Command & Colours: Tricorne

I came across this floating around in the blogosphere, hat tip to Old Trousers from Numbers, Wargames & Arsing About.  This is Tricorne, Richard Borg's take on the American Rebellion. Contrary to early reports, this game will be shipping with blocks rather than plastic figures or at least that's what it says on the manufacturers website. I'm not awfully keen on blocks, but to be honest I will probably play it with figures anyway. 

I have no great enthusiasm for the American War of Independence, but I am very interested to learn how Richard Borg tackles linear warfare.  There are suggestions that a Seven Years War version will be forthcoming if this is successful and that I would be very interested in. 

The game will cover the following battles. None of these involve the French unless I'm very much mistaken - though Du Gourmand is already laying in supplies of 1/72 figures in anticipation.

Bunker Hill -17 June 1775

Long Island (Grant's Attack) - 27 August 1776

Long Island (British Flank March) - 27 August 1776

Freeman's Farm - 19 September 1777

Bemis Heights - 7 October 1777

Bemis Heights (British Redoubts) - 7 October 1777

Monmouth - 28 June 1778

Camden - 16 August 1780

Cowpens - 17 January 1781

Guilford Courthouse - 15 March 1781

Hobkirk's Hill - 25 April 1781

Eutaw Springs - 8 September 1781

The game is not available yet, but can be pre-ordered here with a hefty $20 discount.  Unfortunately, the shipping from the US is equally hefty, so I'm in two minds at present. That said, Richard Borg has never written a game I didn't enjoy.

Drummer update

Drummer on the right

(click to embiggen)

Progress on my drummer continues slowly, but steadily. Mainly slowly. The effects of multiple washes of white are slow to materialise, but I think I'm beginning to see some improvement. I'm doing the red, and there is a lot of red, with thinned down Scab Red from the GW stable. Thanks due to Mr E on that one.

My other two short term projects arrived from Wargames Illustrated today. They're both kits from their Moments in History series for Mrs Kinch's great uncle and grandfather.

Drummer - work in progress

Brown moleskine trousers, very fetching

I haven't had much chance to work on anything hobby related over the last few days, mainly because the house has been demanding attention. Getting our heating fixed is a definite priority. As to why it is broken? Well, therein hangs a tale...

...which does not concern us now.

As you can see I've started making some very timid steps with my new large scale project. I read Stokes's article on painting white uniforms in the Wargamers Annual 2012, available from Caliverbooks, and asked the author a few questions online. The idea is to paint the uniform grey and use that as a sort of blacklining. Then paint a basecoat in tan, which you then cover with thinned down white paint.

Everyone is wearing white this year

I was skeptical about the grey undercoat, mainly because I've found that it, much like shading, doesn't do large scale figures much credit. So I started as you can see above with a tan basecoat on a test section of the figure. I then gave that a quick coat of very thinned down white. The result looked dirty and a bit blotchy, but the technique calls for several coats, so I expect that result will even out once its had another lick of paint.

And that is a problem for another day as I'm up for work in four hours. Goodnight.