Phillippeville (2)

Despite having guests staying I've been able to do a little more work on accessories for my 1930's/40's French town.

First up is the lovely Austin 7 Gentleman Civil Defence from those chaps at First Corps. Mark has done a fantastic job on this model and it's a real joy to paint. It's right-hand drive so I'd like to think that this is an English journalist covering the phony war who has been caught up in the German advance and is trying to escape back to Paris.

The base-coat is Vallejo Model Colour Black-Red which I think gives a fantastic rich burgundy colour.

You may be able to make out the tweed detailing on his cap, I think this makes a nice period feel.

The car comes with a couple of extra armed figures, but they don't fit my narrative for the model at the moment, but, I'll likely paint them up at at later date and blutack them in for Maximillian 1934 games.

After I started painting the model I realised that the windscreen was actually flash that should have been cleaned up, but I ended up painting it instead.

The base is quite simple, I did not want to overdo the rocks, tufts, etc if it is meant to be on a dirt road.

 I also painted a few more of the accessories in the Rubicon Models Utility & Light Pole Set Three more lampposts and three more telegraph poles.

I would highly recommend this set if you are looking to add some street furniture to your games.

Warbases Engineers Cart

If you came here because you followed a link from TMP, you have been duped. Tango01 does not exist, he is a sock puppet account of TMP Editor and the post you followed was just a pathetic attempt to drive traffic to the cesspit that is TMP by using SEO. Don't support TMP it steals content.

If you want to support something, go buy a copy of Infamy! Infamy!

I've had this cart for about a year now since Victoria bought it for me, but had ran out of draft horses. My trip to the UK and visit to Partizan back in August remedied that.

Both the shire horse and engineers cart are from Warbases and were all painted in my usual style of a base-coat, AP strong tone wash, glazed highlights and then brown lined with W&N peat brown.

The green on the cart is some Vallejo Model Colour that the label fell off years ago, no idea what colour it is but good for things like this when it really does not matter what colour you use.

 It's mainly to be used as an engineers cart for my Sharp Practice games, but is pretty generic so may see action in many other battles too. I've now amassed quite a collection of baggage train, mainly from these great Warbases models.

American Civil War: Union (17)

If you came here because you followed a link from TMP, you have been duped. Tango01 does not exist, he is a sock puppet account of TMP Editor and the post you followed was just a pathetic attempt to drive traffic to the cesspit that is TMP by using SEO. Don't support TMP it steals content.

Another unit of Zouaves mustered for the Union forces this week with some Zouave companies from the 76th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment.

Line the 74th New York that I did last week these figures are all from the Perry Miniatures American Civil War Zouaves set.

I did my usual method of, prime, base-coat, AP strong tone, highlights on these and am happy with how they came out. The standards are from Warflag.

A top tip, the Perry Zouave box only contains one command frame, if you want to get two units out of it like I did then also buy one of these.

Checking the tracker, this brings me up to 530 28mm foot figures painted this year, I think that may be a new record, and it's only November!

We have visitors staying for the next couple of weeks, so painting may be somewhat curtailed for a while.

Agincourt 1415 - again

Friday evening saw us playing the Agincourt scenario again with my collection at Noble Knight Games. Myself and Kevin played as the French while Bruce and Alexander played the English.

Last time we used To The Strongest! this time we gave it a go with Hail Caesar with my later Hundred Years War amendments that can be found here.

The French force was:

• First Battle
• Jean II Le Maingre, Boucicault, the Marshall of France Ld7
• 4 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager one unit has the Oriflamme
• Charles d'Albret, Constable of France Ld7
• 4 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager
• Second Battle
• David, Lord Rambures, Grand Master of Crossbowmen Ld7
• 2 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager
• 2 units Crossbowmen: Militia, Stubborn
• Charles, Duke of Orléans Ld7
• 2 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager
• 1 unit Crossbowmen: Militia
• 1 unit Foot: Militia
• Third Battle
• Louis, Count of Vendôme Ld7
• 3 units mounted Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager
• 1 unit Foot: Militia
• Anthony, Comte de Brabant Ld7
• 1 unit mounted Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager
• Waleran de Raineval, Comte de Fauquembergue Ld7
• 1 unit mounted Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Eager

• Any unit of men at arms making three moves becomes disordered at the end of the moves.
• French units must make as many moves as they roll.
• The French army does not have a commander

The opposing English were:

•  Henry V, King of England Ld9
• 2 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Valiant, Steady, Phalanx
• Edward of Norwich, the 2nd Duke of York Ld8
• 2 units Men at Arms: Tough Fighters, Valiant, Steady, Phalanx
• Thomas de Camoys, 1st Baron Camoys Ld8
• 5 units Bowmen: Medium infantry with war bow, Double-handed weapon, Stakes
• Sir Thomas Erpingham Ld8
• 5 units Bowmen: Medium infantry with war bow, Double-handed weapon, Stakes

• Any unit of men at arms making three moves becomes disordered at the end of the moves.
• Any English commander may reroll any 1,2 or 3 when rolling for Command Traits at the start of the game

Things went really badly for the French before. Most of their commanders were a mic of incompetent, cowardly and despised!

Once the English started rolling dice it got much worse, they seemed not to be able to miss with their bow fire and when the French did force a combat the English never seemed to fail a save.

It did not go all the way of the English though, both Henry and Edward were sorely wounded, but the Marshall was slain.

At the end of the game, the French were slowly getting the upper hand, but the nature of the combats in Hail Caesar meant that there were units scatted all over the table and it did not feel quite as right to me as it did the last time.

I think that To The Strongest a couple of weeks ago did give a better representation of the battle with a stagnant 'hack and slash' in the centre, where the better quality English men at arms were getting the upper hand. In this game the French knights got the upper hand solely by weight of numbers even though the scenario was trying to prevent that.

But, Hail Caesar give a more fun game, a lot of stuff is happening all the time and combats are very decisive, but it seems to be much more luck based than TTS!.

American Civil War: Union (16)

This weeks painting output is a unit of 24 Zouaves representing companies from the 74th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

The figures are all from the Perry Miniatures American Civil War Zouaves box set and as ever with their output are a very well sculpted dynamic set to work with.

I had planned to paint these as part of last years Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but there was always an excuse to not get started on them, but a couple of weeks ago I set my resolve and made a start.

I'm quite happy with how they came out, but they are a lot more effort to paint than standard Union infantry in sack coat and trousers, I have just made a start though on a second unit of Zouaves and hope to have those done in a few weeks, although visitors from the UK will somewhat curtail my painting time.

Here are a few close-ups of the individual figures.

I experimented a little with the paints on these and used the Army Painter Red tone on the reds and I'll certainly do so again, I especially do like the richness it gives to the pantaloons.

The flags are from Warflag which is a great resource for such things.

First game of Longstreet in years

I've not played Longstreet in many a year (checks archive April 2015) but I've got so much 28mm stuff painted of late it seemed an opportune time to give it a go in 28mm.

On Thursday evening Drew and I convened for a game, he, as usual would play the Union while I took the Confederates. Both sides were 40 bases and to keep it simple all troops were Eager Recruits.

I went heavy in the centre and Drew had a strong right flank.

Thinks started out badly for me and continued so through the game. Here is the roll Drew made for his first volley!

It continued much like this, with me faring badly in every firefight and every charge was repulsed with casualties.

We both played "force the enemy to discard x cards" during the game, of course Drew rolled a six and me a one!

Still a good evenings gaming though and I'll certainly give it another try.

Here are the two Broke Boxes at the end of the game, says it all really!

More images from the game courtesy of Drew.

Mr. Binsack

Here's an interesting figure for the collection.

When Drew's father died he wanted to memorialise, him so working with Paul Hicks had a sculpt done. As his father was a veteran, the initial thought was to sculpt him in his OD fatigues from the 1970s/80s, but Paul thought that he deserved something more grand.

As Drew's father was a member of the Knights of Columbus, Paul thought that would be much more suiting, so he was, immortalised in his Knight of Columbus outfit, thanks to Hicksy.

Of course I did not find this out until after I had painted him so it's definitely not painted in KoC regalia, but he will certainly work for my Spanish Civil War games and may even see duty as the Mayor of Phillippeville.