Goal for October Done: All Infantry Finished

Today I finished my first set goal for this project. October was infantry month and now they are all done. So this evening I´m celebrating by, appropriately, going to an Oktoberfest at Burres place (my regular gaming buddy who also enjoys German kitsch and horrible folkmusic).

OK, all the little guys are done (except the bases, I´ll do all of those at one time, later when the game mat arrives, which should be next week).

Also, Foppa has borrowed a brigade to paint, I´ll get those from him soon I hope. Here´s some pictures of the (almost) complete army. Heavy infantry, artillery, dragoons and commanded muskets, it´s all there.

Now the next phase begins: Cavalry. I have already started experimenting with them, trying painting techniques and so on. Bought a new Vallejo color today for the horses; "Marron Bichos", or Beasty Brown.



Check out the video as well! Imagine yourself doing a muster, riding by the waiting army. Just ignore the scraping sound of the camera against the table and the illusion will be total ;-)

Nice

My latest order from Baccus, consisting of cavalry, arrived today... It´s a lot of figures!
The first photo shows the entire order. Armoured Cuirassiers, leaders and two big blocks of cavalry.

It´s more cavalry than I need but I´d like to have a surplus. I haven´t yet decided on how much cavalry I will have per base.

It´s leaning towards 8, but could end up at 10. It´s a balance between getting that massed appearance that I want and reducing time to paint. As you might remember, November is cavalry month.

I need 20 units of horse to play Edgehill. The cuirassiers are to portray the elite units in the game, such as Essex lifeguard, Bedford or the King´s lifeguard. (Edit: More importantly, in later battles, Haselrigges famous "Lobsters")

The mounted leaders will, with some cuirassier as bodyguards, be used as the various leaders in the game. I´m toying with the idea of using circular bases for the leaders, to set them apart.

Light Infantry

In M&P Edgehill there are lots of light infantry and commanded musketeers running around on the battlefield. Most of it is small units with 1 or 2 strength points. But on the Royalist Right wing a nice strength 3, morale 6 unit of musketeers is lurking in the hedgerows.

I have failed to find information what regiment(s) these guys were picked from. (I have info for the commanded musketeers on the Rebel side and the dragoons on both sides).

So I opted to paint them in a civilian fashion, with all kinds of colors. I´ve read that much of the Royal army looked like that at Edgehill. Parliament had seized all the stores that would supply the imminent expedition to Ireland and the King's attempt to gain the depot at Hull had failed. Painting the Heavy infantry brigades in this manner would have taken much too long but for this lone unit I could take it.

Heavy Infantry

This is four of the six infantry brigades I have

finished so far. I need 11 of these. Also, my gaming buddy Foppa has gotten figures to paint a brigade of his own. I have started to attach the flags as well, I like the result!

Dragoons

I painted some dragoons yesterday evening, with horses on the base. At first I planned to skip the horses but it looks good, sets the dragoons apart and is historical (every tenth man was detached to hold the horses). Here´s a picture. Obviously, the bases are not done - I´m still waiting for my game mat to arrive.

Guns and Crew

I haven´t yet figured out how to take good closeups of my artillery, but here´s a shot anyway, until I can do better.

I´ve painted the crew in a civilian style, with mixed colors on clothes and equipment. On some of them, I painted sleeveless buffcoats, on which Devlan Mud (see below) performed very well.

I have two guns per base as I want to have an impression of batteries, not single guns. The crew is too small of course, but more figures would crowd the base and hide the beautiful guns from view.

It was fun to paint the artillery crew as I put a lot more effort on detail compared to the infantry brigades. Next up is basing the guns. I´m still waiting for my game mat to arrive. I want it before I decide on a definitive style of basing.

Devlan Mud

After reading the blog of Ruarigh I today purchased a bottle of Devlan Mud wash by GW. Already tested it a little and like the results. More on that later. Oh, I got a new job today, 6 months as web editor up in Helsingborg. More money to buy Baccus :-)

A Weekend in the Country

I got lots of painting done in the weekend, up at my parents house in the country. I did all six musketeer units I need for Edgehill, some guns and another brigade of heavy infantry. I was very impressed with the Field guns, they looked great. I was less thrilled by the smaller Light guns, I don´t think they look very good at all. Here´s a picture of the guns, sans crew that will be painted next.



I experimented with basing units, starting with some musketeers. I realize it can be done much better, but I´m OK with this look. Perhaps someone reading this blog can offer some advice on how to improve the bases. Take a look at this close up and criticize away!



While waiting for the big order to arrive, which it did last week, I took the opportunity to make a lot of terrain. Hedges and roads are my primary concern, as these are the dominant terrain features for Edgehill. Below is a picture of the roads. They are made of strips of pine wood. I made the wheel tracks by putting Scotch tape over the road and then cutting away what would be the center and sides of the road. Some wood glue, small stones and paint later they looked like this:

Preparations

Another photo of the new figures, all glued to wooden sticks and ready to be sprayed black.



This took all of my evening and the early hours of the night to do. But I managed to paint a new brigade as well, this time some greycoats.

Why Edgehill?

I wanted to write something about why I´ve decided to do Edgehill as the first step of my project. At first my plan was to acquire enough miniatures and terrain to be able to play both Edgehill and 1st Newbury. Later I had to reduce my goal to just Edgehill. The reasons are:

1) Musket & Pike: TACW has five battles, of these only Edgehill and 1st Newbury are half mappers. To be able to play the larger maps I would require a larger game mat, more table space, or use smaller hexes.

2) Terrain. Edgehill is the battle with the least amount of terrain. The field is also flat. This is why 1st Newbury has to wait a while, to do the terrain required for that battle will be a lot trickier.

3) Numbers. Edgehill has relatively few units, especially cavalry is not so plentiful as in later battles. To play Edgehill I need a total of 11 Heavy Infantry Brigades (the double hexers), 7 units of Dragoons, 6 units of Commanded Musketeers, 1 Light Infantry unit, 20 units of Horse and at least 12 mounted Leaders (three Wing Commanders per side, one Army Commander per side, and their replacements). I almost forgot Artillery, of this I need 1 battery of Falcons, 2 batteriers of Sakers and 1 battery of Culverins.

4) Edgehill for Musket & Pike is well known as a fun, balanced scenario that can be played in a reasonable amount of time.

New Baccus figs arrived

I´m happy like a kid in some kind of a store! Yesterday my big order from Baccus arrived. All the infantry, dragoons and artillery I need. Plus some flags. These are just some of the figures, after they´ve been cleared of cast.



I have declared October to be infantry painting month, November is cavalry month. As I said before, in the last weekend of November I need to be finished for the gaming convention in Helsingborg (just opposite the Sound from Elsenore, of Hamlet fame).

Yesterday I also finished a game of Edgehill versus one of my gaming friends, Peter aka Foppa. It was one of the most exciting games of M&P I´ve ever had. I was on the way of winning when I made a terrible mistake and lost King Charles! Here is a picture of the situation in the center, late in the game: