A Return to the Table

I finally managed to get the last few regiments from my initial order completed this week.  The foot were straight forward, but, this time on the cavalry regiments I removed the moulded standards and replaced them with brass wire poles to hold the standards from Wargames Designs.  The use of these standards really does improve the look of the regiments and I am very happy with the new poles. Here are the pictures of the regiments finished this week.  So, with the total now standing at eight regiments of foot and five regiments of horse completed that brings the total number of figures painted up to 333, just another 779 to go plus whatever I pick up at the show this coming Sunday. The next two sets of figures to be completed will be a dismounted dragoon regiment and another foot regiment, though with this one I am going to armour the pikemen and paint them at the Kings Lifeguard.  Though with the show at the weekend I am going to be a little swamped here to ...

Last year I attended my first wargames show in about ten years, it was the  Border Reiver Show and even though I was not there for long it was long enough to reawaken the desire to get back into the hobby.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the  Battleground Show in November due to me being on driving duties for my wife that day, which was a shame as I really wanted to get to that one as there was a talk by the Battlefield Trust on three English Civil War battles in the area. So, this year I am to get to several more shows starting in February with a trip to York to the  Vapnartak Show .  I have read good things about this show on a couple of other blogs so I thought I would give it a go, also the company I have been looking at for getting some terrain and Baccus will be there as well, so I am sure I will end up spending some pennies as well. After that I think the next one will be  The Joy of Six in Sheffield in July.  This one is run ...

The past week has been filled .with unexpected arrivals.  First to arrive were the standards from Wargames Design, which arrived 48 hours after they were ordered, I will certainly be ordering from them again.  The quality of the standards is amazing and as a bonus two sheets of Irish Confederate standards were included, so I have started to use them this week and they do look good, but more on that later. Next to arrive was a package from the Pike & Shot Society containing the rulebook Twilight of Divine Right and the ECW Scenario book.  The rules look quite good and the good news is that I would not have to rebase the regiments to use them.  The army lists look straight forward, but there are no lists for the Scots or for the Irish armies of the period, I will certainly be trying these rules out, after testing out how the Polemos rules go.  The scenario book covers the major engagements in England during the First Civil War as well as an Irish battle and ...

It has been a busy week here, I have managed to press ahead with getting the existing regiments painted and out of the pending box. I got a couple of regiments of foot and a regiment of horse fully painted and based and a regiment of both foot and horse sprayed and ready to be painted this week.  The completed foot regiments were done as Lord Molyneux and Sir Lewis Dyves regiments and the horse regiment was done as Prince Maurice's Regiment. The standards on both of the regiments are just really generic standards.  I have just ordered a few sheets of Royalist flags, both foot and horse, from  Wargames Designs and will replace theses generic ones with specific ones for each regiment. Well the base for the regiment of horse turned out a bit better than the last one, but the guidon is still far from perfect, or even acceptable, so I think that when I have a spare cornet I will try to remove the flag moulding and then replace it with a paper one.  That ...

As things are going smoothly on the painting side of things and until I can get what will be my gaming space cleared out and organised there is no way I am going to get a table sorted out.  So, I decided to order some more figures from Baccus.  So, my first order was for 288 infantry and 45 cavalry for 333 figures.  The new order is for 480 infantry, 80 dismounted dragoons, 135 cavalry, 45 mounted dragoons, 20 artillery and crew, 4 limbers and finally 15 generals, for 779 figures. In four to five weeks I will have over 1100 figures, which is a little daunting as I think it will be the most I have ever owned at one time for one specific period.  So, I am going to have to speed up my progress in clearing out the first order and try to get them all painted and based before the new order gets here. January is going to be a busy one.

The New Year has started well, with the first cavalry regiment being finished on New Years Day and the second regiment of foot completed yesterday and a third regiment of foot started. The cavalry regiment is the Kings Lifeguard of Horse and despite my reservations about painting horses, they worked out quite well in the end. The only two problems were with the guidon, which is really badly painted and something I will have to practice a lot on, and the basing. The problem was due to me selecting the wrong brush to spread the initial PVA layer with.  I ended up coating parts of the figures with the glue, something I did not realise until after I had covered the figures and base with the fine sand basing medium.  So, after spending some time scraping off the granules, the regiment looks a little dusty to say the least. No such problems though with the second regiment of foot, or Sir Gilbert Gerard's Bluecoats.  One change I made was make the pikes stand o...