Bring on the Empty Horses

Just a quick progress update on my Hinton Hunt French hussars which have suffered from a number of distractions slowing progress.  The latest distraction from the hussars is their mounts.  As I've no doubt said before, I enjoy painting horses a great deal more than their riders, and the net result is that I've finished their mounts while making little to no progress on the hussars themselves.

I'm pleased with how the horses have turned out so thought they deserved a quick post.  So here are the 'empty horses'.

And some close-ups of the different painting schemes / markings - some of these show up some of the casting flaws in some horses that escaped my clean-up and fill process.

That's all for now, but for anyone following the Caesar's Camp, Chain of Command, campaign the next game is now scheduled for the 15th of the month.

Lasalle & Drumming Up a Special Figure

A while ago I posted a WiP piece, the French 4th Hussars, and a personality figure of Lasalle.  As I find painting one-off figures much more enjoyable it's no surprise that Lasalle is the first to be finished.  I present: General Antoine-Charles-Louis, Comte de Lasalle.

The figure is a Hinton Hunt (HH) casting except I added a pipe in his right hand, as he is so often depicted with one.  I painted his uniform, horse colour, tack and shapbraque based on an illustration by Patrice Courcelle (I think) showing him leading a charge by chasseurs á cheval.  

I'm guessing the picture is meant to depict him at the Battle of Medina de Rioseco (14 July, 1808), and as my collection is primarily Peninsular War focused that seemed most appropriate.  Anyway, that's why he's not on a tiger skin as in the famous painting of him by Detaille.

Give us a twirl Antoine ...

... and then a curtain call in close-up.

In the meantime, while Lasalle has been hogging the painting table, and now the limelight, the lack of progress on the 4th hussars is getting embarrassing - see below.

But, Lasalle doesn't deserve all the blame for the sluggish painting on the hussars, as I've had a fairly ambitious conversion job running in the background.  

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For some time now, I've been rather taken by this Knötel image of a Prussian drummer mounted on a coach horse during the Prussian pursuit of the French army after Waterloo.

The story goes that the sound of the drum convinced the fleeing French that Prussian infantry, as well as cavalry, were on their heels and thus they'd keep running.  Whatever the reality, I wanted to make this figure, and here he is.

He is an amalgam of an artillery draught horse (unridden), a pair of hussar legs and, from the waist up a Prussian drummer courtesy of 'Wellington Man' from 'The Hinton Spieler' blog.  I had all but given up on this conversion after working on the separate bits, but while cleaning up Lasalle and the hussars I put the bits together and realised it looked much better when assembled.  This was enough to revitalise the project, and it, together with Lasalle, then claimed most of my recent painting / modelling time.

So first, as I'm rather proud of him, a couple more photos ...

... and yet more.

This was a pretty ambitious conversion as removing the drummer's legs while keeping his coattails attached was a long drawn out and fiddly job.  Other challenges included: rebuilding some of the detail on the drum (it had to be repositioned for a riding figure); adding straps on which the drummer is resting his feet for balance; and, building a more animated horse tail out of solder.  The following montage shows some of these points in close-up.

Now he's off to find a Prussian army that needs him to help them whip the French and chase them all the way back to Paris.

WiP Complete - 3 Rare Tanks

With various jobs around the house complete I was able to focus on finishing the three tanks I started some time ago.  They are rare-ish because few were made in the case of the Tetrarch (100-177) and Panzer II Luchs (100); and the more numerous Panzer III was reduced to a handful of survivors by the late-war period which I game.  They are all 1/76 scale, white metal kits, by MMS Models.

The A17 MkVII Tetrarch, in this case the CS version, is intended to support my Airborne platoon and is painted in a two-tone brown camouflage pattern.  I had thought it was going to be pretty dull when I put it together but I find the finished look rather pleasing.

The Pz II Luchs, this was a nice kit although there were some casting flaws but it captures the rather 'cute' (can tank be cute?) look of the original.  The markings, for a 9th Panzer vehicle in Normandy, were a real pain.  The red, four-digit serial goes over some vision slots and decals refused to adhere to this uneven surface.  So, I had to paint these freehand, not great up close but from a distance they're okay.

The Panzer III, Ausf J, is one of my favourite tanks and I've painted it up as one of the training tanks forming Panzer Kompanie 'Mielke' at Arnhem.  That unit had several Pz III of various different marks not all of which are known so I've taken the liberty of assuming one was an Ausf J.  I've given it the serial number '28', as what I've read says they had black two-digit serial numbers on the turret and one of them was '29'.  The commander seems to be doing his Usain Bolt impression, what that's all about I'll leave to the imagination.

And finally, an even rarer flight of fancy.

ADDENDUM: I perhaps should've pointed out that the Airborne flashes on the Tetrarch are my first attempt at printing my own decals.  Didn't do too good a job of varnishing them before use to protect the ink from the water - but live and learn.

Modified Vintage 20mil Naps Complete

At last, my 2nd Burgos Regiment is finished, this was quite a long job given the amount of modifications made as covered in earlier posts.  That said I'm rather chuffed with how they turned out so now it's time for their curtain call:

First, the regiment in line, accompanied by a previously painted Major General.

Then some drill practise in formations less used by my Spanish troops, such as attack column[1] ...

... and square (I have a habit of relying on musketry to stop cavalry).

And, finally a close up of the command group.

Notes:

[1.]  In this photo an interloper can be seen behind the general - this was the test figure I did first just to be sure I could pull off the conversions before beheading an entire unit's worth of figures.  When I did the unit's rank and file, I did an entire unit's worth in case one of the conversions failed - they all worked so he's now a handy spare.

Old-School Ancients Top-Up Complete

I managed a bit of a push last week and today I finished off the last of the figures needed to bring some very old, old-school, units up to strength i.e., enough to occupy a 6" grid square.  In this case it was a couple of units of Successor pike.  I only had 16 in each unit plus 11 spare painted figures (5 of one unit and 6 of the other) so I needed another 21 to bring the two units up to 32 figures each.

And here they are, with the newly painted-to-match figures based up with the painted spares.

I am rather pleased with how difficult it is to tell the new from the old.  The best way to tell is to look at the hands grasping the pikes, if both hands completely enclose the pike, then it's a newly painted figure (I like to make the figures' weapons really secure).

Posed together with the old based-up figures, they make much better-looking units - bigger is always better with pike blocks. 

If anyone is interested the older bases are on the outer flank of each block.  I had trouble sorting them when taking the photos but finally realised I just needed to look underneath; the older bases have white steel paper underneath whereas those just based have black ferro-sheet.

Old-School Ancients - limping along

Still not at my best but managed to make myself base up the figures I had painted before.  This time it's more mounted figures:

An extra base of Hincliffe Companions with shield (plus a head-swap from the Macedonian Pikeman in the same range).  The new base is on the right in the photos.

An extra base of Persian (Cappadocians?) extra-heavy cavalry; the new base is again on the right and easily identified by the 'leader' figure (a Hinchliffe Belisarius figure with a head-swap from another Persian cavalryman).

And finally, the camels.  I had a bit of a senior moment here as looking at the DBM rules for troop types I saw there was no light camelry type so I intended to make them all ordinary Camelry.  Then, after painting enough figures (3) to bring the numbers up to be enough for four 3-figure bases, I found light, scouting, camels are actually listed under Light Horse...     D'oh!

What's more, I forgot when basing them to put them at angles that allowed the heads, which project beyond the base, of a second rank to go between the camels of a front rank.  I guess that's what comes of doing it when under the weather but I doubt they'll be in more than one rank very often and certainly it won't matter if fighting on a grid which was the main reason for this whole topping up exercise (see the earlier post). 

As I thought I was going to have to re-base all my camels I had removed them from their bases, so in the photos, the newer figures are mixed in with some of the old so I've marked them with arrows.

As with the Persian cavalry I added a leader figure - a Palmyran Heavy Camelman with some additional, green-stuff, hair.

PS: My shielded Companions already had a leader figure which is why they didn't get one added in this batch.

New Roads to Nowhere

For the last couple of days, I have been painting my new latex roads from Early War Miniatures (EWM).  These were a joint birthday present from my family who all chipped in as I wanted to make sure I would have more than enough for any future Chain of Command (CoC) game.

This was my first serious use of acrylic paints as I figured they would be less likely to flake off than my usual enamels.  And overall, I think they look pretty good, albeit the grass bank could've done with being a little less green to blend in with my fleece mats (from Tiny Wargames) - see below...

...and a slightly better close up.

The road sections consist of: 10x long straights; 2x long curves; 4x short straights; 10x short curves; 4x T-junctions; 2x Y-junctions; and, 2x crossroads.  With long sections about 12" in length, short straights and Y-junctions 6", and the rest 4", this makes approximately 18 feet of road, much of which can be seen below...

...and from the other side.

One thing that did become apparent when laying out the roads for a photo shoot, is that the sections are not designed to fit on a grid.  This means closed loops will need to use a symmetric arrangement of sections - annoying but unlikely to be required on a 6'x4' CoC layout.

LotR Fernando Touch Up Complete

Just a quick post to celebrate completing touching up my Lord of the Rings figures that I got painted by Fernando Enterprises.

First is Faramir and his Ithilien Rangers; Faramir needed more work than his men, which was slightly annoying as I paid for Super Showcase standard for him.

Then some more good-guys in the shape of some Rohirrim foot warriors.

And finally, some more opposition in the shape of Uruk Hai.  These didn't seem to be up to the standard of others so quite a bit of extra shading was applied.  Also, to make then a bit more visually interesting I added shields (3D printed from eBay) as only two of the original figures had them.

So, these guys should hopefully be taking the table soon for a game of Dragon Rampant.

***************ADDENDUM***************

As commented by someone on TMP it was a bit silly to show the retouched figures without photos of them as received from the painters.  As I didn't take any before retouching, the following photos are some of those provided by Fernando Enterprises for approval before sending them back; they are not high resolution but they didn't provide anything bigger (I did ask).

First some of the goblins - these were IMO the best painted of the different figures and I did nothing to them apart from the bases.

Likewise, the Warg riders (mounted on Ral Partha wolves) which also, IMO, needed no retouching.

By comparison the Uruk Hai were a bit disappointing (I added shields to these) ...

... especially the faces on the archers where not covered by helmets (some of these got small shields added).

The Ithilien rangers as finally received were pretty good and only had minimal retouching e.g. sword hilts which were painted brass all over and to the faces that where seen were pretty crude.

On the subject of faces, the initial sample photos (see next photo) had the eyes painted white with dots, which I requested them to change (as well as brightening up the green used for cloaks etc.).

And pretty much the same again for the Rohirrim on foot.

The mounted Rohirrim were quite heavily reworked by Fernando after I requested more work but and as re-worked were pretty good (almost nothing done to these apart from repair to a figure that lost an arm - the only damage in transit).

So, onto the Super Showcase personalities, and Faramir - with white eyes. 

I requested some rework which produced this.

I still didn't like his face so that was heavily retouched - faces seems to be a major weakness and I retouched them on all but the goblins but luckily most were obscured by helmets so didn't require much.  

And finally, Eomer in the first photo sent for approval.

This photo almost had me give up, but I requested a complete repaint of the horse and some more colourful equipment for Eomer who looked pretty dull for the heir apparent to the throne.  And the next photo received was a dramatic improvement. 

So, the lesson I have drawn from all this is that Fernando can be a bit hit and miss with their painting but are very willing to make changes or rework figures if you are not satisfied, so if not satisfied say why and ask for changes.  Obviously, it can be quite onerous explaining exactly what you want changed, but in my experience it is well worth the effort as they do their best to please.  

One final point, the figures look better in the hand than they do in the photos - I was pleasantly surprised when they arrived how much better they looked.  Of course, some of this is down to viewing them with the naked eye and not through a powerful camera lens.