Four new units based and flagged yesterday.
First of all, some lovely paintwork by Lee; I am very pleased to welcome these two units:
At a much more mundane standard, there are two refurbished units of my own:
It is a gloomy sort of day today. Too damp to go outside, and the light in the attic isn't really adequate for indoor shots. I tried a few flash photos, but the gloss varnish makes it hard to get any sense out of these. I am reminded that a light box is one of the numerous projects with which I have made no progress this year!
As always, the figures are mostly Les Higgins/PMD. The mounted command figures are Irregular, but the remainder, and all the horses, are Higgins. More British troops in the pipeline, so I'll make an attempt at a decent group photo when they arrive. The lighting people have been warned.
Very smart sir. Are you still working on your own rules for this period?
ReplyDeleteThank you JBM - my WSS rules have got as far as a first "production" edition. I am still hoping that our exciting late-pandemic regime up here might allow a little face-to-face gaming at Chateau Foy to try the beggars out. They seem to work solo, but that proves nowt, as we have discussed!
DeleteThere is always Zoom, of course, but the WSS game is a bit fiddly for such a thing.
Very nice Tony…
ReplyDeleteIt’s such a pretty period… colourful enough but without all the la-de-dah you get later in the century…
All the best. Aly
Hi Aly - thank you sir! I've had a period of downtime on the wargames front this year, but am looking forward to making better progress over the Winter - I enjoyed getting these chaps organised! La-de-dah - yes indeed. Astonishing how often WSS uniform sources and so on get diverted into the later period without warning!
DeleteAfter the Brits (which should be just about complete for Phase One by New Year time) it will be time for the French. I'm looking forward to that, too, since I have some excellent books for the French. Also they didn't do daft hats for their grenadiers!
They are looking super nice Tony, shiny was definitely the way to go with these!
ReplyDeleteThere's something about the tricorne period that seems to me to fit right into some eternal concept of "toy soldiers". Maybe it comes from reading Charles Grant all those years ago, maybe it was the illustrations in story books I had as a kid. Using these rather statically-posed Higgins castings, it seemed natural to go for a gloss finish - I've never done it before, and it does make the colours shout!
DeleteTop looking troops Tony!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray - hope things good with you!
DeleteLovely stuff. Especially the daft hats on the grenadiers.
ReplyDeleteDaft hats are a speciality. Did their heads go up to the top, we ask ourselves?
DeleteThe units look terrific.
ReplyDeleteThank you Peter - I enjoyed getting them ready!
DeleteDaft hats is what I'm here for. 'Here' being the wargaming world. It's all part of the "soldier, soldier, won't you marry me with your musket, fife and drum" vibe that interested me in the first place.
ReplyDeleteFour more pleasing units to look upon. Quite a force you must have by now.
I am, of course, deeply passionate about the daft hats, but it's odd the way a simple cap - intended to allow the grenadiers to bowl inswingers - grew up into such an edifice. I defy anyone to wear a hat like this and walk into a Glasgow pub on a Saturday - we'll soon see if you are really tough!
DeleteThe old traditional (and nursery) song theme is there in the background too. I realise that this period was right at the start of armies wearing a national uniform, so they were camping it up a bit, but some of the fashions of the day were definitely quirky. Those big fake cuffs must have been really handy with a matchlock musket, and the weirdest of all are those moustaches with no middle that the French seem to have taken a liking too in the Grand Alliance wars - just the tips on the cheeks.
Maybe the Glasgow pub thing is not far off - "Jings - these boys must be really hard if they dare to go about like that..."
I've always been sceptical of the lobbing grenades origin of the grenadier cap. Unless its development into a mitre came after they stopped lobbing grenades. If you told me there was a Freudian explanation, I'd believe that.
DeleteI thought the big cuffs were genuine cuffs, and that it was just the miserly Frederick William of Prussia who introduced smaller, useless/fake cuffs after the WSS.
The "must be hard if you wear that" idea reminds me of former midfield yard dog, Stacy Coldicott. That's one way to toughen your son up. Give him a name like Stacy.
This is all hearsay anyway (just occured to me how close to "heresy" that is...), but I read that the small cap made it easier to sling the musket on its strap round your neck, so that you could then concentrate on the inswingers. I'm not sure when a cuff becomes a fake cuff, to be honest, but the NYW period, when the French cuff was well above the wrist, showing a length of waistcoat sleeve, doesn't look too functional. As far as I can see, a cuff's main function is to stop your sleeve fraying at the end; if its (secondary) role of carrying buttons and braid becomes more important then the klaxon warns us that it has become a fake.
DeleteThe psychology of OTT uniforms is complicated, I think. Yes, there's all the "fighting cock" thing, but there must also be an element of logic which says, "God - if they can spend that much on feathers and silver lace, think what they must spend on bullets!".
Great to see the boys all based up with flags, really sets them off a treat. As for the 'daft' pointy hats it was seeing British Grenadiers of the period and the wonderfully embroidered original caps at the National Army Museum as a school kid that started my love of military history.
ReplyDeleteThe hats are wonderful, no mistake. Thanks again for your efforts - much appreciated - the boys seem to have settled in very quickly, though I had to give the Guards a Status mini-dice value of "4" to give them an edge over the rest...
DeleteI had meant to add that I like the configuration of the units on the bases, I had wondered who would be be placed where (if that makes sense!). Looks very good indeed. The Guards look very smart, so much smarter than the poor Guards in the Crimea who had to grow enormous bushy beards to cope with the cold.
DeleteAh yes - the British Foot required a tweak to my (newly drafted) standard WSS unit layout, since I decided that they would have to have 2 flags, just for the look of the thing (so will the French - 1st battalions anyway - for the same reason). My original configuration was developed for the Austrians and Bavarians, who have 1 flag per battalion - the 1st Bn carry the Leibfahne, etc.
DeleteIn my standard (pre-British) set-up, the mounted colonel is flanked by the ensign and the drummer, and the back row of the grenadier base is just another grenadier. I spent an evening or two worrying whether the British line-up would look silly, but I think it's fine. As I told myself, they are only toys, after all, and if you need lots of flags, go for it...!
Really nice looking regiment the ‘classical’ look really sets them off and just shows you don’t need all the fancy basing, action poses etc to make an impressive unit
ReplyDeleteThanks Graham - my relentless use of minimalist basing is deliberate - one day it may become fashionable again! - but also has something to do with my lack of talent in the scenic department!
DeleteTo be completely honest, in the early days I was sort of resigned to the fact that I was probably going to change my basing system again quite soon, so keeping it simple was a sensible approach! Eventually I decided I liked it that way, so that's the way I do it since about 1980. The sabots are to speed up play and protect the little men!