Bloody Miniatures: A Thunder of Hooves

 After spending quite a bit of time this past twelve months working on 15mm terrain for our Napoleonic and Crimean War games, I have returned to painting Bloody Miniatures. A Thunder of Hooves was the first batch of mounted figures from Bloody Miniatures. 

Pack BM 042 is The Troopers. Well armed and uniformly equipped, these would be great for representing horse of the New Model Army: 

Pack BM 043, The Flashing Blades, do look a bit dandy with their lace and feathers:

Pack BM 044 are The Lobsters. Hesselrig's is what obviously comes to mind when looking at these figures but they could easily represent a General's or the King's life guard: 

The final pack in this tranche is BM 045, The moss Troopers. Festooned with firearms, they would make great harquebusiers, bandits or even dragoons:

The mounts are modified eBob horses. The original mounts had large, thick draft-like necks with skinny, under-muscled haunches. Sculptor Nick Collier has bulked out the hind ends, making more  accurately proportional horses and modified the saddles. The double reins are (probably) anachronistic but I am not much bothered by that.

Bloody Miniatures: All The King's Men and The Parliament Men

 With these last two packs painted, I have finished off wave 3 of Bloody Miniatures. BM 015 is All The King's Men:

BM 016 is The Parliament Men:

Some of these Royalists look a bit dandy...

This gentlemen finds war to be enjoyed with a nice goblet of cabernet sauvignon:

Not all the kings men are from the indulged upper class. Here we have a veteran; perhaps he fought  alongside Prince Rupert on the continent:

... as well as a distinguished swordsmen:

The Parliamentarian men are more dour, and dressed appropriately. This urban businessman doesn't care for taxes (and possibly kittens):

We also have a "plain russet-coated captain that knows he fights for, and loves what he knows...":

Next we have- according to the Bloody Miniatures catalog description- a 'Puritan Intelligencer'. A very serious man...

And finally, an sensible man of the land, who would rather be plowing his fields and harvesting crops than fighting to bring his king to his senses. 

    

Onto wave four... 

    

The League of Augsburg English Civil War Cavalry

 Warfare Miniatures (better known as the League of Augsburg) are primarily known for their late 17th century, early 18th century 28mm figures. There are plenty of awesome photos of their figures in action on the excellent League of Augsburg blog. They do, however, have three blisters of ECW/TYW cavalry in their shop.

I don't recall seeing many of these in the collections of other ECW war gamers and as I really like their other figures (I am desperate for a reason to order some of their Ottoman Sipahis) I ordered one of each blister out of curiosity. The riders have a ton of detail, very well sculpted and cast. I loved the faces.

I painted most of the riders in dark, almost blackened armour. I did try my hand at russeted armour but I think it needs a bit more work..

Although the riders are great the horses were a little rough; lots of pitting and some of the detail of the tack was less crisp than similar detail on the cavaliers. As these are the same mounts for their already existing cavalry ranges I imagine the moulds may be getting a little tired.

Although most of my horse are in pairs on 50mm square bases or singles on 25mm by 50mm bases I chose to do these as triplets on 75mm by 50mm stands since there were 9 figures.

I will cobble together another stand of 3 from other manufacturers, probably TAG or Bicorne so that the unit will be my customary 12 figures.

ECW Cuirassier

 I picked up some painted Perry Cuirassier off of ebay last month. 

Although not in bad shape, they were sloppily painted. I chose not to strip them but just tidied up the paint job and gave them a standard.

I opted to give them a Prince Rupert's Lifeguard of Horse standard from Wargames Designs. Was Rupert's lifeguard cuirassier? Probably not, but it gives them some distinction on the games table.

Although there are 8 troopers on 4 bases in Pike And Shotte I would only use 3 bases and they would count as Small.

And The Weeks Turned Into Months...

 This past winter, since December 20th I have concentrated on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (for those unfamiliar with it, see here) and the bulk of that time was spent painting my rather excessive collection of GW's LoTR plastic kits (not really historical material...).  However, to give myself a bit of a break from my main drive I did complete a few ECW figures, mainly from the Bloody Miniatures range.

The first group are from blister BM001, The Mortuary Men:

As has been said elsewhere these are wonderful character models.

I did a second blister, BM009 The Moss Troopers from the second wave released last year:

From the BM webstore:

    "A rapacious gang of brigands, freebooters, broken men, or discharged and destitute soldiers turned to banditry and ambuscades."

Perfect for skirmish games; really suitable for low figure count games such as Fistful of Lead or an adaptation of the incredibly flexible Pulp Alley rules.

My final entry of the campaign was a command stand for King Charles I.

I broke what some seem to consider a cardinal rule of building wargaming units and used figures from different manufacturers here (5 in fact!). The sergeant with the halberd is from Avanpost, the Cuirassier with the standard is from Horcata, King Charles is from Warlord Games, the dismounted Cavalry officer from Bicorne Miniatures and the horses by Front Rank.

The Horcata figure comes with a saddle sculpted to the rider as they were designed for the Front Rank horses but I had to sculpt a saddle for King Charles:

Aside from Charles' large head (seems historically appropriate...) all the figures fit together well enough . The King's standard is from Wargames Designs.

I chose to paint Charles' horse as a dun like Van Dyck's 1637/38 portrait of him as opposed to a grey as in the 1633 portrait in part because the grey is an almost exact replica of other mounts in Van Dyck's other portraits of European nobility so was probably his default portrait steed.

King's Lifeguard of Foot, pt 2

 After a long delay, I have finally completed the King's Lifeguard of Foot:

I started the regiment by putting together the pike block back in January of last year; it has seen duty in a variety of other regiments, and will continue to do so while we carry on with our campaign in the south-west.

Subsequently distracted by other projects and building other regiments the wings of shot have now been completed. 

The majority of the shot are Warlord Games plastic but one wing contains 4 musketeers marching from the 1st Corps. range.

Although taller and with distinctively larger features, they do not look out of place with the Warlord figures on the table top. Also in the back row is a figure that I picked up second hand- no idea the make (third figure from the right in the picture below).

Although described as being outfitted in red jackets and monteros I added a little variety in the head wear. With this regiment completed I will be putting together a grey coated regiment from figures I acquired through an eBay purchase...

Command Stands and The Battle of Glastonbury

This past weekend Murdock and I got together for our second game in our campaign, the Battle of Glastonbury, from Partizan Press' English Civil War Campaign Scenarios Vol. 1.  In preparation of this game I put together some command stands to represent specific commanders. For the duration of the campaign these stands will represent these commanders. As new commanders or generals are introduced they will get a specific stand- no more generic stands!

At Glastonbury the Royalist Infantry was led by Col. John Trevanion, taking direct charge of the right division.  Serving as an MP before the civil war, Trevanion would not see the end of it, dieing at the siege of Bristol just 6 weeks later.

The left division fell to the command of Col.William Godolphin. Before the civil war he was also an MP but unlike Trevanion he would survive the war and live on to see the restoration of Charles II.

Lord Hopton's cavalry, divided into a left wing and a right wing,  was led by Robert Dormer, the Earl of Carnarvon. He entered the war with previous military experience, leading a cavalry regiment in the Bishop's Wars. One of his achievements was to secure the surrenders of important towns in Dorset after the fall of Bristol by offering generous terms, only to have it undone by undisciplined royalist troops plundering. In protest he gave up his position in the west to join the King's army. He died later that year at first Newbury.

Carnarvon's own brigade was commanded by Sir Humphrey Bennett of which little is know except that he survived the war and went on to serve as a Justice of the Peace after the restoration.

(as you can see I was in the position of having to double up on commander models).

Last but not least, the left wing fell to Prince Maurice, younger brother of the charismatic Prince Rupert. Maurice started his military career in the Dutch army under the Prince of Orange. At 20 he had moved on to serving in the Swedish army before joining his brother in England in 1642. He came to the civil war with a reputation for bravery however as a commander he did not encourage discipline in his men who brawled with the Cornish infantry and were know to plunder. After the defeat of the king he was banished from England; he served in the Prince of Orange's army before following a career as a privateer, ultimately going down with his ship in a storm in the West Indies.

With the command stands sorted, onto Glastonbury.

With securing Bristol as his main priority, Waller decided to send an army under Col. Alexander Popham to keep his old buddy, Hopton, occupied. Hopton, struggling to keep his Cornish foot focused, saw the approaching Parliamentarian force as just the opportunity he needed to do so. 

The two armies met each other just south of Glastonbury; Popham. however, found himself in the unfortunate position of having lost half his force to desertion due to an arrears of pay!  Choosing discretion over valour, Popham ordered the baggage and most of his foot back north leaving a rearguard to face the oncoming Royalists. 

Here the Royalist are deployed in all their glory, Prince Maurice' regiment of horse in the foreground and Col. Trevanion by his foot, all hemmed in by hedges and muddy fields:

Murdock lays out the sparse parliamentarian defenders:

After choosing to run pell mell up hill into musket fire at Stratton, I chose a more conservative approach at Glastonbury, hoping to send off the raw Parliamentarian troops with my superior foot through volleys of musket fire.

Murdock's foot return fire:

Just 3 raw regiments of enemy foot line the far hedge.  The stones represent the ditches that ran through the fields

In turns 4 through 7, in a spectacular display of dismal die rolling, the raw Parliamentarian foot evaporated. Leaving just a few regiments of horse and some dragoons.

 Here Murdock removes the last few stands...

The plan worked... almost. Yes, the enemy foot disappeared but the horse was rock solid. Their position form which they refused to budge kept me from being able to clear the last hedge with my foot, thereby allowing my horse a chance at achieving their goal of exiting the far table edge (I needed to get 3 units off the table by turn 15 to get a minor victory).  Unfortunately the picture below shows as close as I got. 

 With my foot plugging up the centre, it seemed like my only real option was to get my horse moving up the flanks. This plan was stymied by freshly plowed fields, hedges and ditches. To add insult, the prize horse of this Royalist force- Prince Maurice's Regiment of Horse and Lifeguard of horse- were chased from the field! Aside from those details the result of our game was the same as the historical outcome: the defenders were able delay the attackers long enough for their baggage to get a safe distance away.

The next installment of this campaign looks to be a few months in the future as Murdock is all tied up through the balance of February, March and early April.