a gathering of horse, part deux...

Ha! Auto-Focus-Nemesis strikes again! Nevertheless, an eight figure squadron of 54mm cavalry makes for an impressive sight. I really do like these figures. Once again, a forthcoming game proves to be a wonderful inspiration for getting things done.

let slip the dogs of war...

Big-Fig Battle Day finally arrives. I must confess... I've had a decadent wargame weekend. On Saturday I participated in a Zulu vs. British game. On Sunday we play-tested Quindia Studio's 'Victory Without Quarter' ECW rules. Both days were exquistly fun. And, now that I think about it, both games were played with plastic figures. The colonials and Zulus in 20mm, the ECW in 54mm. Hmmm... perhaps I'm overcoming my long standing prejuduce against plastic wargaming. As much fun as the Zulu game was, I was really looking forward to seeing the big-figs in action. I dragged my 4x8 sectional wargaming table out of the basement and overlaid the dining room table a full two days before the game. My wife was quite indulgent with me, bless her heart. This was the first game I've hosted in over five years.

junior officer granted brevet...

My collection is a bit shy on command figures. Eventually I'll have to jump into conversions simply to have enough flag bearers. But I've been stalling on that. This gregarious sergeant is a stock figure. He'd probably make a good addition to the line troops but due to the shortage of gentlemen he'll be receiving a field brevet. Over on the Helmet blog there are some shots of this figure having undergone some conversion work to a standard bearer. Hmm... where'd I put that Green Stuff?

treasures from the columbus toy soldier show...

 I've attended a number of wargaming conventions over the years. But the Columbus Toy Soldier Show on October 3rd, 2007 was my first 'Toy Soldier' show. It was a pretty smallish one-day affair with thirty or forty dealers in attendance.

yellow dogs...

The fourth 24 figure unit has been completed. Notwithstanding that all my other units are generic, for some reason I think I'll label this unit as Talbot's regiment. The yellow coats would be appropriate but I'm not sure about the color of the pants. Nor am I sure about the correct flag to use for Talbot's regiment. While the few sources I've consulted all agree on the 'talbot hound' device, the flag itself may have been either yellow or white. I'll probably go with yellow.

the artillery park...

In a previous post I mentioned picking up some artillery pieces at the Columbus Toy Soldier show. Cool stuff. It was a pleasure painting them, no eyes, no belts, no draped fabric to shade. Just hardware. Wood, bronze and iron. I had previously slapped some paint on a BMC American Revolution cannon but hadn't bothered to finish it. But once I got some paint on the other three gunnes, I had to do some detailing on the little BMC.

kudos to michigan toy soldier company...

Bravo! I've been told that  Michigan Toy Soldier Company provides excellent service. My first experience with them supports that. I recently ordered some more ECW figures from them and when I received the stuff it wasn't quite what I wanted. I had mixed up a product number and they had forgotten to give me an advertised discount. I was a bit disappointed and dropped them an email suggesting that they send me the box of figures that I really wanted in lieu of the discount. All in all, given the size of the order I thought this would work out to their advantage financially, though it would be a close call once shipping was added in. But to be honest I was expecting a reply of "Nope. Sorry. Tough luck." That was on Sunday. On Tuesday I got a reply: "Sure, sorry about that." Wednesday morning I got the figures. Wednesday night I got a notification that they had been shipped. Now that's what I call customer service. During their busy Christmas season they took the time out to make my first order a good experience. Thanks, MTSC!

auto-focus-nemesis in retreat...

Happy Holidays to you all!
I do not believe my wife reads this blog. Nevertheless, I'm sure that somewhere between the basement (where I photograph my figures) and the upstairs study (where I post to the blog) I must have mentioned, in passing, once or twice, how much I despise her digital camera. And so this year for Christmas she gave me a Nikon CoolPix P5100. Within 30 minutes of unwrapping the gift I was snapping these photos of the latest figures. These are the first two pictures I took.

male modeling instincts...

 It's been a while but things are finally coming back together. Since getting the new camera I've been itching to test it out. However, I started a new job just two weeks before the holidays, and for the last week and a half I've been fairly, though not seriously, ill. The figure shown here is my first modification of a 54mm figure (see previous post). The painting was done mostly before the holidays, though I just finished spontoon earlier this week and the base about two hours ago.

back on topic...

I've whined before about the limited number of poses available for plastic 54mm English Civil War figures. This is especially true for command figures where I'd prefer to have more individuals. It pays to have friends. I got an email not so long ago from Craig who said someone picked up two of the old Airfix cavalier/roundhead cavalry figures at a convention and given them to him. He also said that he doesn't need them both. Well, that's just rubbish since you can use all the ECW cavalry you can find but I know a good deal when offered.

hurrying heavy horse...

Fairly often when searching the web for information on the 'A Call to Arms' English Civil War figures you'll come across a statement along the lines of 'Yes, the figures are nice, but there are no cavalry available.' Not true! The company makes two sets of 17th century cavalry figures.

a touch of the blues...

Somewhere, on some computer, at some time, I saw a web site with a simple listing of coat/cuff/breeches colors for the various ECW regiments. Of course, I can't find it now. Haythornthwaite shows this blue/brown color combination as in use by the trained bands. However, I suspect it is generic enough to be used for any regiment on either side that wore blue coats. This is my third completed regiment and exhausts the color combinations used on my test figures. Guess it's time to do some actual research. Almost completed regiment. Base flocking is yet to be done.

a banner day...

One of the goals of this project is to create scalable standards that can be used for any size figure. I've been using SVG (scalable vector graphics) for a few projects at work and figured it would be a good format to use for flags. Size 'em to whatever size needed, print them off and viola! jaggie-less flags, big or small.

the gentlemen assemble...

The first officers to answer the call. The figures in the Call to Arms command set are large. In fact, their size and styling makes me strongly suspect they were sculpted by someone other than the rest of the range. They are not my favorite figures though they do exhibit a fair amount of character. One thing I can say for certain is that the large surface area of the officer's coat loudly cried out for shading. This was a good chance to experiment. I wanted to keep the shading subtle yet I know that I also have to keep the paint 'dry' or risk washing off the base coat of glue. So shading came down to an exercise of mixing paint on the figure. This was something new for me as I am traditionally more of a 'wash' painter. I am not unhappy with the results, though clearly more practice is required.

a gunne arrives...

The bargain artillerists. While the Call to Arms figures are very decently priced, at over $10 for a single gun (with no crew) their artillery is not. Now, I lucked out by finding a box of artillerists at half price at my local hobby shop. But I haven't footed the bill for the gun, yet. The gun shown here is a BMC model that came in a bag of cheap American Revolutionary War figures. I suspect the gun trails should be a bit straighter to more accurately reflect an ECW piece, but I'm also sure there was quite a bit of variability in early English guns.

a gathering of horse...

Seen here is the first of the painted cavalry. I'm not real happy with the buff coat. Too yellow, methinks. Finding cavalry figures may be the biggest challenge of this entire project. Call to Arms makes two types, an 'Ironside' and a Haslerigge 'lobster'. Luckily there's four poses of each--at least of the riders. I do feel the need to find some more active horses for these figures. The challenge is also true for finding mounted command figures. There are some truly exquisite 54mm figures available for the period. But they also have exquisite prices! And I have to face it: part of the reason I'm doing this in 54mm plastic is to avoid the cost. I may end up doing more conversions than I had originally intended.

disciplined green troops...

The second regiment has been completed. While this is, ostensbily, a green regiment, it might be difficult to tell from their uniforms. The color that most catches the eye is the yellow of the buff coats on both the pikemen and the at-attention musketeers. This is obviously a well drilled unit... except for those musketeers on the right. Once again the physical size of the unit impresses me. And, once again, I'm concerned about the table size I'll need in order to play a game with these figures. In fact, I've found myself looking at a lot of 6mm and 10mm figures lately. Though I'll stick to 54mm for the ECW stuff, I may try War of Spanish Succession, SYW or even Napoleonics in a much, much smaller scale.

the regiments form...

My original intention was to use 36 figures for a unit; 16 pikemen in block flanked by 8 musketeers on either side. But the more I read the more I disliked the pike component being deeper than the gunners. So I'll probably go with 8 pike in 2 rows flanked by 8 musketeers, also in 2 rows. However, there'll be a third row behind the pikeman for command and color bearers. This may contain 1 or 2 pike men since I still think 2 rows of pike just looks a little skimpy.