Here is the artillery for my SYW imagi-nation for Honours of War;
I have also finished off the rest of my infantry battalions, but I will do a separate post about these.
Apart from when it has been too hot to paint, I have been continuing my Honours of War project. First, two battalions of line musketeers and a brigadier;
Next a battalion of the Grand Duke's Garde zu Fuß and the army commander;
Note that these guys have blue uniforms. It is annoying that the general and his ADC are a bit blurred but I can't be bothered to retake the photo.
Thirdly, here are the rest of my brigadiers, probably more than I'll ever need in most games;
This project is something I had no idea I was going to do at the beginning of the year, but a few people at the club were getting interested in the Honours Of War rules from Osprey and were using SYW armies that they either already had or were putting together. I played a couple of games and, although I have some reservations about the rules, I decided that they weren't too bad and I ought to put an army together too.
The rules allow for the use of imagi-nations, which is something that I am very much in favour of because it takes me back to Charles Grant and his wars between the Vereinigte Freie Städte and the Grand Duchy of Lorraine in his classic book, The War Game.
My project is to create the army (in our chosen scale of 15mm) of the Grand Duchy of Überwald (a name that will be familiar to Terry Pratchett fans), a long vanished entity from somewhere near Austria.
The rules in the book uses infantry battalions made up of five elements, but because some players have battalions of four elements, we have agreed on this for our campaign, which is supposed to begin in the autumn. We are also reducing cavalry squadrons by one element too, to keep frontages in proportion.
Our campaign will be using a blend of real and imaginary states, so long as the imaginary armies have the characteristics of the real ones in the book.
The Grand Duchy of Überwald's army will be using Essex Prussian minis and will be based on the rule book stats for Austria. As you can see, their flags will look rather French too.
So far, I have completed two battalions of Grenadiers and three of light troops, as pictured above. My plan is to have ten battalions of infantry, three of light troops (most likely a Freikorps) and seven squadrons of cavalry of various types, plus medium artillery and a number of brigadiers and an army commander. I expect that my imagination will run away with me and I end up with a few more units.
To provide a nice colourful appearance I will paint up some infantry in colours other than grey. There will be a battalion of Garde zu Fuß musketeers in blue and two more battalions in green, representing troops from the Margravate of Streslau, a feudal vassal of Überwald. There will also be artillerymen, cuirassiers (including one of Garde zu Pferde), dragoons and hussars in a variety of uniforms.
I am going to have to work quickly. I also have a 28mm Austrian Napoleonic project that I need to finish by November. So far, everything is assembled, based up and undercoated.
This was a rush job, because I wanted to be able to use them at the club tomorrow (31st July).
I want to use these as the kind of Special Forces stealth operatives who can infiltrate secret bases, armed compounds or clandestine installations, do the job and get out quickly.
Their paint job is essentially all about shades of grey which make them hard to see in the dark or in the kind of tunnels and passageways beloved of film and TV whenever Black Ops are part of the plot. Even their weapons are matt grey.
Anyway, I hope that they will work for the game that Clive, one of our club members is running tomorrow.
I will also be able to use these for the Black Ops rules written by Guy Bowers, which are published by Osprey.
Over the last week, I've managed to finish off two wizards and a pair of sorcerer's apprentices. First the apprentices;
Like the wizards below, the apprentices are by Mark Copplestone and they are really nice minis. The wizards, however, are even better, really superb sculpts.
The taller, more threatening-looking wizard definitely has a strong resemblance to a very famous Grey Wizard, variously known as Olórin, Tharkûn, Incánus, Mithrandir, Stormcrow, Láthspell and, to most of us, Gandalf. In the Fellowship of the Ring, when confronting the Balrog in the deep places of Moria, Gandalf described himself as "a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor". He is probably even more famous than the schoolboy wizard above, well he certainly ought to be.
His companion is a charming figure, a wise old chap with a book of spells, clearly about to wreak havoc upon some unruly and dangerous opponents, or maybe just lecturing a class of apprentices at Wizard School. Perhaps he is one of the Istari of Middle Earth, most likely one of the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who Tolkien also called Morinehtar and Rómestámo elsewhere in his Unfinished Tales. Who knows? These two wizards are only mentioned in passing in the Lord of the Rings books, suggesting that they travelled far into the unknown East of Middle Earth.
Of course, all four figures have a lot of possibilities; Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Saga Age of Magic, Dragon Rampant, 7TV Fantasy etc
I had a quiet lazy day yesterday, what with my partner being off out all day so I got on with some more painting and did two more vampires.
These have a much more Carpathian or Eastern European feel than the previous two. They are Noble Vampires from the North Star Frostgrave Blood Legacy range of figures and I really like them a lot. I probably won't ever play Blood Legacy, but these two have so much potential for all manner of things.
I think that the forested mountains of Transylvania are likely to be their original home, because they really do have that Balkan nobility vibe about them. There is a Gothic supplement for In Her Majesty's Name which has been brought up to date for the second edition of the rules. You can download it here. These figures seem to be pretty much perfect for IHMN, but are also going to work with all manner of horror or Pulp rules, and even with The Silver Bayonet, especially if you want to play in a Russian setting.
One of the nice things about a warm day is that things dry quickly and your varnish won't go cloudy. I got up before 7:30 this morning and varnished and photographed the pair of toothy horrors. I think that they have turned out really well.
I am currently getting a few nice odds and ends out of the way before embarking on a new (as in, not one I was planning to do at all last year) big project.
First up are two vampires, both from the North Star Silver Bayonet range of figures.
I am really taken with the poses of these two, they are full of cunning and menace, as though they are waiting in some lonely place for passing victims.
I have called them Monsieur le Marquis and Madame la Marquise and I see them living in an ancient château somewhere quite remote in south-western France, maybe close to a village that is entirely under their control. Although they are dressed in the fashion of the 18th century, they are clearly far older beings, perhaps with lives that stretch back to the Middle Ages, if not before that.
Although designed for The Silver Bayonet, these figures clearly have a lot of potential for all manner of rules and scenarios. I think that they are terrific figures and they were a lot of fun to paint. as an aside, I gave Madame a green dress trimmed with yellow to echo the uniform (green with yellow facings) of the 17th century Régiment de Fimarcon dragoons, who by the Seven Years' War had been renamed the Aubigné Dragoons and were uniformed in red with (probably) green facings.
