From AlanD: Covenanter Pikes (60 points)

Along with a gnome and more Romanians this week, I finished my Covenanter company for Pikeman's lament. The last unit was another block of 12 pikemen from Warlord Games, based again using the 3-2-1 system suggested in the rules. I really like the look this gives to the units, and I will be using it more.

GregB asked last week how many figures are needed for Pikeman's Lament, and apologies Greg for not getting back to you sooner. The rulebook suggests games using 24 point companies. Infantry are made up of either 6 or 12 foot (eg 6 for a Forlorn Hope, 12 for Pike or Shot) and cavalry always have 6 figures. Units cost anywhere from 1-8 points, but most cost about 4 without upgrades. For example, a company made up of two units of horse, two of pikes, one shot and one unit of dragoons would cost 24 points, and require 39 infantry figures and 15 cavalry (depending on how you base your dragoons). Typically, I just painted far more than I need so I can have bigger battles or different options.

The flag is one I hand painted some years ago (at larger scale) and reduced it on the photocopier. I painted a few Covenanter flags and different cavalry cornets back then - if anyone wants them let me know and I'll send you a scan.

Since I'm calling this project done, I'll finish with a group photo. Without any upgrades, this would be a 36 point Company in Pikeman's Lament. Only about 2/3 of the force was painted during the challenge, with some painted a number of years ago and rebased. 60 points for the final pikemen please Barks!

Well done on 'finishing' this project! They are a beautiful and coherent force. I like your idea of painting your own banner and then reducing it.

Barks

From AlanD: Covenanter Lancers (60 points)

It has been a full and interesting week, so a pretty small entry this time. I have nearly finished my Covenanters for Pikeman's Lament, and the penultimate unit is a group of lancers. The figures are from Warlord, and they are OK, although ideally I'd like the Scots horses to be a bit more scrawny... The Scots were unusual in using lances during the ECW, as they tried to compensate for their inferior horses and comparative lack of pistols.

60 points for six cavalry gets me past the 1000 point barrier. Yay!

Very nice work again, Dux. Your pictures show the interesting effects of warm and cool tones! It is a slippery slope of detail when we start insisting on appropriately emaciated horses... Congratulations on reaching the big M!

Barks

From AlanD: Covenanter Dragoons on Istvaan V (115 points)

I'm back teaching this week, so production is slowing somewhat. However, I've been pushing on with Covenanters for Pikeman's Lament while I wait for a few more Romanians to arrive...

This week, I present a couple of units of dragoons with some prayer support. One of the things I like about the 3-2-1 basing suggested in Pikeman's Lament is the flexibility it gives. These troops can be mixed up to show a couple of units of dragoons, with some mounted and some on foot, or I could just use the foot figures as a unit of commanded shot. The figures are from Bicorne Miniatures, the first figures of theirs I've painted, and I enjoyed the range of poses and deep detail.

Supporting the dragoons is a Covenanter preacher from Warlord Games, although I chopped off his hat and gave him a bonnet. Istvaan V is a particularly apt planet for this force of Covenanters to land on. The events we (inaccurately) call The English Civil War were precipitated by Charles I's clumsy attempts to impose his brand of Anglicanism on the Scots, the first shots of the war being the objects thrown at the minister using Charles' Prayer Book in Edinburgh in 1637. The Scottish Covenant signed shortly after was a response to the suspiciously Catholic appearance of Charles' religious policies, which reeked of heresy to Scots Presbyterians. 

Istvaan V's theme of loyalty is also relevant to the Covenanters. Their opposition to Charles' religious policies made them initial allies of the English Parliament, culminating in them handing Charles over for trial in 1647. However, in 1648 the Covenanters changed sides, invading England to try to restore Charles to the throne after Parliament failed to follow through on their vague promises about making Presbyterianism the official religion throughout Britain.

With that, the figures here should gain me 95 points with a 20 point planet bonus, for 115 in total. Happy weekend to you all!

Another lovely unit of Covenanters! I really like the colour tone you have achieved here, and your basing works well with the backdrop.

Barks

From AlanD: The Next Project and Runes for Glorantha (125 points)

In the lead-up to the Challenge, PaulOG and I were talking about our 20,000 different projects, and I got all excited again about the English Civil War. This tends to happen every 8 months or so. In particular, I was inspired by the beautiful new figures from Bloody Miniatures, which are in my painting queue. First up though, I wanted to paint a Covenanter force to play Pikeman's Lament. I already had a few painted Covenanters, so I based them up and prepared the rest of the army for the Challenge.

This week I painted a unit of 12 pikes and a frame gun, all from Warlord Games. For the basing, I've decided to go with the 3-2-1 basing recommended by Michael Leck and Dan Mersey in the rules for Pikeman's Lament. I must say, I like this arrangement of basing a lot. It's quite flexible, and gives units a nice slightly ragged appearance. I had my usual existential crisis about what colour hodden grey should be, settling for the main part on a sort of medium sea grey with a bit of brown added in.

I was quite keen to explore Glorantha this week as well, and remembered I had a set of runestones from Fenris Games that I bought about 10 years ago. These are lovely accurate models of runestones from Sweden (from memory), and will be used for objective markers or just interesting table scatter in games like SAGA.

15 foot figures should give me 75 points, with another 10 for the frame gun. I don't really know how to score the runestones, except that they all fit in a 6 inch cube, so call it 20 points? Add a bonus 20 points for Glorantha, and I think this entry is worth 125 points. The Inspektor visiting from Weimar Berlin is just included for scale.

I really like that grey-blue tone you've achieved with your pikemen. I've never been quite game to adopt the 3-2-1 basing, even though I can see both the gaming practicalities and the aesthetic appeal. I do wonder how effective frame guns and early artillery was, but I'm sure there's a psychological shock. And the painted patterns really help the runestones pop.

Barks

From Mike W - More ECW Scots Covenantors (165 Points)

As promised after my second post, earlier this challenge, here is the follow-up Covenantor unit plus the Command stand for the first one that did not arrive in time for the previous post!

The New Unit, with second command stand at it's side

And as it was a few short days ago! If anyone is wondering about the art work they are resting on  -
its my grand-daughters doodling of a Dinosaur!

I have used the same paint palette for this unit, as I used for the first one - allowing me to swap and change the figures about to get the second rank of each unit aligned to meet my OCD tendencies - to me either a unit has to be made of all different figures or those in a similar pose!   

The Command Stands

I used the same techniques to paint these figures as the last unit - so will not duplicate this here.

The sharp end of the unit - Pike & Pole-Arm Block

One command group has a blue drum and a black flag, (taken from the wonderful Project Auldearn 1645 Blog and actually the Colonel's flag of Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Regiment), whilst the other command stand has the red drum and blue flag, just to make them different. Rather annoyingly I made up both unit's officers with dual pistols - I had thought that I'd prepared one with a sword and pistol - oh well - the downside of rushing through these builds late at night and  early in the morning!

The Left Musketeer Block

Flags are taken from the internet and fancied-up using Microsoft Paint before printing on my home printer, cut to size and then glued on their poles using wood glue to moisten the paper and allow the flags to be moulded into a more realistic position.

The Right Musketeer Block

In this second set of figures, I have modelled four of the pikemen to be holding halberds / ancient polearms to represent the liberation of such weapons from the houses of local noblemen.

The new unit by its-self

The final picture is that of the two new units side by side...

Both Units - Side by Side - OCD fears resolved!

POINTS

32 x 28mm Foot Figures= 160 POINTS

Covanenters, the grim dark forces of the ECW!  What a great looking unit Mike, I really like the look of them all lined up.  You've also given some real personality to this very grey force.  I am a big fan of DIY flags sourced from the Interweb so you get some extra points for those.  Next time include a better shot of your grand daughter's artwork! 

From MikeW: 28mm Scots Covenantors (140 points, Squirrel, Istvaan V)

For my second post of the day I have just finished a unit of 24 x Scots Covenantors, which in use for both ECW games and as an opposition to English later 17th Century Armies in the period known as the 'Killing Times'. See a couple of my post on our club website covering Rullion Green & Bothwell Brig <here>. I also have to declare an interest here as my family were themselves covenantors - back in the day!

Completed unit, minus command element! Dour Scots Covenantors!

Before I go any further a big thank-you to Curt for sorting out my tech issues preventing me posting earlier - and thanks to Peter for dealing with two posts in a day, as I catch-up!

One of the Musketeer wings form the unit, I tend to use figures in stands of four
but allow individual figures as well to allow for various scenarios

So these little guys are Warlord Games plastics and the more astute amongst you will have immediately noticed that there are no command figures in this group. I have a second batch of Covenantors on the workbench that do have command figures for both that unit and this one! I built these units from an old battalion box of figures I had and found that there were no command figures in the box - so I had to acquire some new ones via eBay and they arrived too late for the challenge's kick-off....

So breaking with tradition - I undercoated these guys in grey but then as soon was appropriate - I then painted hands and faces in white.

The other Musketeer Wing, my OCD will be soothed when the next unit is completed and the back ranks of both musketeer wings will have matching poses, as I will mix & match the figures accordingly

Various coloured trousers were added and then the gutsy work of painting in bandoliers, straps and pouches was undertaken, mostly in a natural leather colour but with some variation in bags etc. Socks, shoes and bonnets were then base coated and then flesh and hair was added in.

The Pike block, for post ECW conflicts the pikes would have been substituted for a variety of pole arms, from agricultural tools to Lochinvar axes etc

Details were added to give the swords, muskets and pikes plus splashes of colour on the bonnets (green sprigs), garters (red to give a sense of unit cohesion) and power apostles (sky blue, as this is a popping colour in an otherwise dour unit).

As the Covenantors were considered to be heretics back in the day by King James (with their ultra Presbyterian views) I'm going to claim a cheeky 20 Point Bonus for Istvaan V (if that is allowed).

POINTS

24 x 28mm Foot Figures        120 POINTS

Istvaan V Bonus                       20 POINTS

TOTAL                                    140 POINTS

_______________________________________

Lovely work on these Covenanters, Mike! I too have a fond spot too for them as my family has a connection to the period (however ill-stared). Apparently, these Scots are so dour that they even eschewed their own colours! ;P I look forward to seeing their brave bannermen in a subsequent post.

- Curt

From Guy B: [Chamber of Darkness] Fifty shades of Scots grey? [230 points]

I have an odd disability for an editor - I'm mildly dyslexic. It means I have to be careful and generally read through things twice. So when I read the Chamber of Darkness initially, I thought "Great! I can get some Covenanter Scots painted!"...

The miniatures are a mixture of Warlord plastics and Perry Miniatures. I have some Foundry as well to mix in which will break up any uniformity with the Warlord poses. 

The command wasn't ready in time, so I'll probably post these later. 

The pikes are a mixture of metal and plastic, the Warlord ones tend to break but as pikes are in short supply, I'm still using them. 

So I did paint... a lot of them. 41 completed, with some shotte and command half finished. That was until a friend of mine suggested I read the challenge again and see what it actually said! So it meant using a grey scale only... Oh dear!!!!

So I decided to paint some rocks as well, so I met the criteria... these are 3D printed with Mr Smoother applied, to remove most of the graininess. The rocks are all greyscale, and even involved various Vallejo greys! Challenge completed, sort of!

I attempted to speckle one of the rocks to make it look realistic. This was quite laborious but the finished rock looks good (better on the table than in photography). If I paint any more, I'll add the odd bit of lichen in greens and browns.

So I estimate 205 points for the 41 Scots and 5 points for the rocks, plus a 20 point challenge bonus equals 230 points!

From NoelW : Covenanters (200 points)

I've been working on several projects this week, largely continuations of work already posted. But I've not managed to finish most of them. In fact my submission this week is not quite finished, either. You'll notice two spaces in the sabot bases - these are for the ensigns, whose standards are yet to be done, so they'll have to wait till next week.

Luckily, though, I've managed to complete 40 Scots for the ECW project. They'll sit on one wing of Parliament's army at Marston Moor. This'll take me above 2000 points, which amazes me, seeing as I thought I might have problems reaching the original target of 500 points. 

The difficult part of these troops is the plaids. Fortunately, there was no systematisation of tartan in the C17th, so you can make up your own plaids, but they still have to look credible. Then there's the additional problem of trying to paint convincing straight lines over curved and folded surfaces. I think that about 50% of those I attempted look reasonable and the other half rather less so. But, as always, in the heat of battle, such sins can be forgiven. Or at least ignored.

The figures are all Perry minis. I may mix some Warlord in, though I'm not that keen on the Warlord bonnets, which look a bit shapeless to me. But shapeless is presumably a likely shape for hats on a battlefield, so perhaps they'll look okay when mixed in. 

That's 40 28mm figures, so 200 points.

Hoi there Noel, you have finished a very nice looking unit indeed! Those Covenanters really are splendid even in their grey suits. The plaids are very good and I like the way you've put them on the bases, this makes them look great put together.

Gosh, past the 2000 points mark! How do you guys do it? Well on to the next 2000!