Monday, September 10, 2012

Montrose Irish Brigade


This is part of a project I've started with a friend based around the Scottish campaigns in the English Civil War. I've decided to build the forces of that wily commander Montrose and my friend is building the Covenanter's.

My Montrose(ish) army isn't an attempt to exactly replicate what the forces of Montrose looked like, but rather a melding of Scottish and English together so I can use it as both a Scottish Royalist army and a Northern English Royalist army. I like the history of Montrose and Rupert so I'd like to use it for both. Basically it will be my own impression with quite a few liberties taken. Hopefully the end result will still be convincing enough to not totally offend the purists out there.

I'm starting off with a regiment from the rock hard Irish brigade in which I mixed Bicorne's Irish and English together which gives them a mixed and slightly ragged appearance (except the officers) which I feel they probably looked something like that. The Irish were noted for using a half pike, but I prefer the full pike and so went with that. They also wore a greyish top and white leggings(many did any ways) of which I included in the mix, but I changed the top to mostly green for two reasons. The first is I'll have plenty of grey to do when I do the regular Scot units and well......they are Irish and green just darn well belongs!:-)

The figures are from Bicorne and the English figures are simply superb(best ECW around IMHO) and the Irish figures are pretty good too if not quite as good as the English figures. I painted them using AP with highlights added. The Flag is from Flags of War and while it looks wonderful it's a little small for me, however I heard he's now making them bigger and so I probably replace it with a bigger one. Once again I was painting in comfort zone of earth colours so I had a lot of fun painting the figures and they are large and the detail raised just added to the fun.

I also found out it's pretty difficult photographing such a wide regiment . They are mounted on 3 bases 80mm x 60mm each giving a total of 240mm wide. I hope I succeeded in getting a clear enough view. Click on the pics for larger photo's.

I'll probably do my second Irish regiment next if I don't get distracted first. The rules we have in mind are Black Powder's Pike and Shotte.

Yet another time for me to complain about the new and improved worthless photobucket. Why did they try to fix something that wasn't broke!!

God save the king!
Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company-Bicorne Miniatures