Yesterday I picked up my brushes for the first time since May; very easy session, enjoyed it.
I completed some more of the siege-bits pile for WSS, right through to varnishing and basing. I also sorted out more of the "cast of hundreds" figures destined to play the part of assorted siege-gunners and engineering types. These figures are all previously painted, some came with the odds and ends from Eric Knowles' WSS hoard (very usefully, Eric specialised in odds and ends), some came as loose change in various eBay hits, and in historic purchases from Soldiers of Rye, some were kindly donated by friends - thanks to Jim Walkley, to Benjamin, to Albannach, to Serious Michael (in Derbyshire), to Old John, to Clive and to Goya (for hunting things down for me at bring'n'buy stalls in various countries). Thanks also to anyone I've forgotten to mention.
The "cast of hundreds" approach is useful; thus far I have gone for the easy stuff - figures which only really needed some chip-repair - if they also looked a bit faded then a quick exposure to Army Painter's "Quickshade" is a big help - then fresh varnish and new bases. If they look a little pre-owned then that is just what they are - they are working antiques, so appropriate respect will be welcome. If there seems to be a lack of direction in the uniforms, that's OK - some of these chaps might well be British, or a bit French, but if they are not then they are probably Dutch, or a garrison battalion, or Walloons, or from assorted German states - they may even be in civilian dress - who knows?
I still have some more figures to add to this army of extras - the next lot will require more touch-up work. At the moment I have run out of 20mm bases, and to be honest I am not yet sure just how many more I will need. I'll come back to this.
On the weapons front, I have another 3 bronze-barrelled siege cannons to finish off, one extra-large mortar and a few little Coehorns. Getting there.
Beyond that, I need to paint up a lot more gabions, get started on some decent chevaux de frises, and sort out some separate (3-man) companies of troops to carry out trench raids, and to stand guard duty for sapper teams. This last exercise offers a chance to use up a small supply of pre-painted British grenadiers who will not get a gig otherwise.
One proposed terrain breakthrough has been a bit of a wrench; for Vauban-period warfare, I do have proper 3D (sloped) glacis pieces to go with the walls and bastions. The nicely-made glacis pieces can also be something of a nuisance, since they limit the fortress designs I can use unless I spend money and/or effort getting extra moulded pieces. I have decided to use flat glacis plates - just hex tiles painted in a special shade of green so they stand out, and use Fat Frank's standard "trench" pieces to represent the covered way at the top edge. I'll try some mock-ups with this idea in the next few weeks. What could possibly go wrong?
Sounds like a cunning plan!
ReplyDeleteHi Matt - I should have maybe also pointed out that all these siege pieces are painted in universal dirty brown woodstain, so can be used by any army! I have the field artillery properly painted in national colours (as much as we know what they are!) and correctly uniformed, but the siege extras are up for grabs. In a siege, you can normally tell whether a big cannon is outside the fortress, firing inwards, or inside the fortress, firing outwards - this is a good guide.
DeleteI like it. I like it a lot. These armies were often made up of different states so a non-uniform approach to the siege/garrison teams is sound. I like the two chubby officers. The one doffing his hat has M. le Gouveneur written all over him. The other, his opponent.
ReplyDeleteHi Chris - for my Napoleonic armies, I put in a lot of effort creating big siege trains for the British and French (Peninsular, really), which was all good but by the time I came to the Spanish my heart was broken and I have been putting it off for years, which is hardly fair, since they were engaged in more sieges than Wellington ever was. It occurred to me fairly recently that if I used vanilla guns they could be shared across nations (and centuries, if necessary) - first up, best dressed. In the case of the WSS, I can also fudge the uniforms for the various nations, for the reasons we discuss - this replaces extra painting with extra effort rehearsing excuses, which probably suits my skill set.
DeleteEric's armies include some nice humorous touches - unfortunately his very copious WSS artillery collections were all in 28mm, which I could not reconcile with a (1/76) 20mm soldier regime.
Great work and a mighty fine start, looking really good so far, I must admit the officers are great, lovely, characterful figures.
ReplyDeleteThank you Donnie - I'm pleased to be getting back to work on this. If that large gentlemen in the orange coat told me I had to eat half rations for the next month or so, I might wonder were he got his own rations from, but I think I would just do it. I was brought up to obey people in big hats. Inculcation - you know how it is.
DeleteQuite a big job you have but an interesting one. My glacis are shaped from cardboard covered with crepe paper (I wanted a quick fix years ago). I went down the road of a standard layout for the fortress with variations in outworks as I finished up with so many little bits of glacis. Where they don't quite fix, if I vary the fortress pattern, I go down the 'good enough is good enough' road. However, your idea of flat glacis pieces is interesting and I look forward to seeing how that works. It sounds to be a useful compromise.
ReplyDeleteGood morning Jim - there are a few of your old soldiers in this batch. Glacis - a friend remarked to me that in an aerial photo you wouldn't detect that a glacis was not level, which got me thinking that flat might be OK for a game. I have the additional self-imposed constraint of fitting terrain pieces into a gridded table, so I am committed to variations on hexagonal forts! I'll play around with the geometry a bit, so see if there are standard-shaped pieces which can be re-used by the town planners.
DeleteFlat glacis will work very I suspect - good solution! Sorry about the late comment but Google decided not to tell me that you’d posted. Fixed it with my shoe so all working again now. The mixture of uniforms and colours looks good to me - for whatever that’s worth!
ReplyDeleteYou are among a small but elite group which Blogger refuses to notify me about, and your emails get sent to spam, whatever I do about it. It's OK - just an alternative system. To digress a little, your reference to fixing things with a shoe reminds me that today may be the day I finally ask BT (Bastard Telecom) to stick their landline phone service where the sun does not shine, since it is not working again, and when it does work most of the traffic is nuisance calls from Mumbai. The worm is turning.
DeleteTony, I think my comments are being deposited into SPAM as well. Good to see that you are Back To The Brushes.
DeleteThanks Jon - the touch-up work should lead on to some proper painting of fresh castings before long! I am not aware of your comments falling into the spam trap, but anything is possible.
DeleteOnly those officers could be more imposing than that artillery park, Sir. There is a precedent for a hexagonal Vauban fortress at Longwy-Haut - from the plans it seems to sit very tidily on a larger platform which is, approximately, an equilateral triangle.
ReplyDeleteLongwy is interesting - thanks for this - I had assumed that hexagonal forts must be fairly common (or else why would Terrain Warehouse have made one?). It seems it was just a lucky fluke that I bought one.
DeleteThey seem to come with any number of corners, sometimes as dictated by terain. The pattern I discern is that the curtain walls between bastions can't be more than a couple of hundred yards long, or there will be parts of the wall out of reach of effective musket fire from either of the bastions, so, geometrically, the larger the area to be enclosed, the more sides you need.
DeleteYes - good point - I suppose that at an earlier time the range of an archer was a design factor. In fact I think the bastions don't necessarily have to be corners, since in theory you can have a hornwork or something in the middle of a long straight wall. By some curious serendipity, the Vauban-style siege pieces I have (made long ago by Terrain Warehouse) are the right sort of height for 15mm scale (about 1/100), which is what I use for buildings with small 20mm soldiers, so it works visually in a vertical sense, yet the length of the wall sections and the bastion footprints seem to be scaled to about 1/1000, which (as 1mm <> 1 metre) is also the horizontal scale I use on my tabletops. Terrain Workshop must have gone through the same reasoning loops as me, albeit in a different place at a different time. It seems far-fetched, but it looks OK for a game, bearing in mind that for sieges I assume 1 figure = 50 men. I fear this reply became boring a while ago, but the lengths of my straight curtain wall sections are about 6 inches, which works out at around 150m, which is covered by muskets firing from both ends. I am happy with the numbers, fortuitous as they are, so I stop doing the math before the coincidences run out.
DeleteI'll have some photos here soon, when I start experimenting with flat glacis (this is getting into a very niche area...)
A right fine siege train you are assembling there, Tony, with cast of colorful support characters as well!
ReplyDeleteCheers me up no end, Peter, to be getting some hobby momentum up for the end of the year! Hope things good with you.
DeleteNo complaints, here, Tony! Maybe this year I'll come closer to (only) working the hours I am supposed to!
DeleteThat 'fat officer' is really a versatile figure and just bursting with character. Looking forward to seeing how the flat glacis works out.
ReplyDelete"Bursting with character" - I love what you did there, you devil!
DeleteSome serious looking artillery there - great work bringing them up to scratch! Will there be limbers to go with these chaps?
ReplyDeleteNay, lad - maybe the odd wagon, but everything is just stuck in the park. Guns were very heavy around 1700 - a 24pdr gun ("demicannon") would need about 20 horses.
DeleteNow that's an artillery train to be proud of! :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks David - there's certainly quite a lot of it! Bear in mind that this is the artillery train for both sides involved in a siege.
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