QH Miniatures - Havana Volunteers

I spotted these a few months back when looking to bolster the Spanish forces for the Haitian Campaign produced by QH Miniatures out of Spain. 

One of the benefits of playing one of those periods that lacks source material is you can be a little more flexible in the forces you field so why not draft in reinforcements from Cuba and Havana Volunteers, a black light infantry unit.

They are some way off others on the market in terms of sculpts, but they have a certain charm about them, they remind me a little of Peter Laing from the early 80's. 

An extra unit of light Infantry will help bolster the Spanish forces in their continued assault on the Haitian loyalists. 

Next Up Spanish Command.

Dispatches from the front II

I bloody hate cavalry...… I have been sitting looking at the same cavalry unit for the best part of three weeks, if I can't break the back of them tomorrow they might have to be bounced from the queue for a while.

I am not sure if it's the mass of horse flesh or the fact that I have glued the riders on first, something that I don't normally do in the painting process. Do we all have a touch of OCD when it comes to painting?

Meanwhile we had a crack at Osprey's latest card game, a two player game with a number of missions from D-Day to play through, you use your cards to grab the initiative and use your squads to grab objectives I must admit it was a real blast and felt very realistic, very much a band of brothers feel to it, the early missions contain only rifle squads, but later missions introduce MG's Mortars and snipers.

MG's are great at pinning troops, mortars are flaming nasty and you need to get a move on once the targeting round lands. Stick and move is the name of the game.

Send your scouts out to clear the ground in front of you before you send your rifle sections in to take the ground.

The game tiles have plenty of detail and I am sure I won't be the only one thinking about how I could convert this to a miniatures game. 

Each mission lasts about 45 minutes and makes for a great evenings game. 

I based up the QH Miniatures and have included a couple of comparison shots to the Trent Miniatures, they match up very well in size although the quality of sculpt needs some work when compared to others on the market these days. 

Trent Minatures have a slave pack available which landed this morning along with some casualties which will give me so more line infantry shock markers. 

Whilst finding anything to do other than paint the Haitian horse, I did finally get round to painting up the Warbases Pigeon loft and a couple of the test houses for the Red Phoenix project.

Switching between 28mm and 6mm is not great when you are trying to get you eye in once the cavalry are done I will look to get the rest of the Korean village finished so I can get a couple of Seven Days to the Rhine in.

Dispatches from the front....

It's been a mad couple of weeks with very little time for gaming and painting all very frustrating.... 

I really need to put some focus on the hobby as the toys won't paint themselves.

With a new job there has been very little time for painting or is it that the I just hate painting cavalry and the Haitian Colonial Cavalry have been sitting on the paint table for a couple of weeks now, I need a spark to get them going.

Meanwhile the painting queue just got a little larger.

I picked up a couple of packs of Havana Volunteers which gives me a couple of light Infantry units for the Spanish. I saw these advertised a few months ago from QH Miniatures and thought they might be worth a couple of packs.

Thanks to Steve M for sending on my package. After a mix up the package from Spain went missing, but thankso Steve who tracked me down via a couple of club members and sent them on, so there are some benefits of gaming odd periods and blogging about it :-)

Meanwhile last weekend saw a quick trip over to the M5 Living History Show at Spetchley Hall, with a mix of periods covered Ancient Greeks, Romans, Medieval, Vikings, Napoleonic, American Civil War, WW1 and WW2 together with a number of traders it's always a good way to spend a Sunday morning.

Everyone looked to be enjoying themselves and it was nice to see some cavalry in action in the ACW engagement, the chaps representing the Brits in Khaki were very impressive and got me thinking about painting some up. I picked up the following in one of the book tents....

Some light reading for the holidays - could this be a new project?

Definitely a period not gamed but can you get the figures for the Brits in Tibet and is there a uniform guide for the Tibetans let alone figures.

I can feel a few late nights on the internet coming up.

Any suggestions chaps on who makes figures for Younghusband's Expedition?