A Seven Years War diversion

I recently acquired a rather large SYW French and Reichsarmee 15mm collection from Richard at the club. He has been working on a set of SYW rules and from the game I played and those I've seen they are rather good. However, I'm a stickler for the cosmetics of the game and as I have plans for Imagi-Nation type stuff in the future I want all my troops in a uniform basing style.

Now there are a lot of figures here (c.60 x 16fig battalions plus cavalry etc.)so rebasing will be a long and slow process. I also want to keep the bulk of the army available for playing the rules at the club so I started with the smaller Reichsarmee contingent figuring some could double for Hessians and some for French in my AWI games! Now I also wanted to 'alter' the painting style to fit more with my own. They are very neatly but basically painted and given the numbers I didn't want to spend too much time on them so I applied a Games Workshop Flesh wash to the skin areas and then used Future/Klear with a little black over the rest of the figure. I think they've come out OK. This is my first attempt with Klear and the mix has been a little inconsistent so some look better than others.

Here are some comparison shots:

Cronegk - before and after
Kur-trier - before and after

Rear view

Warasdiner-Creutzer

The finished brigade

Still a lot to do but I think the approach has promise and when done they overall effect will be worth the effort.

British Grenadier markers

As I slowly limber up for the first game of British Grenadier at my local club I thought it was about time to do some markers. I'd seen various threads on the GdeB Forums about different approaches and also Giles's recent post on his blog. I decided to try a couple of approaches and have markers with either 1, 2 or 3 'items' on them. I'm not sure on using one marker and using whichever side is in contact to determine the value. Too many opportunities for it to get knocked out of alignment. So I tried the cairn and the grass patch approach. Corners of markers clipped to betray my ASL background!


Not sure if they'll be too 'visible' but got to be better than any plastic markers. These are currently for DP markers only. For casualties I can't decide on using a roster or doing casualty markers on triangles as Paul Marsh suggested to me.

Will post some more when done and also when in use.

Preparing for battle

Seeing as I've been trying to reorganise the attic to create some space I thought I'd set up a small table and finally take the shrink off some of the Purbeck blocks I have. It's only 4x4 but there is room when the underlying table is fully out to take it to 6x4 which for 15mm battles will do me. I also wanted to see what the troops I have to date actually look like en masse. Still having problems with the camera so no doubt if you zoom in then they'll be out of focus!

So first an overall view as multiple lines of Rebels prepare to defend the hills:


And then views of the Rebel and British lines:



I want to do some mods to the Purbeck to add some texture and variety and maybe some fields. Or maybe just do them on card at sizes my fences will fit around! And I need roads. And I've got a few buildings to paint up as well.

There is just sooo little time....

British General or 'Beware of the dog!'

And to command His Majesty's troops is this little chap. Receiving a report from his Captain of Grenadiers while his pet dog pauses for lunch!



British figures are Polly Oliver, the dead and the dog are Freikorps. The two grenadiers were done by Billy Bones Workshop as part of a small test batch of figures. He also painted the spares I sent in case of breakages so this is them put to use. Just checked his site again and he has some very interesting looking stuff about paper armies. Worth a look!

Still haven't quite mastered the focus thing but not really made too much effort with it so far. The first set of shots I took were better but when I zoomed in I realised his Lordship was covered in flock!

American General

Although I've had various command figures done for a while I hadn't got round to doing the 'proper' 40x40mm CinC bases suggested in British Grenadier. So, as I plan to actually get round to a game soon (honest!) I thought they'd best be done. The man himself is from Freikorps and the assorted aides from Essex. The drinker and waiting runner are from a batch of figures I bought a while back. The others my own. In true American style he's firmly ensconced behind a fence!

2009- plans for the future

And so we come to 2009. It's the sixth already and I've still to make my plans for the coming year. First off is that despite the purchase of a large 15mm French SYW army there will be no SYW painting for the foreseeable future. I really want to finish a few aspects of my AWI project beforehand and get some games in so that all the effort feels like it has achieved something! So the overall objectives are:

1 Finish the OOB for Cowpens at 1:10

I want to complete this as it was what started the AWI venture and I'm almost there. A few British Legion mounted, the 7th, the assorted militia horse and re-doing the continentals as Lights as they should be. Still a fair bit there but not too bad.

2 Finish the OOB for Guilford Courthouse

Well, I haven't really started this yet and it stems from a desire to paint up the 23rd and the Guards. Although a lot of my militia/continentals are fairly generic I intend taking a leaf out of Gile's book and start focusing on some specific units that are a bit different. It's partly why I have 16 'converted' figures to use a DeLanceys Brigade sat waiting to paint - and a strong intention that this won't lead to Savannah...yet!. I've also picked up enough of the Minifig Continental marines to do one of the Gaurds battalions and depending on how that gos I'll no doubt do the second. Lots to do for this anyway but the main aim for the year!

3 The Parade

Set up the terrain, lay out the figures and take lots of photos!

4 the Game

Having read and re-read the British Grenadier rules I actually want to play them! Need to do a bit of terrain work to spruce up the Purbeck blocks and add a suitably large number of trees to make it all look good but I want to do a sort of Series Replay. I've played Advanced Squad Leader for years and the Replays are step by step records of an entire game showing every dice roll and result. I'm not sure how much record keeping will be needed but it worth trying as a way to REALLY get to know the rules. It won't be a big game, maybe a couple of brigades of Brits attacking several lines of Americans a la Guilford Courthouse (or if it goes wrong, a la Cowpens!)

All the above should also provide plenty of pics of Polly Oliver figures for my cataloging of that range.

So, what's on the workbench?

Finished off 6 Continental type command figures to provide a command stand for some ragged continentals I bought off Doug and to provide and extra militia command stand. Currently painting my British CinC as I have 2-3 British brigade commanders but no the big man. Should finish him tonight so will post a pick later if done.