A Touch of Class

One of the things which continues to delight me in the world of wargaming blogs is the kindness people have shown to me over the years. I've been on the receiving end of a number of gifts and favours which have often far surpassed anything I might have expected (or might have deserved).

This last week I received a parcel from one Aly Morrison, gentleman and sculptor/painter extraordinaire. Included in this package was a unit of painted French cuirassiers, as he had promised, in return for something I had sent him - as is often the case, the repayment was out of all scale to my original effort. I'm really very pleased with them, so now I have based them up I thought I would share some pictures.

12eme Cuirassiers

The figures are 1970s PMD (Les Higgins). I am impressed not only by the painting, but by the quality of the conversion work. The Higgins range was a bit eccentric in some ways - there never was a cuirassier officer, but there was a dragoon trumpeter which would work well with the cuirassiers. When Aly first mentioned that he had some figures he would paint up for me, I had a brief wonder about what I would do for command - usually I have used Art Miniaturen figures in recent years.

I underrated the man. Not only did he convert a couple of troopers to provide an officer and a standard bearer (a feat which I have been known to achieve by painting the epaulettes silver, and maybe going for a black sheepskin) - he carved off the carbines and all the support belting and cartridge pouches, he corrected the eagle bearer by removing one of his epaulettes and adding a sword handle to the top of his scabbard, and he removed the officer's portmanteau, recarving the dog-tooth sheepskin edging which is now exposed.

Detail close-up of the carving on the officer conversions

I am, as they used to say, knocked out. My cavalry reserve becomes bigger and better. Let's see Stryker chase this lot the length of the Danube, then.

Thanks, Aly - really pleased with them.

WSS - More Imperial Foot

The painting is still coming along nicely. As promised two weeks ago, the next hefty batch is refurbished and finished - flags apart. Another four battalions of Austrians.

As this job continues, I'm starting to get to the rather more battered parts of the hoard (horde?), so the clean-up work becomes more substantial, and in this case I had to supply about 15% of new figures, painted from scratch. To avoid any culture shock, or obvious silliness in the line-up, I have started painting the new figures in a style which is unfamiliar to me, with black outlining, to match the originals. This is slow going, but I have enjoyed the challenge, the results are quite pleasing, and it is a good exercise for me to have to produce finished soldiers painted "in the style of" the previous owner. Certainly the new boys fit in well enough with the refurbed old ones for me to have to look carefully to tell them apart.

There you go, you see - forging antiques; my teachers said I would come to no good.

Two battalions each for the regiments of Thürheim (left) and Gschwind. Not a flag in sight, of course, but that should be sorted out in the next few weeks

Next batch of Imperialists will be another of the same size, 72 figures, and that will be Phase One finished, apart from general officers. Lots of flags to do now - the new arrivals have to wait in a lengthening queue for their flags, but I'm coming around to that. Something should happen there soon.

You can see the large command bases in the centre of each unit, with the mini-dice frame at the rear. The research team here at Chateau Foy came up with a design which would make a column 150mm long or a line 150mm wide. No reason, really, just OCD at work.

Immediate plans for what happens after Phase One are to add two battalions of grenadiers to the Bavarians, two more battalions of Austrians (blue - Baden-Baden - for a bit of variety) and a small batch of foot dragoons for the Austrians.

I'm trying to keep this painting frenzy organised, so I don't lose all enthusiasm for the task. I'm (roughly) working 6 days on, 3 days off, I limit each session to two hours max and take a lot of trouble over keeping things tidy and putting everything away at the end of a batch. I think the attic area may become rather hot for extended painting sessions as the Summer comes in, but the night shifts are good [no extra pay, though]. Radio 3 on permanently during painting hours - I've sat through more screeching sopranos than usual over the last few days, but generally very calming.

The two-hour shift rule works nicely - I also try to keep my hands off the soldiers during my days off, or else I just get distracted and fiddle about, which, overall, dampens the mojo.

Strange times, so if I can delude myself that I'm staying organised - however petty the context - I find it helps. I am not painting because I have nothing else to do, I'm painting because I choose to do so.

My thanks to Stryker for advice on painting in this style - much appreciated. Keep well, everyone - look after yourselves and each other.

WSS - Things I Need to Find Out - (1) Grenadiers

The sudden arrival here of a collection of miniature soldiers for the WSS at the end of last year was partly because I had always had a (vague) interest in that time-frame for wargames, partly because such a collection had become available and, importantly, because it seemed a relatively easy way into a new period - not exactly buying a new war off the peg, but certainly getting off to a flying start.

Since then I have been busily reading and refurbing and painting - all good fun, but no games yet.

My original plan was to attempt to develop the Bavarian and Austrian armies at equal pace, so that I could start playing with them as early as possible, and develop my rules as I went along. That's what I did, with some success, for the ECW a few years ago. So for the WSS I started off like this, but it soon became obvious that I could make quickest progress if I concentrated on the Bavarians first.

Various reasons, in no particular order:

(1) The miniature Bavarian army, for some reason, was in better shape - less breakages, less paint deterioration, less men AWOL.

(2) The Bavarian army seemed a lot less complicated - less daunting - organisationally and as a painting challenge. Also, the Bavarian troops I had bought in represented just about the whole of the historical army, so there were no tricky decisions about an OOB. The Imperialist set-up is a lot more tricky, I would have to make some decisions about the OOB, to give some kind of historical context (though in fact my planned OOB has more to do with the facing colours of the existing collection!).

(3) There are some aspects of the Austrian organisation which I haven't yet got a grip on - though I am acquiring some impressive-looking books. I just have to read the beggars now.

(4) The whole subject of WSS flags is a lot more complicated for the Imperial side. This may seem trivial, but for me it isn't.

I've now reached a suitable moment for a bit of a sanity check. I have two big batches remaining of troops to refurb for the Austrians, then my Phase One plan is pretty much complete, if I can get the numbers of staff figures up to scratch. I'm due to start painting again on Thursday, and I'm not sure that painting and thinking at the same time is as easy as it used to be. There is, though, a need for me to do something about grenadiers.

So today's subject is grenadiers. How did the Austrians arrange their grenadiers? How shall I paint and base the grenadier element in my Austrian army? I'll start this by interrupting myself, and returning briefly to describe what I'm doing for the Bavarians.

Bavarian Leibregiment grenadier - plate by Anton Hoffman

Thus far, for the Bavarians, I have arranged a few grenadiers in the right-hand base of each battalion, to indicate that there was a grenadier company present, but they serve no real purpose beyond the important one of looking nice. My games are unlikely to operate at a tactical scale where the grenadier company is detached to do something specific. I still do have the job of painting up two proper grenadier battalions for the Bavarians, though. My understanding is that the Leibregiment had two battalions of fusiliers (which I have painted already), and one of grenadiers (which I haven't) - this grenadier battalion was a designated unit in its own right, wore a slightly different uniform from the fusiliers and had its own flags etc.

OK - good so far. In 1703 or thereabouts, a regiment of (supposedly) French emigrés was to be set up, organised the same as the Leibregiment. According to the autobiography of Jean-Martin de la Colonie (who had expected to be the colonel of this new unit, but eventually was appointed lieutenant colonel), the fusilier battalions were never formed, though the grenadiers certainly were, and can be found on the OOB for Schellenberg - the Boismorel Grenadiers. The inhaber, Monsieur Boismorel himself, was a Frenchman (his name, I think, is a kind of forest mushroom, which is not important at this point, but is the kind of nonsense that interests me), and his personal ambition, according to Colonie, was to stay as far from any warfare as he could. The Boismorel boys have the appeal of offering some variety in the uniforms - dark red, in this case. Some of them wore grenadier caps, some wore tricorns - a welcome bit of colour on the wargames table and - again - they were a distinct, permanent grenadier formation with their own flag.

Righto - so that's what I'm doing for the Bavarians, now, for goodness sake, let's get back to the Austrians.

Austrian Grenadier on the left - image used without permission

There was a grenadier presence in the Austrian bit of the collection I bought in, but I am intending to change it. Based on what I have established so far (which is not very much), the Austrians would group together the grenadiers from the regiments within a brigade, thus the provisional battalions formed would be separate from the fusiliers, but would not have flags, and the facings and so on would be a mixture of the contributing regiments. This is kind of familiar to me, since this is what I have tried to reproduce for my Napoleonic Spanish army of 1809.

So my first question for this new Age of Reason is, did the Austrians organise their grenadiers by brigade, in this way? Am I right in assuming that the battalions thus formed would have no flags of their own, since they were informal groupings? Which leads me on to the practical issue of how I should base such units. My Foot battalions for the WSS are organised as 3 bases of 6 figures - each base is two rows of three men, the centre base holds the command presence - colours, mounted officer, drums - while each flank base includes one officer on foot. The bases can be used to denote the formation, but they do not operate independently, and are not removed for losses.

This is now getting into thinking out loud (or in print), but if I were to combine the grenadiers from two regiments for a brigade, for example, I could have one base of grenadiers painted for each regiment (I could even include a drummer in each such base) - not sure if I need a command base, nor how such a base would be made up, but now we are getting into fiddly detail. I could make a grenadier battalion from just two such bases - I'll have a look at the numbers in the books and see if that would make sense.

At that point I think I've conveyed the nub of the problem. Beyond that I'm going to embarrass myself with my own lack of knowledge! If you have experience of the WSS on the tabletop, I'm keen to learn how you think the Austrians organised their grenadiers, and how you set this up in miniature. All ideas welcome!

If this goes well, my next questions will be about the nippy issue of Austrian flags in 1703!...

WSS - Another Batch of Cavalry

It took me three days (not very intensive days) to paint the remaining cavalry which were still in the current queue. About half that time was needed to refurbish those figures I could lift pretty much straight from Eric's collection (with facing changes and a bit of cleaning up), and about half to paint the missing command figures from scratch.

From front to rear, these are the (Bavarian) Santini Dragoons, the (Bavarian) Leib Garde and the (Imperialist) Aufsess Dragoons. Not a flag in sight, as yet. I have a good image of the flag for the Aufsess boys, courtesy of one of the Bruno Mugnai books, but have come up with nothing at all yet for the Bavarian dragoons - maybe they didn't carry them in the field? Nah - there's men with poles waiting for them, so if I can't get authentic flag images I'll invent my own. I've a lot of flags to do, so I'll have a graphic-design week later on.

The Aufsess unit (grey coats) are actually Franconian, from the Fränkische Kreis - I chose them because I had pre-painted troops in very similar coat colours - no better reason for selection could be imagined! The dismounted dragoon contingent for the Aufsess are now in the queue - I have the figures, I just have to paint them.

The Leib Garde (blue) are actually [heavy] horse; the squadron with the red belts and facings are the Carabiniers, the squadron with black are the Hartschiere.

No excuses left now - the next job must be the first of the remaining big Austrian foot batches - 4 battalions, I think. I'll clear the decks and have a couple of days break before I disappear into that lot.

I had a very pleasant walk on my own yesterday on the farm - during one of the few sunny spells of the day. I walked down to one of the farm's reservoirs - really just a big rainwater sink which they use to pipe water on to the fields. There must be fish in the reservoir - I saw a swan, about half a dozen geese and a few ducks, and a spooky heron took off as soon as I appeared. Strange creatures, herons - they take off like a lorry-load of scaffolding. I also saw and heard the skylarks busy over the farm fields, so I guess they were trying to distract my attention from their nests.

Very therapeutic, anyway.

Keep well, everyone.

WSS - Just Can't Get the Staff

As a change from the mass batches, I've been working on some command figures for the Bavarians. Quite pleased with the results, though my new "shiny" period keeps surprising me with just how shiny it is!

Bavarian Army Command

 This is an Army Commander base, which in my house system is a 60mm x 60 base of three figures. The standard is that of the Elector - that may be him (or one of his chaps) with his hat off, accompanied by a senior officer and a standard bearer. The figures are by Irregular - nice little sculpts.

Most of my Staff figures will probably be conversions of Les Higgins castings - there aren't too many needed, but it's important to get a decent amount of variety - few things are as stupid as synchronised line-dancing generals.

Before anyone mocks the state of the lawn, it was mown on Saturday, so some respect would be appropriate. Which reminds me - I was looking at photos of HG Wells wargaming in the garden - how on earth did he get the soldiers to stand up on his lawn? I have difficulty understanding how he got them to stand up on the attic floor, which is less of a challenge.

WSS - Bavarian Return - 2nd April

A day late and the usual dollar short, I got the four remaining battalions finished - they have still to get their flags, but I'll leave that to my next flagging session.

Because they are not strictly finished (without flags), and because I feel there's probably a limit to the number of photos I can post of the same units which say, "Look - I've done the red paint now...", I thought a quick group photo of progress to date with the Bavarian army might be an idea.

Some kind of infestation in the attic

Here they are - the new battalions are the ones at the rear without flags. I also have another unit of dragoons on the bottletops, ready for a Henry Ford-style refurb-factory touch-up, and similarly for the Guard Horse - they should be quite quick, I think. Other than that I have plans to get a couple of battalions of grenadiers painted - this will be proper painting from bare metal, and I'll probably send these out to a pro painter. In passing, I might mention that one of the two painters I currently use responded rather flippantly to my query about whether he was taking on work during the plague; he said that there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary panic about some sort of flu epidemic. This was a couple of weeks ago, so maybe he has had time to revise his views. Certainly I imagine he will have been obliged to close his shop - I hope he survived. There's a lot of view-revision going on at present, and no mistake, so no snarky questions, please.

Beyond the outstanding cavalry and dragoons and the proposed add-on grenadiers, the army does look a bit light on horse generally. I have a couple of French regiments they might borrow - I'll think about it. Oh yes - I have done nothing at all about staff figures, so I'll get that organised, too. I was hoping to use some Lancer Miniatures figures for generals, but they do not match well - the guys are built like toads. Sorry about that - they are beautifully cast, but it's my army and they are not getting to play - I'll stick with Irregular and Higgins and conversions thereupon for the time being.

The photo is taken on the attic floor, as discussed, but I couldn't squeeze in and didn't have my pipe handy. The light is good up there, though, with two big Velux roof-windows. I'll take a better "parade" photo when there are more flags. Very odd, actually. I spent the photo session paralysed with anxiety in case the soldiers got damaged on the floor, though there was no-one else in the house, and I had no immediate plans to stand on them. HG Wells must have been very tough.


I've removed the remaining Austrians from the community foot-bath, and faithfully paid my dues for a couple of afternoons, scraping off someone else's damned old flock, so now they are packed into house-issue battalion boxes (freezer packs) and will be ready for work soon.

Now I'm going to tidy everything away and have a few days off painting - 6 battalions retouched in 11 days is a rate of progress I haven't come close to for many years. Now I'll do some reading. While I'm on this high-energy roll I might as well see if I can read some history books without falling asleep.

WSS - French Books and That

Progress with my Henry Ford-style production of a big refurb batch has been pretty good - never since the golden days of my purchase of Peter Welsh's Napoleonic collection has anything as mind-numbing as this taken place here. All being well, I should have 4 more battalions based and flagged by Wednesday (famous last words).

Before I started this latest batch - two battalions each of Bavarian IR Bettendorf and IR Kurprinz, to be retouched and freshened up. The ultimate Henry Ford touch would be to spray them all black, but I'll try not to do that

Assuming I don't destroy my morale completely in the next few days, the plan would be to do two further, similarly-sized batches, this time Imperialists, over the coming weeks. They may be rather more fiddly, since there are more replacement figures needed, and my research into flags is - how do you say? - doing my head in.

Anyway, all good. Since I will certainly become very peculiar if I paint all day, I am deliberately setting aside non-painting times, so some suitable reading is going on too.

I also have some British troops to refurbish, and I've been dipping a toe into the subject of the French army for the WSS. I have the CS Grant paperbacks on the period, and I've been very kindly sent some copies of uniform plates and old magazine articles, but I thought I should get something just a little heavier, to give me some good background and some reliable detail. My French forces will be starting from zero, so it would be useful to build up a small army for 1703 which can sensibly grow (God willing) into a rather larger army without too much disruption and too many U-turns.

I intend to buy Mark Allen's book, which gets some criticism because it is not The Bible, but it looks very useful anyway. Rene Chartrand is also an obvious source, but I start to get into problems with potential overlap between different publishers (primarily Osprey and Helion), and also there are a lot of books with similar sounding titles.

This is a period for which it is possible to spend money very quickly and find that what you have bought isn't quite what you were looking for. I have obtained titles by Robert Hall and Bruno Mugnai on the Austrian army, but I'm aware that trying to doing anything like this for the French is risky and potentially ruinous. Thus I am starting out at a gentle stroll.

I identified the following as books I could get easily and without huge expense - I'm still dithering about this, so would welcome any comments.

This last title is potentially interesting but, looking at the contents summary, am I to gather that this covers the Line Cavalry etc only up to 1697? Hmmm.

Unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, I might start with a few French units that would be OK at Schellenberg (for example), but could grow into a larger presence. My War of the Spanish Succession is very likely to be almost an imagi-nations set-up, with long-winded and largely imaginary campaigns between Bavaria and Austria to start with. [To quote from the Gallacher Book of Axioms, "If actual history is useful on a particular occasion, then use it, otherwise it's just a luxury (like the sick-bag on an aeroplane journey)".]

Anyway, British and French are a little over the horizon, but could come into sight fairly soon. Thinking and reading about them can't do any harm.

After a late rush of maniacs last weekend, the beach here at the farm has now been closed to the public (well, closed to their cars, which is effectively the same thing), so here's a sort of post-apocalyptic photo - by 9am on Saturday, the only footprints are mine.

Look after yourselves - please keep well. I'm also intrigued by the reported huge demand for dried chick-peas - is this recommended stuff for the fallout shelter? Any good recipes will be welcome.

WSS - I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues

Today I have started on the re-furbing of a big batch of Bavarian infantry - this one is four battalions. Yes, matron, you are right - I must be crazy, but it is only a heavy touch-up job, and I have a few days to get it done.

One slight complication I have here is that Eric painted the Regiment Kurprinz (2 bns of this) with black facings - I wish to have the facings light blue, as per the regs, so I must overpaint the cuffs and coat turnovers. This sounds simple enough - first issue is that whatever I do is going to be a compromise, since the coats of the chaps in the regiment are painted in slightly differing shades of blue - I'm not worried about this, since I can always claim that the uniforms would vary, not to mention fade, and I'm sure those big fancy cuffs weren't made of the same material as the main bit of the coat. OK - good, that's Bluff #1. The next challenge is to choose a decent shade of blue to do the job. It doesn't have to perfect, but should not be ridiculous - if I can't find a suitable shade for the cuffs, one of the alternatives might be to paint the coats as well, which doesn't strike me as an attractive idea.

Illustration borrowed from WSS Bavarians blog, which, in turn, borrowed it from Anton Hoffman's book

Next slight problem is that my colour vision has never been such that I would bet the farm on it, so I decided to involve the Contesse in the decision making.

I find that I have 22 different shades of blue, and that's without getting to the enamels and the model railway colours. A great many could be rejected out of hand, since they were obviously too dark - some others had congealed, of course, which is always a risk. I roughed out a short list, and painted some blotches on clean white photographic paper. Since I rather enjoyed painting the big blue blobs, I have included a scan of the sample sheet.

You would think that Foundry's Bavarian Cornflower Blue would be a good shout, and that is what I've used for my Napoleonic Bavarians, but in the early 1700s it seems that the uniform colour was much paler. I'm delighted to announce that the Contesse and I - independently! - both chose Coat d'Arms #206 Light Blue, which should be close enough - so that's something I don't need to worry about any further. Mission accomplished.

*************

To restate the theme of this post, here's the excellent Robben Ford, when he was much younger than he is today, playing live on Italian TV, a very slow version of his interpretation of Mose Allison's arrangement of Duke Ellington's classic song (are you following this?), I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues. You may not like his ponytail, but I think it's hard to find fault with the music.

Take that.

WSS - Another Two Battalions Ready

Maffei at the front, Luetzelburg at the rear. All ready to be hidden away in the boxes. I've smartened them up a bit, but these are still identifiable as from the original 1970s army, which is what I intended, so I'm pleased with that! 

I finished off the Bavarian battalions I was working on - this morning I painted the bases, fitted the magnetic sheet, added the flags. The boys are now safely away in their box. Good. Next up could be another two Bavarian units of foot, or I could knuckle down to scraping the flock off the Austrians who are in the foot-bath. What I'll do, I think, is tidy up a bit, have a coffee and do a little reading - I have Mark Allen's old magazine articles about the French army of the WSS - I have no idea when or where they were published, but they are a very good source for a novice like me.

I was going to arrange a group photo of all the Bavarians I have ready for action, but decided against it - I'll get to that another time - the gaps still irritate me! For a while I was sorting out the boxes, crawling around on the attic floor in a way that I would have found extremely natural when I was eleven or thereabout - the knees must be in better shape than I thought!

When I do the Bavarian group picture, maybe the attic floor would be a good setting - shades of HG Wells, too.

For the Bavarians, I have now completed the following:

IR D'Octfort
IR Tattenbach
Leibregt (2 Bns)
IR Spilberg
IR Haxthausen (2 Bns)
IR Maffei
IR Luetzelburg
Monasterol Dragoons
Arco Cuirassiers
Weichel Cuirassiers
4 guns & crews

I have to complete refurbishment of:

IR Kurprinz (2 Bns)
IR Bettendorf (2 Bns)
Garde Karabinere
Santini Dragoons

And I have yet to start:

Leibregt Grenadier Bn
Boismorel Grenadiers
All the General Staff

 Set out like that, somehow it looks like progress is being made!

I think I have made something of a decision this morning - I may change my mind, of course! While sorting through the various units in the WSS boxes, I got confused a couple of times by the fact that the Bavarian and Austrian cavalry look very similar. The units are all fitted with 5mm dice frames, to carry status scores in my new rules. They have white dice fitted at present, but I also have red and blue mini-dice of the same size, so I think I'll issue the Bavarians with blue dice, to avoid any embarrassing mistakes! Stryker can tell you about such mistakes.

WSS - A Trickle of Bavarians

Up early this morning - I went for a walk down to the beach, when it would be quiet, I reckoned. Quiet? - deserted is more like it. Haven't seen the place as quiet as this since the Foot & Mouth epidemic of 2001, when the farm was closed to the public.

The farm company have fixed the road up from the beach, past the old ruin of Adam Otterburn's Auldhame Tower - peaceful up there

I made good progress yesterday with finishing some odds and ends for the WSS project (a gun that never got varnished, a few colonels who have now been painted and can join their regiments - stuff like that), then I put about 8 battalions-worth of Austrian Foot into (appropriately) the foot-bath, to soak off the old bases and clean them up, and set to work to refurbish 2 more of the Bavarian battalions. Nothing arduous, just gently working away at them, drinking plenty of coffee and water and listening to Dominic Miller. The Austrians can chill out for a couple days.

These old troops are Les Higgins figures, from Eric Knowles' old collection - they will not take a huge amount of work to get ready to fight, but there are a lot of them, and refurbishment is always subject to creeping scope, as I have discussed many times before - when you start with the brushes, you suddenly decide that there's more to do than you planned for. Eric's WSS Bavarians were in pretty good shape, considering they must have been painted in the 1970s. My work, apart from freshening the paint, is to change the organisation (I use rather smaller units, apply nice, toy-soldier gloss varnish and rebase). Eric's army shows obvious evidence of having used CS Grant's From Pike to Shot as his prime source, and he has faithfully reproduced the odd howler and spelling mistake! Many of the glitches in CSG's book look like transcription errors - someone in the reference chain misread someone else's handwriting, or (as I do) had problems with German print.

Eric's Austrians are a bit further from what I have in mind for them, since he appears to have aimed at a sort of middle-ground army that would sort of fit the WAS, and the uniforms are a bit wild in places. All shaping up - I have a plan! In the short term, the clock will be frozen at 1703-4, and Bavaria and the Empire will fight an extended and little-known campaign against each other. With luck, some Dutch, British and French troops should join them in due course.

Maffei at the far end (with the yellow ochre regimentals) and Lutzelburg at this end (dark red). Now then - do I really need to freshen up the white trim round the hats? I guess I'd better, eh?

Yesterday's Bavarians were a single battalion each for the regiments Maffei and Lutzelburg - I am always intrigued by the Maffei name - it is often mistakenly written as Mappei, or various other variants. It doesn't look like a German name, and I wondered how it should be pronounced. I did a bit of Googling, and it turns out that the regiment was founded by General Alessandro Scipione, Marchese de Maffei, who was a native of Verona, though a commander in the Bavarian army. So it's not a German name (which I guess would be pronounced "maff-eye", with the accent on the first syllable) but an Italian name (which, again, I guess would be pronounced as "maff-ay-ee" with the accent on the second of three implied syllables). Lord knows what his soldiers called him. What is really rather odd is that the family was originally German, and Maffei was an Italianisation of the German Matthaeus. This is a recurrent theme in Bavarian military history, I think - I was surprised how many of the Bavarian generals and regimental colonels in Napoleonic times were from Italian families.

In the unlikely event that you might wish to check out the Marchese, you will find that his presence on the Internet is pretty much swamped by his brother Francesco Scipione, who was a famous scholar, writer and art-critic.

That's quite enough about that. Here's a bit of Dominic Miller - an echo of my painting session yesterday.

 

Preparations for the Lock Down

We await further announcements and restrictions at any moment - at present there is a feeling of "Phoney War" here, which in itself is ominous. This is a very rural area, and things are pretty much unaffected so far, apart from the pubs and the cafes being shut down, and the schools. There is a great shortage of groceries, of course, and I am now not allowed to visit my mother in the local care home.

So far this week I have cancelled a visit to the dental hygienist and the chiropractor, but I did go for what could be my last ever haircut!

Since I am an old chap, and my youngest son is still at school (until tonight, I think - he attends a school across the border, in Northumberland, otherwise he would already have been at home for a week), I am required to self-isolate. Interesting - we are not yet under full plague conditions, but it seems only a matter of time until such isolation will be a matter of legislation. Whatever, we decided we should have a go at this - at worst I should develop a few good habits, and see what it involves. I have moved into the attic here at Chateau Foy - there is a decent bedroom, and another room, officially titled the Dressing Room, which will serve me as a working and reading area - I have now installed a proper writing desk up there, for working and soldier-painting. I may have a lot of time on my hands, so I'll shift my activities upstairs as far as possible - let's see how this develops.

The desk is not much of a beauty, but it's solid, has a good working surface and plenty of storage for my paints and knick-knacks. It's carved oak, and I understand it dates from the 1930s.

Last night I watched one of my French DVDs up here - I've seen it before, but it's a goody. L'Homme du Train, starring Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday. The film is supposed to be wryly comedic, I think, but its dominant theme seems to be failure, and the complicated pointlessness of life in general. Recommended for all that. One thing that seemed very odd - and it shows what a deep impression the COVID-19 publicity has made - was all the embracing and hand-shaking that goes on in the film - I kept thinking, "That's not a very good idea...", and then I would give myself a gentle slap (having washed my hands first, of course).

Anyway, I enjoyed it - thought-provoking.

I've received my WSS mounted colonels back from a re-paint after the varnish went horribly wrong last time, and they look very good, so I'll get them finished off and they can join their regiments - that will give me a first painting task for the new station up here in the roof!

A strange time. An exchange of emails with a friend produced some dark thoughts, wondering which of our friends and contemporaries might not make it through what is to come, but I prefer not to dwell on that. Things in the cities must be far worse, of course. Unusually, two apparent suicides near here yesterday - someone walked under a train at Prestonpans, and an Edinburgh restaurateur has gone missing - he may have jumped off the cliffs into the sea here - the Police are looking for him. That does bring it home - a lot of people must be in a desperate situation.

I can only wish everyone all the best, and hope that the situation becomes clearer. One thing I really don't know, for example, is how long it takes for an unknown package to cease being potentially infectious. I read somewhere that the virus in water droplets will only live for 12 hours without a new host, but I have no idea whether that is true. My parcel of WSS officers arrived this morning - I had a feeling I should leave it for a day before I opened it - in the end I opened it and washed my hands thoroughly, binning the packaging.

That's the sort of thing that would be helpful to know. If we don't get official information, the dreaded social media will come up with something more exciting - recent scares about the potentially lethal hazards of ibuprofen were fake news, apparently. There's a good opportunity for people to behave sensibly for a change - that would be useful.

WSS Project - Some Dismounted Dragoons

Today I finished off some dismounted dragoons - the system is to be that my dragoon units will each be of 3 bases of mounted men, with 2 extra bases of dismounted. When the unit is ordered to dismount (which takes a complete turn), two of the mounted bases are replaced by dismounted; the remaining mounted base (which ideally should be the one with the minidice giving current strength!) represents horseholders and all that clobber.

Bavarian Dragoons - this is the Regt Monasterol - the new Irregular chaps at the front are here shown with their mounted Higgins colleagues.

The dismounted castings here are 20mm Irregular Miniatures, which are unusually small 20mm but give a good size match with Les Higgins.

The boys from the Regt Santini are the same, apart from the green facings - their mounted contingent are progressing through the paint queue at this very moment

The history of Les Higgins/PMD is well described elsewhere; the original 20mm Malburian figures are just a tad smaller than their ECW range (though the original "subscription series" Higgins ECW were about the same size as the Malburians), but both ranges use the same horses. The figures are too small to match with much else - Irregular, Lancer Miniatures (which are relatively stout, though their artillery pieces are lovely) and that's about it.

Painting - Good News and Bad News

Odd day yesterday. My most spectacular achievement was falling downstairs with a tray of freshly painted soldiers - fortunately, the only lasting damage seems to have been to the sensibilities of the Contesse, who was not impressed by my vocabulary.

I have now based up the Waterloo Life Guards - still one man absent, but now varnished and based. Very pleased with them.

Unit #334, Hinton Hunt Life Guards, with many thanks to Goya for his restoration and conversion work. These chaps were previously the spares from the ex-Eric Knowles Royal Horse Guards, and include the noted Trooper Lazarus, a write-off who was miraculously fixed back onto his base. I understand that we have located a recruit to fill the gap in the back row.

Less satisfactory was a shipment of mounted WSS officers which arrived back from the painter. Something very odd has happened here - it seems that the varnish has reacted with (and stuck to) the bubblewrap in which they were packed. This painter normally wraps each figure in tissue, which would have avoided the problem, but wisdom after the event is not helpful, and it's also irritating.

A varnishing act that went wrong. Warranty claim necessary. Ancient Les Higgins figures - not as old as the Life Guards, though

We've agreed that I'll send them back, and he'll sort things out, though it looks like a strip-and-start-again situation to me.

Other than that I spent a fascinating couple of hours yesterday with a neighbour, learning more about the history of the immediate area where I live. I'm particularly interested in a number of vanished local castles and tower houses, and also in the old farm-workers' hamlets of Whaupknowe (which means "Curlew Hill" in Scots, and appears to have been right where my house is now) and Muttonhole (which is only commemorated now by a field of the same name on an adjacent farm). These hamlets seem to have vanished around 1750. Looks like I'd better get the waterproof jacket and the old walking boots ready.

Guest Appearance - Steve Cooney

Prompted by my brief return to matters ECW, Steve very kindly sent me some more photos of figures from his own collection - I'm always keen on a little reflected glory so here they are.

Steve says, "Whilst you’re in ECW mode, some photos attached which you might like. They are of Sir William Waller’s Parliamentarian Regiment of Foot, Regiment of Horse and Artillery, all Hinton Hunt figures with a few Les Higgins conversions (this is regiment number 24!!). The mortar is a Lancer Miniatures."

Thanks very much, Steve - I do like them - very much, in fact.

WSS Project - Bavarian Artillery Done

This afternoon I finished off these chaps. As before, the figures are Les Higgins 20mm, from about 1971, and the guns are much more recent, by Lancer Miniatures.

Dog's Chance

I'm really pleased with this. The refurb job on my ex-Eric Knowles British Royal Horse Guards (for Waterloo) suddenly became rather more complicated when the extra figures (Eric's units were bigger than mine are) offered the chance of making some of them into the Life Guards as well. The numbers were a bit tight - through the marvels of digital communication (and Old School analogue kindness) an extra recruit is now on his way from New Zealand to swell the ranks (will he get a seat to himself, they wondered?), and a broken figure needed to be fixed to complete the establishment.

Ah.

Fixed.

Right.

So here is Trooper Lazarus, now of the Life Guards. The horse was broken off its base, years ago, at ankle/fetlock height - tricky in 20mm. I had both the casualty and his base, in the boxes. No problem for Count Goya's Magical Manufactory of Miniature Marvels - the legs and hooves have been drilled, wire braces inserted and appropriately fiendish glue applied. He's as good as new, matron. Marcus Hinton himself could not tell he'd been repaired.

I'm delighted with him. I couldn't have done this. Thank you very much, Your Excellency.

The rest of the unit will follow along as soon as the chap from The Colonies arrives. Trooper L is thrilled to have the chance of getting back into action after all these years of being dead.

Black Bob

Lightweight, entertaining little paint session tonight. Digging around in the Eric Knowles boxes, I have found some interesting items in there.

Tonight I restored a couple of little command vignettes.

First off, here's Maj.Gen Robert Craufurd, of Light Division and getting-killed-in-the-breach-at-Ciudad-Rodrigo fame. This is not going to win any prizes, but it's an attractive little piece. The conversions are ambitious; I can see from the figure bases that the starting point for each is Hinton Hunt SC 4, which is a one-piece-casting ACW cavalry trooper. The mounted Rifles officer has had a body swap - I think I recognise the top half of the HH Rifles officer (normally on foot) - the one with the whistle. His shabraque has been cut from lead foil - it's an impressive job. The General's top half is more of a mystery - I thought he might be a Wellington - I even thought he might be an SHQ Wellington, but I think this model was made too long ago for SHQ. The cape is hand-built from lead foil, again, and I imagine the saddle furniture was, too. I've kept Eric's colour scheme. There was evidence of some corrosion on the foil cape - a white bloom on some of the edges. Lead rot? I've cleaned them up, repainted as necessary and sealed with fresh varnish, and put them on an official house-standard base (Division Commander - 50mm x 50mm, white border). I guess Black Bob's days may be numbered, but with a bit of luck he might outlast me.

And here is a HH General for the ECW, complete with dog. This will go well with Lord John Byron's ferret and Fairfax's Mynah bird. I couldn't find the dog in Marcus Hinton's catalogue, so can only assume it must be a Clayton addition.

Napoleonic Refurb Project - RHG

My Refurb Project has rather grown arms and legs since I acquired some of the old Eric Knowles collection of figures. Here's the first Napoleonic item to emerge from the boxes.

As you will see, these are the Royal Horse Guards. The castings are Hinton Hunt OPC BN60 - as far as possible I've kept Eric's painting - I've repaired chips and freshened faded colours, and occasionally tweaked things to match the house style, but the spirit lives on. The splendid conversions for the officer and trumpeter are by Count Goya, to whom I offer most appreciative thanks.

My Napoleonic collection has been consciously confined to the Peninsular War for many years - in fact (to my subsequent regret), I have been known to pass over or get rid of items which did not fit with that narrow (though large) focus. Recently I have been working on a Bavarian Napoleonic army, so units for the Danube campaign came into scope, and now the arrival of some of Eric's old soldiers has brought the possibility of adding some specifically Waterloo-period units. Anyway, here's the first.

Eric's regiments were rather larger than mine, so I have spare figures left over. I hadn't meant to, but I now realise it would make sense to produce a unit of Life Guards to keep the RHG company. Goya has added further impetus to this idea by producing command conversions for them in advance, so I'll get on with the regiment. Sadly, I am one casting short - it is possible to convert and recarve and so on to get the extra man, but I thought I would brass it out and ask here: does anyone have a spare Hinton Hunt BN60, the British Household Cavalry trooper (charging)? I shall be delighted to do swaps, pay you actual money, wash your car, take your children for a walk - anything - name your price. I only need one.

Topic 2 - Waste Management

This crops up from time to time - not a rant, really. I read recently about a certain city in England where a primary schoolteacher contacted the local council last year, and said that her class of 7-year-olds were very fired up on the topic of saving the planet, and they were very keen to come along and see how the local authority deals with recycling and so on - would there be any chance of a class outing to the rubbish processing plant?.

She met a surprising amount of hesitancy, she thought - resistance to the idea, in fact. It turns out that the council are not actually doing any recycling at the moment. The residents clean and sort out their recyclable domestic waste, place it all carefully in separate dustbins, as instructed, but when the wagons take it away the whole bloody lot all goes into the same landfill site as the general waste. When she expressed a little disappointment, she got a lecture from the department head. Once they used to sift through it all and send it for suitable processing, then the problem became too large, they couldn't get the staff to do the work, so they started (apparently) sending containers full of plastic and glass waste to China. Then China stopped importing the stuff, so now landfill is the solution. She was told that they realised it wasn't an ideal situation, but proper recycling is not economically viable. They have a duty to the ratepayers to keep costs down etc etc.

OK - I can see there's a problem here, and I hesitate to rush to make worthy suggestions, but I did have some sympathy for the teacher's suggestion that the council's economic model might change a little if they were hit with a very large fine every time they did this. The ratepayers might even have something to say about it, too.

Just as well that environmental issues aren't important, really, isn't it?

WSS Project - Some Bavarian Heavy Cavalry

More units smartened up and re-based - here are the Cuirassier regiments Arco (front, blue facings) and Weichel (rear, red). The 20mm figures are all 1970s Les Higgins castings, with a few additions from Old John, who still markets these old figures. Building up the armies continues - next up is to prepare missing mounted colonels for a bunch of infantry units, then the Bavarian artillery, then the dismounted companies for 3 dragoon regiments, then I shall continue to crack on with the infantry and cavalry (of which there is a lot).

It's not quick, but it's going nicely - first objective is to build a couple of approximately equal armies, so I can get on with playtesting. Watch this space...

WSS Project - Figure Suppliers

Tonight I hope to finish off the current period of painting and re-basing, and then I'll spend a week or so trying to catch up on the small matter of flags. By tonight I should have completed a third and a fourth unit of cuirassiers for my 1702 Austrians. There's plenty more refurb work to be getting on with, but I'll take a bit of a break.

I cannot promise I have a completely firm idea of how these WSS armies may progress from this point, but there are a couple of basic principles I'd like to stick with if it's at all possible.

(1) The whole reason for buying these figures was that they provided an attractive shortcut into a period of which I have no experience. I intend to keep them "as-is" as far as possible - with just a modicum of touching-up where necessary. This is partly sheer laziness on my part (consciously so, since left to my own instincts I would have everything stripped back to start again, and I don't have the time or the energy for this) and partly a matter of respect - a wish to keep Eric's old soldiers in some recognisable form. It seems only right.

(2) I am determined (and if I succeed it will be the first time ever) to keep some idea of constant scale - I always tend to drift off into some kind of scale creep as I build armies, having convinced myself that 20mm = 25mm, or some such nonsense, and I always regret it later.

In pursuit of End (2), I have been checking out the availability of suitable extra figures. My units will be rather smaller than the original organisation, so - proportionately - I'll need extra command figures. The armies consist entirely of 1970s 20mm Les Higgins figures - and these are pretty small 20mm, too. I can get extra figures from Old John, including conversions and extensions to the original Higgins/PMD catalogue which he has produced, but in the interests of variety I have been looking to see what else will fit with them. After going through everything I could think of, the only makers I am left with are Irregular Miniatures (which are just a tad small, to be honest, but are OK if I mount them on Higgins horses), and Lancer Miniatures (which are OK for height, and have a bit of character about  them, but they are FAT, man - this is the Front Rank of the 20mm world).

On the Lancer front, I think they will probably be OK for isolated figures like staff groups (let us assume that the nobility were obese, then), and possibly odd cavalry command chaps, but generally they are less of a good match than I had hoped - also their horses are crude. I have to say that the cannons and carts look very nice - I'll probably make use of some of them.

A third unit of Austrian cuirassiers - these chaps are the regiment Jung-Darmstadt - the flag is in the pipeline; the odd man out is the trumpeter in the tricorne, who is an Irregular man on a Les Higgins horse. Yes, all right - he's a small man, but he's OK

This is the command base for the fourth regiment - Alt-Hannover. Once again, the flag is coming soon. The trumpeter is one of John's conversions of Les Higgins, the other two are Fat Lancers - not sure about them at all. They are quite nice, if you are into Noggin the Nog

Separate topic: I am disappointed to note I am having problems with metallic paints again. This is a recurrent theme for me - I have a long tradition of getting annoyed with metallic paints which won't cover, or don't shine, or lift when subjected to varnish, etc etc. I have the Foundry metallic paints, and have found them to be a bit feeble - I've tried all sorts of Vallejo and Tamiya and Revell and Testor paints. I used Citadel for a while - they were OK, though the pots went "off" rather quickly. For the last few years I've been using Humbrol acrylics - shades 11 (silver) and 16 (gold) - with no problems, apart from the hand-removing properties of the stupid little screw-top plastic pots. I have now replaced them with new Humbrol pots - different design, in the style of Foundry. The pots themselves are a lot better, but I fear that the paint recipe has been changed again. I spent a lot of time stirring, warming, swearing. The paint, I fear, is crap. I might as well apply yogurt to my soldiers. Thus I am back with my Foundry pots - they seem OK - maybe they've thickened up with being opened. I must revisit the Citadel range again - I have to admit that I don't really understand Citadel paints any more - nothing is just a pot of paint, it is a base colour, or a highlight colour, or some bloody thing or other. I must pay attention, and get some decent gold and silver paint in.

I was spoiled, decades ago - eons ago - by a brief flirtation with Rose Miniatures gold paint, which came as a jar of metallic powder and a jar of clear medium, into which you mixed the powder. It was fiddly, but it produced a magnificent finish - never seen anything as good since. Anyway - persevere.

Flag work starts tomorrow.

Thanks again to Old John, who has been heroically helpful with links and uniform sources, and to all others who have offered help and advice.