Beautiful morning here in Rochester, coffee and toast, fed the cats, walked the dog, primed another eight 20mm soldiers and ready to spend a few hours painting.
The 6mm's are coming along nicely, I REALLY like the Irregular Miniatures cavalry castings, the horses are slightly chunkier than Baccus so I can get some highlights on the rear, it's really about carefully picking detail out of the black base with these figures.
I have a bit of a plan for the Crimean war, a modest one to begin with but it's a plan! I'll be starting with just 8 bases per side, 4 line infantry (one of which will be designated as Guards) 1 skirmisher base, 2 cavalry ( light and heavy) and a battery of guns, plus a command stand. This will allow me to play through some small solo games. The board will be just 2 x 3 and what I want to do is to make it up from 6" interchangeable squares with all terrain features modelled on. This will be phase 1, and beyond that there is the option to produce more terrain squares and many more figures, but that's for the future. I estimate that within a few weeks this could be done. I'm thinking of 3mm MDF for the basic squares, sealed with varnish before texturing. I envisage winding roads and streams, hills, woods and towns all modelled onto the small squares, this is something I have wanted to do for years now.
Of course the commission painting comes first, I'm currently working on English Foot Guards and a regiment of horse of the WSS for Tony. I have an enquiry to paint 80 German Volkssturm in 20mm scale something I would enjoy doing if confirmed so fingers crossed. I just can't capture the subtle tones of the reds with my old phone camera but I'm really pleased with the first 8 soldiers.
Added the Scots Greys, Rifles and more Russians to the 6mm's, I'm not certain that the Greys still had that red patch rear of the bearskins by 1854, references are hard to come by?
Im with you re Irregular Miniatures.When I sold all my 25/28 mm figures in the early 1990's I went over to 6mm because it is the ONLY way to refight the big battles. Ian Kay who Ive luckily enough to have known for years would always listen to what I wanted and would create the bases to order. He kindly created single figure 100 wars cavalry. French Napoleonic's with knapsacks for ease of painting and his wonderful blocks of marching Napoleonic infantry and Roman legionaries.His Franco Prussian ranges are some of his best work, especially the cavalry. Sadly I have sold virtually all my armies bar the Napoleonic's which Im loath to sell. Re terrain boards, speaking from experience I stabilised my boards by painting both sides with wallpaper paste which stops them warping.Like my collections I gave the boards away but they were still very flat and looked good.I could bore you to death with making all the boards I created to show off Ian's figures. So good luck and well done.
ReplyDeleteOoooh really nice. Interesting period - and plans! Good to see the old mojo’s back.
ReplyDeleteAlways like the Crimean War, a disaster for the British in terms of lack of supplies, sickness and casualties but fascinating.
DeleteInteresting plans and a lot of scope for rule sampling and situations to test once the base game is done.
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice manageable side project Norm for me to play about with!
DeleteTruly superb and impressive 6mm units, wow!!
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Phil
DeleteThey’re looking really nice and it’s good to see your plans taking shape, the 6” squares sound really good and for a small playing surface should work well.
ReplyDeleteThose 20mm are looking spot on
Thanks Graham, I'm very pleased with how the 20mm Foot Guards have turned out. Struggling to get good photos but tried my wifes new IPhone and the difference is amazing so I'll get some shots up in the next post.
DeleteI think you've got the bases just right and I like the idea of the small terrain tiles - something I've always wanted to do! I had a few sample ACW bases from Irregular a few years ago and think they're great, would definitely have used them if I hadn't already gone the Heroics & Ros route.
ReplyDeleteHi Ian. The Irregulars don't look much when you first see them but an awful lot of fine detail emerges as you start to paint them. I'm enjoying painting them.
DeleteSplendid work on your Crimea project, nice looking bases!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain