Every Englishman needs a Castle

Donnington Castle - a quick scratch-build project

I didn't have a castle so John lent me his gatehouse to act as Donnington Castle in our upcoming bath-tubbed refight of the Second Battle of Newbury, 27th October 1644, in the English Civil War (ECW).

While looking the part, when I put it on my table it was clearly going to dominate the look of the whole thing.  Likewise, the manor I was lent to play the part of Shaw House.

While perfect for some skirmish gaming, e.g. with my Three Musketeers, it made my whole table look like little more than the grounds surrounding the house.

While I had an OO Dapol kit, the Country Inn, that could serve for Shaw House I was lacking anything like a castle.  So, a scratch-build was the only option, but looking at the castle I decide I would only build the gatehouse, which is all that's left nowadays.

A quick scramble through the loft located my foamboard and a suitable cardboard tube that was holding my maps of Spain.  This was quickly cut into two lengths for the gatehouse towers - shown with a few 25mm Hinchliffe ECW figures used to help gauge how small (sub-scale) I could make it without it appearing silly.

The walls for the main part of the gatehouse were made from foamboard with the foam cut out for the corners, and the butt joint where the two ends are joined. 

The folds have a 90° cut-out section (±45°) ...

... and the butt-joint, simply has the foam backing removed from one end the same length as the depth of the other end to be slotted in.

Hopefully, how this works can be seen with the walls folded round into shape and held in there with an elastic band.

The 'towers' then had sections cut out so they would fit around the front corners.

The next task was to come up with a suitable render for the castle, which called for something like a flint wall effect.  Finding a picture online was not a problem.

But, tiling this image to print out and cover the walls is always a chore, involving lots of manual pixel manipulation in MS Paint.  But this time I tried something different, AI, namely ChatGPT.  ChatGPT did the job, albeit I had to go through several iterations of instruction before it did what I wanted.  Nonetheless, it was quicker and a much less onerous than doing it manually.  So, I printed the walling out of A4 sized label paper and applied it to the component parts, and then glued gatehouse walls into their final form with PVA - shown here with more elastic bands to hold it in place while drying.

It was then a case of adding all the features such as: windows, doors, merlons, stone courses, etc.  This was very fiddle and quite time consuming, and with time pressing[1] I stopped taking photos.

It might've gone badly wrong, but it didn't.  And here it is, in place on the field of battle and ready for action.

More pictures should follow in the post on the battle to be fought.

Notes:

[1] The castle was only finished earlier today, and as I sit here typing this, the game is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and I need to do a quick review of my rules to make sure there's nothing in this game they can't cope with - so I cut it quite fine.

Eindhoven Reached - But Not Taken

Painting an Airborne Platoon for Kampfgruppe von Luck

A Work-in-Progress (WiP) - 1st update

A few posts back I posted (here) the 20mm figures for my next project, an Airborne platoon (and supports).  At that point the figures had all been cleaned up and primed.

Since then, I've have made some progress and reckon I'm almost a third of the way through, excluding the vehicles and glider - hence the rather silly title for this post.  But enough for an excuse to post a few photos.

First, the two guns: a 75mm Pack Howitzer; and, an Airborne variant of the 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun.

Each should have a crew of 5 men plus a junior leader, but the other figures are not finished yet, and can be seen in some of the later batches below.  BTW, by 'finished', I mean they are fully painted but have yet to sprayed with matt varnish and their bases textured and painted.

Next up, a mixed bag of a medic and assorted casualties (most of whom look beyond his help) and a bailed-out tank crew.

I've had the tank crew for ages so thought I'd include them in this batch.  The set included 5 figures but I didn't like one of them with an MP40 so he didn't make it out of the tank.  

Now, a Vickers medium machine gun with its full 5-man crew (no junior leader).

These are Adler IIRC (most of the other figures are FAA) and slightly bigger, but not enough to show.  Firing the gun is 'Lofty', so called because he has oddly long legs, and if he were to stand up, would tower over most of his comrades in arms.

Last of the fully painted figures are three 2" mortar teams (two of them have a second figure in a different painting batch), a figure with a supply canister (to serve as a supply point), and three individual paras (not sure why they went into this batch).

And, coming up behind these, are three more batches.

They've all had their faces and hands done and outlined in black, and the batch (what I call a plastic container's worth of figures) on the left has had the Denison smock painted and the webbing picked out in black. 

The only other progress has been assembly of the three SHQ Airborne Jeep kits, shown with some more supply canisters that will be used for jump-off or supply points, or maybe just battlefield scatter.  

The Jeeps will have magnets counter-sunk into the seats, which will hold in some AB Jeep crews I have - they will have magnets inserted where the sun doesn't shine.

Compared to many others I've seen, this is slow progress, but I'm fairly pleased with it.  Unfortunately, we're just running into another week and a bit of hot weather (by UK standards).  Not only do I find painting unpleasant when a bit sweaty, but also the paints dry quickly, and trying to keep them a suitable consistency makes it even more trying.  In short, I expect progress to slow over the next ten days or so.  But I shall try and keep them ticking over.

A WiP Too Far?

Having made the 21st Panzer Division special vehicles for the Too Fat Lardies 'Kampfgruppe von Luck' pint-sized campaign (Link), I have finally taken the plunge to get started on the British Airborne troops for that campaign.

I am not sure it's a great idea but I've cleaned up all the figures and I am going to try and do them in one massive batch.

My Platoon Board for a British Airborne Platoon shows the organisation.

And here are the figures for basic platoon plus: 1x additional support section with extra Bren for the 2-Bren section option; 3x snipers; 3x PIAT teams; 1x Engineer Flamethrower team; 1x bailed-out tank crew; 1x 75mm Pack Howitzer; and, 1x Airborne 6-pdr Anti-Tank Gun; and, various supply canisters and collapsed parachute canopies.

Most of the figures (and both guns) are 20mm from Figures Armour and Artillery (FAA), and now available from Lost Battalion Publishing in the States, with a few Adler figures (now sold by Heroics & Ros).  The parachute canopies, and most of the supply containers, are from Empress Miniatures.

This cleaning up took a long a time, not helped by my dislike of bendy gun barrels.  The 6-pdr barrel was rather thin and not very straight so I cut it off at the retaining band and drilled out what was left of the barrel to insert a steel rod.  The rod needed thinning down slightly to go inside, and to fit the muzzle-brake created by drilling holes in what was more of a flash-suppressor than muzzle-brake  This took me the best part of day to do but I'm pleased with the end result, albeit in this close up you can see it's not perfect.

So, where are the crews for the guns you ask?  Here they are, together with: 2x 2" Mortar teams; 1x Vickers MMG team; assorted casualties; and, a few spare figures (singletons for casualty removal).

As if this wasn't a big enough challenge, I also treated myself to a must-have scenic accessory.

Whether this is all proves too much (just like Market Garden) and has to be put aside for a break when painting fatigue sets in seems pretty likely - but for now I'm going to give it a go.

Dragoon - Go Slow

It seems my last post (Link) was overly optimistic on how quickly I was going to get my Dragoon reorganisation done; turning two units into four by adding a few extra figures.  With the original units rebased with fewer mounted figures the job of converting the surplus mounted figures from these into two new units looks a bit more challenging than I had thought, as can be seen in photo below.

The surplus mounted figures ...

... which need retouching with different coat colours to make them visually distinctive, are heavily outnumbered by the new castings to complete the units.  These consist of ten foot figures for each unit when operating dismounted; the letters on the bases indicate which side they are for; 'R' for Royalist ...

... and 'P' for Parliamentarian.

A further two foot figures are required to act as horse-holders.  These can be seen in the photo below with four horses with added ('Greenstuff') saddles for them to hold, and four more horses and riders (the latter impaled on cocktail sticks for painting).

The riders in the above photo, that appear equipped with shepherd's crooks, are the new ensigns who will each get a guidon to carry - the wire 'crook' is there to stop paint from clogging up the holes into which the painted guidons will be inserted.

Since the above photos were taken, only some limited re-basing and painting has taken place ...

... but it has, at least, been enough to see the mounted bases for the new green-coated Parliamentarian unit completed.

I must try harder, and, as the 'Yarkshire Gamer' says, in his straightforward northern way, just knuckle down and get on with it.

Dragooned into Shape

With things flowing well I decided to stick with the current 're-visiting' theme and reorganise my Hinchliffe ECW dragoon units, Wardlawe's[1] and Washington's[2].  For some time I have wanted more than one unit a side and felt that the number of mounted figures tied up in these units is wasteful.  When dismounted, I represent my dragoon units with three bases of figures, two forming a firing line and one representing the horse-holders, thus ...

       Washington's    &       Wardlawe's          

... and when mounted they are each represented by twelve mounted figures.

    Wardlawe's      &     Washington's

As these units tend to spend most, if not all, of their time dismounted it seems wasteful to use so many mounted figures in this way, and on four bases as they only occupy three when dismounted.

The solution I came up with, was to reduce the mounted representation to just two bases of mounted figures but use them with same horse-holder base used with the two dismounted bases.  Furthermore, I decided I would have only one guidon per unit, and that would be with a mounted figure on the horse-holder base.  This would require some re-basing so into the paddling pool they went to soften up the PVA and sand basing.

This was watched, with some trepidation, by those elements of the units that did not require re-basing from the safety of a nearby window sill.

This all went pretty smoothly apart the need to replace the reins of the horses from Washington's horse-holder base as they broke when being de-based.   

So, here's the new-look Wardlawe's and Washington's, dismounted ...

 Wardlawe's       &    Washington's

... and mounted.

Wardlawe's     &    Washington's

I rather like the end-result.  The extra mounted figure on the horse-holder base makes the horses more prominent in the dismounted unit, and it blends in fairly well as part of the unit when mounted.

To complete each new unit using the surplus mounted figures, I have to paint: ten dismounted figures; a mounted ensign with guidon; a mounted dragoon, and a horse-holder with two horses.  Additionally, there will be some re-touching of the figures taken from the old units to give them different coat colours and their new regimental guidons.

The identities of the two new units will be revealed in a future post.

Notes:

[1.]  A Parliamentarian regiment of dragoons of the Earl of Essex’s army under Col. James Wardlawe, later reduced to an independent troop, commanded by Capt. George Dundas', and later by Capt. Jeremiah Abercromby (source: wiki.bcw-project.org.uk).

[2.]  A Royalist regiment of dragoons, originally under Col. James Ussher, and later Sir Henry Washington; also known as Prince Maurice’s Regiment of Dragoons.  It fought as part of the Oxford Army, and at Marston Moor, then converted to a foot regiment in the garrison of Worcester (source: wiki.bcw-project.org.uk).

WiP Packed Away

 Just for once it seems a quick job, turned out to be just that - a quick job.

The small batch of 13 painted Uruk Hai that I bought of eBay (see previous post) to quickly retouch to boost Saruman's forces is complete.

After the drubbings Saruman received in the last couple of games he needs something like this to put some fear into eth hearts of men.

 And if this isn't enough, I've also finished touching up the batch of painted figures from Fernando Enterprises that arrived while I was working on these.  They will provide an even bigger uplift to the Army of Orthanc but that will have await another post.

A Quick(?) WiP

With the 20mm Naps finally complete, and a batch of painted figures awaited from Fernando Enterpises, I was looking for something quick.  Then I saw this lot on eBay (photos from eBay listing).

They were reasonably priced, very painted much like my existing units of Uruk Hai, and just enough for one more Dragon Rampant unit to round off Saruman's army.  The paint jobs, shown more clearly below, looked like they would need minimal retouching to blend in.

When they arrived, I realised it might take a bit more work, as the hair was dry-bushed metal like the armour.  Nonetheless, I got stuck in and shortened those, ridiculous in my eyes, can-openers on sticks, and stripped the flock off the bases.  And this is as far as I've got so far.

To be honest the textured bases were nicely done but would not blend in with all my other units so I will give then my standard plain sand textured basing.

As I was writing this post the Fernando figures arrived, a good 24 hours before they were expected at the earliest - I haven't unpacked them all yet.  Hopefully this won't stop me completing these Uruks fairly soon ... I hope.

All Coated Up and Ready to Go

The mojo seems to have returned with the good weather, as I have finally finished off the latest, long drawn out, WiP batch, the 121ème régiment d'infanterie with a supporting unit of voltigeur skirmishers, and all overseen by Général de Division Jean-Marie-Pierre-François Lepaige Dorsenne.

So, after going through their paces in the field, a quick trip to the local photographic studio was called for.