More Dutch Horse

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This weekend I finally had the chance to get back to the painting table and polish off another unit of “Dutch” horse for my 15mm ECW collection.

The figures are Hallmark from Magister Militum, painted with GW Contrast Paints.

As with all my ECW figures, I mounted them as a For King & Parliament element on a Warbases Vehicle Base. They are lovely and chunky to move around the tabletop, but I am somewhat terrified of dropping one!

Whilst I was waiting for the paint to dry between colours on the above, I also managed to paint a command base for my Scots Covenantor force. Here I used the Peter Pig special Scots pack of ensign, preacher and dog and a Hallmark gentleman command figure.

I must remember to brush off the spider’s web before photographing!

These came out quite well, and I do love the preacher. One thing I must remember to do, however, is to brush off the bits of errant spider’s web that the varnish picks up when I’m spraying in the garage before photographing the figures. It comes off easily, but you can barely see it in normal light…or at least that’s my excuse.

Onto some pike-only units now.

Scots Covenantor Artillery

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Another unit for my ECW Scots Covenantor army: this time it’s the artillery.

These are figures from Khurasan Miniatures’ 15mm Scots & Irish range, with one man per crew coming from Peter Pig.

They are painted with GW Contrast Paints, and mounted on a vehicle base from Warbases. The “heather” comes from Boontown.

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More Scots

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A very productive weekend with another two units of Scots for my ECW collection rolling off the production line. All the below are 15mm figures from Khurasan’s Scots & Irish for the ECW range, painted with GW Contrast Paints and mounted on Warbases vehicle bases to give a nice chunky element for For King & Parliament.

First up was the third unit of Highlanders:

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Following the Highlanders was a suitably manky unit of mounted Scottish Pistoliers. In FK&P , Scottish horse are nearly always downgraded due to the poor quality of their steeds.

My name is Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacCleod...

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Now that the three battalia of Scottish pikemen are done, it’s time to start adding the Highlanders

These are, again, 15mm Khurasan Miniatures mostly painted with GW Contrast paints and mounted on my chosen element bases from Warbases.

I used 16 figures to represent the Highlander unit equivalent of a pike ‘n’ shot battalia. That might be a little light, but with the dynamic poses you can see in the pic above, any more would have had them on top of each other. It looks about right on the tabletop though.

Note that the chaps with the polearms and yellow shirts are “humblies”: called that because they are the poorer sort of Highlander!

Scottish Pikes

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Here’s another battalia of lowland Scottish pikemen for my English Civil War collection:

The figures are from Khurasan’s Irish/Scottish ECW range. They are 15mm and size nicely with the Peter Pig and Hallmark (from Magister Militum) ranges that I am already using. They are very cleanly sculpted and an absolute pleasure to paint. Those of you in the UK might be interested to note that they arrived with me only five days after ordering them from the US: the GZG teleport device is obviously now working in both directions!

They are painted mainly with GW Contrast paints and are mounted on a Warbases vehicle base, giving a very nicely sized element for use with the For King & Parliament ruleset. The flowers/heather is from Boontown.

I’ve taken a pragmatic approach to painting tartan. Rather than spend hours and hours trying to actually reproduce a genuine tartan pattern, I’ve made do with something that doesn’t take too long and looks good at a wargames distance of three feet or so. In effect, all I did was add stripes of a different colour to a heavily shaded sash. This worked for these guys, but the highlanders that I’m currently painting need a little more work as they have a lot more tartan, but more on that in a later post.

Another Scots Battalia

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Enthused by how the first Scots battalia came out, I leapt into painting the second one and polished it off in no time at all.

As a reminder, these are Khurasan Miniatures’ 15mm English Civil War Scots infantry: a mixture of their pikemen, musketeers and infantry command packs. They were painted using GW Contrast Paints, and mounted on a Warbases Vehicle base. The purple heather is from Boontown.

When I first started the Scots, I was a bit worried about painting tartan, but I seem to have found a way of getting the various sashes looking at least tartan-esque, certainly from usual wargaming distance. To be honest, all I did was paint each sash a basecoat red, then drew lines of various different colours (mainly green) against the grain of the sash. I think they have come out quite well, but the real test will be when I move on to the Highlanders!

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There will now be a short interval whilst I paint the one remaining legionary unit I need to actually field the Marian Romans…

The First of the ECW Scots

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I still needed some more foot for my ECW armies, but was a little bored of painting up another straight pike and shot battalia (I have seven units of about 26 figures each, or 182 foot figures) so decided I’d add a Scots element.

Most of my ECW figures so far have been Peter Pig or Hallmark (via Magister Militum), so I decided to look elsewhere for the Scots: two changes presumably being as good as two rests!

The figures I settled on in the end were Khurasan’s fairly new range of ECW Scots and Irish. I must admit I was strongly influenced by how good the painted up examples on the website looked (other manufacturers take note!) and the fact that I could send a message via FB to check if the pikemen were open handed (they are) and get a response within a couple of hours.

Even more impressive was that after I’d ordered my usual fairly large amount (three foot battalia, three horse units, two units of Highlanders, and a couple of artillery pieces) the figures arrived from the US only five days later. Five days!

This meant they headed straight to the front of the painting queue, so here’s the first battalia finished:

What I like about these figures is the obvious contrast with the English battalia: all dressed very plainly as compared to the bright colours down South…but with several of the figures having tartan sashes just to liven things up a little.

These paint up very easily (as usual, I mostly used Contrast Paints) and are highly recommended.

A Few Odds & Ends from the Painting Table

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Very busy at work this last week, so only time to complete a few odds and ends for the two projects I’m currently working on: English Civil War and Marian Romans.

I always find that having two projects on the go at any one time is better than having just one. If, like I do, you only collect in one scale (15mm for me) I also find that it’s best to use different manufacturers as well: alleviates the boredom factor.

First up, a couple of command stands for my English Civil War armies. Here I’ve used a couple of gentleman officers from Hallmark (via Magister Militum) as a random Colonel-type, and then a couple of spare figures from Peter Pig - one command, one artilleryman - as a Colonel of artillery. The mini-gabions are Hama beads filled with basing material!

The Hallmark figures are really exquisite and, if you use Contrast Paints like I do, really easy to paint.

On top of the above, I’ve now painted up the five Hero figures I need for my Marian Roman army. Representing Heroes is always difficult, as you need a figure that stands out a bit and yet is not being used for the rest of the army.

What I chose to do was to add a set of Peter Pig Centurion figures to my Baueda Marian Roman army.

One of the great things about Peter Pig (in addition to the huge range and lovely, very paintable sculpts that they do) is that you can ask them to give you a custom built pack of just one sculpt. So here I looked at one of their mixed command packs, chose one figure, and had a pack of eight of just that figure sent to me. Very handy indeed.

Siege Guns

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Having equipped my ECW armies with light guns and field artillery, it was time to add the big boys: a couple of Siege Gun elements.

The guns themselves were no problem: many years ago I was at an English Heritage site (or similar) and came across a tub of artillery models that have, over the years, proved ideal for siege gun-sized artillery pieces. I still have a handful left, so two of them would form the centrepiece of the elements.

I wanted the siege gun elements to look immobile, so rather than having the guns “naked” on a base, I bought a couple of resin gabion pieces from Peter Pig to serve as dressing. This also meant I didn’t have to have any sort of limber and team in the vicinity: they always take ages to do!

The crews initially came from Peter Pig, who do six different poses. Six men per gun didn’t seem enough, however, so I added a couple of Hallmark officer/sergeant types to each to bulk things out. Hallmark (available through Magister Militum) and Peter Pig size very well together.

I then discovered that the guns, gabions and crews didn’t really fit depth-wise on the standard element bases I’m using for my ECW troops. My standard bases are Warbases Vehicle Bases that fit up to about thirty foot or half as many horse figures without difficulty, and sit very nicely on my FK&P grided battlemat…but the combination of crew, gun and gabion stuck out over the end. Fortunately Warbases were able to supply customised “double depth” vehicle bases that exactly did the trick. I can even use the spares I ordered for TTS camps.

So that’s two siege gun elements now completed. More Romans on the way…

More ECW Dutch Horse

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Having painted up three units of Republican Romans, I needed a break from things Latin, so dipped into one of the more recent outcrops from the lead mountain: another unit of Dutch horse for my English Civil War collection.

These are more from the excellent 15mm Hallmark range, available from Magister Militum. They are painted with GW Contrast Paints, with the flag from Maverick. The base is a large vehicle base from Warbases.

ECW Artillery Bases

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Managed to find time to paint up a couple of ECW artillery bases for For King & Parliament. Guns and figures are all 15mm from Peter Pig and, as usual, they’re painted with GW Contrast Paints.

These have come out quite nicely, and will form the centrepiece of the next scenario in my fictional North Wessex campaign.

Here there be Dragoons!

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More for my ECW armies: a unit of Dragoons.

In For King & Parliament, my chosen ruleset for the period, Dragoons are small unit compared to a standard infantry battalia: effectively a cavalry unit dismounted less a few chaps to hold the horses. I’ve already decided a Forlorn Hope as being eight figures strong, so given your standard battalia is 24 figures strong, the Dragoons are somewhere in the middle at 12 figures strong.

I’m not actually going to paint up mounted versions or horse-holders because, as I understand it, there was only one encounter where Dragoons fought mounted, so best to avoid ahistorical fielding by not having any on horseback. That’s my excuse anyway!

These are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted (quickly) with GW Contrast Paints. Note the chap next to the purple flower in the picture above. He’s a good example of something you have to watch out for with Contrast Paints: missing a bit! Because the paints flow like a wash, it’s often easy to forget to use a proper brush (i.e. not a wash brush) and work the paint into the relief (the creases) in a figure. If you just dab the paint on like a wash, sometimes it will run away from where you’ve dabbed it a few seconds after you’ve done the dabbing, which if you’re painting multiple figures on a lolly-stick can mean that you miss what’s happened because you’ve moved on to the next figure. I shall have to re-open the box and fix him!

Incidentally, I had started thinking that I’ll never finish this English Civil War project, but then I realised that the reason it was taking me so long to complete, the reason why I had painted so many figures compared to other armies, was that I was painting enough of the same sort of figure (as the sides are relatively homogeneous) for to field both sides in a game…so painting two armies or one double-sized army. Doh!

Finally, today, regular visitors will know that I’ve set myself a task of interspersing my new project painting with clearing some of my rather sizable lead mountain. Here’s what I did - to do my duty! - just before painting the Dragoons:

It’s one of those objective markers the size of a Battlefront large base. Don’t know why I had it, or what I’ll use it for, but that (tiny) corner of the lead mountain is now flattened!

More for the ECW Collection

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Lockdown does definitely mean more time for painting, and I’m adding units to the 15mm ECW collection almost as fast as I can buy the raw lead!

Today’s offering consists of two parts.

First up is a standard infantry battalia but, for the first time, with the figures from Hallmark rather than Peter Pig:

These were actually easier to paint than Peter Pig: they are very un-fussy figures, with everything that needs to be painted clearly defined. As per usual, I used GW Contrast Paints, apart from the metalwork, painting eight figures of the same type at the same time.

I like to swap between ranges, provided the sizes match: a change is as good as a rest, as they say.

I like the way the Contrast red has left all the buttons a much lighter shade than the surrounding cloth: I can’t imagine what it would be like to hand-finish every one. Well, I can actually: very tedious!

Next up is a few of the offs and ends that you need to play the game itself: two Light Gun markers and one officer (a Colonel). I haven’t positioned the officer figure very well in the photograph: you can only see half his profile!

The gun markers are Peter Pig; the officer himself is from Hallmark, with his mounted flag bearer from Essex.

Dun Coloured Dutch Horse

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As regular visitors will know, I’m trying to take advantage of the extra painting time available during lockdown by interspersing my main projects with clearing a bit of the lead mountain.

After having completed the platoon of Hawkmen from The Scene, who had been perched on the lead mountain’s upper slopes for some time (see post last Friday), it was time to get back to my English Civil War armies with another unit of Dutch-style horse.

Like the last unit painted, these are 15mm Hallmark figures from Magister Militum: a close match in size to the Peter Pig figures which, so far, have formed the bulk of the collection.

I decided to try and paint dun-coloured horses this time: using the GW Contrast Aggaros Dunes colour straight from the bottle and then blacking the legs, manes and tails. It seems to have worked quite well, turning out a bay dun or buckskin dun colour.

As an experiment, I also undercoated in the ‘official’ grey undercoat as opposed to the usual white. That worked quite well, as the grey doesn’t show through so much if you miss a bit. Didn’t really notice much difference to the colours though.

One thing I did notice, however, was that the Contrast Black colour is quite fragile i.e. the least scrape across the tails would take some of it off, leaving said undercoat showing through on the most raised bits. In the end I gave each horse a quick stroke of normal black paint straight down the tail which solved the problem. A pity, though, as the hair on dun coloured horses is rarely pure black: it tends to have medium dark brown strands as well, and the pure Contrast black simulated a non-block-black quite well.

The rest of the figures were also painted with Contrast Paints, except for the sleeves in white. I had to use normal acrylic white over the grey undercoat as the Contrast white didn’t really do anything: just came out a bit dingy. Contrast white over Warithbone white in future, I think.

Right, with another “main project” unit done, off to the lead mountain to see what I can find to paint up next.

More Painting

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Not commuting every day has certainly increased my painting output, so it was time to start a project that’s been on my mind since before Christmas.

Regular visitors will know that I play the Ancients game To The Strongest using 15mm figures on a 15cm grid. This way, I can use the armies that I originally put together for Vis Bellica on 6cm frontages by using two VB units for one TTS unit. This has meant a lot of investment in my old VB armies: effectively doubling the size of each or, where “deep” units such as Hoplites and Warbands are concerned, quadrupling the number of bases needed.

One of the last armies to need the TTS expansion treatment is my 100YW English army: knights, longbows and billmen. The trick here was going to be matching the figures and paint schemes that I had used before.

Figures weren’t so much of a problem…once, that is, I’d remembered (i.e. searched the Internet until I got a match) that I’d used Museum Miniatures for the core of the VB army. Paints would have to be as close as I could get with the originals using Contrast Paints.

Here’s the first two contributions: a command stand and an element of longbows:

I also managed to find time to complete a second unit of Commanded Shot for my ECW armies. As with the other, these were Peter Pig figures in 15mm.

I’ve also just had another delivery of Hallmark figures so (once the wife has wiped the package down with Dettol!) it’ll be on to more Dutch Horse.

Commanded Shot

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Here is the first of the two Commanded Shot battalia that I have planned for my ECW collection.

These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig, painted with my now usual Contrast Paints from GW.

One more battalia of these to go, and then I’ve broken the back of the infantry that I need. I’ll probably paint up another couple of standard battalia to allow for the odd bigger game, but the main hurdle still to come is the Dutch Horse: 4-5 units of nineteen cavalry each. Other than that, it’s the fun stuff that gives you quick gratification as it doesn’t take long to finish a piece: artillery, officers, attachments and the like.

I need Dragoons as well, but can’t decide whether to paint up the entire mounted-horseholder-foot mixture required for a full representation, as I read that in the ECW, Dragoons only ever fought mounted once. I shall have to see how keen I am on painting up even more ECW when I get to that point.

A Bit of Bank Holiday Painting

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I managed to get a bit more painting done over the bank holiday weekend: just a few bits and pieces rather than anything major.

First up, a unit of Cretan Archers for my Greek and Macedonian armies:

These are from Museum Miniatures’ excellent Z Range of CAD figures. Really nice and highly recommended.

Then there are a couple of officer stands for For King & Parliament: a General and a Colonel.

These are the always-dependable Essex figures in 15mm. I think I went bit over the top with the costume on the Colonel’s flag-bearer, but have compensated by making the General’s costume quite muted.

First of the Dutch Horse

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Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a collection of 15mm ECW figures with which to play For King & Parliament.

In FK&P, cavalry generally comes in one of two formations: the more modern, single-line Swedish style; or the more archaic, double-line Dutch style. So far I have painted up quite a few units of Swedish horse, but no Dutch.

All my ECW troops are based in big elements: bases that are roughly 12cms wide and 6cms deep, with a foot battalia being 24 figures (plus command). A Swedish style unit of horse is 9 figures (plus command) strong, a Dutch style unit therefore 16 figures (plus command) strong.

Big bases!

I was worried that differentiating between Dutch and Swedish styles needed more than just figures on a base, so wanted to try a different manufacturer as well. I also needed a break from painting Peter Pig figures (the vast majority of the army so far): not because I don’t like them any more, quite the opposite, but just to get a bit of variety in the brushwork.

The first manufacturer I tried was Blue Moon: lovely figures, so I ordered some cavalry, but when they came, they were distinctly larger than the Peter Pig cavalry that I already had. I mean grossly larger: they just would not do. I’m all for mixing and matching (people are different sizes after all) but this was ridiculous.

Off to the Internet, and I discovered this excellent blog post from the charmingly-named Madaxeman in which he posts pictures of all the different types of pike and shot infantry figures available. This was very useful, so I carefully scrolled down to where the Peter Pig figures started to appear and checked out which other manufacturer matched them for size.

There were some real horrors on the sizing and quality of figures front, but the two potential matches were with the Naismith line and/or the Hallmark line from Magister Militum. I couldn’t work out whether the Naismith line was still available to buy, which left MM’s Hallmark line as the range of choice.

And the winners are…Peter Pig on the left, Hallmark on the right.

An order and some nice prompt delivery later, and I had the figures for a unit of Dutch horse to paint up. The figures looked quite ornate to me, so I decided to make this first unit very much a unit of gentleman cavalry:

I’m very happy with these, so another order has gone off to Magister Militum (I can remember the first show they were ever at, just after they opened) for more horse and, this time, some infantry as well.

Looking at the MM website, you can ignore a lot of the detail and paint the cavalry in plainer colours, so that’s what I’m going to with this next unit.

And how do they compare with the Swedish horse. Here’s how:

Very good: exactly the effect I was after. I’m now off to wait for the postman…

More ECW Foot Figures

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My ECW collection is coming along nicely: today’s addition is a third battalia of pike-heavy foot.

As usual, these are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted with GW Contrast Paints and mounted as one element on a Warbases’ Vehicle Base. The flowers are from Boontown.

I’m intending to use these for For King & Parliament, the ECW version of To The Strongest, hence why they will work well as a single base of figures.

What I need to do now is to swap my efforts onto the units of Dutch-style horse that my collection requires.

The main difficulty is that I would like to make the Dutch horse even more distinctively different to the Swedish-style horse I already have, so have been looking around for a different manufacturer to try.

I did try Blue Moon, who have some very nice figures, but they are distinctly bigger than the Peter Pig ones, especially the horses, so don’t really fit. I’m usually pretty tolerant about different figures sizes (after all, you do get a variety of sizes in real life), but these are really very much bigger. So if anyone wants a few packs of unpainted, untouched Blue Moon ECW horse, I’m happy to look at swapping them for something. E-mail me at the usual address (right hand column gives it).

Off to the Internet to see what I can find…