

6mm Irregular Miniatures, 20mm Les Higgins and 25mm Minifigs on the desk at the moment having completed last week more 15mm Peter Pigs! 

The 20mm WSS cavalry are Cadogan's Horse painted Sunday and Monday, another gloss varnished unit for Tony. The British Light Dragoons and another Russian infantry battalion (in caps) are the latest additions to the Crimean project with another Russian battalion to paint today. I need more Russian infantry as they will have a lower fire combat rating than the British. This will represent the fact that many were still armed with smoothbore muskets rather than their ability to fight stubbornly.

I'll be starting a 19 figure unit of lovely of French line infantry, 25mm Minifigs next for John, I still love the sculpting style of these figures, presumably the work of Dave Higgs (?), traditional metal  dolly and solder masters that have an instantly recognisable style. The old box art also brings back floods of nostalgia for me, reminding me of my many trips to the Rye Stamp and Hobby Shop in Peckham SE London owned by Bill Brewer.

Below: Latest recruits to the Light Brigade, Light Dragoons. All Irregular Miniatures of course.

The ACW's for Graham are going home today. As mentioned previously I had issues photographing the green of the Berdans uniforms, could not get it to look as dark as in the flesh ( I'm still using my older IPhone camera so maybe it's about time I tried something new), but rest assured they all look far better than they appear here!

And a few 6mm shots to finish with for now, British on the march as the Russians look on, Lord Raglan raises his hat as they pass.