Spanish Civil War Headquarters (and the last of the Cottages)

For the past few weeks I've been slowly plodding through a group of Spanish cottages that I picked up from Grand Manner. I paired the first two buildings along with some Napoleonic figures, but I thought for this last one I'd place it in a Spanish Civil War setting.

Depicted here is a Nationalist command group who've set up their headquarters up in a little casa close to the front. 

The 28mm figures are from the Empress Miniatures range. I got these from Atlantico Hobbies when we were in Madrid this past spring (great store btw) - and I thought it an apropos purchase in light of the setting. (Thanks again for the day out Alf!)

These figures are listed as Republicans, but since the officer uniforms between the two sides were fairly similar in cut I thought I'd take the liberty of swapping their allegiance. 

I've seen many great vignettes of these figures skillfully arrayed on a single base, but I thought I'd be a bit of a philistine and split them up, allowing the figures to be used separately and also to reduce their footprint so they can easily fit within more confined settings. 

The sculpting on this set is remarkable. For example, the little details crisply cast onto the table - the plate of food, knife, wine bottle and the eyeglasses on the map - all really help to set the scene. 

For the map I've painted a rather impressionistic rendition of the 'Battle of Ciudad Universitaria' which took place during the first months of the war in Madrid.

Period map of the Battle of Ciudad Universitaria.

A modern rendition.

The cottage itself, like its two brothers, is a lovely bit of kit. Highly textured, charming and suitably rustic.

 

The recent popularity in MDF kits is amazing - their quality is excellent and their ease of shipping and assembly is certainly a boon. Nonetheless, there is something about the surface detail which high quality resin models can convey that is very hard to match with MDF. I often find MDF buildings to be too crisp, too geometric, almost too perfect. Certainly this is great for modern or sci-fi buildings, but I find MDF has a difficult time conveying the natural, yet charming imperfections we see in older structures. For example, this cottage has bowed walls, uneven lintels and less than perfect joins, yet the model has a feeling of lived-in authenticity that I don't often see in many MDF models. Maybe its because that MDF is constrained by using perfectly flat planes as its design elements, I'm not sure. I realize that much of this can be softened with judicious sanding, grinding and liberal use of filler, but that seems to defeat the inherent ease and speed of their assembly. This all being said I'll still remain a fan of MDF, as their many benefits outweigh these criticisms, but after working on this series of charming cottages from Grand Manner I clearly see resin terrain has a continuing place in the hobby.

Next up: A bit of Post-Apoc nastiness.

28mm Napoleonic Spanish Guerrillas and (another) Mediterranean Cottage

Keeping in theme with last week's French Dragoons, here are some of their antagonists - a small group of Spanish Guerrillas, exhorted by their priest and being called-to-arms by their drummer boy. 

For the most part these figures are from Brigade Games' Napoleonic Spanish range, but I see in there at least one figure from the Perry's Carlists collection as well. (This range has several non-uniformed codes that fit very nicely for the Napoleonic period). The priest is an older figure from the collection but he needed a repaint after taking a nasty spill (falling from grace, so to speak).

With this group done I will give have around thirty figures for the entire force, enough for most skirmish scenarios, I think.

In addition, I've included the next building from my recent Grandmanner purchase. 

This cottage has a fairly simple square shape but it does have a nice walled veranda, which adds a bit of visual interest (and some welcome cover for skirmishers).

For this building I used a slightly lighter, more tan colour palette. The effect seems a little more rustic overall. I'm not entirely sure that one is better than the other, but this one was definitely faster to paint, which is a big plus to my way of thinking. 

Okay, just one more cottage to go from this series. To try to keep things interesting I think I'll change time periods for the last one. 

Thanks for dropping by everyone! See you soon.

28mm Dismounted Napoleonic French Dragoons and Mediterranean Cottage

I needed to take a bit of a break from the undisciplined (if entertaining) cacophony of Renaissance fashion to work instead on something a little more staid, a little more 'uniform' in order to kick back and unwind.

Here are a half-dozen dismounted Napoleonic French dragoons, accompanied by their trumpeter and officer. 

Napoleon posted several regiments of dragoons to Spain during the Peninsular War and one could say that the French dragoons were the earliest anti-guerilla units in history. (Being that the Spanish word 'guerilla' was popularly coined during the Napoleonic period, being the diminutive of 'war' or alternately 'little war'). For both sides the guerilla war in Spain was a very brutal affair, with no quarter asked or given.

These figures are from a couple of manufacturers - two are multi-part plastics from Perry Miniatures, while the rest are from Brigade Games, sculpted by Paul Hicks.

Leader based on a hex and Trumpeter (support) on a square to help spot them on the tabletop.

I think the two sculpting styles work quite well together. That being said, I have to admit I'm a bit of a traditionalist and prefer the longer coattails of the earlier dragoon uniform a bit better. Hey, it's all about cutting a dash while sweating to death under the blazing Iberian sun!

The rustic cottage is from Grandmanner's 'Spanish Napoleonic' range. I managed to pick up a few in this series before they were discontinued earlier this summer (thanks for the help on this Sidney!). This is my first stab at painting one of these models and I found it a blast to work on.

After cleaning, I first sprayed the building's parts with Krylon Camo Brown and then over-sprayed with Krylon Camo Khaki to provide the base. I then used 'Americana' craft paints to block in the colours, Army Painter 'Strong Tone' as a wash and then liberally drybrushed using increasingly lighter tones.

While these buildings were specifically designed to reflect 19th century Spanish architecture, I think that, with a bit of squinting, they will work fine in any Mediterranean setting, and I imagine they'll see good service in our upcoming Italian Wars games. I'll post pics of the other buildings as I work through them.

Thanks for stopping by folks - have a great week!