Baraque ECW and Crisis

I'll be there for the first time and I hope to see many of you as well!

As any of my regular readers will know my blog has gone quite for awhile....well pretty much the whole summer in fact. I've been blogging for over 9 years now and while I've not been prolific I have been consistent with one or two posts a month on average, but for some reason I just ran out of gas. I expect things will return to normal. I haven't been completely idle and have been painting here and there, but just couldn't be bothered with taking pictures and writing things up I guess. I'll post some of the other painted projects I've done later.

Anyhow I thought I should share at least some of what I've been doing. While I still don't feel like setting up some studio pictures I thought I would show a progress report of a sort so the pictures were just quick ones without proper lighting, but still give one an idea of the project.

I'm advancing in years and have settled on the fact that I'm a slow painter and will just never be able to finish all the projects I want to do, so some compromises will need to be made if I want to see a particular period hit the table.  A few months ago a nicely painted ECW collection came up for sale at a very reasonable price and since I've been burning to play the new Impetus Baroque rules, but lacked the armies to do so I decided this was a opportunity not to be missed and purchased the collection. The collection consisted of both a complete English army and Scots army numbering some 600+ infantry 40 Cavalry, some artillery, commanders and a number of blisters of unpainted figures!

Lots of figures!

Upon receiving the package I was happy with what I purchased, but knew I would need to change a few things and put a little work into the figures to get them in the ballpark of what I wanted. Namely-

-Add extra highlights to the skin, hair, musket stocks, leather, sashes
-Repaint chipped paint and damages
-change the color of the pikes from a dark to light brown
-Repaint or in most cases replace flags with GMB ones
- Rebase everything for Impetus Baroque

No question this is proving very time consuming with the additions and changes, but nothing compared to if I had to start from scratch so I'm not in the least bit complaining! At one time I was thinking of going 10mm with ECW, but changed my mind and happy that I did. I will of course need to rebase my own personally painted ECW collection for Baroque which will add a further 100+ figures to this one.

The rule set I plan on using.

Anyhow here is some quick pics of the units I've completed with the transformation so far. Not the best pics I know, but enough to see what is happening.

The Reds

The Whites

The Greens( A mix of P&S and Shot)

I'm currently working on 4 bases of Blues which will see the English foot finished and then I'll move on to the Scots. I really enjoy putting everything on Impetus Baroque bases as I feel you can really give a sense of movement. Regiments tend to form up in somewhat imperfect lines which Baroque bases allow you to depict quite nicely.

So one can see I have been doing things, but haven't been reporting on it which I plan on fixing and going back to my regular posting schedules. 

As I mentioned at the header I'll be at Crisis this year which will be my first time so I'm looking forward to it even if my wallet isn't! I hope to meet a few of my fellow bloggers that I haven't met plus the ones I have! One of the things I like best in traveling to wargames conventions is talking to my friends about wargaming on the way and since this looks to be a long drive I'm sure we will get to cover many topics!

Miniature Company-Bicorne, Renegade, Warlord, TAG