Almansa 1707 - 2mm Army Camps

A while ago, well back in early 2023, Reject Richard made some Army Camps, for his 30 Years War figures, here.

I thought they looked rather snazzy, so thought I'd make something similar for my 2mm Battle of Almanza project

Now being 2mm you'd have thought they wouldn't take too long to plan out and paint up, but I've been working on the 2 army camps for far too long, they shouldn't have taken me 6 months to complete but they have!! I suppose the 2 stays in hospital this year haven't helped?

First up, we have the French camp

All the figures on both camps are from the excellent Irregular Miniatures

On the base we have a few tents???? some infantry on parade, with a few Officers watching on. I added some supply wagons bringing in some garlic and onions and a base of the horses that I posted a few weeks ago.

The red coats will tell you that this camp is for the English and allies. 

We also have loads of tents, 2 smaller regiments of line on parade, a base of cows which again was posted a few weeks ago, and a few supply wagons too!

In this pic, I've added a unit of English foot for scale, both camps are based on a random shaped mdf bases, that I picked up on facebook from John Banks and are approx 5 inch square.

 I added a hill to each of the bases covered in woods just to add a little scenery and colour. I also added a large pond, again just to break the base up. I keep saying this.....hopefully we'll see these out in Posties Shed sometime soon? You never know.?

The Other Partizan 2024 and loads of animals too!!!

 

Its around about now, I enthusiastically ask the question "Who's going to Partizan?" 

But, as you can probably tell by the pic above, I've given into fate and decided not to make the trip up. To be totally honest, I'm gutted, but my legs still not 100%, more like 60%, so its stupid making the 3 hour trip twice in a day and walking around the show. Mrs R and my girls are the only ones who are pleased with the decision, but quite rightly and very boringly, my health has gotta come first.

I'm not sure if any of the other Rejects will make the trip, I know Steve is very keen??

So if you are going I hope you have a fab time!!!

I have had  little time to paint recently, I must admit its hard painting when I have to have my leg raised....

I've been painting some animals for scenic purposes. 

I manged to get 90 cows and 32 horses painted up in one painting session.

Mind you they'e all 2mm!!

For scale I've included a Portuguese line regt and a 15mm figure

I've based these horses up, on the metal base they come on.

And the same with the cows. Not sure what I'm gonna do with them just yet, whether they'll all stay on the bases they'e on, or maybe I'll add some onto a camp base for both sides, as Reject Richard did for his camps?

All the figures are from Irregulars 2mm collection.

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Woods

Several months ago I started to make some woods and forests for my 2mm Almansa project. My first attempts were utter failures, I originally used different sized pompoms from Hobbycraft, (see below), but as you can see, they come in loads of different colures, so they'd need painting.

I gave it a go and made a hell of a lot of mess, I had green paint absolutely everywhere. More importantly, I had a lot of trouble gluing them down. So I gave up and the whole mess went into the bin!!!

If anyone want a few boxes of these little blighters let me know. You can have them! 

So I went back to Richard's idea of  using Javis tree foliage.

I bought several packs of each of the three colours.

Ripped the pieces up, so they all looked like a large tree for 2mm scale.

Lee suggested using WWS Basing glue, as that's what he'd previously used on his rivers and roads. 

I bought some of the glue yonks ago, to make my own grass tufts, but as per usual I've never got round to doing it?

I found the glue very watery, so much that it soaked right through the felt base of the woods, gluing it to the mat underneath, where I'd left it to dry overnight. so that one went in the bin as well.

The main reason I wanted to use felt as the ground of the woods is so it would be flexible and hug the contours of the board I wanted to place them on. Like halfway up a hill for instance. As you can see by the photo, they are very flexible and bendy, so they should do the trick??

I dipped each tree into superglue then pushed it in place onto the felt. It's probably not the cheapest way to do it, but you know the trees definitely not coming off again, but still gives the flexibility I wanted.

With the 3 different colours all mixed together I think they look pretty effective, I just need to make a few more now, some bigger and some smaller.

Thanks for checking out the blog!

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Spanish Chuch

My painting has slowed down recently, but I did manage to get this wonderful Brigade Models Mediterranean Church finished.

Its quite big as you can see by the pics, so its probably more a Cathedral size?

It was too big to go on the 40x40 town bases, so I thought I'd make a feature of it. Giving it walls and a graveyard.

Which are all made from card!

And can come out, if you wanna place a stand of troops in the area.

The gravestones are a little large for 2mm. I did try to cut them smaller, but it just didn't look right, so I stuck with the over sized gravestones and tombs. Which I think was the better idea.

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Farms

 

No, there weren't any farms on the Almansa battlefield that I'm aware of, but I thought it'd be rather rude not to have a few ready and waiting for future battles.

All the buildings are a mix of Irregular and Brigade Models

From Brigade's Mediterranean and Roman/Greek range and Irregular's Roman/Greek range.

They're all based on 40x40 bases from Warbases.

I am in the middle of making some field to go with the farms, again to try and fill out the battlefield with terrain. So look out for them soon......I hope?

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Village

 

Just a small post today.....

When I was basing up my buildings to make my Spanish town of Almansa, I had a few buildings left over. So I decided to base them different and make them into a line.

Of course these can still be pulled apart an used individually.

If I remember correctly some of these are from Brigade Models and some from Irregular, to me they seem to fit together perfectly?

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Blockhouses

 

Technically, I don't need these luvvly Brigade Models Blockhouses for my Almansa project, but I just couldn't pass the up. 

You get 4 different buildings in a pack for the rather nice price of £1

Check them out at this Link

I originally based up a ew of them on a 20mm round base, but thought about it again and glued 6 of the 8 onto

some slate chippings.

I painted them up in the same way I painted the hill for my castle a few posts ago.

I'm not sure how they would be used in a game, but will probably be more tabletop decoration, than anything else.

For the final 2 buildings, I based them onto odd shaped card bases, on top of little foam hills.

Look out for more Almansa terrain items over the coming week.

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Roads

 

There's a fair bit of road need to try and recreate the battle of Almansa as you can see from above. So the question was how am I gonna try and make this and try and keep it cheap?

Reject Richard used lollypop stick for his 2mm roads, which looked brilliant, see below.

 

But at first they caused a few arguments, as we leant over the tabletop, some of the roads were pushed out of place, causing gaps to appear where they shouldn't be. So a un-named blogger suggested cutting up some small pieces of felt and glue them to the bottom of the stick, to make them stick to Posties terrain tiles. This worked!

So I had the thought of dumping the 100 odd lolly sticks I'd already bought and go straight to the felt idea.

I bought a few different shades of brown felt from Hobbycraft and went with a light brown in the end, I heavily dry brushed the sheet with the same colour paint I used for my bases, then dry brushed a lighter brown over, stuck on some 1mm flock to some edges, just to create that road look. I did try to add the odd bush, but they kept falling off, I tried using superglue, which stuck the bushes down but, it tended to leach around the bush an leave a stain.

Scale wise they should be probably be a little thinner, but I think that'd be a bit too fiddly. You might as well use string, like I've seen some 2mm gamers use. So I stuck with the width of a lollypop stick.

I did say cheap, I only used 2 sheets of A4 felt and I've probably got enough road to last me a lifetime, and all for 99p a sheet! And it sticks to Posties tiles like you know what to a blanket!!!

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Spanish/Mediterranean Buildings

 

I've got the castle, so needed some normal homes and houses. Brigade Models make a range of excellent 2mm Mediterranean buildings, so these were my first choice and at £6.25 for 20 mixed buildings you can't go wrong.

I also bought some Roman buildings too and used the more modern buildings to add to the collection. I'm not sure if Almansa had a town square, but my Almansa does! 

Then I saw the recently released  2/3mm Greek buildings from Irregular Miniatures by Geoff Addison and realised that some of the buildings would fit in very nice with the Brigade models. The Fountain in the town square above is from this collection, based on some sandpaper.

I liked the look of Reject Richard's 2mm buildings, he painted up for his French Wars of Religion, so I based mine up on the same sized base as his, 40 x 40. And based then to look a little like a street like Richard did. So if need be we can borrow each others for our games.

Here they are in all their splendour around Almansa Castle. With a base of  2mm Spanish infantry for scale.

There's loads more terrain to come!