New Units for 1st Newbury

I´ve finished some new Royalist cavalry and musketeers for the upcoming battle of 1st Newbury.

That means I got all the Light infantry I will need, and just seven units of cavalry left (70 figures).

This means the difficult task of doing all that terrain is moving inexorably closer and can not be avoided much longer.

But that´s what I like, laying wake at night thinking on how to build a hill or a better way of making hedges and roads. The preparation is more than half the fun.

New Toys

Two packages has arrived, one from from Baccus (my regular supplier of this addictive white metal drug called 6mm miniatures) and one from Angel Barracks (AB).

AB is a new acquaintance, selling all kinds of things for miniature gaming. Their scenery is what drew me to their webpage in the first place, Specifically, I was interested in a very smart little package they had, originally a product of Irregular Miniatures. See picture below!


For the next step in my project, 1st Newbury, I need houses. The kit I´ve ordered is made up of lots of little building components. According to AB: "A collection of windows, doors, stairs, roofs and more all designed to be pegged into balsa blocks to enable you to create your own bespoke dwellings." So now I just need to get some balsa wood and start building.

From Baccus I´ve ordered these babies below. Heavy siege guns to use as the 12 and 24 pounder guns that are part of the battle of 1st Newbury (and Edgehill for that matter). The siege guns are actually much too large for this use, neither army fielded such heavy artillery but I want the heavy guns to look different than the medium 4 and 8 pounders.

New Artillery Done

Some new guns I finished yesterday. 3 batteries of light 3 pounders and one battery of 4-8 pounders.

First Cavalry Finished and Game Mat Has Landed

This hobby is like having Christmas every few weeks. With regular intervals orders arrive by mail and make your day. Today for instance my long awaited game mat arrived.



The game mat by Hotz Artworks looks good. 2 inch hexes on one side, 1,5 inch hexes on the other. To my surprise the mat I got was square, 117 by 117 centimeters.

I had ordered a 117 by 86 cm mat. But the one I got actually works much better for my needs, it matches the Edgehill map I´m using which is is 24 by 24 hexes. The 2 hex inch mat I ordered was only available in 23 by 21 hexes.

But I somehow received a 25 by 23 hex mat so once again I´m happy like a kid in some kind of a store.



Some photos of my first painted cavalry, on top of the new terrain mat. I´m playing around with different base sizes and how many horses I should have per base. These photos are dedicated to Asko (regular commentator of my blog posts) :-)

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.

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.

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:

First painted figs

(This and previous posts are backlogged history, the project has moved forward since. I want to document my steps for my own benefit. Soon my posts will catch up with my actual progress and the blog will see more "live updates". I also want to take this opportunity to apologize for bad language, English is not my native language)

After I had settled on a map solution I went ahead with the actual painting of the miniatures. Apart from Epic 10 or 15 years ago I have never painted any 6mm at all. Here is the result of my first experimental brigade.



I made many mistakes, I painted slow and quite clumsily. Lessons learned:
1) Glue figures to wooden sticks
2) Paint a whole brigade at one time. (In my case 8 Musketeer stands, 3 Pikemen stands and 1 command stand).
3) Use bright colors and paint adjacent fields in contrasting colors (these I also picked up on forums, but their wisdom only became apparent to me when I started to paint myself).