Fiddling Around – Trenches and Varnish

Abstract representation of Siegeworks

You may recognise the objects in the picture – they are wooden blocks from a game which goes by various names – the very big garden version is called (I think) Jenga – I only played it once, and I wasn’t very good at it, though the beer was good, I recall. I subsequently bought four miniature sets, very cheaply, from a local general store, just to get my hands on the blocks.

You see, what these are really is siege trench sections. Yes, I know they don’t look very realistic, but they are what I have available. I am reminded of a very old schoolboy joke about survivors of a plane crash in the Tunisian desert searching for food; the bad news was that the only organic material they found was camel dung – the good news was that there was a lot of it. So my trench sections might look rubbish, but I have more than you would believe.

Since my siege gaming is still in its extended prototyping stage, and since I am a lazy beggar, I have stuck with these dreadful lumps of wood on the grounds that it wasn’t worth splashing out money or effort on anything better until I have a game which works. Disadvantages, of course, are multiple – for a start:

(a) It’s not very motivating or interesting to build trenches which look this ridiculous

(b) Recruited players – particularly younger ones – may find themselves building odd shapes with the blocks during the game, to create a welcome distraction

(c) Etc

I am starting to think seriously about more acceptable trenches. Whatever I do has to be cheap, simple, and easily stored. There are some splendid looking resin castings around, but that is hardly a cheap option. I could scratch build something, but I fear I am not very skilled at such things, and it would take me ages to produce enough – and then I have to remember that all the scenery I ever scratch built fell to pieces very quickly.

Somewhere, in an old book, there is a suggestion for the use of triangular section hardwood strip, cut and mitred to provide proper lengths and angles. That’s cheap and storable, and would paint up OK, but it’s only a small step up from the Jenga blocks. What else is there?

Well, the bold Mr Kinch mentioned dado rail recently, and I had previously thought myself of picture frame mouldings, so I have been having a bit of a look at what is on the market, studying the websites of Wickes and a few specialist picture framing suppliers. Some exotic stuff out there – nothing jumps out at me yet, and I am starting to realize that I don’t even know very much about what a real trench looked like, so I’ve started reading up on that, and I’m heading backwards at a decent rate. If anyone would like to come round for a very large game of miniature Jenga, I might be interested.

More on this subject soon, I hope.

Subject 2 – Varnish

Moss Troopers and friends, waiting to be de-shined

I have become the owner of a collection of ECW figures of the correct size – SHQ and Tumbling Dice, mostly, plus some others I haven’t identified yet – which are painted up and should be capable of being worked into my armies without a life-changing effort. They were part of the (vast) collection of a chap in Belfast who died recently, and my interest was kindled by the fact that they contained numerous Scottish and Irish figures, which might give me an easy way to expand my armies in such a way that I could have a bash at the campaigns of Montrose.

I’ve received about half of the new arrivals so far, and am somewhat shaken to see that the flags and the organization of the units suggest that the previous owner had them set up for – that’s right – the campaigns of Montrose. I’ll have to see what comes in the second box, and there will be a lot of re-organising and rebasing needed, but this is quite an exciting little development.

Only slight fly in the ointment is that the figures are finished with a very heavy gloss varnish – almost certainly an enamel-type varnish rather than an acrylic one, so I’ll have some work to do calming this down a bit to match the rest of my forces. I’ve been trying some pilot figures, to see how a wash in detergent followed by a coat of matt acrylic works, and it looks promising. I was afraid that the acrylic would just form into blobs, or wouldn’t cover properly, but it is looking good. I’ll have to do a bit of extra detailing on the horses once they are dulled down, but I am reassured that it is feasible.

So I’m busily reading Start Reid’s booklets on the Scots armies, and am quite enthusiastic about the potential of this little exercise. Again, you should hear more of this in due course.

At Long Last – proper British Peninsular War dragoons

Le Marchant's Brigade - fresh from the painter

I am delighted to introduce the official version of Le Marchant’s Heavy Brigade, circa Spring 1812. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions here previously, I have been looking for figures in the correct uniform in this scale since about 1975. For a while I considered the Hinton Hunt dragoons, but I could never have collected enough anyway, and I excused myself on the grounds that they would be a bit small for my heavy brigade. I rejected Qualiticast for exactly the same reasons. I also had a serious look at the Minifigs S-Range bicorne dragoons, but the uniform is a little early for my purposes. Another, better option was the Falcata boxed set (now OOP) of KGL dragoons, which are perfect apart from the fore-&-aft bicorne hat fitted with chinscales, which was a local eccentricity of the KGL. Briefly, there was also the NapoleoN version of the KGL boys, which were lovely figures, but - like everyone else - I was snoozing during the short time they were available.

3rd Dragoons

4th Dragoons

5th Dragoon Guards

My final version, therefore, is a hybrid – Falcata men with S-Range heads, on Falcata campaign-order horses. This has been an extended labour of love, and it is only fitting that I commissioned Lee to paint them to his usual high standard, so I am really very pleased indeed to have them ready and in The Cupboard.

My previous (post-1812, helmeted) regiments have moved into the Allied Odd-Bods box, while I decide what to do with them. They served as stopgaps for 40 years, so some respect is due.

British Sappers & Miners

For a while now, I have been looking for some fellows to do sapping and mining work for the British army in my Peninsular War siege games. I already have some nicely authentic French sapeurs armed with pickaxes and shovels, and garbed in cuirasses and helments – these are from the LW and Strelets sets, and were kindly donated by Clive when he came to do some siege testing a couple of years ago.

It might appear to be an obvious subject for a plastic set, but no-one has done a British equivalent to date, so I have been keeping an eye open for conversion possibilities to balance things up. I have a few odd figures – also left by Clive – from the HaT British Marines and Sailors set, and even a couple from the Orion English Pirates set, who can serve well enough as men stripped down for serious digging. To these I have now added some men from Art Miniaturen’s nice set of Austrian engineers, plus a couple from the Finescale Factory set of French pontonniers (which I believe is now back in production, and available from SHQ), and a pair of officers from Falcata.

It occurred to me that an undressed man of any nationality is pretty much the same, so the possibility of these becoming Spanish by simply substituting a couple of specifically Spanish officers into the line-up is already noted. There is one of the Austrians that I attempted to fudge into a pre-1812 Royal Artificer who would need to be hidden or replaced as well.

Ideally I would have used officers with spyglasses or something more obviously specialized (I had ideas of modifying a British ensign so that he was holding a pole, but gave up on that one), but ended up with a couple of chaps lining things up with their swords – presumably with the intention of guarding their men while work goes on, or at least of pre-empting any possibility of disagreement about the task in hand.

As with their French opposite numbers, the men are individually mounted on 20mm discs, backed with magnets so they may stay on their movement trays, and the bases themselves are painted in the official house shade of Siege Mud which is used for siege equipment and engineering.

I’m a little bothered that the man with the wheelbarrow is easily recognizable as Hamish, with whom I played in a band for many years, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered so I won’t consider the matter further.

Another ticked box for the siege games – the British may now dig holes and tunnels whenever they like. Next big gap is some decent trenches and earthworks. Don’t go holding your breath.

Hi-ho, hi-ho – plus Stephen and Buddy

…it's off to work we go

The prospect of getting back to some siege gaming (an activity which – strangely – was actually discouraged by my Peninsular War campaign) has got me sifting through the boxes of not-quite projects to get some more engineering and supply units finished off.

First hit was an easy one – a little group of British infantry pioneers, individually based. Right away, I have to admit that these are not really a siege-type unit – there will be proper sappers and miners for that later on, with the regulation brown bases. These fellows exist primarily because it seems like a good idea, and there is already in existence a French equivalent. Next admission is that I don’t actually have any rules to allow the pioneers to influence the game, but now that I have a unit for each side I am more likely to do something about that.

They are, as you will see, from Minifigs “interim” range – the one after the S-Range and before the current range of clinically obese chaps. There isn’t much available in metal in this scale. My French sapeurs are a mixture of Kennington and Falcata castings, which gives some variety of poses. I had intended to use S-Range Brits for the pioneers, but the S-Range pioneer is a disappointingly weedy looking sculpt, who looks as if he is struggling with his axe, and might have trouble sharpening a pencil. So it’s the intermediates – these are BN55, vintage circa 1974?

Since this is an informal collective (pool?) of bods from various regiments, they have mixed facings. If you want someone to lose that gate for you, or to help with building a bridge, these could be just the fellows. I regret that there are no beards on show, but the castings have no beards. I tried painting a beard on, but the effect was funnier than I had hoped.

Subject 2: Stephen Fry

Of late, I have given up trying to paint soldiers with the TV on. Wearing my painting glasses, I cannot see the TV, never mind work out what is on the screen, so these days I listen to music while painting. This weekend it has been the usual mixed bag – Mississippi John Hurt (brilliant, but after 20 minutes it all sounds the same, and is always in the same key, which doesn’t help), Buffalo Springfield (disappointingly dated, and not as good as I remembered), Herbie Hancock (excellent – I played River, which is an album of Joni Mitchell’s music, with guest vocals provided by numerous worthies, including Leonard Cohen and – erm – Joni Mitchell), Cassandra Wilson (terrific, and sexy in a slightly weird way), and a boxed set of Mendelssohn’s symphonies. Intuitively, it seems odd that Buffalo Springfield seemed more dated than Mendelssohn, but hey.

One of the things I did not watch on the TV was Stephen Fry’s QI show, which makes me decidedly uncomfortable. If you haven’t seen it, it consists of a sort of bogus panel game, which is entirely designed to perpetuate the legend that SF is the cleverest fellow on the planet. The panel members do not always sit easily in their role as stooges, but the show can be very amusing nonetheless.

It’s hard to put my finger on why Stephen’s public image grates with me. I actually quite like him – he is unpredictable and witty and frequently endearing. I just get very fed up with the constant force-feeding of his TV packaging as a National Treasure – fed up in the same way that I became fed up with the constant overexposure of David Jason and the late John Thaw (great talents, both) on British TV in past years.

No amount of TV is going to make me accept that Mr Fry is an intellectual, or a great scholar, or Oscar Wilde, or Dr Johnson. My attention is limited – I will find it more convenient if he remains a comedian, an occasional writer and – to be brutal – a TV personality. I am happy with him in that more digestible role.

I hasten to add that I have huge affection for the old Jeeves & Wooster series he did with Hugh Lawrie, which remains one of the very brightest gems of British television in my humble opinion. In fact, now I come to remember that I have an Amazon gift voucher which someone very kindly sent me for Christmas, I must have a look to see what boxed sets of DVDs are available for that series. While I’m at it, I should check out what there is of the old black-and-white Tony Hancock shows. You have to be careful with this – it would be awful to be confronted with the fact that – like Buffalo Springfield on Saturday – these shows are not as good as I think they were. Tricky stuff, nostalgia.

One of the very strangest bits of Stephen Fry was when they sent him on a trip to America – touring in a London cab. His visit to Chicago included an interview – in the cab, naturally – with Buddy Guy, the great urban blues legend. The idea of Fry empathizing with Buddy’s recollection of what life was like for an impoverished black musician in 1950s Chicago is bizarre. I suspect that they could have achieved a comparable amount of empathy by getting Stephen to travel round Chicago in his taxi with a grizzly bear – he is affable and enthusiastic and correct, but these worlds never quite collided, did they?

ECW - Recruitment continues...

Five new regiments of foot arrived back from Lee's House of Painting Miracles - once again, I am humbled by the quality. Thank you, Lee.

Three units of Lowland Covenanters, to help the Parliamentarian cause. These are the regiments of the Earl of Loudon (Glasgow), Colonel James Rae (Edinburgh) and Viscount Maitland (Midlothian), looking suitably belligerent. Shades of Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night. They will, of course, change their identity as appropriate to fit the scenario.

For the Royalists, there are two new units from the North of England, fighting with the Marquis of Newcastle's whitecoats; here are the regiments of Sir Wm Lambton and Colonel John Lamplugh. Like the Covenanters, these figures are mostly Tumbling Dice, with a few Kennington/SHQ chaps drafted in for a bit of variety. I really like these TD figures, but I have to say I'm getting very fed up with cleaning up and gluing heads, though the results appear worth the effort.

Lastly, here's a fine Puritan preacher, calling down appropriate vengeance (as one does). This is from the old Warrior range - not the present one - and is quite a rarity. I haven't quite decided how to use him yet, but here he is, practising, just in case.

More New Troops

A couple of units of town guards or militia - no muskets...

Yesterday the postie brought me a package of newly painted soldiers back from Lee - the customary lovely job. I've been busy getting them based and equipped with flags. With apologies for the poorly set-up pictures, here's a quick view of what's new before they disappear into the storage boxes.

A lot of Real World stuff going on at the moment, so the war-games have been a bit quiet.

More Royalist gallopers - this is Marcus Trevor's Regt

And a small unit of Firelocks for the Royalists - ready to capture Beeston

Different period - meanwhile, in the Peninsula, here is General Pablo Morillo.
The figure is a bit of a rarity from eBay - this is NapoleoN Miniatures'
Spanish general, which, as far as I knew, never made it into production.