Tuesday 16 October 2018

More horseys!


I promised to add a couple more units for Sunday's SELWG For King and Parliament game, and here they are (clickable, of course).  These two regiments were relatively quick to recruit, since I just needed to paint up four minis, from scratch, and retouch another fifteen or so, to match some pretty minis I bought on eBay. The front regiment is Skinner's Kentish Horse and the rear regiment, Twistleton's, all cropheads.

You can see I'm using my cavalry Batbases, each of which take 6 minis, which I like to think of as a troop of around 70 horse. I've used my patented BigRedBatGunk basing material; the next step will be to flock it, later today, and then I can add tufts later in the week. These two give me a total of sixteen regiments of horse, representing some 4,000 ECW horsemen. I need at least ten more regiments for my projected Salute game. :-/

In other news I seem to have started an entirely new project in a different period, of which more, anon!

Thursday 11 October 2018

Soggy Bottom is coming to SELWG!

Advancing Royalist foot- love that Gyronny!
Various chums will be helping me to bring "Soggy Bottom, 1643", the TtS! For King and Parliament demonstration game, to SELWG at Crystal Palace on Sunday 21st October. If you'd like to play in either the morning (11:00AM start) or afternoon (1:45 PM start) please drop me a line at simonmiller60 at gmail.com. 

Essex's regiment- or the "Smashing Pumpkins", as mate Shaun calls them.
Here are some more pictures, taken by chum Ian Notter at Colours. All the images will expand if you click on them.

Two battalia of the King's Lifeguard of Foot advance, with clubbed muskets. Salveeee!
Sometimes, the larger ECW regiments would arrive at the battlefield in enough strength to form more than one 5-600 man battalia. Above are two battalia of Lifeguard, which have some of the finest flags of the war. On other occasions several under-strength regiments might have to be combined to form a single battalia.

The Parliamentarian line
I confess to a regrettable preference for painting Royalists. Nonetheless, my Parliamentarians are gradually catching up in numbers, and, next year, I hope to double the size of some of the regiments so they can each form two battalia. One day I'l love to do Naseby, and recent research indicates that there were a heck of a lot of New Model foot.

Thomas Ballard's Regiment
Above, one of my newer regiments, mostly painted by Shaun McTague. As with all of my units they are mostly Bicorne with a few Renegade and Redoubt mixed in.

Parliamentarian "Dutch" horse
If you come to SELWG, you'll see that I am experimenting with teddy-bear fur. One can achieve some very realistic effects with it, especially with my wobbly-edged bases which sink right into it.

Each time I run the game, I try to add another unit or two. This time I plan to add another regiment of horse, as part of a big expansion of my ECW cavalry over the winter, for a planned Salute game. The ratio of horse to foot in the ECW is astonishingly (and inconveniently!) high, especially for the Royalists- consequently I find that I "need" another 200 mounted minis for my planned game.

Anyhow that's it for now- I hope to see some of you at SELWG! It's always a great show, and my last of the gaming year. Not too crowded, but crowded enough, with some cracking historical games and one of the last of the "Bring and Buy" stands.