French cavalry on the DBN bases.

Not a great deal of painting going on this week as the family are over and with two toddlers and a nine year old causing mayhem there's not much quiet time, but we would not have it any other way of course. The house looks like a bombsite! They have all gone out for a couple of hours today so I did a quick bit of drybrushing of the French cavalry bases, everything is now on 120mm frontage bases suitable for DBN or indeed C&C should I choose. 

Made a short video to show off the French cavalry, sometimes I find it easier to rabbit on over a short video than type. 

What I didn't know a week ago -

As mentioned previously I have been looking into the feasibility of creating some Royal Horse Artillery crews for my 40mm collection over the Summer. There is no doubt that there are many great figure sculptors out there producing small independent ranges, we are all spoilt for chose these days. It is not actually that expensive to have a master figure sculpted and moulds made, with Griffin being top of the list for the mould making/castings process. However, when looking for something like the RHA crews in 40mm scale, it is obvious that there is never going to be any great commercial demand for such figures. I am currently exploring the production of some bespoke figures with a fellow 40mm collector, for my part I am looking for the following:

• 2 gun crews each consisting of an officer with telescope and 4 crew.
• A single Rocket battery base consisting of an officer and maybe 3 crew.

By making a couple of the crew figures open handed it should be possible to create the 10 gun crew figures from 3 gunner masters plus the officer master, and the rocketeers from the officer and the open handed figures. Thus, I need a total of about 14 figures only. 

Being from back in the days of metal dollies and solder I was unaware of just how far the technology of 3D resin printing has come, and recent research has really sparked my imagination, and so prompted by my partner in this little venture we are now exploring the possibility of going down the digital rout to create our gun crews. Here's what I didn't know a week ago!

Masters can now be digitally created on a computer, and the resulting SDL (?) file can be used to print out the master in resin on a 3D printer that can then be used to make a mould. Having seen a few examples of just what can be achieved I have to say that I am very impressed with the technology, and a test sample of a RHA officer has been commissioned to see how it turns out. More will follow as things progress.

A few related links:

Griffin Moulds. - Rubber and silicone mould making and centrifugal casting.

Digital Sculpts Sweden. This is the guy who is doing the test RHA officer.

Graham Cummings has been experimenting with his 3D printer on his excellent Scotia Albion blog, well worth checking out these links if you are interested in the technology.

Scotia Albion blog - 3D printing of masters.

https://scotiaalbion.blogspot.com/2018/11/go-large.html

https://scotiaalbion.blogspot.com/2018/11/first-print-results.html

Meantime I'm painting a battalion of Les Higgins French infantry for 'Tony, very nice little castings they are too, and working on finishing off basing the 40mm cavalry in 4's on 120mm frontage for DBA/ C&C. The results are slightly chunky looking, but these are weighty figures and need a thick base in order to pick them up safely. Pictures will follow hopefully tomorrow.

On the painting desk - 3.

I have had a good sort out and tidy up of my painting desk over the last few days, the drawers were becoming rather cluttered and untidy and I find the need for order with an 'everything in it's place' mentality. One thing I have done is to go through my Vallejo paints and try to arrange them in colour batches. I always keep my paints in the same place in my box, so I know where the main shades are without needing to go through them, although the greys were becoming a bit of an issue as I have so many. I glued in a few dividers and replaced the paints upside down so at a glance I can see every shade, this also has the advantage of keeping the thicker pigment towards the top of each bottle, this is working really well and the neatness is also very appealing. I also have an overflow draw of around another 50 pots, replacements/spares/rarely used colours, kept correct way up. I have a draw for my modelling tools, drills, wire, cutters, files etc and another draw for my scenic/basing materials. All very good.

I had a few mounted officers left in my 'Sash & sabre' draw, plus some foot figures. all were painted and it seemed a shame not to use them in some way, so I made the four command bases you see below from them. These are aside from the main circular command bases already in the collection, and will prove useful and more practical for smaller games. I'm not sure what make the British officer with shako on sword is, he came from Andy and is a lovely character, I think he's a bit of a conversion, I do love that large head and that face. All got a bit of a touch up here and there.

So that's every 40mm figure used now, save for the few you see behind that I'm finishing off. Time to get an order in but I'm just waiting for a pension transfer to come through then it's more Sash & Sabres, the Perry British Light infantry and some of those wonderful buildings.

A place for everything, and everything in it's place!

The newly organised upside down paint pots.

My favourite is the young British officer, full of enthusiasm for battle.

I had to use those two spare Grenadiers somewhere.

Somewhat toothy French officer, but I really like him!

The spares drawer.

Spain, 1 year on and looking ahead.

Hard to believe it's a year ago that we moved to Spain. We have no regrets about making the choice to come here to the Costa Blanca, Valencia, it's a beautiful part of Spain and the people are incredibly warm and friendly. However, it has become apparent that we are far more isolated up here on the Monte Corona hillside than we wanted to be, and we now want to be nearer the beachfront in Gandia with all of the social life that surrounds it within walking distance. We also want to be able to spend more time back in the UK with the family as we are really missing them. So, it's time to downsize to an apartment in Gandia to begin phase 2 of our new life in Spain.

When you spend time planning and thinking about the future you tend to think over all aspects of life, and in my case my hobby is always a consideration. Looking back I always said that one day I would own a large Napoleonic collection, and the acquisition of the 40mm's from Andy proprietor at Old Glory UK last year started me on the path to finally achieving that ambition, and since then anything else I do I quickly lose interest in. This must therefore be the main focus of my hobby time going forward. I absolutely love these figures, there is not a day when I'm not admiring them, handling them or painting them and I really want to get them on the table now and expand them.

So I thought I would jot down some random goals for the Summer ahead, I find it helps to get this stuff out and down on paper sometimes.

The collection has now topped 400 painted figures, including 60 cavalry, mounted officers and 4 guns and crews. But I really want to add the following:

• French heavy cavalry ( I cannot resist cuirassiers) only a single unit in the Peninsular, but I must have some. Sash & Sabre from OG.
• More British or KGL heavy dragoons - Sash & Sabre from OG. These are lovely cavalry figures in bicornes.
• A full battalion of Swiss infantry (24 figures, 12 are done). French line infantry marching pack, Sash & sabre from OG.
• British Light infantry deployed as skirmisher bases. 7 figures per base on standard 120mm frontage. I think 2 bases or 14 figures will suffice. These will have to come from Perry Miniatures, a good match for my S&S figures - I already have some in the collection. The Perry's are a bit more expensive at £4.25 per infantry figure and £9.50 per cavalry figure but very nice castings. I like their British Light Dragoons firing carbines from the saddle very much.

So far, so good. Another ambition I have is for some RHA guns and crews. Problem is that nobody makes them! I have been in touch with Steve Barber who is currently working on a commission for a set of 40mm characters based upon the Sharp series and they are wonderful, especially the 'French Spy' figure. Steve has said that he could make a set of 4 Peninsular RHA crew under his 'Shared Commission' service, and is enthusiastic about the subject matter. The cost includes the creation of the masters by Steve, and moulds by Griffin (excellent). To make this viable I would need to find another  40mm Napoleonic collector to share this commission.

Wargames.
Moving to an apartment will lose the 'underbuild' space I have for a permanent wargame table, but a temporary  table is certainly managable. My intention is to play DBN games on one side (plain boards) and C&CN games on the other using 150mm hexes 9 x 13.

I have abandoned the houses I was making below, just too big and not detailed enough, so in the bin they go! I found these, and they are perfect, although 28mm scale they are tall enough (around 125mm) to work with my figures at a scale down, they will also fit the hexes and make good modular areas for DBN. Oh, and they are supplied ready painted and are lightweight robust material which helps with postage to Spain.
http://www.tablescape.co.uk/Catalogue/Mediterranean/MediterraneanRange.htm

The winter project is on hold, I dunno, just something about painting plastic kit figures is not doing it for me anymore, although I still like the tanks, all are back in the storage boxes for now.

On the painting desk (2).

Having rebased all of the 40's I found another 8 unpainted highlanders in the drawer, and with 4 left over from the re organisation of the battalions I decided to add another 12 figure DBN base to the 92nd regiment. This will bring them up to 36 figures on the display shelves, but for DBN purposes each base of 12 represents a larger formation, I like to think in terms of battalions. Moving the three bases as a 'formation' gives a nice appearance of mass on the tabletop.

One thing that I have noticed about the highlander castings is a tendency toward weak bayonets where they join the barrel, quite a number were broken and have required repair. No real problem though but of course the 40mm's are expensive figures.

Basing for DBN rules.

I seem to be caught up in a lot of basing at the moment, as I decided after much thought to organise my 40mm Napoleonics for the DBN rules. I purchased a copy and after only a couple of read throughs was hooked. I just think they will work for me, and will allow me to game with these large figures on a modest  size table as movement rates, ranges etc are quite modest. I will expand on this in due course, but in the meantime here are a few shots showing the new basing method. Of course I was not prepared to remove all of these from existing bases, but rather to put them onto sabot bases, which comply with the standard size DBN frontage and make handling these figures so much easier.

DBN stipulates 40mm frontage bases, with the game played on a 2' square board (12 point games. I have gone for 120mm frontage bases featuring 12 foot, 4 cavalry or an artillery battery. The beauty for me is that one can deploy up to 5 bases as a formation- march column, attack column or line- and the figure mass looks really impressive in this scale. A formation can be activated by a single CAP (Command Action Point). I won't go much farther yet, but you get the idea below, I still need to sabot base the cavalry in 4's (120mm frontage). The other thing is that I won't be trying to squeeze these into a grid, I could just not make it work without breaking the units down into too small groups of figures to fit!

DBN :  Ms = muskets, 12 figures   Fs = Foot skirmishers, 7 figures  Jg (Jagers) 6 figures, includes British rifles ...... mine of course are the 60th Regt. I also plan some British Light infantry down the line. cavalry of course are heavy or light.

Finally, how refreshing it is to read a set of rules that don't cost £30 + quid, and are not full of images of beautifully painted figures! The download cost £12.00 and I was happy to pay that for a set of rules that I know I'm going to enjoy using and very easy to cross reference with example diagrams at the rear.

On the painting bench this week are .......

... another 40mm British Peninsular command set, and more 15mm ECW horse for Steve the Wargamer. I fancied painting some of the ECW's and a reciprocal arrangement was reached involving beer! Only 16 mounted figures, 8 are done with 8 undercoated for this week. I'll leave it to Steve to show them in full on his blog once they arrive back home, but here is a quick sneak preview, an absolute joy to paint.

Early stages yet.

These 40mm's are the last of my stock of figures,( well I do have numerous Highlanders but have no plans for them as yet as I already have the 92nd,) so it's time to stock up, Andy is holding more for me. I spent an enjoyable hour or so last night working on these 4 whilst listening to The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast, number 19 'The Peninsular War - part 1'. I was introduced to these several years ago by 'Foy' and they greatly enhanced my understanding of the Napoleonic Wars so I plan to go back through them once again whilst painting. The episodes relating to the Russian Campaign of 1812 were particularly good I recall.

I'm still trying to work out how best I can use my 40mm's on the tabletop without having to deploy a huge table and tons of terrain. Recently I came across the DBN rules (see below), and the more I learn about them the more I think they could work. A 6 x 4 table with all units on standard 120mm frontages (12 foot, 4 cavalry, 1 gun and crew), would be very practical I think, no  re-basing, just sabots to test this out. I really like the way they play, very simple but that suits me. Rather than me trying to describe how these rules work a good introduction is this 12 point battle in 15mm scale, victory goes to the player who destroys 5 enemy units and they play with just a single D6 per player. I'm giving this serious consideration.