37th North Carolina (for now)

Finished this regiment over the weekend. Bit of a mess with some old figures that I wanted to reuse and some others accidentally based in the wrong unit (two skirmishers in the back of the left base). It's not so coherent as I would like but then again, unit will be fine to game with. Still a temporary flag (37th NC) while I am awaiting the flags for some Georgia Regiments in Hood's division.

This weekend I will base the skirmishers and artillery battery I have finished painting. Currently working on the next fresh regiment and I try to make a picture after each color applied in an attempt to create a tutorial how to paint up a reb regiment. Will have to see how that works out and if it is of any use. Still in doubt but I am making notes for the first time on color triads I used...

All are from Redoubt and now added to the ACW gallery

Ragged rebs marching in

It took them seven years to arrive but hey...
I finally based them! Most of these I painted seven years ago and finally they are ready for action. When I started this project I knew I could make a quick start because I had done two regiments already.  Since my painting improved over the years I decided to tidy them up a bit. Added some extra highlights and repainted couple of shirts, trousers or a face I was not happy about.
 
The first brigade (Benning if I ever get the flags) of five regiments will be ready in April. They are all Renegade and Redoubt. I am in doubt now for the next brigade. Should I stay with the larger figures or can I get away with the smaller Perry/Foundry ranges? Not sure if how big the difference is...

Added them to the ACW gallery.

Start of ACW, Confederate firing line

The last three months I dedicated my painting time to ACW. This is a pretty large project to my standard but I now have three units and some artillery almost finished. I aim for about eight regiments to represent Georgia in Hoods division. Once I get the right flags from the flagdude I will replace the generic which I used now.

For the rules and building the army we have an approach we do for all new periods. We begin with a ruleset that allows us to play with limited figures to get started and inspired. When we have enough painted or combine armies we look for a larger scale ruleset. Most project never pass the first phase though :-)

With ACW we start using Terrible Sharp Sword, for larger battles either Black Powder or Guns at Gettysburg.
TSS are company level rules using eight man groups. If you have five or six groups you are ready to go. So I paint my units in two groups of eight and include the command. In larger games this will then represent a regiment.

These are the first ones ready for the table. 28mm by Renegade. They are large figures but I do like them a lot. Paint up easy with good results. I combine Renegade with Redoubt for this army. That's fine for me but don't try to mix Perry or other ones. It won't work.

Click to enlarge

 Some extra shots in the now launched ACW gallery

15mm Napoleonic project?

Choices.It's one of the most frustrating things of the hobby for me. I simply like too many things and have too little time to do all the things I want. In the past when I really wanted to get into a period I bought pre painted figures but I quit doing this. Way too many painted figures ended up in boxes that were opened once or twice. And when we played a game I preferred to use the figures I painted myself.

One of these choices is about playing larger Napoleonic battles. Now I am a complete 28mm fan and will always paint those but with limited time and changing projects every couple of months I will never get a really larger force on the table. It will take me about two years I guess to paint a couple of Prussian battallions inbetween other projects. So once in a while I investigate other scales (I even ordered 6mm samples after I was blown away at Salute 2009 by a 6mm Wagram game) and recently rediscovered a box of pre painted 15mm French Napoleonics bought in 2006 which ended up in the drawer I mentioned. At that time club decided to do Naps in 15mm but we were  disappointed with the quality of the painting and the castings of the figures we bough that we moved on to do different things. We took the loss as man do and simply ignored 15mm from that day.

Untill last week. When I saw the box while cleaning out a cabinet I had to give it a try. I quickly put them on bases and threw some army painter dip over the miniatures. Next evening I simply highlighted the main colors and start basing work. Again the next evening I painted the base and varnished the unit. Ready. Total time spent about three hours for a unit of 36. Impressive by my standard. The quality you can judge for yourself.



Dipped, highlighted and based


 

Out of the box





 

Currenly I have 10 battallions and four Cavalry units waiting for a makeover. Not enough fot the really big battles but it will do to see if I like this and test out some rules against an Austrian army we can use.

Draft plan is to get the units done inbetween the current ACW project over the next few weeks and do a game after. If I like it I might order some more of these since they come very cheap and present value for money in the end. Generals and vignettes I will paint myself. Any suggestions on who has the nice ones? I know almost nothing on 15mm. I did find some nice scenery at total battle miniatures and still looking for trees/forest.

You see, I have it all thought out. Now let's see if I actually do it.

Napoleonic Gallery updated with Spanish troops

As I am slowly sorting out my pictures on the computer I've uploaded some 28mm Spanish troops in the Napoleonic gallery. I use these for Sharpe Practice games together with the guerrillas I posted with my Carlist army. Infantry made by Eagle Figures and the cavalry from Front Rank. They represent grenadiers of Regimento Rey and Numancia dragoons.

Some of the guerrillas. Perry Miniatures except for one. The brave priest with the cross.

Guest post: Rob's Landwehr battalions

Once in a while you will see a guest post here from one of our club members. This time Rob who just finished three of his 3rd Silesian Landwehr battalions and a Jaeger company. Together with my Musketeers they represent the 15th Infantry brigade.

1st Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

OK, over to Rob:

2nd Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

In addition to the regular Prussian infantry units who can do without Landwehr??
This all started over a year ago when I was looking for some opponents for napoleonic French but I didn't want to paint up British... We had been looking at Calpe some time but never saw them in real.. I decided to have a go at them and made a list of things I wanted to order.. At that point Mike was in Madrid for business and could see the minis in the flesh and this confirmed us they were absolutely great and i made my purchase of Landwehr and some additional Jaegers..
After the figs arrived it took almost a year before I started painting on them and together we decided on the Corps/Regiments we would paint up for our games. For me this
became Major Von Thile's 3rd Silesian Landwehr with the attached Jaeger company.. Suitable to make a surprise appearance at our planned Waterloo game in the future.


Painting up three large battallions and also the additional Jaegers and staff officers was a large pile of minis to go through.. With the selection of the figures I have tried to keep
the variety in poses as diverse as possible in order to get a disorganised, un-military look in the units as Landwehr would be more loose and irregular than the Musketeers/Fusiliers.
After having done the build-up of the units last summer the painting started and, with some distractions on some WW-I and AWI paintjobs, I managed to stay focussed and have the
units painted and based (only some tufts needed) by early february.. Only a unit of Uhlans to go.. I must confess that i am a bit tired now of painting dark blue coats so will now make a start
with our next club project: ACW.. And you probably guessed it already.. Union in dark blue coats..

3rd Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

1st Silesian Jaegers

Full gallery

Now get yourself an account Rob so you can comment on your own post :-)

First Prussian battalion finished

Yes, done! This week I finished basing this battalion ans I can deduct one of my long Prussian to do list.
We have a long term Waterloo project and everybody in our group is painting different battalions. In 2015 this should result in a massive game after visiting the anniversary.
One of my contributions are some Prussian battalions. So please welcome the I Musketier Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment ´6th Reserve´. Part of the 15th Infantry Brigade under General Major von Losthin in Bulow´s IV Corps. Next up will be the II Musketier Battalion but it won´t start them until I finished my ACW over the next two months or so. I also want to do a step by step for the Prussians to remind myself what colors I used and in what order.

The miniatures are from Calpe and are a painters dream. Easy to paint, endless poses, no flash, no mouldlines. Just perfect IMO. I know Warlord has plastic Landwehr now and the Perries are about to release Prussians but these will be very, very difficult to beat in quality. I already decided I won´t switch.

Our first AWI skirmish battle

Last saturday my good friend Rob and I set up a little AWI game. Something small just to see how the rule mechanics work out and to see if it would match our expectations for a larger awi skirmish.

Since I  only painted one group of riflemen and Rob only had 2 groups of continentals we limited the British to three groups as well. Rob was in charge of the British and his objective was to break out from the house and move the wagon off the table somewhere. My task was simple, stop him and take the house.

We used Sharp Practice with the awi supplements This land divided and Fire and Sword.



set-up, a guaranteed Continental win

  


The game was fun as the British tried to break out with two groups while another tried something of a flank move? Or what was it Rob? Anyway they outpositioned themselves and got shot to pieces quickly. My dicing also helped  a bit. So the group can be reassured, no more 6's for me anymore the next three years.

 

target practice 



The real fighting was done around the house with some brave charges from both sides. It was close but when the rebel militia finished their target practice exercise the British found themselves surrounded.

All was lost for them although they tried to sneak the wagon out behind my back. No luck though, the treasure was for the rebels and the house taken.



Of course, at that stage you forget to take pictures so I include a couple of images from the day.

For us these rules with it's supplements work out just fine for our larger skirmishes. We feel it does justice to the period. Maybe even more than Napoleonic where it originates from. While we like playing the Nap version we sometimes have difficulties with the skirmish aspect when we use traditional formations and think we command battalions in a skirmish game.



Rob's mounted riflemen..not used today



Finally some close-ups from the two perry riflemen packs I painted.. All the pictures of the game are in this album.