Sling Off

   I've got two bigger posts of things I'm painting for another couple of projects that by rights should have beaten this one out, but as these figures are not going to be joined by any friends for a fair while, it was worth them jumping the queue.

   I bought some Mid-Late Roman Slingers a few years back as part of another order, just as a cheap pair of skirmishing units for my 15mm Crisis of the 3rd Century Roman project, although, I think they might be a touch later in their appearance. These models were stuck in their lolly sticks, sprayed and then sat in a draw for going on 3 years at this point. I'm currently having a bit of a sort out and trying to make my man cave/office usable* and, if I'm really good, include a permanent gaming table so I can actually play some games. These figures needed to be painted and put away, so that's what I did.

*not a death trap

   The colour scheme was pretty plain, I kept them in off white tunics as I think it's likely to be the most historically accurate for them and mixed the trouser and hair colours for variety. I have broken my basing convention for these armies with these guys, but I thought as fully skirmishing units I wanted that to stand out on the board, so instead of regular size bases but spread out, I halved the base size.

This project still has another 7 or 8 bases of units to go - mostly for one side addition to the idea - plus some scenery bits, so hopefully that won't take another 3 years to get around to.

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Undead Wolves

   I always try and stay upbeat and positive about models and the hobby on this blog, as anyone that stumbles upon it isn't here to see me whining, but this unit have been a real disappointment in multiple ways.

   I ordered them back in February from Little Corporal and they arrived in the last couple of days of August. To be fair to the shop, the figures are from a US company and the shop thought they had stock on hand at the time of the order and only found out they didn't when they initially tried to pack them. Add in the order time from the US, the shop itself moved and didn't do any orders for a month and then the owner had a health scare and didn't send anything for a couple more months and its been a long process actually getting them.

   Then the figures turn up and as they are 15mm skeletons with spindly little legs, necks and tails, them being packed in a padded jiffy bag has meant that every single one was squashed flat. I've bent them all back up and had about a third of them being too broken to be able to fix. So, I've downgraded them from two bases and a couple of spares worth to a single horde base.

   Now, the figures. These are skeleton wolves, which I've quietly lusted over for a couple of years now, mostly successfully not ordering until a moment of weakness earlier this year. They were a test order as I wanted to see how they looked alongside other stuff before I took the plunge with a big order.

   They are simply painted up as there isn't much to do with them and I quite like them, now they are based, but they are fragile as anything and it's a unit (like the bats) that I don't think will survive more than a game or two before someone breaks one or more.

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The Spanish Arrive

   The next unit of Carthaginian troops from the Warlord Games epic sprue are the Spanish Scutarii. As these seem to be Celtic in origin, I tried to go for bright colours so that they stand apart from the North African infantry.

I need to find my spare sprue of bases to get much more done, but I'm enjoying how this project is starting to look.

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The Libyans Arrive

   I've played a few games of Rebels and Patriots using a single sprue of the epic scale American Civil War figures from Warlord Games, with each base counting as a 12 wound unit, which I've found to be a really good way of showing how cheap wargaming can be while still moving "real" figures around a table.

   So when Warlord Games released their Hail Caesar range of epic scale, and then sprues came free with a magazine, it was only a matter of time before I had some painted. I'm pretty lucky that the gamers I have round me aren't interested in these sprues so I've doubled up on numbers without any extra costs.

   My brother and myself are slightly modifiying how we are building armies compared to how I did it for the American Civil War stuff with two bases being a full wound unit. There are a few reason for this; 

1. It helps with game play. In Lion Rampant a unit is either full strength or half strength in terms of how it fights, so being able to take a base off really highlights that.

2. It makes working out unit sizes tidier. It doesn't matter if one army has 5 figures to a base and another is 20, 2 bases are a full unit.

3. It allows the blocks to looks like useful blocks in this scale. 5 Horsemen in 13mm don't look too impressive, 10 ranked up do - then 40 infantry just look really pleasing.

The block of Heavy Infantry. I'd like a second block of these in time, but would need a one more sprue which isn't a priority.

The unit of Cavalry plus their captain/General.

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Ōuchi Clan Ashigaru

   After a break of a few months with other projects distracting me* I decided I needed to get back to work on my Ōnin War Samurai project** and get on with the opponents the Ōuchi clan. Starting as normal with the regular foot troops, which for feudal Japan is the Ashigaru.

*as per usual

**slightly grander title than a colour scheme I found online

   I found a single picture online that claimed to have the colours worn by Ōuchi clan Ashigaru and with no knowledge of my own, I decided to take it as gospel and get painting.

  I've decided I need to focus on getting a few key projects finished asap, so hopefully you won't see too much of me bouncing around for a bit.

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Little Gallopers

   Back early in 2022, I put a post up with some 15mm English Civil War dragoons for my Parliamentary forces and made a passing comment at the end of the post saying I was looking forward to getting this project on the table later in the year - that was 3 years ago at this point and I am pretty sure these Royalist gallopers have been on their sticks with the horses painted that whole time judging by the amount of chips to the paint.

   Over on the social media app Bluesky there is a guy who is encouraging me to look at buying into American War of Independence in 10mm as the models do look amazing (although, I suspect if I do get into that, it'll be in Essex's 15mm), however, as I was sitting at a kids birthday party being tempted by the toy soldiers online a sensible voice in my head reminded me of two things; 1. Money, lets hold off spending money I don't need to for at least a bit. 2. I have so many 15mm projects that can't get onto a table due to not having even minimal armies being complete.

   I've been painting a real assortment of odds and sods, but this is a project I think I should focus on as it is close enough to being complete that its worth the push but also, I think it will look much more convincing that my 28mm project for this era, mostly just as the pike blocks look much more 'pikey'.

   These are the two units of cavalry I like as a minimum for these projects, a captain/general and a horse holder for the back field. I'm pretty sure the figures are all from Essex Miniatures barring the horse holder stuff as they are from Peter Pig.

   This is definitely a project that I always meant to expand much further than the initial 24 points or so of Pikeman's laments forces but to even think about that I need to get the infantry finished now.

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5th New York

   While on sick leave I had planned to give myself two or 3 big (ish) projects to do, mostly painting big units of things that I just haven't been doing in my normal painting time. One of those was an army of Warlord Epic scale American Civil War Zouaves that I picked up in a sprue sale last year. I had time while off to get some of the base colours on and have since gone back over them to get them done.

   I really like having Zouaves on the table when playing ACW as the reds they tend to have in their uniforms give a bright pop above all the blues, greys and browns that the Union/Confederates normally wear. I have a few units painted for my 28mm ACW in the form of the 72rnd Pennsylvania, Baxter's Fire Zouaves but for these I went for a more "Zouave" colour scheme and picked a unit that had the red trousers, this time being the 5th New York.

   I'm hoping to get more 15mm gaming in this year* and having these done gives me one more thing to put on the table and something else not sitting on a side next to me. 

   I need to get their other banner, but they have their US flag for the moment.

*although I need to actually game to do this

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Hosokawa Samurai

   Last for this side of the project we have the units of Samurai. There were a few moving parts on this one when it came to building the units and painting them.

   The first big decision was how big to do the units as Lion Rampant does regular units sizes and halves the unit size for "elite" units like knights, however, reading how most gamers who play this period do, they treat Samurai as slightly better regular troops and save the elite slot for Hatamoto Retinue, which seem to be elite Samurai. So, that is what I did.

   The second was a colour scheme. I decided to make this units a bit more interesting and to stand out for their Ashigaru regulars by letting each guy wear their own colours - to an extent - so the units are mixed. I think this helps the models stand out as elite, while not needing to be very elite in their rules. I then gave them all their back banners to tie them into the army again.

The two units of Samurai

The Samurai Archers

The Commander

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15mm Ashigaru Archers

   The next unit finished for my 15mm Feudal Japanese project is a unit of Ashigaru Archers, again, from the Hosokawa clan. Painted in the same way as they melee weapon carrying colleagues, the thing I struggled to find out was what the rule for their back banners was as half my guys have their hats on their back so can't fit a flag. As far as I can work out, there isn't really a rule for who does and does not wear them, but having a 50/50 split in a unit probably isn't massively historical, but limited by the figures I've done what I can.

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The Land Of the Rising Sun - but 15mm

   Someone at our club was having a clear out and one of the boxes I managed to pick up was a box of 15mm Samurai. I think they were bought to play DBA but I was thinking Lion Rampant.

   I normally do bases of 24 for 15mm Lion Rampant but I wanted this project to be fairly quick and cheap, so I've gone with 10 on a half depth base - I can always double up bases and get someone that looks ok against my other stuff that way.

   Upon checking the box, I think the only figures supplied were actual Samurai from Two Dragons, so I looked online and added some Ashigaru to my collection along with back banners for every figure that could have one as none were supplied.

   I decided to go with the same colours as my 28mm, which meant I had to check what decals my 28mm Samurai were painted in as I had no idea and it turns out that it is Hosokawa clan - although the symbol doesn't seem quite right to me. Then I found one of their opponents from the Ōnin War in a different enough scheme to be interesting and this seemed to be the Ōuchi clan. This is not my area of expertise, so any mistakes are completely due to my own ignorance.

I should probably get on with the rest of the project

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How Many Cavalry?

    As I have mentioned before, I have a hobby spreadsheet where I keep lots of different bits of data with all the formulas that I can think of, giving me numbers back out. The formula that is important for this post is how many small scale games I have played this year (4*) and it is too low for being over half the year in.

*although, I don't think the 4 is within the spirit of my aim

   Then in a separate fact, I also added all the major battle dates from the same spreadsheet into a new calendar that I have then linked to my personal calendar, so that if at the end of a club night we aren't sure what to play the next week we can see what anniversaries are the next week and see if that inspires any games**. The reason I mention this now is that with the thought of having another 15mm game at some point soon, I noticed that the battle of Adrianople (Goths vs Romans) is in early August . . .

**which has inspired a big project rethink that might be something to do with the 25th October

   The first batch of figures up are the rest of my regular Gothic Cavalry, another 4 bases bringing my total up to 6 bases (48 mounted men). These are more Forged in Battle figures from my last big splurge on their site***. I've mixed in a few more horse colours this time as I have more in my repertoire but nothing exciting beyond that.

***Although, I have just seen they have a summer sale on

   The second thing is a unit of Noble Cavalry and some commanders. The noble cavalry seem to be based on the same figures as the regulars with, I think, 1 extra rider sculpt(?) and chainmail on the torsos so I've added some white horses into this batch to try and make the easier to pick out on the table top as from 3 foot away, you can't tell the difference.

   The commanders are all Forged in Battle as well and are mostly Germanic commanders from a few hundred years earlier, I just avoided ones that were obviously the wrong period. The general is Theodoric 1st himself, although, again, I doubt I'll actually be using the figure as himself.

   Then I have some scenic bits for the project. The campsite is from Baueda and was bought in a semi-recent Magister Militant test order. I just wanted to try and bring a bit of life to the back of the table and I felt like the Goths would have some of that. 

   While the wagon is from Essex Miniatures and I'm not sure why I didn't paint it in my last big batch of 15mm wagons.

   The vineyard was a test piece copied from Setting the Scene Volume 2. I probably need to add at least one more base of a similar size, but a double sized one would be better.

Figure for scale

   The last things are two Alternative Armies 15mm War Mammoths with crew from Forged in Battle (extras from my other packs). I bought these in a sale on a bit of a whim when I was thinking about adding little fantasy bits to my historical armies. I'm sort of tempted to add one more if I do another order but for now they will do. They are mounted on half sized horde bases, so if I need standard base sizes, I can add them together as a unit.

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Bats and Zombies, Oh My!

    We are really at the dregs of Operation Panic Paint now, where I started prepping loads of figures in the hope of doing some really big painting days and weirder stuff started getting stuck onto sticks. The zombies are fairly easy to explain as they are a unit I've owned for a while but couldn't be bothered to prep and paint, but the bats . . . I bought the bats at the same time as the bone carts from a few posts back. I've had plans to get them for a while but was put off by how fragile I thought they looked. I can confirm that I don't think this unit will survive even a single game, but they look really good in my opinion.

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Napoleonic Cuirassiers but smaller?

    One key unit I wanted to test was a unit of French Napoleonic cavalry, and this was for two reasons; 1. It would give a unit of cavalry per side for a test game. 2. I wanted to see if using the new Warlord Epic scale figures would look too jarring in scale to the rest of my regular 15mm stuff. 

   Expanding on the second point, I had already bought the 15mm Essex Miniatures British cavalry so I didn't want to add to those units or mix different figures near them, but what about the other side? I've been given 3 or 4 sprues of the Epic scale French cavalry that came free with Wargames Illustrated as my mates were never going to use them, along with some infantry sprues and I think one British sprue. While I don't have any immediate plans for them - although they might be good for other games, so nothing is getting thrown out - I wanted to see if as a stand alone unit, the cavalry might work.

   I decided to only paint up a single unit of French Cuirassiers so that time sunk into the project is as limited as possible, but that I should still end up with a useful unit if the idea does work.

   Compared to regular 15mm figures I suspect that the difference in scale would end up being jarring if seen next too each other too often, so while I suspect they will get replaced, I do still have a unit that can work in games, but I'd appreciate some feedback as I'm torn.

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Royal Artillery but smaller

    As Operation Panic Paint started to draw to a close and I lost what little focus I had and started to just paint whatever came to hand*, I did manage to tip some more useful units onto the desk to keep myself at least in sight of the right track. As I mentioned with the Napoleonic French cannon, I felt like a gun a side would make for a more interesting regular table top game, so I wanted to make sure I finishe done for the other side too.

*Yeah . . .

   This Royal Artillery cannon plus limber and crew came in the same order as the French one, from Essex Miniatures and I painted it in the same colour recipe as my 28mm one.

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ECW Dragoons - No Added Dragons

    Carrying on the Dragoon theme to get a cheap joke, I thought I would finish off the last figures I had for my Parliamentarian force for my 15mm English Civil War army. As I mentioned last summer when I painted the infantry, I bought myself two small starter forces so I could test the theory, but only got as far as painting the infantry for one side. If my painting time does entirely dry up like I'm half expecting it to, I won't be finishing the second side for this force any time soon, but I've got them prepped ready for any spare moments as I would love to see them on the table this year.

   The figures are from Essex Miniatures and I've given them a dark red jacket so that they don't match any other unit I have planned. While the colonel and horse holder are in slightly more generic clothing.

While this is the last I've bought for my 15mm Parliamentarian force, I'm not counting it as complete for my tracker as I will be buying more at some point soon - especially if I can get the other side painted and on the table.

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6th Light Dragoons

    The final push of Operation Panic Paint went much better than planned, however, as my old job wound down and my new one started up what I forgot to get done was the photos of units as they were finished, so nothing new made it onto the blog. I've had a spare bit of time so I've gone back and tried to line up some posts to show what I finished towards the end of March.

   In this post we have a mix of fictional units from two very different sources. If you've read the Matthew Hervey series and the Temeraire series you'll know where I am coming from.

   First up are two units of British Light Dragoons from the fictional (at this point in history) 6th Light Dragoons from the Matthew Hervey series of books, which I am only a few books into currently. In the novels they were at Waterloo, so I figured it would be cool to have some units to represent them. The figures are from Essex Miniatures.

   Last up is a Light Dragoon Dragon rider. Let me explain. The Temeraire series is set in the Napoleonic wars and the author likes the idea that even in alternative history there are events that need to happen, however, what is different is that there are dragons. Without giving any plot away, there is a dragon corp as an extra wing of every nation's military and I've wanted to do something with this since reading the books a few years back. I've gone for a light dragoon on a small dragon (from Alternative Miniatures) to represent one of the messenger dragons rather than a front line battle dragon. I'm pretty sure the dragon riders in the books wore different uniforms, but that's not something that I was worried about in my army.

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Undead Supplies?

   In a bit of a tangent, I've painted a few of my 15mm Undead army, again an army I'd like to get on the table, but not one that was particularly urgent. I've had the knights and command figures on sticks for a while with no real motivation to get on with them, while the wagons were a more recent buy.

   

   The necromancers and knights are all from Alternative Armies and were bought in one of their spring sales - which they've just announced another one of . . . - the knights I bought as a pack and then loads of singles to get enough regular guys rather than too many of the standard bearer. It would be nice to have a bit more variety but as there are only 2 units its not too jarring.

   The necromancers were sold as wizards and I scoured their whole range for my favourites. The photos look much worse than they look in person. I've based them as per my future proofing theory. Big base for the army general, medium bases for sub leaders - useful when splitting a collection between players - and smalls for magic users in Sword and Spear. I've got a real urge to buy another figure of the male wizard on the single base to paint red and write WIZARD on his hat . . .

   I'm not sure if I NEED a civilian wagon and baggage element for my undead but it seemed like fun so I did it anyway. Now that I've found somewhere that sells 15mm undead farm animals, I'm tempted by a  few bases of them now too . . .

   The big wagon is from Essex Miniatures and was the first one I bought, with added horses from Alternative Armies. Then about a week after I built it ready to go, Alternative Armies announced their own corpse wagons, so I ordered 3 (was only supposed to click 2) and ended up with a small fleet of undead wagons.

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The Nassau Question

    Being a bit* of a butterfly in all aspects of my life, be it hobby or historical interests etc mean that the subject that I am reading everything I can find about and making detailed plans for how to make it part of my hobby one week, could be a barely remembered idea a few weeks later. That includes the subject of this post, the Nassau.

*Understatement

   When I initially planned to do bits of the Waterloo conflict in 15mm I had made plans on which units I needed to represent units at different points for different scenarios and it became clear that I needed the 2rnd Nassau. A regiment's worth were ordered from Essex Miniatures following my company as a single unit method, bases were magnetised as place holders and put into my "British" box and the figures were put into my backlog. Move on a year and with the French origins of the regiment firmly in my head, there is a very confused Mike trying to work out why I was putting them in the wrong box.

   But back to painting; I'm a tad surprised that these have been painted and are being blogged about at this point as there are at least two other Napoleonic projects that I've marked as higher priority, but I was sticking figures to lolly sticks and fancied doing a quick test unit to see what they looked like and I got carried away.

  There is a minor risk that these are the French era uniforms and not the British but I'm not an expert in spotting the differences so I'm not 100%, the key thing here is that the unit is recognisable for what it is and won't be mixed up on the board.

   I've painted a command figure to represent the Colonel or player, a unit of Grenadiers (with an extra 2 elements simply because I had the figures and it made no sense not to paint them while I was going through this project), 4 units of line and 2 units of voltigeurs (with extra elements as well).

   If I can get a cannon for the "British" and some horse painted for each side I'll have more than enough to do a test game. Back to the painting desk.

I'm also counting this as my second finished project of the year project of the year.

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