40mm Polish lancers - day 5.

I'm really recording the progress of these as something I can later look back on. I have started on the next 4 troopers. Prussian blue + dark grey, deep red + old rose, london grey as a base for all the white/silver to follow. There is a lot of white on these so over the grey I paint off white and highlights will be pure white. The faces are light brown, touch of red added to give a little shade colour along sides of nose and cheeks before picking out highlights with flesh tone highlighted with a touch of white mixed in. Eye sockets then touched in with white and a tiny dot of dark blue. Today will be finishing off the white and silver to be followed by brass and gold.

Tomorrow will be a day off as it's our Granddaughters 4th Birthday so I'll be out much of the day but I hope to have these finished on Sunday ready to start the eight horses next week. Bases will be four to a base 120mm x 70mm as is standard.

Thinking ahead a bit I think It's about time I finished off the 40mm Spanish unit (Perry Miniatures) that I started earlier this year and painted just 14 figures, so another 10 to paint to complete the unit. Also in mind are the RHA crew that Ian Smith and I commissioned a year ago, unfortunately Covid 19 bought the moulding and casting process to a halt so I'm thinking of going with the resin prints but we shall see how things go. I have the officers and the two guns painted and ready so it's just the 4 gun crew.

These are the digital conversions for the intended rocket troop, the actual gun crews will consist of officer, rammer, portfire, loading shot and carrying buckets.

40mm Polish lancers - day 3.

Managed to get about another three hours painting in yesterday over a couple of sessions so the first four figures are progressing well. The next four are now cleaned and assembled, the lance hand needs to be drilled out and the heads are separate so that they can be turned and positioned for some variety. I will probably try to get them undercoated today, which is quite a time consuming job in itself in 40mm scale! The plan is to finish the first four to this kind of basic standard, paint the next four the same and then work on highlighting, retouching and generally finishing off all eight riders before moving onto the horses. As previously said I'm taking my time with these and painting slowly with as much care as I can, even so there will be areas that require touching up or tidying up.

Before I attempt to paint the 'N' on the shabraques I'm going to see if I can find some kind of pen out there that will allow me to draw an outline guide for accuracy. Problem with freehand or brush is getting the paint to flow sufficiently well.

I have solved the problem of the lances. The brass rod looked a bit too thick and was going to prove difficult to create the point, quite by chance eldest daughter brought us round some incense sticks - I'm not actually keen on them myself and these are apparently White Musk - but the first thing that I noticed was how suitable the handle section would be for making lances, as you do! So I chopped off the end 70mm, carved the tip to a point and the result is what you see below, I think scale wise they should actually be 60mm.  I'm now looking for printable pennons that I can paint before adding, or I may hand paint one and then scan it.

All in all coming along a treat and it's already done wonders to lift my mood.

Edited to add images with lance pennons - first attempt! lances cut down to a scale 9' (60mm).

40mm Polish Lancers - a therapy challenge!

Whilst this blog was started 10 years ago as a therapy blog for my battle with chronic depression I don't generally these days bang on about it too much here, but rather try to keep the focus on painting model soldiers. But sometimes living with Dysthymia, (Persistent Depressive Disorder as it's more commonly known now), does present challenges that can be difficult to cope with, and on the occasions when a major depressive episode comes along (delightfully known as Double Depression), things can get very tough indeed. Knowing the illness as well as I do after so many years I am at least able to recognise when the latter is the case and just recently I have been locked into a period of the DD's! It's more than just a touch of Lockdown Blues, I coped well with that and the DBN painting project certainly helped to get me through the days. It's a kind of 'locked in' syndrome where simple everyday things just become hard to get done, you feel constantly fatigued, an overwhelming sense of sadness, low self esteem and just generally mentally blocked. I almost deleted this blog over the weekend.

Yesterday I decided to try and give myself a push in order to fight back against it, by amongst other things setting myself a new painting challenge, to paint the 40mm Polish Lancers that have sat in my drawer for almost a year. I know that completing a unit of 40mm soldiers gave me the strongest sense of hobby satisfaction, a really uplifting sense of achievement that I just don't get with the smaller scales.

So, I'm going to paint a unit of 8 Sash & Sabre Polish lancers and probably record the various stages of progress to keep me focused. I'm starting with the officer, trumpeter and two lancers with a further four lancers to follow to complete my standard eight figure cavalry unit. So far I have blocked in the two main shades and done a bit of work on the faces. I'm keen to get the colours right which is tricky as almost every reference shows slight variations in shades between the 'blue' (actually a dark blue/grey) and the 'red' ( which varies from crimson to deep red to almost pink in the references). I settled upon the reference image you see below as being most representative of the true colours and these are what I'm attempting to match. Early stages but happy so far, obviously I need to find a suitable highlight for the main coat colour without going to light.

Lances will be made from brass rod and I will need to create the sharp point, add the lanyard and the pennon and I'm wondering how best to do this. carbines will be painted and added separately and reins will need to be added to the horses as I did with the 13th cuirassiers, then I used card but this time might go with foil from wine caps. I estimate the unit will take a couple of weeks or more to finish and that they will give me a real boost at a time when I could do with it.

Fun with hex hills!

I seem to have spent hours this week messing about with MDF and foamboard in an attempt to make some hills for the C&C mat. First attempt was to draw around a hex and then cut out freehand with a new scalpel blade but that was a total failure as there was too much variation in the sizes. Next I hit upon the idea of gluing each MDF hex down onto the 5mm foamboard to produce 7mm 'slices' three of which were then glued together but once again the end result was not to my satisfaction. I then textured the edges with my basing stone before painting (you can see the results below), but yet again I was not happy as they looked far too chunky and the lot went into the bin. The final solution was to make 10mm slices, two of which would create each hill. By gluing together two sheets of the foamboard and allowing to fully dry before cutting around an MDF hex held in position by a couple of small blobs of blu-tac I managed at last to get the results I desired. The edges were then painted and a printed hex shot from the mat itself was glued down on top.  So what I have are lots of 10mm hexes which can be used singly or doubled up, I think they probably look better using two together although I can build some larger hills using a single level rising to two levels.

Having now perfected the method I'm in mass production with another batch currently drying for finishing tomorrow.

Version 2 - 7mm slices.

I should have just painted the edges, the texture ruined them!

Mark 2 - ruined by the rough edge texture so in the bin they went.

Broken ground, printed texture with a few garden stones.

The printed top surface photographed from the mat.

Mark 3 - 10mm foamboard hills accurately cut.... finally!

The finished mark 3 version - Swiss infantry standing on a single 10mm hill.

EDIT: I am now the proud owner of 12 upper sections with printed tops and 12 bottom sections, enough to be getting on with!

The Iron Duke.

I spend a fair bit of my spare time looking at early photographs as I am fascinated by them and the proliferation of 'colourised' B/W images does in many cases really help to bring the subject back to life although often the colours are not totally accurate. This one just staggered me, an 1844 Daguerreotype of The Duke of Wellington taken on his 75th Birthday 175 years ago. It has been sensitively coloured.

Ramekin/C&C played freestyle!

I just had to try this out, I may be mad, but it's been on my mind a lot recently, could it/would it work as a fun solo game. So at the risk of attracting derision from 'serious' wargamers I present a short overview of how things went.

The first thing required was to adopt a standard 'Distant Unit' (DU) for moving,  firing ranges, combat, retreat moves etc so another trusty wooden knitting needle was procured from my wife and marked out in 2.5" sections, this would be my distant unit measure. By chance this converted to 5 sections on the stick, handy as 5 DU's s the maximum artillery range. The DU is also used to represent the area occupied by a unit as shown in photo below, whether deployed flank to flank or front to rear, although I'm not sure this is essential in an open game.

I kept things very simple, just a few units per side and 5 each of my shiny new Ramekin order chits per side (painted and varnished 15mm MDG circles). I rolled a red and blue dice to see who took the first bound and it came up British. using the chits to mark activated units is a revelation to me as they really help to keep track of things, when a unit moves and has no further actions the chit is removed  but is left in place for combats and then removed as resolved. The game developed quickly in true C&C style and units were soon in firing range (2 DU's). I used the revised Ramekin charts for standing ranged fire, generally it reduces the combat dice throws by 1 dice which makes a surprising difference to the casualty rate which feels much more realistic.

In no time at all I was getting used to the concept of a DU for movement and firing. Terrain features were all clearly defined, and unlike moving onto a single hex a unit counted as being in or on terrain when it physically moved into contact with it, thus a battery of guns moving onto a hill, an infantry unit moving into a village or into woods etc. Close combats were resolved when units moved into contact with each other, two units can attack a single unit in the usual C&C manner and artillery can still support a close combat in combined arms combat as per the rules.

Retreats seemed no problem to resolve, you just move away towards the table edge where possible and if rearward movement is blocked by friendly troops casualties are lost in the usual way. Bolster morale worked just fine using the DU to establish when supports can be claimed to prevent falling back, obviously this was only a short game and more play will be needed to work through all of the retreat/morale situations. Leaders act as usual, they can join and lead a unit, detach and move etc. Leader retreat is not something I have tried yet (with it's specific hex path in the rules), but I see no reason why a commander having to retreat 3DU's and avoiding units in his path should be a problem.

To be honest I had a lot of fun with this, the game flowed along in C&C style, casualties mounted up gradually, cavalry charged cavalry, made breakthrough moves, infantry formed square against attacking cavalry, units fell back when reduced to support fresher units and at the end of it all the French won a resounding victory. I know that it could only really be used in friendly games but I will definitely be keeping this as an option for my solo games.

Certainly for me the big thing was the aesthetics, I am less keen on grids these days than I was, preferring a clean open table, and after more than eight years playing C&C they remain the only Napoleonic rules I ever fully enjoyed.

The DU measuring stick in use.

Activation/order chits placed.

Two supporting units within 1DU ignore 1 flag roll.

General needs to move up within command radius.

Portuguese infantry were forced to retire by French infantry fire and were then charged by cavalry.

End game. French victory.

 

More on DBN/Commands & Colors and some AB Cuirassiers.

I have been giving a lot of thought this week to the question of which of the two games I prefer, Commands & Colors or DBN and the answer really is that I clearly enjoy both. The added bonus of course is that my figure basing means both are eminently practical on either the folding card table or the printed hex mat.

What I am very interested in is the prospect of playing remote games and for this I am convinced that a grid based system is the way to go so to this end I'm going to explore the technology and experiment a bit. I have no experience of such so it will be a learning curve for me, but should be fun.

I will be taking delivery of some MDF courtesy of Tony Barr at east Riding Miniatures, 75mm hexes and 15mm circles.  The latter will be used as order chits for Ramekin once painted a suitable colour while the hexes are to be used to make 20mm high hills for my C&C mat. I have some 5mm foamboard sheets and these will be sandwiched between the MDF hexes, edges treated and painted and a printed image of the mat surface glued on the top, an excellent idea 'borrowed' from David Crook. I'll probably also create a few fields, broken ground markers etc.

On the painting front things have slowed down a bit this week but I have made a U Turn on the decision to stick with Blue Moon cavalry. I have nothing whatsoever against BM figures but having painted these four cuirassiers (painted as the 13th in Spain) I'm happy that they won't sit too badly beside my existing BM cavalry bases. I would not use them mixed on bases, but separately they work OK. You can see from the photo below the slight size difference, the AB's are a bit chunkier with larger heads but the horses match up well for size. I did replace the big heavy cuirassier horses with AB medium horse which helps the overall look I think. I'm happy to go forward like this.

Eureka continue to send out my orders. Latest arrivals are the first of my planned 1813 Prussians. Having seen so many beautiful Prussians on various blogs I could not resist doing them. The AB Prussians are of course superb sculpts, the initial order was for Landwehr, line infantry, jagers and a gun and crew. Waiting on some French Guard, Old Guard, Young Guard and Marins.

13th Cuirassiers with 42nd Highlanders following up.

BM Cuirassier (left) AB (right).

First of the AB Prussians for the growing lead pile.

Pleased to report that DBN are now available as a hard copy that looks very attractive. Author Alex is offering the rules at 50% off for those who have purchased the download in the previous six months. My set is on order.