French Siege Train: A Little Progress

The guns were painted up months ago, but recent diversions in the Real Life Dept have meant that the siege train has been stuck in a siding for a while.

You wish to lose a wall? a bastion, perhaps? These are the boys for you

The first batch of gunners are now painted and ready - I'm pleased with them. As ever, they are finished in my simple old toy soldier style, and the unpretentious little SHQ/Kennington crewmen are absolutely fine for purpose. These are the 3 batteries of 24pdr siege guns (old La Vallière pattern models, as is historically accurate for the French in Spain, though the purist might object to the rather later style of jacket...). The crews for the mortars and howitzers are undercoated and on the bottletops, so they should follow shortly.

The siege train also merits some senior officers to go with it, so I'll see what I can come up with.

Jean-Marie ponders - dolphins? why dolphins?

New Officer for the 43rd

My good friend Pieter very kindly sent me samples of some new GBM Peninsular War figures he has commissioned, which are now in the Hagen shop. As ever with Massimo's sculpts, the figures are very pleasing - so pleasing, in fact, that I took advantage of a rare couple of hours' free time this evening to paint up a replacement officer for my 43rd Foot - note the regimental eccentricity of a non-regulation pelisse. The unit he will serve with consists of original 1970s Les Higgins figures - the officer is obviously quite a tall man, but his hat is a good match so - by my house rule of thumb (also known as Foy's Third Law) - this officer is officially the correct scale for the job.

He displaces a Les Higgins officer - I'll find the redundant chap alternative employment elsewhere.

1809 Spaniards – Regimiento de La Coroña – got there eventually

The Mojo Breakers - painted at last - just waiting for flags. Mostly NapoleoN 
figures - some Falcata and some conversions in the command

I checked some dates – I painted up some test figures for a couple of regiments, including this one, in September last year. At that time (unusually for me) I had been progressing well with figure painting, and my Spanish army was coming along nicely, but it was becoming obvious that I would have to cope with increased exposure to Real Life for a while, so I was attempting to plan what to do next. What I did next was to paint up the command figures for two 2-battalion regiments (pics appeared here in Oct ’15), and ship off the massed fusileros to a painting service I’ve used before.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, my philosophy with these paint shops is that they do a so-so job, requiring a fair amount of correction and retouching, but if they are cheap enough then the time saved is worth the cost – even comprehensive retouching is invariably quicker and easier than painting from scratch.

Well, maybe not invariably. In this case, I sent the figures away with uniform artwork and a couple of painted samples, which is the normally the best way of ensuring an effective job. They were a long time at the painting service, and I started to get worried when the customary progress photos did not come back by email. When I chased the batch up, they simply returned them, painted to what I regarded as a very disappointing standard, and with a few breakages to add insult. One of the regiments was a fairly straightforward job to sort out, and they duly took their place in the line (well, the box file) within a week or so. The other – 2 battalions of La Coroña – was just a mess. I started tinkering around, to find matches for the paint shades, and to work out how much effort was needed to sort out the facings and piping. To be quite honest, it would have taken me a couple of weeks of evenings to make a really nice job of them, but instead I went into a major sulk. La Coroña  are my only Spanish regiment to wear the older 1802 regulation uniform (which is very smart, though a bastard to paint), and I was upset out of all sensible proportion that they had gone so wrong.

My last emails to the painter, expressing my disappointment, are dated the end of November last year, when I put the figures away in a plastic box – all mounted on the official painting bottletops and everything – and left them to fester for a while. A week or so later, my mother was admitted to hospital for the first of a series of episodes which has severely limited my hobby time. We got a reprieve from March to August, but otherwise this has not been a good year for a lot of reasons, and figure painting is well down the list of priorities that didn’t make progress this year.

So – no hard luck stories – I simply got timed out on the Coroña boys, and they have sat like an itching sore in the plastic box for best part of a year. I could have done much better, but I managed to find more pressing things to do and – I have to admit it – my spirit was rather damaged by the episode with the painter. One thing for sure, this is the last time I learn that particular lesson…

Time passed. I was pleased with the things I did with ECW sieges, but the Spanish infantry stayed very definitely in the Sulk Box – I felt worse and worse about them. My mum has now been back in hospital for a month and – paradoxically – this has helped, since it has broken my spare time down into definite times and fairly short sessions. Almost out of spite, I dug out La Coroña, and over a week or so I have finally got them finished to a standard that I am happy with. It was fiddly, and it took a lot of coffee and Chopin and Stan Getz and Bill Evans and the Yellowjackets to get the job done, but it’s done.

Yes!

The 1st Battalion - almost all my 1809 line infantry are in the better-known white
1805 uniform. I think the 1802 uniform, as illustrated here, was very attractive
- all regiments were the same, and the look was permanently tainted by
association with the despised Godoy. It is correct, I understand, that La Coroña
were one of the units still in the 1802 kit at the Battle of Ucles (1809),
so here they are, just to add a bit of variety to the army.

2nd Battalion

They do not have their flags yet – I believe I have already printed the flags, so they will be in the folder somewhere. I’m not worried about that for the moment – the main point is that I have defeated the mojo-breakers. I’m back on track, and am feeling a lot better about painting.

I have plenty more Spaniards to paint - I also have a couple of units farmed out to friends who have kindly offered to do some painting for me, so I expect to make better progress now – even if things crop up to delay me, I know I can get the job done when I am ready. These things are important, it seems.

I was going to put up a short list of things which I have to paint next, but when I started thinking about it I found my enthusiasm starting to waver, so I’ll just stack the plastic boxes in order, and work through them. Stand by with the coffee and the CDs.

In passing, my thanks to Stryker for invaluable guidance on paints, and on the technique for painting buttons with a cocktail stick (a potential sanity-saver), and to Arlen de Vries for spiritual support and occasional Dutch jokes.

French Siege Train - Heavy Metal

I've painted the guns for the siege train now. They are varnished, based and stored away in a new box (titled "French Siege Train" - how's that for organisation?) to wait for a small matter of 52 gunners plus (maybe) one or two senior officers.

This may be the least colourful photo of the year so far. I maintain a house tradition of 2 model guns per battery - the reasons for this are fading into obscurity, but as I recall they included:

* it is possible to field a half-battery (if you need one)

* 2 model guns have a definite front, and there is less scope for crafty spinning on the spot 

* I prefer the look of the thing (important)

* somebody (Charles Grant Sr?) recommended 2-gun batteries years ago, and I duly obeyed (even more important)

You can see here 3 batteries of Vallière-system 24pdrs (heaviest guns were the last to be converted to the Gribeauval system, since advantages of weight saving and standardised spares were less relevant - French siege train in the Peninsula had some very old guns) - models are Minifigs; 2 batteries of howitzers (different types) one lot are by Finescale Factory and the other are Hinchliffe 20mm; 2 batteries of Gribeauval 10" mortars (recently repatriated from the British and repainted - see "oops" reference in previous post) - these are also Hinch 20mm.

On the general topic of drab appearance, I was asked recently why I had adopted brown bases for siege equipment and personnel. I ignored any faint suggestion that it was not such a great idea, and explained that, since siege guns and sappers and similar people would spend most of their working time in specially-dug earthworks or sitting on (muddy) timber platforms, a nice shade of mud was felt to be appropriate for my Old School bases. At times, I confess, I have had doubts about it, but it would be a major project to change it now, so brown bases it is. Certainly, a siege battery sited on a beautiful croquet lawn, like my field artillery, would look spectacularly daft, so I'll cheerfully stick with this. However, olive green guns on a brown base are a bit dowdy, so I'll have to make sure the artillerymen get plenty of red plumes and so on, to brighten things up.

French Siege Train - Mortar Swap!

There is a law of Nature which I've been affected by on numerous occasions in the past, though I've never fully understood it and I've never seen it written down anywhere. Perhaps it is Foy's missing Fourteenth Law.

It works like this: you wish to (say) replace a tap-washer, so you go to the hardware store and purchase a pack of the things, and you dig out the bag of tools and find that the spanner you need has been misplaced, so you go to the garage to check the bicycle tools, and while you are in there you realise that there is a new wasps' nest under the roof, so you go to find the wasp spray and you spot that a mouse has chewed through a pack of lawn seed, which is likely to attract more of its friends, so you go to find a plastic detergent jar to put the lawn seed in, and so on and so on, and you collect a growing list of upstream tasks which eventually require you to move the house 4 feet to the left before you can do anything at all. As likely as not, the tap will still be dripping tomorrow.

To my surprise, my work on the French siege train suddenly involved some work on the Allied siege train yesterday. I have recently acquired some very nice Hinchliffe 20mm French 10" mortars, and when I assembled one I realised that it looked strangely familiar - in fact my British mortar batteries are already equipped with them. Oops. This, of course, will never do, so I decided that I would sort this out before anything else happened.

Re-equipped RA mortar batteries. Yes, you're right - the gunners are Warrior
figures, over-acting as usual.

As luck would have it, that splendid fellow Old John recently sent me some S-Range Coehorn Mortars, which would be just the thing to re-equip my Royal Artillery boys. I painted up the Coehorns, re-based the crews (taking the opportunity to remove those embarrassingly redundant chaps with ramrods - 3 figures is plenty for a mortar team anyway...) and put the French mortars carefully aside for repainting and reissue in the near future. So here are the British mortar batteries - units 345 and 346 in The Catalogue, with the regulation siege equipment brown bases - ready to go back in the box.

Meanwhile the guns for the French siege train are complete and just about ready for painting, so I hope to make a start on that tonight. If I find my olive green paint has solidified then there will be a short delay while I move the house a few feet to the left.


Separate Topic

Yesterday we visited The Hirsel, near Coldstream, the ancestral seat of the Douglas-Home family, and had a very pleasant walk in the grounds. In the course of our walk, we passed the Cow Arch (pictured), which intrigues me because there was a similar one at the old (ruined) mansion house here at the estate where our farm is. As I understand it, these things were to allow the cows to cross the driveway without spattering it with unmentionables. This was practical, I guess, especially in the days when people wore more ornate finery than we do now, but - strangely - the riding horses and coach horses of the gentry were free to spatter everything in sight with impunity. This was somehow acceptable - in fact it continues to be acceptable to this day, as anyone visiting my house (on a farm with an active riding stables) will testify.

Two generations of the Foy dynasty pose beneath the ancestral Cow Arch of
the Douglas-Homes. Not a cow in sight, by the way.

If you are not familiar with the idea of something being spattered with impunity, it is not especially pleasant, particularly under the wheel-arches of your car on a hot day. Enough - I hope I have not put you off your pain au chocolat this morning.

Not in the Plan at All

Classic Old School 20mm? - everyone has their own favourite figures - this is certainly
one of mine. Bill Lamming's Royal Scots Greys trooper, circa 1970. Off-hand, I
would also list the Minifigs/Alberken Brunswick-Oels, the early (20mm) Garrison
French infantry with the bayonet stuck up high in the air, and any number of Hinton
Hunts - the Old Guard and some of the OPC cavalry, especially the charging
French lancer. This must have a lot to do with all those hours spent gazing at the
pictures in the Featherstone and Charles Grant books...

I’ve got a lot to do to get my Spanish Army back on schedule, but, to my surprise, I find I suddenly have a distraction I really didn’t expect. However, I’m pleased with it.

A couple of weeks ago there was a batch of unpainted, vintage Lamming French dragoons up for auction on eBay, and I put in a bid, though I most certainly have more than enough French dragoons. It wasn’t a very serious bid, and it quickly became obvious that someone wanted these more than I did, so I watched the price rise away past what I would have paid for them – I was calm and not troubled at all, but it got me thinking about Lamming figures.

Lamming are an enigma – the early figures are very pleasing, and right on the old “true 25mm” scale, but later much of the range was remodelled, bigger and often uglier. Normally I shy away from Lamming lots in auctions because you never know quite what you’re getting – I’ve called a few wrong, to my cost. Then, this week, there were some painted Lamming Scots Greys on eBay, and I liked the look of them – the photo showed that the listing also include some Miniature Figurines cavalry, and confirmed that the Lamming Greys were OK for size for my armies.

I decided what I thought they were worth, put in a moderate bid, and was very surprised to get an email telling me I had won them. They arrived within about 48 hours, nicely packed.

Now let’s be clear about this – I used to have a unit of Scots Greys. They were lovely, they were Phoenix Model Developments figures, I converted the officer and the trumpeter from PMD helmeted British Dragoons, and – apart from the standard, silly Les Higgins horses – they really were most attractive. Problem was that I had no wish to fight Waterloo, the Greys were no use at all for my Peninsular OOB, and – as part of my commitment to replacing my heavy dragoons with proper, bicorne-wearing fellows, I was persuaded to put them up for sale on eBay – this must be 6 or 7 years ago, I guess. I was confident they would go for a decent price, but it all went a bit wrong. Maybe it was the week everyone was watching the cricket on TV or something, but my Gorgeous Greys went out with a whimper - sold for the opening bid of £11.99, to a lady in Sussex who had a gift shop.

I was upset! I never quite got over it – I didn’t really want the figures, but the low selling price was somehow insulting. Serves me right, anyway – a fool and his soldiers are soon parted – if Confucius didn’t say that then he should have.

So, as from Wednesday, I have a replacement for my unnecessary Scots Greys, and I am pleased with them, though I’m not sure when they will get into action, and for the time being they will live in the Allied Odd Bods box. I had several attempts to decide what to do with them – stick them in the spares box, and one day strip them and repaint them? – that was my first idea.

But you know what? – these are old figures, they have been together since about 1970, and someone painted them a long time ago, rather better than I could ever have painted them. I decided to keep them as they are – clean them up a bit and retouch here and there – in particular, put fresh white paint on the crossbelts and gloves and plumes. I even chose to repair a couple of damaged swords and keep them at the original strength of 12, which is contrary to all known house standards (all my other cavalry regiments have 10).

Here they are - some toys from another age - a little weathered, and a couple of
S-Range command interlopers, but they are the business, aren't they?

Twelve cavalry in two rows, on a heavy cavalry frontage of 25mm per figure, will fit nicely on one of my standard sized light cavalry sabots, as it happens, and I can decide later whether the extra figures will gain them any additional clout in action – I suspect not.

They are ready for a temporary home in the Odd Bods box now – the officer and the trumpeter are Miniature Figurines S-Range, though Lamming had both of these in his range – in fact the cornet with the flag is a converted Lamming officer (BC/6) – all the rest are Lamming’s RSG trooper (BC/2), as illustrated in the Gallery on the VINTAGE20MIL website. They are not beautiful, but I’m pleased to have them.

1809 Spaniards - Some Welcome Progress

After charging ahead with my 1809 Spanish Army for a while, everything screeched to a halt in November - to a large extent this was simply because an illness in the family left me with very little spare time, but it was also a consequence of what I am now rather ashamed to refer to as The Great Sulk - of which I shall say more later.

Today I am delighted to welcome the first newly painted Spanish unit of the year - this is the 3rd of what will be 4 Foot Artillery batteries suitable for 1809. These were excellently painted by my rather shadowy friend Francisco Goya (does he paint in a mask? - hmmm), and they are not only a valuable addition to the available forces, but also (I hope) an important step towards ending the Sulk.

The figures are mostly by GB Miniatures, one of the Hagen family of 1/72 makers (mastered by the estimable Massimo), with a couple of NapoleoN boys and one Falcata. The guns are Hagen's own.

One slightly tricky aspect of putting together a gun-crew is the combination of poses - I try to make this sensible, but manufacturers are very enthusiastic about having the rammers ramming, the firers firing etc - everybody depicted doing what it is he does - but having them all do it at the same time would upset the Health & Safety boys more than a little. I'm not too fussy about this - I have enough artillery crews of old Minifigs and similar which made a point of having the rammer portrayed making an attempt to have his arms blown off, so getting snippy about it at this stage would be rather silly. I do try to keep an eye on things, though.

The Sulk.

Ah, well. You see, last year I suddenly found myself in the position where I was going to have to go back to doing all my own painting, and this after a period when I had been using the services of painters who were both quicker and far more skilful than I. I decided the only thing to do was to bite the bullet and crack on, by myself, so as not to lose momentum (momentum, at my age, being a precious thing).

I did pretty well, painting away, good-style, and listening to a lot of Fauré, but I was obviously going to need more outside support in the painting department. I renewed my acquaintance with Philgreg, the painting service based in Sri Lanka.

I had previous with Philgreg - I had found that they produced an acceptable result (unbelievably cheaply, even allowing for postage costs) if I provided an exact painted sample of what I wanted - I would get back pretty good facsimiles of what I sent them. The occasions when things went a bit wonky were when I required them to work from verbal descriptions, or - I suspect - when they were unusually busy, when an observable dip in quality suggested to me that some of the painting crew were less experienced, or fringe players in a team pool. My first attempts to get Philgreg involved again last year went pretty well - I required them only to provide rank-and-file, in fairly simple uniforms, and the amount of rework I had to do to get the finished figures to a decent quality was acceptable - the cost of the outsource work was good for the effort saved. If they produced 85%-finished figures, it was worth the money.

Their approach is businesslike, and the main man (Philip) is helpful and easy to deal with. The idea is that they send you photos of samples, to show you how your shipment is progressing, to make sure you are happy. Apart from a rather high proportion of broken figures, this went OK - for the first such shipment. Then - lulled into a foolish over-confidence - I sent a rather more complicated job.

First ominous sign was I got no sample pictures, and got no progress report at all until I chased them. The figures arrived back, painted, and they weren't good. One battalion took me about a week of evenings to rescue, but it turned out well. The other battalion that came back was worse. In all honesty, they aren't really so bad - I reckon that another week of fairly dedicated evenings would put them into very good shape indeed, but somehow I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I have been more depressed by this (relatively minor) reverse than I should have been - I have put the figures, on their bottletops, carefully in a box, ready to start work, and then I have hidden in a hole in the ground. I have found Other Things to Do. Sulking. Lamentable behaviour.

With this new artillery unit I hope I can get myself motivated again - a good slap around the head, a cup of decent coffee, some appropriate painting music on the old Bose and I should be back in business. There you are - I've said it on the blog - I'm duty bound to shape up now.  

ECW - More Siege Artillery

Big ones, small ones - from siege cannons to a 2-man peashooter

Having worked on the oh-so-shiny gunners from the Mike & Whiskers Legacy Collection, and dug some appropriate guns out of the lead pile, I suddenly have a big dollop (I believe that is the correct military term) of extra artillery - specifically for sieges.

My ECW armies are already probably over-provided with field artillery, and I have a fine big mortar, but the approach of the siege project has highlighted a shortage of odd guns on small bases, to fit on tops of towers and in "mounts", not to mention actual wall-crushers.

A couple of very serious 'cannons of 8' - if these chaps (provisionally called Stan &
Olly) shoot at your town walls they will stay shot at, and don't forget it. Anyone who
observes that the ramrod would only reach halfway down the barrel is correct, of
course, but may spend the evening on the naughty step. Obviously they have a longer
one stashed somewhere, don't they? 

None of this is of particularly fine quality - the rehashed gunners are purely functional, for a start - but I have ticked another box for the list of things I need to do to prepare for sieges. Tick.

Only ECW artillery job still in my queue is to paint up a few more frame guns for the Scots - I have the gun castings, but am trying to think of how to provide suitable gunner figures in 20mm. Conversions coming up, methinks.

Next job is to slap some paint on some new hills (hexagonal, of course - MDF, of course) and start some tests to get a colour scheme for my forthcoming river system. These aren't siege jobs, but it would surely tidy things up a bit around here if I could store some of this MDF away in the scenery boxes.

Latest thought on a colour for rivers is - rather to my surprise - darkish blue-green. I was going to go for mud brown again, but somehow this doesn't seem right if the new river pieces may also form lakes and coastline. I'll get some sample pots from the hardware store and see how it looks.

Still in the Spares Box, with Mike and Whiskers

Whiskers developing his technique - in fact, I imagine Whiskers as rather more bald than this

Almost exactly two years ago, I scored one of my biggest-ever hauls on eBay, and bought in a load of ECW figures which came from the estate of a chap in Northern Ireland who had recently died - his entire collection, which was enormous, was sold by a local charity shop. I only bought a stack of his ECW troops - all SHQ and Tumbling Dice 20mm - but there were literally hundreds of them.

The big surprise at the time was that they had very obviously been painted up and organised to fight Montrose's campaigns - since that was exactly what I wanted them for, I had seen that there were a lot of Scottish troop types in the collection, but it wasn't until I started checking out the flags that I realised what I had.

The figures were quite nicely painted, in a very plain style, but I was a bit shocked to see that they had been heavily coated with some kind of ship's varnish - these figures were definitely intended to stand up to some severe, industrial handling, I would say. I set about identifying figures which would restore most easily, and which were of most immediate use for my Montrose project, and I did some retouching, and a great deal of applying matt varnish to tone down the finish, and rebasing, and I was pleased with the results. The episode generated a lot of very plain, rather dull Scottish and Irish soldiers, which provided a fine addition to bulk up the splendid Covenanter units which Lee Gramson had already painted up for me.

All good - I've done some Montrose things now, and intend to revisit this again soon. While I was spending a few late nights in 2014, getting these ex-eBay fellows ready for the armies, I got to know the previous owner a bit better. Of course, I have no idea who he was, but at 1 a.m. when I was preparing figures for the prescribed matt varnish I would find myself chatting to him - I called him Mike, in the absence of other suggestions.

"Well, Mike," I would say, "this one's got cat hairs stuck on the varnish as well - you should keep old Whiskers out of the painting room.." and so on. I developed a technique of loosening the cat hairs from the varnish with the tip of a penknife, and then removing them with tweezers. A strange way to spend a long evening - this is almost certainly why I started talking to Mike. As time went on, it became a house joke that I had gradually changed my mind, and that I now believed that Whiskers had done the varnishing himself - perhaps with a little guidance from Mike.

Well the horses are pretty ghastly, but they should paint up simply enough, and that
gives me the better part of two new regiments of rather understated Northern horse

Since I've recently been rooting around in the Spares Box, I found another load of the ex Mike & Whiskers ECW boys, and I realised that there are a lot more in the heap which would usefully restore in the same way. So for a couple of evenings I've been washing and debasing and removing the cat hairs. Since these figures are probably a bit worse than the ones I selected for refurbing last time, there are a lot more cat hairs - in fact I have now begun to believe that Mike did the varnishing, but that he applied the varnish with Whiskers, rather than a brush.

And oodles more artillerymen - just the job for the sieges - more than enough...

It's going OK - we are now ready for a bit of touch-up, and then the matt varnish can start. I need to paint up a few extra cavalry figures from scratch, to make up the numbers, but I hope to get a couple of additional Scottish/Northern units of horse out of this, and I will have more gunners than I will ever possibly need - certainly I will have plenty to man the forthcoming extra artillery for siege games.

Topic #2 - more pottery ornaments ready for sieges...

I previously gave a glimpse of some of my new Tey Pottery houses - this little side-project is shaping up very nicely, and I have the makings of a presentable 17th Century English town centre, such as I can lay siege to. So here's a slightly bigger glimpse...

More Siege Topics

I now have work in hand to produce effective trench sections, after some years of just thinking about it, and also to fabricate support pedestals to allow troops to man the city walls when their bases are deeper than the walkway – all clever stuff, but this will require a little while to produce something worth looking at.

In the meantime, I have been tinkering with some new pottery houses (all right – ornaments, if you must) which seem to be shaping up nicely to form a 17^th century town centre, and – since I had the brushes out – I have finally eliminated those ghastly red roofs from my Eco castle.

The Eco castle - now treated with RedRoof-be-Gone

I had been offered a wide range of advice – I’ve been urged to leave it alone, or completely repaint it, or do something in between, so I have produced a good British compromise – I’ve left most of the castle unaltered, and have repainted the roofs and touched in the windows to clean them up a bit.

I have also painted the swimming-pool coloured moat section under the drawbridge – it is now a charming shade of mud, and I poured in my new-and-trendy Decoupage medium, which – in theory – should set to form something looking like water. This last step isn’t looking too promising at present – the medium contains a surpising quantity of bubbles. The received wisdom is that these should disappear as the medium dries, but they do not seem to be doing this – which may be related to the fact that the medium does not appear to be drying.

Oh well – it may all turn out wonderful. If not, I assume that the medium will dry eventually in some form or other, and if necessary I can repaint and varnish or whatever. Let’s wait and see. I refuse to be pessimistic about it.

Down in the street in 17th century Chester, or some such place?

Just a glimpse of how this might look, with the old citadel looming in the background

Back to the pottery houses – these are the OOP Britain in Miniature series, by Carol Tey, who produced them in Norfolk for a while. Not all the range is suitable, but a few of the items are a useful size, and have a nice, stylised (almost playful) look which I think goes well with toy soldiers. They are, it goes without saying, my usual underscale mismatch with the 20mm figures, but they look OK (it also goes without saying). It is a dreadful thing to admit, but I am carefully applying matt varnish to these Tey houses – it improves the look enormously, though it would very much upset serious collectors. I have picked up these pieces very cheaply on eBay. It amuses me that the range is such that my besieged town is likely to contain a very high proportion of British tourist sites – all in one small area – Chester’s Rows, Ann Hathaway’s cottage, a number of inns and historic guildhalls from Norfolk – I even have my eye on John Knox’s house, which should fit in well, and no-one will notice…

Maybe.

I got hold of a good secondhand copy of Stuart Asquith's Guide to Siege Wargaming, and have been looking it over. Apart from the appendix in Chris Duffy's Fire & Stone, and the Battlegames articles by Henry Hyde which use many of the same mechanisms (especially the fast/slow time switch), all the books I have ever read about having a bash at a siege on a tabletop give you a lot of good information on how real sieges work, and more or less leave you to work this into a playable game yourself. This is the hard bit - that final step is a big one - it is the space where the PowerPoint slide says "at this point a miracle happens". Asquith's book is potentially good and useful, but it is of this type - there is a lot about sieges, but a few implied leaps of faith about making an entertainment out of the matter. No problem - I am quietly confident - I am seen to be smiling enigmatically.

One thing that this book certainly brings home is the dreadful loss which the demise of Gallia miniature buildings represented - there are many photos of Gallia fortress pieces and so on, in both 25mm and 15mm and they are - well, fantastic, actually. I've never seen such a thing on eBay - this book was published 1990 - I have no idea when Gallia ceased production - anyone know?

A Weekend Miscellany...

The Gothenburg, Prestonpans

First thing to note is that I found some missing photos from Wednesday's ECW game - nothing startling, but I'll tack a few on the end of this post. It seems that my camera had stored some of them in a folder I didn't know was there...

On Saturday I drove through to Prestonpans (yes - that Prestonpans), which is just down the road from here, to attend the Scottish Battlefields Wargames Show, which was staged upstairs in the Gothenburg pub. I was there early, since there had been concern that the small venue and the lack of parking space might by a problem - in fact, unless it picked up later, the attendance may have been a bit disappointing. Nice little show - there were a number of appropriately themed games, including some in which visitors might take part. I think there were about 7 trade stands, and maybe the same number of demonstrations, so there was a pleasant intimacy about the proceedings.

I liked this 10mm version of Flodden, presented by the Glasgow Wargames people, who
 - as always - were affable and enthusiastic and patiently informative

Some of the 10mm unsung heroes of Flodden

It was good to get a chance to speak to Graham Cummings, who was there selling his wonderful Crann Tara miniatures range (wow - these are seriously beautiful figures), and I was also very impressed by a new, Edinburgh-based venture, Supreme Littleness, which is Michael Scott's laser-cut MDF service. I've been sort of half-looking at MDF buildings for a while, and though they get quite a good press, I have not been convinced. Well, I think I am now. Michael does all sorts of interesting fortifications and buildings, in various scales down to 3mm - I was surprised at the scope really. He was inviting suggestions for new products and expansions to his range, and I intend to get back to him with some requests for 15mm scale earthworks, which he doesn't do at the moment. Here's my picture of some of the bits and pieces - from bases and game markers to medieval towers - which he had on show. I recommend a squint at his website (linked above). The 3mm village pieces are especially good.

Supreme Littleness - for those who have yet to be convinced about MDF...

It was also good to meet up with my shadowy friend Goya - I knew he was arriving when his security men and handlers came in to check that the CCTV was switched off. He brought along some impressive examples of his painting and conversion work to show me, and - just to give a glimpse of how the other half lives - I learned that he has found that the wire from champagne corks is perfect for fabricating replacement bayonets and sword blades in 20mm scale. The important point here is that Goya is teetotal - we may picture him ordering cases of Bollinger, so that he can pour the evil stuff down the sink and furnish enough sabre blades for his light dragoons project. Now that, you have to admit, is classy.

I took very few photos in Prestonpans, not least because I wasn't really speaking to my camera at the time, my confidence having been shaken somewhat by Wednesday's problems.

I got home to find that the postie had delivered my last two fortress components - a couple more gates, on which I have now daubed paint in the house style, so that they may take their place in the FORTS box.

One on the left is from JR Miniatures, the other is by Kallistra

And, finally, some more pics from Wednesday evening...

The Covenanters get a pretty clear run at the hill, if they can just get through that
pesky stream...

...and the capture of East Boldon didn't take long - more wet feet

General view, from the Royalist side, with the Scots getting their assault organised

Last effort from the King's horse, with Sir Chas Lucas about to be laid low for his trouble

Another general view, Scots on the left, just before the end

The Star-Fort (2)

With clear signs that the painters and decorators are still around, here's the finished fort, in its ECW "sconce" role. I included some cannons and a couple of officers to show how the scale mismatch works - 15mm buildings vs 20mm armies.

The occupants are obviously impressed by how modern the design is - it will serve as a shining example for the next 200 years...

I intend to have a squint at Chris Duffy's books on fortification, and search online to see how these forts appeared in reality - could it benefit from a garden shed, or a wine-cellar, or something? Starbucks? Looks a fairly unforgiving place to spend any time, especially under fire.

Note that the Roundhead soldiers are making a token show of aggression for the camera.

Big Brown Lumps - The Star-Fort (1)

Yesterday I finished off the first phase of building-varnishing and got the bits of the Battleground star-fort deflashed and scrubbed up, and applied the first two coats of brown base colour. The picture shows the situation after the second coat - some pinholes still be be touched in, but this is much better than the state after the first coat, which looked like a join-the-dots exercise (the paint being the dots, by the way).

A long way to go, but it is shaping up nicely. The idea is that it should be capable of being an outwork for a Napoleonic fort (e.g Fort Ragusa), or a half-section could be a hornwork of some sort, but also it can serve as a sconce for the ECW (it may not be strictly authentic for this last role, but I'm happy with it, so please do not look askance at my sconce...).

So the plan is: final brown base-coat touch-in to lose the pinholes, then drybrushing with mid grey, baseboard green, medium khaki and a very light breath of light khaki to make everything dusty - followed, of course, by two coats of matt varnish - this is a heavy beggar, and is going to get bumped a bit. After all that I can tidy away all the debris and paraphernalia and get the dining room ready for the Battle of Boldon Hill on Wednesday. Oh yes - my fort pieces are now in very nice new plastic storage boxes, so a load of old broken cardboard boxes can go away for recycling. There's another planet saved.

Speaking of which...

Last night we had an excellent take-away Indian meal from our friend Mohammed's restaurant in the village, and, unusually for us, afterwards we got the log stove blazing, and managed to prise my son away from his computer for long enough for us all to watch his new DVD of The Martian.

Matt Damon visits - erm - Jordan, in fact

Wow - what an excellent film - enjoyed it thoroughly. If it has a faint weakness of plot, I might suggest that the second half of the story is relentlessly and obviously heading for a happy ending, but the spectacle is more than consolation, and the scientific threads hang together well enough to gratify elderly viewers who cherish delusions of understanding these things (a very little bit). I am not a film "buff" in any sense at all, but I understand that it is now necessary always to attach references to previous work by the cast and crew, so I shall list a few personal fave contributors, with a very partial wargamer's view of what they have done before (i.e. what I've seen and enjoyed). Director is Ridley Scott (The Duellists - has to be), and the cast includes Matt Damon (Saving Private Ryan), Jeff Daniels (Gettysburg) and Sean Bean (anything but Sharpe).

I was pleased to be reminded that Bean, is, after all, an excellent actor when he isn't slouching around being rugged.

By the way, I speak with some little authority on the film industry since, apart from being not quite related to Christopher Plummer (previous reference to private joke), I also used to have a relative who claimed to have appeared as a bush in the Dunsinane scene from Polanski's Macbeth, so I'm quite an insider really - please notify Hello! magazine that I am up for the odd interview if the money's right.

Eureka

All hail to Jim, who correctly insisted that the gatehouse building in the previous post was from the old SHQ/Mayhem/Eureka range (still available, I think). I dug out an ancient pdf of a catalogue, and we see that N01, the Stone/timber townhouse and gate, is the very chap. Interesting that it appears in the North European range - I feel this building sits more comfortably in one of Napoleon's German campaigns than in an English medieval/ECW context, to be honest. [I must start painting up an Austrian army, immediately.]

I can only guess at the age of the pdf - maybe 2005 or so? - but it strikes me that the Eureka prices (in Australian dollars, of course) were pretty eye-watering at the time, considering you could get the same products from SHQ in England for an awful lot less. Just saying.

Varnish update: I've been cracking on with an industrial-scale varnishing operation, and have done all my new fortress pieces and all the ECW houses. Next I shall do the Peninsular houses and the Vauban pieces. First I tried Ronseal matt clear varnish - I would love this to have worked, because there is a pleasing inverted snobbery aspect to using something as vulgar and as workmanlike as ordinary DIY paint, and also because any product which offers a finish tough enough to walk on after 3 coats is certainly strong enough for my toy houses. Sadly, though it went on nicely and is easy to use, it doesn't dry to a completely matt state - it is faintly satin. Thus I retreated my test pieces with the product I should have used in the first place - DecoArt Media Ultra-Matte Varnish - £4 for a 4 fl.oz pot from Hobbycraft. I bought 3 pots, and at the present rate of progress that will be enough for several lifetimes - excellent varnish - water-based, dries quickly and, though it goes on milky, it dries completely clear - no hassle at all. This is the right stuff to brush-finish buildings. It has a faint smell of pilchards, but I can get used to anything...

Another 15mm Building for the ECW

While the scenery paint tins are handy and I still have some enthusiasm, I knocked off another building last night. I rather like it, I have to say. As to what it is? - well it certainly isn't a town gate in the sense of being a controlled opening in the enceinte which can be locked and defended, and which could withstand the efforts of a hostile army with serious equipment, but it is a point within a town which could have a sentry, and (I suppose) be barricaded if necessary, and which announces that you are now leaving such-and-such a place, and entering such-and-such other place, and, by the way, it is twenty-five past two.

I have no idea what the casting is - it is very heavy resin, and I bought it secondhand a while ago - I had thought it was JR Miniatures, but it isn't, and it isn't Eureka/SHQ either - no idea - I suspect it's quite old. Anyone recognise this? Good quality, anyway - one of my better eBay efforts. While I was painting this, some passing thoughts cropped up, viz:

(1) whatever this is an entrance to, it would make sense if the door to the actual building, and therefore the clock, were on the inside - no point telling outsiders what time it is, unless we wish to impress...

(2) Hmmm - the clock. I am not exactly sure whether this clock would have been in this form in 1640 - my guess is that it is OK - I saw a lot of very old public clocks in Germany and Austria recently which predate this, but am not sure if the appearance of this clock is an anachronism (how ironic would that be?), and therefore I do not propose to investigate the matter too carefully in case I get the wrong answer [I can't hear you - lalalalalalalala etc] 

(3) The clock (continued) - to be on the safe side, I picked out the details in an understated manner by drybrushing with a pewter colour - that way the clock does not hit you in the face, and reduces the chance of some smart-ass on TMP noticing that, like Einstein's famous clock seen from the Bern tramcar, it is a time-travelling clock. However, I seem to have understated it to the point of invisibility, so I may revisit it with something a little brighter. I'll think about it.

This now joins the queue for varnish. My latest thoughts on this matter are that the idea of fiddling round with a pile of aerosols is highly unappealing - apart from the toxic hazard and the collateral damage, there is more than a slight chance that I, being a Klutz, would not achieve a decent coverage anyway. Thanks to very useful input in response to previous post (for which, again, thanks), I am now obsessed with the idea that my new paintwork is just waiting to leap off again at the first excuse, and at the first contact with tissue paper, so it is a no-brainer to get on with the varnishing job. In fact, I shall also set up a cottage industry for a few days to catch up with the backlog of other buildings which I never quite got around to varnishing. I'm quite looking forward to a few moronic evenings of brushing varnish onto walls and buildings, and I'm looking online for a decent-sized can of artists'-quality acrylic matt varnish to do the job. I may even consider varnishing some of the Lilliput Lane and David Winter stuff - that would be seen as sacrilege by true collectors, but these items are heavy and have very delicate paintwork, so it might be an idea.  

It is, it goes without saying, essential that this varnish should be fully matt. If my buildings end up even the tiniest bit shiny then I shall be forced to run, screaming, around the country. It will be on TV - people will know when I'm passing their way, and will turn out to watch me. It will be the tantrum to end all tantra.

Next up is the mighty star-fort. I shall be especially careful to make sure this is a reasonable colour-match with the existing Vauban bits, though I do not intend to flock it. There will be more about this soon, I think.

Passing mention of Lilliput Lane reminds me that, if I propose to have a bash at something like the Great Leaguer of Chester, for example, then some representation of a section of something like a proper town would be a good idea. A row of cutesy LL cottages doesn't really fit the bill, quite apart from the nausea factor. I'm not sure what (if anything) I am going to do about this - my scratchbuilding days were long ago, I think - certainly on any kind of industrial scale. While I was looking about for ideas, I found that Tey Potteries (now defunct, but once of Norfolk) did a section of the Chester Rows as part of their range, though it is very rare and thus expensive. It did, however, introduce me to the idea of Tey houses - their Britain in Miniature range includes some nice pieces, and they are available cheaply on eBay if you look around.

I'll include some pictures of Tey stuff, to give the idea. I'm not really thinking terribly seriously about this, but (as ever) here are some thoughts on the subject:

This is the Chester Rows piece - probably too small and too
Victorian, and this particular example is in the USA, but
amusing. All pics very kindly supplied by eBay. 

(1) I have absolutely no idea what scale these are - they are probably a mixture, like all such ranges, but sizes I've seen given in eBay listings suggest that they tend to be about 7 or 8cm high, which might make some of the pieces around 10mm scale, which is getting a bit small but might be OK.

(2) The stylised appearance of these is obviously something of an acquired taste - they are not in any sense realistic, and would not mix at all comfortably with other makes. Some of them are charming, though, in a wacky sort of way - the idea of playing with toy soldiers with a backdrop of blatant toy houses is not unpleasant. A small group of these would make a nice town, and most of the models seem to be gratifyingly rectangular.

(3) Being pottery ornaments, they are obviously offensively shiny, and a good coat of the aforementioned artists' varnish would be needed to calm them down. Again, serious collectors would be horrified, but they are not valuable, and they would mine anyway (heh heh) if I bought some.

(4) You know what? - I think I probably won't do anything about this range, but it was interesting looking at them, and it's useful to come up with something unfamiliar now and then. So there you have it, gentlemen - Tey Pottery.