Looks like I'm going to be busy!

I spent a most enjoyable hour this morning opening up and exploring the contents of the three large boxes of figures that arrived last week from 'Old John' for me to paint. As you can see there is lots of variety and will be broken down into monthly lots in accordance with John's preference. Lists and reference material was also included which certainly helps me to organise and plan. There was also a couple of  N Gauge model wagons for my planned model railway shunting layout. Cheers John.

In addition to working on 40 more mounted Indians and another troop of 7th cavalry I have continued to add more bits for my Battle Cry project including some buildings from Battlescale, more 10mm circular casualty markers and some Victory Token markers using 20mm square MDF with suitable printed flags glued on and varnished.

Lighter horses for this batch.

Warlord Epic 'Iron Brigade' the hunt continues! 

I have been searching endlessly online for a box of these figures which are no longer available from  Warlord. These were metal additions to the basic range and I would love to be able to add some to my project. Aside from Iron Brigade they would also be perfect for early war units for both sides. I have trawled eBay, Amazon and every online retailer I can think of or find but sold out everywhere. I have contacted Warlord and put out an appeal on the Epic FB groups. I may have around 10 strips (5 per strip) coming my way from a gamer in Copenhagen who offered to send me his spares so I'm keeping my fingers crossed :) Meantime I have been looking into 3D printed figures and have ordered a test pack of the figures below printed to 13,5mm scale, if they scale up well then I will happily spend time working them into 10 figure strips by trimming arms etc. We shall see how things go.

Iron Brigade from Battle Honours 3D .  Ordered printed to 13.5mm Epic scale from the drop down menu  via Ebay. The company are based in Kent, UK. 

OK, this is the last time I shall mention Corn!

Rather pleased with the results though! You can see it in action (centre section lifts out for placing a base of troops inside) in the latest short 7 minute video on the channel. 

 

Corn Mk.4, Epic P&S for Noel and a small delivery from Old John!

I think I have cracked it at last (see below).

Here are a few shots of the latest batch of Epic P&S for Noel before I packed them up for posting. This represents the first 4 'cavalry' sprues which includes mounted and dismounted Dragoons plus commanded musketeers or Forlorn Hope. I suggested that the commanded foot be painted in varied coat colours to represent the fact that they were drawn off from different regiments and I think they look quite effective. I'm holding back the 6 cuirassiers as Noel wants a 3 deep regiment of 15 figures for the unit which will represent them well. Once again the Warlord Epic range proves to be great value.

I will just mention here the forthcoming Epic Punic Wars release of which there has been much hue and cry around the hobby sites recently. I'm sure you will all have seen the design of the Roman 3 deep bases which features a kind of 'blank' centre strip of heads and shoulders which I think is rather clever! I have no plans to go any further than my ACW but wold relish the opportunity to take on a future commission for this new range as I would love to see what I could do with them.

Currently on the May batch of 20mm Pony Wars for Mark, this time another 20 man Troop of 7th cavalry plus 40 more mounted Indians.

During the week a 'small' delivery arrived of figures arrived from 'Old John' for me to paint :) When John said it will keep me going for months he clearly was not joking. Will be going through the contents over the weekend, cheers John.

Finally Cornfield Mk4! The artificial Bamboo plant experiment proved to be a rather messy waste of time and ended up up in the bin. So, I went online to see what the world of model railways had available and invested in this fine little plastic kit for the grand sum of £15.00. I saw it and could not resist it, with luck I will get two fields (hexes) from this made in removable sections on 2cm square bases.

 

Yet more cornfield improvement and terrain tiles for Battle Cry!

During the week I decided that I was still not happy with the re worked Cornfield for the simple reason that it bore little resemblance to the real thing and looked more like my late old Nan's privet hedge. Much as I'm taking a stylised approach to this project I feel that more can be done. So I did a search for 15mm scale metal cornstalks thinking maybe the Model Railway world might offer up a few ideas possibly. The search threw up a video showing such made from individual plastic bamboo aquarium plants with corn cobs added. I'm going to have a go at something similar but based on 2mm drilled MDF removable sections and will try to achieve small cobs of corn more in scale. So, I have on order plastic bamboo stalks from eBay which should be arriving this week and I plan to have some fun with it! I'm honestly not obsessed with cornfields but it's a common feature of Civil War battlefields. 

Lets see what can be done with these!

Also been making more hill toppers as you can see and will now start to cut the 5mm foamboard hexes that will be sandwiched between 2mm MDF to form the 16mm tall hills. The edges will be textured with Vallejo earth texture and then painted or possibly flocked.

Sharpshooter on a hill.

Also planning road and river tiles, first standard 'rough road' experimental road below. 'Plank Roads' offer faster movement than rough roads in the variant rules so that will be another interesting modelling challenge.

Sharpshooter markers - The Battle Cry Sharpshooter card allows a player to select any enemy general on the board as a target when played. I want something a bit more specific than this so decided that when this card is played a sharpshooter marker may be placed WITH ANY FRIENDLY UNIT IN RANGE OF AN ENEMY GENERAL. The shot is then taken with a crossed sabres required to remove the general for a Victory point. This reduces the 'bolt from the sky' effect and of course will be affected by line of sight rules. Just a touch more realistic I think.

Couldn't hit an Elephant at this range!

I have been making labels for the rear of the unit bases and small casualty markers that will be placed on the strip to show casualties as current strength. The markers are fairly unobtrusive I think and I decided that for those units reduced to a single point a red marker would make it clear that the unit is at the point of wavering and about to break. A big part of the Battle Cry game play is to pull back such vulnerable units and replace them with fresh troops to prevent the loss of another victory point where possible. I discovered a nifty little old tin for the bits and pieces when sorting through some old boxes, it might possibly have been,  (Ahem), a stash tin at some point in the dim and distant past! It was a nice find and perfect for this project.

Finally an example of the labels. It's been a very long time since I have felt such a strong connection with units of model soldiers, somehow the label helps me to really identify with individual Civil war units and will I think greatly improve the narrative when battle commences.

Right then, next step will be planting some Corn.

Cornfield improvement and Commission work - A big ECW bash!

I have just finished painting lots of ECW cavalry, 24 Peter Pig 15mm's for customer John, (I refer to him as 'Young John' so not to confuse with 'Old John!), and 58 Epic ECW's for Noel. Really enjoying working on all of these and if you may be interested my latest short video on my YouTube channel takes a close look at both and how they match up for scale (link is up now on my 'channel link page).

Below: Epic ECW - 4 regiments of  'Horse' a unit of Dragoons and a regiment of Cuirassiers.

Below: 2 Regiments of Peter Pig ECW's.

 

Below: And a few more for Old John!

Battle Cry.

As it's been quite a bash I'm going to take it easy over the weekend as work on terrain additions for my Battle Cry project. I have the cards printed now on nice Buff card and am waiting for plastic sleeves for them. The 'printer friendly' downloads are rather nice I think with crisp clear text (see pic). I wasn't happy with the cornfield that I made as a test as thought it just looked like the troops were standing behind a low hedge so I knocked up a print version (below) which was better but needed some texture! So far I'm happy with the result and will make a matching insert that can be removed when troops are placed inside. Must say I'm enjoying playing around with the terrain hexes.

I would like to add more artillery and cavalry to the armies in due course and it came to mind  the other day whilst watching a YouTube game of 1st Bull Run that I'd like to paint up some of those early fancy uniforms, maybe using the Epic Iron Brigade set (if I can get my hands on any).

'Battle Cry' Epic project is about done!

 This has all come together fairly quickly and with the completion of the figures, (save for a few little extras), the arrival of the PVC battle mat and the terrain hexes in progress I'm almost there. I have the card on order to print a set of command cards using the printer friendly files from the C&C/Battle Cry website and rules printed from the same site.

'Battle Cry' - 24 infantry, 4 guns, cavalry mounted and dismounted plus Generals.

Terrain tiles. 

As mentioned previously I had intended to simply print these, but having done a few trial prints and placed figure bases on them it did not look right. I think what struck me most was the inability to identify line of sight, so I thought about ways of making terrain tiles that remained in keeping with the overall 'game look' that I wanted but enabled me to feature trees, hills, towns etc without going down the whole realistic terrain build. After a lot of thought I decided to go with what you see below and I think it's both functional and effective and I think works well on my PVC mat. 

The trees are functional rather than pretty!

Hill topper tile, needs some grass adding to finish.

Can't get a decent photo of the mat yet!

Cheap and cheerful was the plan for this project and so in keeping with that the trees are simply pieces of Javis clump foliage dipped in watered down PVA and based on 1p coins. They are more functional than realistic because I wanted to be able to place three trees in each wood/forest hex and place them around my 60x35mm bases when occupied. I'm happy with the look of them. 

I spent a fair bit of time trying to represent corn fields, firstly just printed and then using cut down trips of washing up sponge. But I wanted a base of figures to be to stand in them and not on them and eventually came up with this simple solution below, again not perfect but keeping with the overall low relief look whilst clearly showing blocked line of sight to those within or behind. The next issue was representing towns and again I started with printed hexes then tried to make something that features top down buildings which just looked plain silly! My solution here is to use some of Steve Clays wonderful 'Battlescale' 6mm ACW models, selecting only the taller two story buildings that come in around 35mm tall and will do what I what them to do nicely with the 13mm scale Epics. Larger scale 10mm options would just not work with the 75mm hexes and look out of place in the overall low relief look. I'm just waiting for them to arrive. Hills will be 10mm foamboard topped with a hex.

Below: A short pan across the ranks!