Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Thursday 15 November 2018

Ready for The Cupboard, with a Quick Flash of Nipple Pink


All based and flagged, the two battalions of the Grenadiers à Pied de la Garde are now finished and looking for a fight. The guardsmen are 1970s Les Higgins NF1, and the command figures are modern Art Miniaturen castings.

Also completed today are another 2-battalion Bavarian line infantry unit, this one the 5. LIR "Von Preysing", resplendent in pink facings (Nipple Pink paint, thank you Foundry...). Their command figures are a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Falcon (from Hagen), the other ranks are Der Kriegsspieler. Too late for Eggmühl, but I'm sure they'll be in action before long.


21 comments:

  1. Fancy lads, Tony! Four battalions at once. Very impressive! Your windmill in the background is impressive too. Is that a scratch build?

    As for not marching fast enough to the sound of the guns for Eggmuhl, you could always refight the battle.

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    1. Hi Jon - windmill - I'm pretty sure it was a 15mm Hovels model, but can't find it on current lists - maybe OOP. It's resin with cast-metal fiddly bits, so most likely Hovels.

      Eggmuhl reprise - sound idea!

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    2. ...In passing, the old building in the background of the 4th picture is a Lilliput Lane model (!) of Preston Mill, which is a local historic site at the village of East Linton, about 6 miles from where I'm sitting. There's been a watermill (producing oatmeal) on that site, on the banks of the (Scottish) River Tyne, since the 16th Century, but the present building (as in the miniature) dates from the 1700s, and was still working in 1959. Anyway - tourist blurb aside, it amuses me to include it on completely inappropriate battlefields, so it has appeared on numerous occasions in Napoleonic Spain, ECW, and will no doubt find itself on the Danube before long.

      I should get advertising money from Visit Scotland.

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  2. The Guard look worthy of the title.

    Is there a more appropriate colour for lapels than "nipple pink"?

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    1. I'm a bit of a Hodden Grey man myself, so regimental colours like pink and lilac are a bit of a shock.

      Lapels of Presbyterian No-Nonsense Blue would be OK, I guess.

      I was surprised the Guard actually look quite businesslike - threatening.

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    2. Lovely stuff, well done.

      Painting War of Spanish Succession French dragoons has a few culture shocks, but Isabella - poo-coloured - facings? Nice.

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    3. Hi Chris - interesting - is that the same as Isabelline? - this is all foreign to me, but I've seen "Isabelline" suggested as a paint colour for horses, and had no idea what it was. Being an ignopotamus, I assumed it was a make of paint...

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    4. In dogs its sometimes described as the colour of an unwashed shift. Something to do about here wearing the same one for a year (or 10 years or something) without washing it.

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    5. "Unwashed shift" is a triumph of delicacy, is it not? Except that it brings to mind the idea of the boys coming off the morning shift at the Prospect Pit, North Shields, in the old days. This is all very educational - I learned something today.

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    6. I think Mr Foy just found an SEO 'cheat' Ross!

      H

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    7. Sorry, broke my computer again for a few days.
      Yes, Isabelline is another name for the same colour. Allegedly (I say that to avoid libel action) down to Queen Isabella of Spain vowing not to change her underwear until the 9 month siege of Granada was over. GW would call it 'skid-mark brown', I have no doubt.

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    8. Hugh - I don't know how you could think such a thing.

      Chris - that's a defiant attitude. Like it. Did she have any idea how long it would last at the outset? I think I'll refuse to change my underwear until Mr Trump says something I agree with.

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    9. One hopes not. Perhaps the officer in charge of the siege also ran the Royal Laundry?
      Not a good idea, unless you want to end up with the same number of friends as Mr T.

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  3. These are all astonishingly good, Foy. Inspirational, as always.
    Best regards
    WM

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    1. They've been on the bench for a while, so the queue can move up a bit now. Thanks WM.

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  4. Blimey Tony, 4 units at once - that's a whole years' output for me! Very impressed with all of them, will we be seeing some Guard cavalry now? If those Bavarians show the same pluck as they did at Eggmuhl who knows what they'll achieve?

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    1. Hi Ian - Guard cavalry - hmmm - in fact my refurbishing mountain contains a really stupid number of Higgins Red Lancers - enough for 3 or 4 units, a lot of them nicely painted. I propose to give some of them to a deserving cause when I get my ideas sorted out, but a unit of Red Lancers is sort of interesting. I should have enough decent figures left to strip and produce the makings of a unit of Polish Lancers to go with them; the Polish boys are more directly interesting - Red Lancers only existed from 1810. In a similar vein, I was recently offered a unit of nicely painted Higgins Dutch Grenadiers - the real-life unit had such a short time span that I'm not really interested - the only good thing about them for me was that the castings (correctly) were Guard Chasseurs, but the batch was too dear and too well painted to buy and stick them straight in the stripper!

      There's any amount of Bavarians to paint, and also I've been making some sense of the French refurb queue - if I were 2 separate people this would make better progress! Anyway, it's going well at the moment - it only takes a minor bad break on the elderly parent front (as you know very well) to put everything on hold again, so some phrase involving the sun shining and making hay comes to mind.

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  5. Lovely looking units Tony...
    I really like it when you get a nice batch of toys based or rebased.... it makes the project feel like its moving along nicely.

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Hi Aly - thanks - in my case, these big delivery packages are few and far between, so I enjoy them when they happen!

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  6. La Garde looks imposing indeed, and the Bavarians... Fetching? :-)

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  7. Very nice, and I like that basing arrangement, too.

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