Saxon Duguth Warriors #2

Back to my Early Saxons for Dux Britanniarum and my 2nd unit of Duguth warriors. The unit is 8 strong instead of 6 as Hamarolf attracted new followers which is nice!:-) I'm happy to be working back on this project as I really dislike using my Vikings as substitutions for Saxons in previous games even though they don't look too far off the mark. I'm going to try very hard to stay with the Saxons and finish them, before moving on to other things.

The figures are all Musketeer and I like them very much indeed and are a real joy to paint! Some of the figures are doubles, but I don't mind as I just paint them a bit different. The shields are a mix of LBM transfers, repainted  Foundry transfers and my own designs with some MIG pigments added. The bases are from Warbases and are arranged more in a shieldwall style as I personally prefer that over the loose skirmish. The figures can be removed from the bases.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company-Musketeer Miniatures

The Strathbogie Regiment 1645

Marching under the banner of "For God The King Against All traitors" over and "God Save The King" under comes Lord Huntley's Strathbogie Scots Royalist regiment supporting Montrose fight for the king's cause in Scotland during the ECW.

The regiment was very well equipped if not the best equipped in Montrose's army and for the most part fought very well for him. Most wear a typical Hodden grey and blue caps, but as always I took some liberties and mixed up their look a bit to fit the overall theme of my Montrose army which which is to say it's more of an all rounder in that I intend to use the army as both a Scots Montrose army and a northern English army like those that fought at Marston Moor. With this in mind I kept the tartan to just a few figures to give the proper impression and the patterns basic to give the Scottish feel, but not so much so that I couldn't use them as English in a pinch in other games.

The figures are a mix of Bicorne and Renegade which I prefer for this period. The lovely flag is from Flags of War. Painting was done using AP and some highlights added. It seems Renegade has temporarily closed their Web Site which I hope does not become permanent as I really like their figures.

Thanks for viewing!:-)

More Operation Squad

A few days ago Nick, Mike, Franz and I played another game of Operation Squad which is a WWII based skirmish game at the squad level. The terrain is a mix of mine and Nick's and the lovely figures used for this game were Nick's who has been working really hard on his 28mm WWII collection and we felt he should be rewarded by using all his figures(it didn't hurt that they looked superb either!).

Nick and I took the role of a German Luftwaffe squad supported by a Puma, Pak 40, mortar and a Tiger I vs Mike and Franz running a Soviet rifle squad led by a commissar supported by a sniper, mortar, T34/85 and an ISU2. We decided to go way overboard on the support points to try out the heavies, plus I really wanted to play the Tiger!:-)

Things started well for the Russians destroying the Puma with the ISU2 and wiping out a couple Volksgrenadier support sections with the rock hard sniper in both shooting and close combat! However, things changed when the Tiger got his groove on and blew up both the T34 and ISU2 in a gunslinger type showdown. I could almost hear Clint Eastwood or should I say Hans Ostwald saying "Go ahead make my day!".:-)  Then the German mortar found his mark and wiped out a quarter of the Soviets and the commissar in one fell shot. On top of this the supporting members of the German mortar section gunned down the their opposite Russian mortar section through small arms fire and being caught in the blast from the exploding T34.  At this point the Russians were 1 man away from having to take a route test and had no real answer to the Tiger so we ended the game there.

As usual Operation Squad provided an excellent movie like experience and was great fun, but it has it's problems with the sniper, mortar and grenades being way to effective and the lack of tanks have differing levels of front, sides and rear armour values plus the high powered main guns pretty much slice through everything. We will add a few a house rules and that should alleviate these issues.

My camara didn't take very many good pictures this time so I only have a few decent ones, but I implore you to check out Nick's blog that gives a fuller account of the game here.

Thanks for viewing!

Major General Abner Doubleday

This well sculpted Perry figure will most likely represent a standard union commander in my games, but the model himself is Major General Abner Doubleday. He was an able commander, but through false reports and personal dislikes saw him fall out of favour. He is probably most famous for firing the first return shot with his battery at Fort Sumter.

He fought in the battle of Second Bull Run leading a Brigade, then a division at South Mountain and was wounded leading his men at Antietam and was present though inactive at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville. He again entered the fray with command of the I Corp at Gettysburg after Major General Reynolds was killed. His corps showed excellent fighting spirit when  of 9,500 of them  held off 16,000 confederates for 5 hours before having to retreat with several brigades suffering 35 to 50% causalities. Unfortunately for Doubleday another corps commander falsely indicted his command broke first and since Meade the commanding general didn't like Doubleday believing him to be an indecisive commander(his nickname was 48hours) choose to believe this and had him replaced. When Doubleday requested reinstatement of command from Meade for 1 Corps and was refused he decided to pack his bags and head for Washington to undertake administrative duties.

After the war he got into the railway business, law and wrote some books on his experience in the War.

Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company- Perry Miniatures

I also won something over at Dalauppror blog here! It's a great blog full of Swedish wargaming history. Michael cleverly likes to take rule sets for other periods and use those with a Swedish background. Very nice painting and great AAR's can be found there so I highly recommend checking it out.
I won what seems to be a history of tanks in WWI and for sure I will be checking it out. Thanks Michael!

Warlord aquires Arsenal Miniatures

I just saw that Warlord acquired Arsenal Miniatures! Here I remember first seeing this range back in 2010 and thought it looked awesome! It looked to be coming along great and I was already set to spend some cash and then suddenly all work and communication stopped and I heard nothing for several years. I was sorely disappointed as my dreams of fighting the Spanish Hapsburgs and the Ottomans appeared to go up in smoke.

Here is the old Arsenal link:http://arsenalminiatures.blogspot.de/

It was with great pleasure to see that Warlord managed to get the range where others had tried and failed. I really hope they continue with Paul Hicks as the sculptor as the material already produced is at a fantastic standard. I'm very excited as this has a lot of potential and will present a beautiful spectacle on a battlefield.

Time to get ready to spend some cash again!:-)

Brigadier General William Barksdale

This is Redoubt figure of Brigadier General William Barksdale who will serve as himself when appropriate and as a fill in brigade commander at other times. I always liked Don Troiani's depiction of him in battle waving his hat forward for his Mississippians to charge so when I saw the figure on Redoubt page I new I had to include him in my collection.

A veteran of the Mexican War and a member of the House of Representatives and a true hot head who beat another member of Congress with his cane over states rights issues entered the Civil War first in the Militia before taking command of the 13th Mississippi. He led the regiment through the  first Battle of Bull Run, Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battle before taking command of the whole brigade after Brigadier General Richard Griffith was mortally wounded at Savage Station and leading it on a doomed, but heroic charge up the Malvern Hill. Barkesdale now a Brigadier general commanding "Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade" joined Major General Lafayette McLaws Division where his brigade under his leadership became a well known tough fighting brigade in the battles of Battle of Antietam, (Sharpsburg), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and finally Gettysburg where his brigade smashed through the Union forces at the Peach Orchard before being stopped at Plum Run. Barkesdale was leading his men from horseback at the front which inspired his men(and the painting), but left him dangerously exposed and led to his death by bullet in his knee, a cannon ball to the foot and final bullet to the chest which brought him down for good.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company-Redoubt Miniatures

Late Roman armoured infantry (10mm)

Foraging once again into 10mm  to try it out in an effort to get some gaming in. While 28mm is my favourite scale and will remain my primary scale it takes me a very long time to finish each unit making gaming difficult for all the periods and armies I want to do. So, I've decided to concentrate for a little while on some of the smaller scales so I can have some armies to play when I return back to paint the long term 28mm projects that I have. While it still probably takes me too long at even this scale it for sure is much faster then 28mm.

While 10mm is quite small and one must sit down at the table when gaming to see the detail it does however have a certain charm to it that other scales just don't have. The larger scales are more serious and anything under 10mm is flat out too tiny IMHO.

Tim and I decided first to try the Late Roman period focused in Western Europe to start our 10mm venture. I picked Pendraken's very nice Late Romans and Tim went with Coppelstone's equally very nice fantasy Horse Tribe figures which look great for Goths. The Late Roman period has long held an interest for me so I was pretty happy to start here.

The figures are armoured infantry and are based for Impetus on 60mm x 25mm bases. I like a bit of room on my bases so I can handle the base and not the figures as much as possible, plus it comes in handy for the more energetic figures later on and I just think it looks better too. The figures are Pendraken and have surprising detail for the size. The shields are LBM transfers, but I ended up repainting them to give a stronger colour which comes to a good point on painting 10mm. This scale requires you to paint in high contrasts that would look way to strong in 28mm, but work very well for 10mm and is something I'm learning to do. At first I was kind of frustrated, but now that I'm finished I'm pleased with the results and still motivated to do more which is a good thing for future gaming. Oh, another real nice thing is the savings you make at this scale compared to 28mm or even 15mm which is quite significant!

Photography is another challenge for this scale and something I'm still trying to come to grips with so I took as many pics at as many different angles as I could in the hopes that you can see the figures well enough. I'm happy with the painting results, but the photography needs a lot of work still.  I hope to try some proper terrain background when I get a chance and see how that looks as that usually works better.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company- Pendraken