The Duty Marshal

Another new French staff unit, based to my new standard. The groups for Army/Corps level commanders are 60mm square, and have the general himself plus two staff; the base is bordered in the national colour - in this case blue.

This was going to be, very specifically, General (later Marshal) Suchet, but I had second thoughts. The next in the painting queue is the Duke of Damnation, Soult, and he has a very distinctive ADC, who can be spotted from the far side of the valley - "that's Soult," they will say. Now Suchet also had a recognisable ADC, with baggy trousers - plum coloured, as I recall - and this ADC's greatest claim to fame, of course, is that he appears in one of the Osprey books...

Sanity check - I could set up a whole series of celebrity generals to make guest appearances as appropriate - some of them wouldn't get out to play very often. Thus I have made this fellow rather more generic - the ADC in the blue and red (the guy with the horse, for the colour-blind) is wearing the regulation uniform for the ADC of a Marshal-who-is-not-a-Prince, and the man who is saluting is a visiting ADC for a General de Division, so it's all pretty much vanilla. I shall probably use this group as Suchet if the occasion suits, but otherwise other choices are available. Good.

This could get out of hand - I could have gone for the plum-trousered aide - I have figures which would work in this role. Then I would have to consider named groups for Victor, Jourdan, You-Name-It...

Mind you, Massena would be worth a shout - his group would probably require him to be in a carriage, accompanied by his teenage son, Prosper, dressed up in (white) pantomime ADC's uniform, and Old André's mistress, Henriette Leberton, who is reputed to have accompanied him on campaign dressed as a hussar...    [is it getting a little warm in here?]

Well, maybe - not sure what sort of conversion would be needed for a 20mm female hussar - suggestions welcome.

In the meantime, here is Marshal Suchet (let us say), looking fairly calm about  the job in hand. The black gloves worn by the aides were all the rage among the staffers...

The saluting ADC is from Hagen, whose range of staff figures is getting better and more extensive all the time, and the other chaps are from Art Miniaturen, sculpted by the wonderful Jorg Schmäling.

More French Staff Figures

Just tinkering last night - some retouching, and rebasing to the new house standard. In my OOB, this chap (the one in the very silly hat) is usually Villatte or some such. The casting is Art Miniaturen's figure of Colbert, now discontinued. The regulation ADC (one for a General de Division) is a NapoleoN figure - for a while he had sky-blue overalls, which eventually I decided was a fashion statement too far, so I've toned him down a bit.

The General may be shouting, "Come on, chaps - for France and Glory!",
or he may be saying, "...no, I believe they are still chasing us..."

Next command groups in the queue are serious, 3-figure groupings on the new 60 x 60 bases (Army/Corps Commander) - I have both Soult and Suchet ready to go. This is really getting into self-indulgence territory now - Soult is certain to spend most of his time in the box, waiting for his big chance, though on the other hand his presence might encourage me to try some different scenarios - Armée du Midi stuff.

Pilot Figures - pick up the brush...

Not much painting recently - I was doing quite well for a few weeks, but the Real Life situation took hold again; it's not so much that I have no time, it's just that there is a lot to think about and I find it hard to settle to get on with things.

My French general staff and ADCs will continue as a background project - no particular rush there. My new Bavarian project has stalled a bit - I need to order some more figures, and the batch in the strip-soak jar is taking longer than I expected, but I expect to make some serious progress with this over the winter.

Meanwhile I have come back around to an on-and-off idea that I've had for years. When I came up with a new vision for my Peninsular War armies, a good while ago now, I had enough spare figures to make up an extra division of the French army. They were mostly Kenningtons, but it seemed a good opportunity.

Didn't take it. I decided I had other things to do, and eventually sold off the Kenningtons, not least to encourage myself to get on with the ECW. So it goes. Anyway, as it happens I have now acquired some vintage figures which will make a rather more interesting addition to the French army. Since I am spending more time these days in the company of Baron Stryker's very fine Hinton Hunt armies, I am more inclined to think along similar lines. Well, the figures I have are not Hintons, but they are sort of similar - I have enough pre-owned Der Kriegsspieler and Alberken soldiers to make about 5 battalions, which is certainly a big dollop of the extra division.

Flattery by imitation? - not Hintons - the grenadier on the left is an Alberken product
(maybe a little disappointed to be converted to the Line?), and the fusilier is from
Der Kriegsspieler. I have tried to make them suitable for a variety of situations, so
they are sort-of-1809-ish - Danube or Spain. As a skill, I find retouching is a challenge
in its own right - you have to get consistent with how much imperfection you are comfortable
with, how much effort to put into the job. Diminishing returns set in very quickly if you are not
pragmatic about it. There will be a lot of these...

I always fancied adding Bonet's 8th Division of the Armée de Portugal, from the Salamanca period, but for some reason I find I already have a couple of units from Taupin's Division (the 6th) - I have a single battalion of the 17e Léger and the Regiment de Prusse - so if my newly-acquired chaps become the 22e and the 65e Ligne then I'm just about there for Taupin. The idea is that these new/old units should look sort of 1809-ish - that way they can fight the Austrians on the Danube, they can certainly fight the Spaniards early in the Peninsular War, and they can happily take their place in the later battles if I claim that they were a bit behind with their uniform supplies.

This is going to be a re-touch job, and a pretty big one, so realistic timescales are a good idea. This evening I got out the brushes, and had a test shot to see how they might come up - not bad at all. They are surely not going to win any prizes, but they will be most welcome in Marmont's army. I'm pleased with that - if I had merely managed to convince myself that this had to be a full strip-and-start-again job then I think I would just have shelved the idea.

OK - that didn't hurt very much. I'll try a bit more painting tomorrow night. Maybe the odd ADC? I'll get myself back into this - we've got a fresh load of logs for the stove, I've got some CDs I haven't had a chance to listen to yet, there's a box of French wine somewhere - what could go wrong?

The Old Soak - and a bit of a shock

Final soak in the Simple Green, Matron

Today I rescued some old French cavalry from the Clean Spirit soak - this was their second stage soak - they'd already had a preliminary rub down with the toothbrush about a week ago, after the first soak. They came out very nicely. I also had a few getting a heavy-duty second soak in Simple Green, since the first soak in Clean Spirit hardly damaged the shine - this is usually a sign of polyurethane varnish, though it might sometimes be a sign of Plastidip, which is very bad news in Strip Town.

The Simple Green has worked OK, so a good scrub and those few are back in for a final "therapy"  soak - should be a couple of days.

Next load - you can even re-use the Clean Spirit; here's a bunch of assorted Bavarians
I put in to soak this afternoon - I'll have a look at them in 10 days or so

All this probably sounds like routine, but the mere fact that stripping has become something of a routine is still a source of considerable satisfaction for me!

After this morning's blog post (on the subject of the manufacture of resin buildings) I had a further think about the chap I knew who had a resin scenery business, but had to close down because the chemicals damaged his lungs. Now I also remembered that for a while his business partner in this venture was another chap I used to know, one-time owner of the only decent model shop this side of Edinburgh. He was quite a character - he did some Napoleonic figure painting for me, and he was well known locally because he used to run Saturday morning workshops at his model shop for kids - to teach them about Warhammer gaming and figure painting.

It occurred to me that I hadn't seen him or heard from him for quite a while, and that he might have some ideas or contacts, so I did some searching online to see if he is still in business. Well, in fact it turns out he isn't. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015 for stabbing someone to death in an argument.

Right.

This is absolutely true, by the way. I'm more than a little shaken by this belated discovery, and I am very relieved to be able to say that I never fell out with the fellow at any time, even though I wasn't thrilled with his painting. Good grief.

Anyway, I now have a number of units in the cupboard - some British dragoons, some skirmishers of the 5/60th and a load of French cannons, which were painted by a convicted murderer. It's not as good as figures painted by Peter Gilder, but it is a potential conversation piece.

Steve St Clair and a quarter of a million friends

Someone sent me the link to this video; I hadn't seen it before, though I would guess it is very famous. If you have concerns about the size of your current project, or if you are running out of space for your collection, check this out.

Major Checkpoint

Time to have my yearly Sensible Look at what is on my list of projects - things that have been going on for a while, things which have crept in through a side entrance or otherwise jumped the queue (including Creeping Elegance items), and things that I want to start on, and which need a proper plan - or at least a better idea of what's involved.

A sanity check, in fact (or charity snack, as Cousin Dave would have put it) - always worthwhile, always throws up a few surprises and decision points, and sometimes gives an opportunity to start something fresh.

This morning's head-scratching produced the following:

Gaming (generally, like) -

Must make time to do some more ECW stuff, must set about organising another campaign (probably boardgame-based in the strategic department), and must do some more work on developing my in-house tweaked variants on C&CN, to allow for extreme ends of the action scale - i.e. smaller and larger than normal. For small actions, I'd like to develop my tactically-enhanced C&C package, in which units have a front and a formation, skirmishing appears in a more explicit form and there is even (perish the thought) a simple unit "quality" test to permit reactive changes of formation. For very large actions, I must have a proper look at C&CN Expansion #6, which deals with EPIC and similar multi-player games (all the more pressing because of the very welcome increase in the social side of my wargaming, in collaboration with Stryker and Goya); I must also do some more work on my Grand Tactical variant of C&CN, in which units are brigades, and weapon ranges and implied groundscale are halved (roughly).

One hefty byproduct of this is that I should also give serious thought to replacing my current battleboards with posh new ones in 18mm MDF - probably in a slightly larger size, and with the number of panels increased to allow games up to full EPIC or La Grande size C&CN. Daunting but probably worthwhile - however much work may have gone into repainting them, my present boards date back to 1972 or so, they are horrible (fragile) ½-inch chipboard, and life has not always been kind to them.

Organising and Painting Armies -

ECW - my armies are probably big enough, but because I bought in and retouched a load of pre-owned figures for Montrose's campaigns there is a proportion which is pretty scruffy - I mean scruffy enough for me to want to do something about it. This means getting in specific replacements for some dubious looking Scottish pikemen, and it probably means that I should get rid of a pile of spare lead which is not going to get painted. Hmmm. OK.

Peninsular War -

All Armies - I'd like to continue to progress my plan to change grouping and basing of generals and staff figures. Nice to do, but no rush.

French Army - I have enough figures for another Division for the Armée de Portugal - probably Bonet's - which will need to be painted and based. I'd like to get on with this, but it's not critical - nothing else depends on it. This is a conscious addition to the Grand Plan. There are some sappers and engineers to paint for siege activities.

This is the makings of the HLI - some fettling and puttying needed...

Anglo-Portuguese - I have the 71st Foot (HLI) on the bottletops to be painted. This may require me to add some more infantry units to make up a brigade to go with them. I'm thinking about this - I have stove-pipe figures which could become (for example) 50th Foot, and I'm sort of thinking about adding the 92nd Gordon Highlanders (don't have figures for these yet). I have a brigade of nice Portuguese infantry figures (4 line battalions and 1 of caçadores) from Hagen which need to be assembled (a bit) and painted, to fill a long overdue vacancy in the Seventh Divn. I also have some new Portuguese staff figures, which are interesting, and Hagen have also produced some splendid Portuguese cavalry - they haven't produced the command figures for these yet, but when they do I will be forced to replace my existing Portuguese cavalry (which are paint conversions based on Dutch-Belgian cuirassiers, as I recall).

1812 Spaniards - a couple more infantry battalions to paint up - nothing urgent.

1809 Spaniards - well now - I worked so hard to collect suitable castings that I now have far too many. This is tricky - it is very easy just to keep adding units to the OOB, but I need to stop this, and probably unload excess figures. I have two big Really Useful Boxes full of unpainted Spaniards, and they weigh a ton - probably a bit silly.

Form an orderly queue - Spanish grenadiers, and odd staff

I still have to finish off a battalion of grenadiers, and I'm also in conversation with Peter Bateman about replacing one of my hussar regts with a unit of converted Hinton-Hunts, which will be nearer the heart's desire.

Apart from that, from the existing lead heap, I have to paint up

- 1 further bn of converged grenadiers (Falcata)

- 2 bns of light infantry (mostly Falcata)

- 2 bns of Foot Guards (specially converted castings)

- 3 regts of Line Cavalry (Hagen)

- 1 regt of dragoons (Hagen)

- a group of infantry pioneers (Falcata)

- some more staff (NapoleoN, Falcata, home conversions)

- 1 more foot battery (mostly Hagen)

...and that's about it. Then I can get rid of the surplus figures, but this is going to hurt!

Something New - a Napoleonic Bavarian Army!

I've been looking at figure samples and swotting up on uniforms and OOBs. My intention is to aim at (as a first stage, anyway) a division of Lefebvre's VII Corps of 1809 - they can fight on the Danube and also against Andreas Hofer in the Tyrol (eventually, pending suitable figures - a campaign for which I have a strange fondness).

Thus my first effort will involve 8 line bns, 2 of jaegers, 2 or 3 regts of cavalry, 2 batteries and a few generals. I already have some figures - Ian very, very kindly sent me some surplus Hinton Hunts, with which I am delighted, and I'm working on building up a suitable stockpile. SHQ are suitable, there are some Hagen figures which look good (haven't got physical samples yet - as ever, size is everything). The Hintons are very nice - I like them - only slight problem with Hintons is that Uncle Marcus made all the Bavarian infantry with plumed helmets, which is only correct for grenadiers, so I would feel obliged to convert (and clone) deplumed fusiliers in goodish numbers. Art Miniaturen are a good source as well, but they are pricey and sometimes their figures are a little delicate for wargaming.

Anyway - early days, but I'm quite excited about this.

So much for sanity - have I decided what priority order these projects will jostle each other into? Well - nearly...

Better have a good rest, to gather my strength.

Elegance Creeps On - a little progress

Finally got the current batch of ADCs finished and based up. There is a bit of a risk with jobs which hang around - after a certain time (how long this is must vary from individual to individual, I guess) I sort of get used to the idea that they are not finished yet, and they can go into a state of limbo.

The replacement figure for Marshal Marmont [Art Miniaturen - henceforward AM]
 with his aides, who are both from Hagen 

...and they leave as elegantly as they arrive

MS Foy [OOP NapoleoN casting] with his ADC [AM] 

Bertrand Clauzel with ADC [both AM]

And Antoine-Louis Popon, Baron Maucune [NapoleoN] with his new staff man [AM].
It is a source of regret to me that there are no known portraits of Maucune - I would
like to know more about the man. He was blamed (unfairly?) for the defeat at
Salamanca, and a couple of other items on his CV suggest that he may have been
very brave but more than a little dumb. It seems appropriate that my Maucune should
be flagrantly ignoring his ADC - reading and obeying orders seems to have been
something of a weak spot... 

Anyway, this is all about my new basing standard for general officers (or Leaders, as they are termed in C&C). I have a fair amount of rebasing to do, so first I have tackled the Armée de Portugal bit of my French army. Apart from the new Marshal Marmont, only the ADCs in these photos are new - the extant generals have just been rebased with their (regulation) staff allocation.

A bit of background here - my Armée de Portugal is based on Salamanca, and is represented by 3 overstrength infantry divisions (the real army had 8 understrength ones) - the cavalry allocation keeps the full establishment of 2 divisions, which suggests an over-provision of cavalry, but my cavalry are a bit weaker than the historic original.

I am unsure what to do with the cavalry division commanders - for this army, both divisions were headed up by a general de brigade, and in each case the gaffer was an ex-staff man, with no obvious cavalry background or affiliation. Accordingly, Messrs Boyer and Curto appear on my table in rather boring regulation dress - a bit lame for supposed sabreurs. I would prefer it if I had some rather more flamboyant figures to deploy - I'm working on it - but I suspect that they were not particularly interesting individuals. Pierre Boyer gained the nickname "Pierre the Cruel" because of his harsh treatment of guerrillas, and there is a nifty portrait sketch of him, with fancy braided jacket and whiskers. However, I would guess from the style of his goatee beard that this is a later picture, from his time in Algeria, where he maintained his reputation for shooting and torturing, probably generating more unrest than he cured.

Beyond that my French army continues with another force, which is a rather vague amalgam of the Armies of Catalonia, Centre and Midi - it's chief role is to fight the partidas, and give a place in the organisation to the more colourful Confederation and Italian troops, and King Joseph's own fine chaps (poor sods). I'll get to their generals shortly.

In the meantime, things are going well.

The Replacement Marshal Marmont

Still on the regulation Tesco milk bottle top, and with his varnish still a little too shiny (it should calm down overnight), here's my new figure of Auguste Marmont, ready for basing. This is a recent Art Miniaturen figure - very nice sculpt - I can't remember who the casting was supposed to be - maybe Rapp - or it could be Berthier. Whatever, it is now Augie Marmont, one of the classic baddies of Napoleonic France. Offhand, I can only think of Bernadotte and maybe Talleyrand who would rate more boos and hisses in the Pantomime of the Emperor. [Oh, yes they would.]

Apart from having a remarkably bad day at Salamanca, and having had the sense to place the interests of his nation above those of his megalomaniac boss at the siege of Paris in 1814, Marshal Marmont fought well throughout his career, and he was also an exceptional administrator. I feel rather guilty about his compromised reputation - it is not helped by my own (MS Foy's) hatchet job on his standing as a general in my (Foy's) own history of the War in the Peninsular. No matter - history has made its judgement. This little metal version of Auguste looks confident enough. He can join his first ADC, and the second ADC will be along in a day or two.

The old Marmont figure in my collection will be recycled and will become Marshal Soult (also Art Miniaturen, the casting was always supposed to be Soult anyway), and I have something rather fancy in the way of an ADC lined up for that particular group. That will be a bit later. I attach a splendid, borrowed photo of a large figure of Marshal Soult's ADC, which has nothing at all to do with me, just to give an idea - you may imagine what my Old School attempt at painting a mounted 20mm version might be like, but you may feel free to admire my optimism...

Louis Brun de Villeret, Soult's ADC in Spain

Lancelot? - 1000 and still rambling

The flow of finished staff officers is merely a dribble at present - Chateau Foy is being painted on a grand scale, so there are more rollers in evidence than No.1 brushes. This is all good - we now realise that our lovely white house had acquired a definite shade of pale green.

However, here's one new arrival. This is the first of the figures for the new-format "Marshal Marmont" command stand - the castings are from Hagen - the rider is from a useful pack of assorted ADCs and the horse, I believe, is a Turkish Crimean horse, but it is fine. It is a well known fact [bluff] that French ADCs were much given to Turkish military fashion - or was it Egyptian? Whatever - it's fine.

This is one of Marmont's aides - he might be 2nd Lt Lancelot-Meunier, of the 15e Chasseurs (sadly I do not know his first name), who was on Marmont's personal staff at Los Arapiles - he adds a bit more colour and variety to the army. It is not inappropriate to have a Lancelot in my Peninsular War collection - the brigade commander for King Joseph's Guard is a General Merlin, after all, and the British Big Boss is a bloke named Arthur, so it all fits together nicely.

Lancelot's companions will be along shortly - they are undercoated and ready for their treatment.

I am surprised to learn that this is my 1000th post on this blog. For anyone who reads this stuff on any kind of regular basis, I can only offer my sincere thanks and my sympathy - I really didn't expect to have this much to say. As a monument to self-indulgence and rambling verbosity it is not without significance, I guess. As my late cousin used to say, "I hadn't realised you could pile it so high". Back in the beginning, the blog was described as "discursive" - a term which was maybe not without a faint pejorative resonance.

Spot on!

More French Command - on a run now...

And here are some more. This is the missing artillery command stand - they can also be in charge of the French Siege Train if and when it gets out of the box. The standing figures are from TM1815's set TM-F0002 - French Staff Officers - which are available online from Hagen; the mounted chap is Hinton Hunt FN224, because I have a couple of spares, because it's a figure for which I have a long-standing affection and to get the Old School brownie points score up a bit.

Pleased with these - I'm still not quite sure what artillery commanders do in a wargame, but they can stand around and look smart, I guess. You will observe that they are based on one of my new-house-standard 50x50 jobs (which, strictly speaking, is the size for a Division Commander) and they have the regulation black border, which is used for artillery, engineering and logistics command stands.

Those French ADCs are fun to paint. I must say I do enjoy painting these odd command figures - they don't numb the brain to the same extent as, say, two dozen identical fusiliers.

New Faith in the Clean Spirit?

After 3 weeks in the Clean Spirit jar, my Qualiticast French command figures had come up very nicely, thank you, so a couple of evenings of brushwork later I have put them back on their little scenic baseboard. There is still some artistic touching-up required on the basing, but here is the new French HQ - it's been a long time coming - I must have bought these figures on eBay five or six years ago.

All freshly painted - apparently invigorated by 3 weeks in the magic stripper.
In the middle distance, young Jean-Aristide gets his instructions from the
Adjudant-Commandant, while his elders and betters appear to be unsure
exactly where the enemy might be. The duty guard from the 3rd Hussars
are probably bored stiff. 

I have quite a few new staff figures to paint up, so that will keep me busy, but I shall also set up a trial jar of Simple Green. No need for hurry, but let's get on with it. I have some pre-owned Les Higgins Frenchmen who will appreciate the experience, I'm sure.

Latest off-the-wall suggestions for stripping model paints are Coca Cola (which I've heard before) and tomato ketchup (which is a new one on me). At the moment I'm happy with the Clean Spirit test results, now I'll set up a Simple Green batch - that's enough excitement for this month.

This and That, and Some of the Other

Odds and ends, really.

Topic 1: The Figure Stripping Trials

Getting a breather from the Clean Spirit

Following previous laments about this, and plentiful advice, I have now had the set of Qualiticast French Napoleonic staff figures steeping in a sealed jar of Bartoline Clean Spirit for two weeks, so I decided it was time to see how they are getting on. I fished one of them out, scrubbed down with water and a (rather soft) toothbrush, and did a little exploratory picking with a penknife point. Not bad at all. What I have done now is I put him back in the Clean Spirit with his pals, and we'll see how they are doing in another two weeks. As mentioned by Doug, the big advantages of this stuff are:

(1) - it is unbelievably cheap - a bottle about the size of a wine bottle is about £2-something out of Homebase.

(2) - it is non-toxic - hardly smells of anything - you can soak figures in it forever without damaging the metal - it would do plastic too, it's safe to handle, and you can flush it down the kitchen drain without wrecking your pipes or the environment.

(3) - it seems to work - pretty well, if you like slow and steady rather than quick and life-threatening. I'm interested to see how the residual fragments of paint get on over another two weeks, and - of course - see how easily the paint comes off figures which have been in the bath for a month. Good so far.

I also ordered a bottle of Simple Green, which was much more expensive, and has just arrived - it took a fortnight to get here (posted from Germany, I see, though I ordered it from a UK firm).

If I can find a suitable figure or two, I'll start another trial jar of Simple Green.

Good this - almost scientific, in a pathetic sort of way. I'll report back. They won't be sneering when I get my Nobel Prize...


Topic 2: A Delayed Make-Over

Pontes Bellonae

After I saw some recent photos of my old Bellona bridges, I suddenly realised that they are very crudely presented - I slapped some paint on them about 45 years ago, and that's how they've stayed. They get a fair amount of use, but every time I see them I think, "Oh, there's the old Bellona bridges", and completely fail to register that they are a bit scruffy. This is very odd - if I'd paid a lot of money for some piece of imported resin exotica I would be carefully drybrushing the life out of it before I let anyone see it.

I decided it would be a simple matter to smarten up the Bellona chaps a bit - so I did it last night. Dark brown undercoat, drybrush with two shades of stone. Not a brilliant job, but surely an improvement. Why did it take so long? No idea - low prestige project? - other things to do? - kept forgetting? - some other reason?

Doesn't matter. Done.


Topic 3: This One under Wraps for a While

Drop me a line

What's this then, Foy?

Well, it's fishing line - pretty strong fishing line. It is my latest outside-the-envelope idea for solving what has become something of a bugbear problem in the figure preparing and painting department. There will be some experiments, and if I have any success I'll come out of the cupboard and bore everyone silly. If it doesn't work, I'll just never mention it again.

How can we lose?

Poppycock! - another damned waste of bleach

Some of us are destined not to be successful strippers - we just have to face up to the fact. I would love it if bleach worked for me - I keep allowing myself to be duped into trying it again.

I'm currently having a minor blitz on a pile of French command figures which are waiting to be painted - I've just spent a day and and a half, filing and fettling and supergluing - mostly Hagen and Art Miniaturen figures - really rather enjoyed myself. This is partly aimed at shifting some more of the painting queue, but also at moving to my new basing standard for general officers - it may take a while to get there, but the idea is to have brigadiers based on their own, division commanders based in twos (a general + an ADC) and army commanders in threes (a general + 2 staff). I have a nice supply of figures just itching to be painted and based - all good stuff.

I made very good progress, and while I was at it I thought it would be a good idea to do something (at long last) about a Qualiticast command group I bought on eBay - it's been in the cupboard for a couple of years. Problems with it are (1) the group includes Napoleon [gasp], and (2) the group has been professionally painted, to a standard which does not please me. The painting is, to employ a technical term, crap. I could - and shall - do better myself.

So I prised the Qualiticast figures off their little diorama base, being careful to preserve the table (with map) and the scenic drum, crossed myself and placed the figures lovingly in some nice new bleach I had bought specially. I took care to avoid bubbles, and checked they were all covered to a good depth, and left them for 36 hours. When I felt they were ready, I rinsed them off, rubbed them down with the regulation toothbrush and had a speculative pick with the official penknife.

These are not, you will notice, what are termed unpainted figures

They are now drying. When they are dry I shall stick them in the hated Nitromors, or hand remover as it is known here. That will do the job. Speak not to me of bleach, nor Dettol, nor Buckfast tonic wine, nor Fairy Dust - all that can be said for my most recent bleach attempt is that I am very unlikely now to catch any infection from the figures, but the paint on them has become "a little spoilt" rather than "gone", which is the state I had hoped for.

If bleach works for you then you have my envy and my respect - it does not work for me. The number of times I have proved this to myself, you would think I would have got the hang of the idea by now.

Not to worry. Progress consists of small steps. I think Goethe said that. It might have been the Chuckle Brothers, in fact.

****** Late Edit ****** (Saturday night, 1st July)

Nice clean, airtight Douwe Egberts jar containing the Clean Spirit experiment
 - give it a couple of weeks. I'll set up another trial when the Simple Green arrives.

Bordering on Command

This is a figure I've had lying around, undercoated, for years. Enthusiasts may recognise another vintage Alberken/Minifigs20mm OPC commander - this one starting life as the casting for Lt.Gen "Daddy" Hill. I have now painted him up as a senior field officer of the Royal Artillery. One issue I had with the casting was that there is a very prominent shoulder belt, over the LEFT shoulder - for which I could find no use. Given this fellow's map (no, it's not a towel), and the artillery role I've given him, the rogue shoulder belt became a leather strap for his map case. Of course, I hear you say. What else could it be?

I'll come back to this figure in a while - for the moment, observe that his base has a black border.

I've been asked a few times in the past, what is the significance of the coloured borders around the edges of the bases of the senior officers in my armies? Primarily, it makes them easy to spot, but occasionally I myself have questioned this system - house rules can sometimes live on as tradition long after the original reasoning is lost. For my ECW armies, for example, I dropped the coloured borders; I don't think I will, but just occasionally I have wondered if it might be a good idea to retrofit them, after all.

It all dates back to 1970-something, when I was using Don Featherstone's rules (gradually replaced by Charlie Wesencraft, then - later - by the WRG, which was the beginning of a period which I refer to vaguely as The Disillusionment...). In these rules, a simple morale test made use of whether a unit still had its officer present - fellow veterans and game historians will probably be able to identify just which rules these might have been. To help with this rule, I made sure that all unit officers were based on their own, and - to make it easier to spot them in moments of crisis - I painted a dark green rim around the edge of the base. This worked pretty well. I extended this to brown for brigade commanders, white for division commanders and yellow ochre (?) for army commanders. Yellow ochre? - well, the original idea was that I should use vaguely earth-type colours, which would not be too offensive against the house pea-soup green bases and tabletop.

Yes - I know, I know. The pea-soup is already something of an affront to the visual side of things, so picking colours which blended with it seems odd. It's OK - you just mutter the words "Old School" under your breath, and everything is fine. In fact, if I work at it, I can even dredge up a little genial ridicule of other people's armies, where the soldiers carefully drag a lovingly-prepared hearthrug of flock and cat-litter around with them - even along roads and into rivers. I am, of course, jesting. The point is, it's OK.

In a spasm of commonsense, I eventually replaced the unimpressive yellow ochre with a distinctive colour for the army, so that the Anglo-Portuguese army had a red border for its commander, the French blue, and - later - the Spanish had yellow. Yes - all right - yellow isn't great for Spain, but it isn't red or blue and it hadn't already been given a reserved meaning.

Righto. Time passed (that was the easy bit) and I was no longer using regimental officers for this morale rule - though it's always tempting to retain the coding system just in case I wish to use it again in the future. The result was that, long after it had ceased to have any significance, I was still devoutly painting up my units with dark green borders around the regimental officers. A major rebasing project eventually put a stop to that for the infantry and artillery - all command figures are now just glued onto a multiple base, with some of their subordinates, and no bordering colour is added. My regiments still have some way to go with liberté and fraternité, but we have at least made a start with egalité.

However, for the cavalry it persists. Now I would really be pushed to come up with a sensible justification for it, but any new cavalry units I add still have the officer on his own individual base, bordered in good old dark green. The only reason this still makes any sense at all is that - especially in campaigns - it is a commonplace for cavalry colonels to have to take over a brigade, particularly given the horrifying casualty rates in the cavalry arm in my battles. So, just occasionally, a colonel with a green border has been a useful addition to a battlefield, when acting up as a brigadier. I think that one day I shall probably get rid of the green borders on the cavalry, but I'm currently in that twilight, it's-a-tradition-no-it-isn't phase.

I am now slowly moving onto a Creeping Elegance project to change the basing standard for field officers - division commanders are to have an attached ADC, army commanders to have 2 supporting staff - so this gives me an opportunity to reconsider the coloured borders. I think I'll probably keep them.

Fine. Now, if I go right back to 1970-something, I did have an additional classification of field officers. I was aware that proper historical OOBs would identify an overall commander for the artillery, and maybe for the engineers. Since I wasn't sure whether such a fellow would equate to a brigade or division commander in my army organisation, I took an escape route and came up with a separate border colour - black - for officers of what I grouped as "service arms". Thus all commanders of artillery and engineering get a black rim around the base.

Only problem now is - I've never had one! I was never sure what I would use him for (my crass ignorance of how real armies worked is a major contributor to this), and other types of painting jobs always took priority.

Which - at long last - brings me back to the photo at the beginning of this post - long, long ago. I have painted up the old Alberken Hill figure to represent a senior officer of British artillery. I was going to make him Lt.Col Hoylett Framingham in my Peninsular army, but I find that Framingham was in any case a RHA officer, and was absent after being wounded at Talavera, so I'm still pondering his identity. I intend also to add Alex Dickson (a man from Kelso, as it happens) to look after the siege train and all that - Dickson will be in Portuguese uniform, I think. I should also have a commander of engineering. I think it might be appropriate for him to be on foot, and he will have the earlier (blue) uniform. I still haven't really got a clue how these fellows will be used on the toy battlefield (a puzzle with which some real generals of history might empathise, come to think of it), but here, gentlemen, after only some 40-odd years, is my first field officer with a black border.

I shall now, for shame's sake, dig out SGP Ward's Wellington's Headquarters to remind myself how this stuff worked...


***** Very Late Edit *****

I found some old pics of the Picton and Napoleon Alberken figures mentioned in this post and the comments, so here they are again...

I'm also reminded that, though Napoleon came in an eBay job lot, Picton was very kindly given to me by the Old Metal Detector - apologies for my error - one of wargaming's true gentlemen. Thanks yet again, Clive!

Napoleon playing the part of someone else