Rock and Roll

So, when I say I live in "Quakechurch"; I am not lying. Another severe aftershock today, with continuing smaller aftershocks every few minutes. Makes for a pretty crappy time to be in charge of a whole group of small children; I was teaching a class of Year 1 (5 Year olds) today, and it certainly was an experience I was sure I was not going to have to deal with again after February. But; thats the way it goes I suppose.

I am well, my family are fine. My power is on (hence the update!) and for all intents and purposes, life is fine. My house is standing, so, in the grand scheme of things, I am fine.

Here is a lesson on why store wargames figures close to the floor...

In spite of them all falling down (bar the heavily weighted skirmishers) there is no damage to my British, so the Blog is not going to be stopped! It would have been a real pity if all that work got destroyed!

What will tommorow bring? No idea. Perhaps some painting? It will depend on whether friends of mine need help with the clean up.

To my Christchurch friends, be well and if there is any help I can give, just ask.

CP

Finished Inniskillings

The 27th Inniskillings are finished!

So, another unit finished! The buff was harder than I thought to do, I thought the fact that I had to paint less white would make the unit easier, but; then again it turned out to be just as annoying to paint the buff! Made for painting more layers. I was initially pretty unconvinced, but now that they are done, I am reasonably happy with them.

A not-so-close close up of one of the generic troopers. I am getting a bit better at painting the 28mm chaps, the faces are starting to look much less mush-like, and more like an actual person's!

The Inniskillings were a pretty exceptional regiment; I mentioned before about how they were mentioned by Wellington himself as being one of his lynchpins in the line at Waterloo. The regiment was under repeated cavalry attack, and so formed square. Once in square, the regiment was pounded by the Cavalry's supporting cannon; losing well over half of it's number while it was forced into the tight formation to defend against the cavalry. All the while, the regiment was holding a key crossroads behind La Haie Sainte; and through managing to hold it's resolve survived intact through the entire day!

Add to that, an impressive service in the Peninsular conflict, that should explain why I wanted them in my force!

Next unit will be Victrix miniatures, hopefully will get them started on Tuesday. For those wanting to see the armies that my British will take on, check out Lintman's Blog and the 15mm Paint Shack.

CP

27th Inniskilling foot

I managed to get some good painting time in today, unfortunatly due to the combination of an increase in hockey, as well as having to do some real teaching work to pay the bills my painting time has been decreased somewhat! Although, the trade off is that it should give me some more spare moneys to do a Perry order, so Cav are definitly in the future!

Anyway, on to the painting. I am over half way through painting the 27th regiment of foot (a medium lasalle unit). The 27th have buff coloured straps and facings, which I initially thought would speed up the painting time for the unit (less white = good), but I am not so sure it did! The 27th were a pretty exceptional regiment at Waterloo, getting mentioned by the Duke himself in dispatches as one of the key points in his central line!

 I took the pictures a bit too late in the day, so they are dark! I will have to get some proper ones done tommorow once I finish the whole unit. You can see the next few guys in line behind waiting for their next colour, I am hoping to get those guys finished off tommorow.

This is the unit's Sergant. It is pretty clear to see the Buff colours, it makes for a heck of alot less white! I was initially pretty unhappy with the way they looked, but now that I have left them, and come back I think that I actually like my take on the Buff!

I have been assembling tonight as well, the first of my Highlander units must be next on the painting block. My first impressions of the Victrix plastics are that they are significantly more brittle than the Perry's; but also the Perry's line just seem to be in a more natural poses, the Victrix are just a bit... blocky? Not sure. Perhaps I will change my mind once I get them painted? Not sure. I am hoping to start painting them over the weekend.

CP

Horse?

Today started with research. My knowledge of horses comes primarily from horse racing; my uncle always owned a racehorse or two (the type that wins you BIG money when it doesn't bolt!); but beyond understanding the fundamentals of making a buck or two at the racetrack, thats about where my knowledge ends.

So, my issue arose when I tried to paint one! I have painted scant few horses in my years, and certainly not for a very long time (back to when I played Warhammer). So, I began by googling horses, and looking at pictures. I chose to paint up my two horses as Bays; which was a particularly popular horse at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, to the extent that a British Dragoon regiment was named "The Bays" for their horses!

Here are my two attempts to paint some Colonels, both models are metals from Victrix.

Here is the Colonel for the Guards, on a lovely Light Bay.

And the Colonel of the 27th Inniskilling on his Dark Bay.

Tragically, the pictures are doing them no justice whatsoever; the Dark Bay looks far more textured, rather than simply a black undercoat as the picture shows! Also, they are far, far less shiny in real life, the Matt Varnish has just not dried yet in the pictures... I need to do some work into making better pictures, but for now these will have to do. I am not totally sold on the saddle for the Dark Bay, the buff could be a bit too plain; although the plain does offset the gilded pompousity (totally a word) of the Colonel!

In other news, I managed to assemble my next unit of infantry; a medium British regiment. It will be painted up as the 27th Inniskilling, to give this Colonel someone to order around! I will hopefully get a start on them in the next few days.

CP

Southcon

This weekend I headed down to Dunedin to play Flames of War at a tournament called Southcon. I was running some German Panzergrenadiers with a Tiger, some Grilles (armoured bathtubs) and Marders. It was a pretty good weekend, I won 5 of the 6 games, and the game I lost was only due to some great dice rolls on my opponents part, as well as some average ones on my part! But, them's the breaks. My long term regular opponent Craig managed to claim best axis. The win loss record between him and I is so much in his favour that I think I qualify for "bad guy" status, like every bad guy in a movie I give it a good go but lose in the end! The tournament was Axis v Allies completly- but due to the player mix the allies had a really, really tough time of it.

The only pic I took of the tournament (I am way, way to easy to distract), shows my Tiger facing down some Shermans, which became the theme for my tournament (note, it is also bailed, which was also a theme)

But, what about the British I hear you ask? No painting was done in the last 4 days. But, as it turns out, the local shop in Dunedin sells plastic Napoleonics, and whats more they were trying to get rid of them! So I came home with a large brown bag, and in it contained...

A great smattering of Victrix British! Key items are another battery of artillery (I need 2), the pack of British flags (badly needed, poor Coldstreamers are feeling neglected) and far more British infantry than I will ever need. Plus, a pack of Peninsular colonels. So where does that leave me? I will be able to complete a British Guards division, with an Infantry support. But, I would like cavalry (Scots Greys!) so I will need to do a Perry order at some stage, but first, painting!

I have painted everything I had assembled, so today I am finishing assembling my next unit of infantry (27th Inniskilling, because buff is badass), but also I have managed to get my first two colonels ready to start painting; so hopefully might get the two Colonels painted tommorow, and maybe some buff faced troopers?

Note the Macgyver style stands for them; it is a piece of sprue glued to a FOW base, worked quite well actually!

For a better Southcon description, check out Craig's blog,

CP

KGL and a few other friends...

My goal was to complete my Kings German Legion unit (one of two probably) for my army by today; so I have succeeded as of this morning! Here they are in all of their glory..

Unfortunatly, it is overcast today so the lighting is a bit average; but you get the point, another unit completed! Here is a picture of one of the soldiers, striking a pose...

I was reading the army builder rules while I was working; only to find out that if I use Brunswick support, I needed two more skirmisher bases for a total of 4; so dutifully I whipped up a couple more troopers from the 60th, to bring my total up to 4.

And last but not least, my Warlord Games order came without Colonels; so I had to wait for a while, but they arrived on Tuesday, 2 Waterloo Colonels, and a sapper. In game terms, the sapper is an optional rule, who would tend to not be played, which is really unfortunate because he is a pretty cool model, and one that I am happiest with at the moment! He would add 2 combat dice to one unit; which if it was used with Guards would quickly become very ridiculous! That will teach the enemy to mess with a large ginger man with an axe! So, for now he is just a cool looking model, he might get put on an objective, or simply just be there as part of the army.

Whats next? I have a FOW tournament (Southcon) starting tommorow, so no painting for a couple of days. Then.... Well another small unit, perhaps those Colonels I think as well. Oh and maybe I might base something?

CP

Some Huns, Some Yanks and a Limey or two

Well, the painting over the last couple of days has gone well. Or more, the painting yesterday went very well, to make up for the fact that I was going to get very little done today! Might get a little more done before hockey training, but it is unlikely!

So, what did I get done? How about half a unit of KGL?

So there is 8 done, plus the skirmisher (he is hiding on the left); so 9 out of 17 germans completed! I have developed a pretty good system for painting my British now; the only change that I needed to sort out with these guys was to find a good way of painting the grey trousers (coldstreamers have white if you can't remember)

Herr Commandant, looking classy as ever!

So, not only did I manage to finish off half of the KGL; the Coldstreamers are also completed...

But wait, there is more! I got sick of painting red; so I painted up two skirmisher stands for the army, these represent the 60th Rifles (Royal Americans). I opted for these over the (far more popular) 95th rifles because the Royal Americans fought alot with the Guards; plus they have some sweet red cuffs!

I still don't really have a handle on the "painting faces" aspect of 28mm modelling; but I guess I have plenty more models to practice on! Overall, at this point I am pretty happy with how my guys look. Quality basing will bump them up as a force, and as of this morning I have a pretty good way to get 50mm bases I think, so watch this space, there might actually be some based troops sometime!

Also, the count for 28mm figures complelty painted so far this project? 36 so far....

CP