1809 Spaniards - The First of the Line Grenadiers

I've been very nervous about these chaps - the fancy embroidery on the flammes of the bearskins makes Spanish grenadiers of this period a bit of a nightmare for those of us who are rather below-average painters. In particular, this group from the Regimiento de Africa features yellow-on-black, which in my experience is one of the very worst colour combinations. They came out better than I had expected, and it was less work than I had feared, so I am encouraged to carry on with the next half-battalion. The drummer is a handsome devil, isn't he?

The Spanish system converged the two grenadier companies from each of two regiments in the same division, to form a provisional grenadier battalion. The other half of this lot will be from the Regimiento de la Reina, who have purple facings with white lace, so they should be a bit easier - they are undercoated, awaiting their turn.

Note the sergeant with the black epaulettes in the right hand group

The hats that make us painting imposters wake up screaming...

These are Falcata castings - I think they are officially OOP - if they aren't then they should be; Uwe recently commented that I was lucky to have so many Falcata figures left - maybe so - the original sculpts are excellent, but the uneven casting quality and the amount of mould damage mean that only a smallish proportion of the figures are useable, and the re-carving and dremeling required to clean them up to a decent state for painting is reminiscent of Hinton Hunt in the 70s!

Anyway, so far so good. Subsequent grenadier battalions will use marching poses, which seem to be in a better state.

Hooptedoodle #198 - The Enchanted Forest and the New Bridge

Last week we went to see The Enchanted Forest, which is a light-and-music show staged during each October at Faskally Wood, a small forest park surrounding a lake, just outside Pitlochry, Perthshire. I have to say I like Pitlochry - as resort towns go, it has a lot of character, and there are excellent hotels and eating places.

The actual show is remarkable - it is run by a local community group, for the benefit of the community, but there is nothing at all amateurish about the production. I believe that the contract firm which installed the sound and lighting this year is Chinese - for the Scottish Highlands, this is quite a big deal. I recommend it without any hesitation at all - if you have a few days spare next October and you can get to Pitlochry (rather less than an hour's drive north of the city of Perth), it is well worth a visit.

Take your camera - these photos are my wife's, for which I offer my humble thanks - they make my own feeble efforts look ridiculous!

...and, since photos without sound are missing an important part of the experience, here's a YouTube clip from this year's show...

To get to Perth from here you have to cross the Forth Road Bridge, and I got my first glimpse of the new bridge which is going up alongside it - no, it is not to be the Fifth Bridge, it will be known as the Queensferry Crossing. The current bridge is developing some rust problems in the main cables - it is not at all dangerous yet - it has years of life left - and so it will continue in service to carry public transport vehicles when the new one opens.

The present bridge is a conventional suspension bridge - the new one is of a completely different construction. Here you see the new towers going up, to the West of the existing bridge - the expected opening date is 2016, I understand, which certainly astonishes me. I wish them good speed - the Edinburgh trams and the Scottish Parliament building were both wildly late and overbudget, so there is a bit of a credibility exercise involved here, as well.

1809 Spaniards - Granaderos a Caballo de Fernando VII

I'm very pleased to welcome another new cavalry unit. The idea for this lot first occurred to me last year - it was the subject of a post on this blog in Sept 2014. There have been a few delays along the way, but here they are, and today I've even got them based up and provided with a flag. All they need now is the regulation (light cavalry) 160mm x 110mm sabot and they will be ready to fight.

The figures, as you will see, are Hinton Hunt conversions. Though "Horse Grenadiers" suggests elite heavy shock cavalry, similar to the French Old Guard regiment, these fellows were nothing of the sort - the title was in all probability merely an attempt at bravado. The historic unit they represent was one of the new regiments formed after 1808. Coronel Fernan Nuñez raised them in Extremadura, and in February 1809 they are described as the Regimiento F Nuñez, while a return from Sevilla, in April of the same year, describes them as Husares. Though they were clearly a light cavalry regiment, similar in style and dress to the line regiments of cazadores a caballo, their title appears to have firmed up as the Granaderos a Caballo de Fernando VII by May 1809.

They have a proper campaign history - the unit fought at Ocaña and elsewhere. By 1810 they had become the Husares de Fernando VII, and pelisses were added to the uniform. In my army they'll be brigaded with the mounted cazadores and the husares, which is where they rightly belong.

Hooptedoodle #197 - The Joy of Socks

Left to myself, I am a creature of habit and of comfort. I like old sweaters - they are familiar and they are comfortable, reassuring - and I also tend to wear old socks.

Socks, sadly, do not last forever - even I, the Prince of Stinge, must fork out for replacements from time to time. As a sop to some faded concept of smartness, maybe just from a sense of shame, I do try to throw them out when they lose all elasticity, slithering (infuriatingly) down into my boots when I'm walking. I also kill off any that develop holes. The Contesse does an excellent job of replacing the casualties with pairs of new socks, and I have to say that any slight vestige of presentability which I retain is mostly down to her.

Recently we have made a special effort to get rid of some old horrors, and buy in quantities of new ones. I like simple socks - inexpensive, sports-style socks are my traditional choice. Well, I do not wish to spread alarm, but something odd has happened. I have started to find that my legs and ankles are swelling a bit as the day goes on, and I am caused some discomfort by my socks gripping too tightly.

Before you rush (as, I confess, I did myself) to point accusing fingers at the brandy, or my decadent lifestyle, I have to announce a shocking discovery.

Evidence. Here are two of my new socks. They are identical, apart from the fact that the one on the left is fresh from the pack, unworn, and the one on the right has been worn and washed a few times. The socks are badged Slazenger, as you will see, but I am confident they come from the same Far-Eastern factory with a variety of brand logos. What is going on? - some fiendish foreign plot? Little wonder I have been having problems - I am astonished that I haven't spotted this before.

The problem is that the shrinkage is not immediate - it takes a few washes to progress this far. I now see that another wholesale clear-out of socks is required, and soon.

I can't fathom this out at all. Is it possible that, like light bulbs and bananas, the physical properties of the common sock have suddenly changed, for the worse? Surely this can't be down to global warming?

1809 Spaniards - Command Figures for Regimiento "Ordenes Militares"

Another little group of command figures emerges, blinking, into the bright lights. This is an example of the classic 1805 regulation uniform. Ordenes Militares were the 31st line regiment of the Spanish army; like Navarra (24th), America (26th) and Jaen (30th) they had dark blue facings, but the configuration of white lapels, blue collars and white metal buttons identifies them uniquely. I'll get their flags printed up during this next week.

You know what they say about men with big noses? - that's right, the
Colonel of the 31st can smell the enemy miles away. This is a Falcata
casting. He is wearing his sash of the Order of Sant Iago.

I'm expecting a new unit of light cavalry to be finished sometime this week, and painting continues for the fusiliers of La Corona and Ordenes Militares, so things are quietly shaping up very nicely.

Disappointingly Normal, Really

Can I help you...?

Quite nostalgic, really, in an off-beat kind of way. I see from this blog that the last time I dared set foot in our nearest Games Workshop was in February 2013. I have some kind of nervous illness which makes it very difficult for me to function normally in these stores, I think.

Anyway, on Wednesday of the week-before-last I was feeling a bit giddy – demob-happy? – since I had just been told I was not required after all for jury duty on what was scheduled to be a 5-day trial in the High Court. It did take them 3 days to get around to deciding this, in fact, but I now found myself with some spare time on a nice, sunny afternoon, in suitably good spirits, and within easy walking distance of the aforementioned store.

I had some misgivings, so went for a preliminary cup of coffee to settle my nerves, and there I decided that it was well within my capabilities to just walk calmly into the shop – I even took some small delight in the fact that I was wearing sports jacket, tweed cap and big knitted sweater – I might just scare the Darklings into a compliant state.

So I did it. First surprise was that it is now called Warhammer. The place was unusually quiet – there were three black-clad young men sitting around a large game in the centre of the room, and I think that they all work there – or worship there, or whatever it is. My arrival usually sparks some unrest, since the obvious conclusion is that I must be an elderly wino who has wandered in to get out of the rain. On this occasion, however, they were very polite – charming, even. The nearest young man said, “Were you looking for something?”, and I said, “I’d just like to have a look at the paint racks, if that’s OK.”

Have to admit I wasn't really looking my best

“What kind of paint?” [tricky question that – I have only an approximate idea what the various paints are called, never mind what they do – on another day I might have been unnerved enough to run out of the store]

“If I can just have a browse around….?”

No objection, so I carried on. Eventually I was asked,

“What you working on at the moment?”

Here we go. “I’m painting some units for a Spanish army – Napoleonic period – I have been building it up for a few years now.”

“Oh – right – erm, cool!” came the  answer, and that ended the discussion.

I was hip enough to know that my favoured Citadel Blood Red is now called Evil Sunz Scarlet (discuss), and I found my way around the racks without hitch, so was quite relaxed by the time I took my three chosen pots to the checkout.

Happy as a pig in wassname...

The manager (or Arch Lord, or whatever) served me at the till, and he was polite and articulate and quite a few things which took me by surprise; in particular, he was very pleasant, and not patronising at all, and his eye-contact levels were very good.

I returned to the real world with my little bag of paints, quite chuffed with my success. No complaints at all, but it is faintly disturbing to have one’s prejudices shaken like this. Is it possible that the Warhammer lot are [and I apologise for the use of the term] growing up? Are they now, in turn, threatened by some newer, younger, even spottier phenomenon? The shop was very quiet – could they have reached a point where they are forced to treat visiting winos as though they might be potential customers?

I sat on the train home, my mind filled with wondrous thoughts, and dozed off in the warm sunshine. Fortunately I live at the terminus…

1809 Spaniards - Command Figures for Regimiento La Corona

Mixture of NapoleoN and Falcata figures - the lights show them as a bit
glossier than I intended, but they will be fine

The painting queue is shuffling along, but slowly. Last night I finished the command figures for two battalions of the Regimiento La Corona - these guys interest me because they will be (probably) my only unit dressed according to the 1802 regulations - these uniforms were still in use here and there by 1808/09, though officially they had been replaced by the better known (but less practical) 1805 white uniforms.

I have to say that (despite my paintwork) I think the 1802 version was very smart - makes me wonder why it was replaced so soon. It has been suggested to me that there was resistance to having all the line infantry dressed the same - the 1805 regs reintroduced different coloured facings. I also read somewhere that importation of indigo to dye the blue coats was a problem during the time that Spain was a French ally, since Britain had a monopoly supply. The first of these two is interesting, but I have no real basis for believing it to be true; the second seems unlikely, since the cavalry had enough blue uniforms to be problematic anyway. So I really don't know - 3 years seems a very short run for Godoy's "deep sky blue" uniforms, and I really do like them. Any further theories would be welcome.

Falcata were an odd manufacturer, some of the later products were pretty
agricultural, but this is one of the early pieces sculpted by Tomas Castaños,
and for 20mm I think this is splendid  

Falcata again - the figures were originally intended to be plastic, and you can see
it in the range of poses and some aspects of the mastering

On the bottle tops next are the command for Regimiento de Ordenes Militares - they will be in the white uniforms. Fusiliers for both units will be coming fairly soon - that's more of a factory process.

I notice from my photos that my matt varnish seems to be getting a bit shiny - better start a new bottle. It's OK, the overall effect is a light sheen rather than a hard gloss, and I like the toy soldier look. The lighting makes it look worse than it is.