Frosted toys

Yesterday I sprayed three 28mm ECW figures with GW Purity Seal Satin Varnish. They looked great.

Now I usually avoid sprays because I have had disasters with frosted figures. I used the spray because I was in a hurry.

Today I sprayed another 13 figures. They frosted! Same can of spray, same shaking, sprayed in same place (outside).

Today is more humid - so that must be the issue.

I managed to fix the figures. Here's how.

First I brushed on some Daler-Rowney Soluble gloss varnish.

When the figures were dry I brushed on Windsor and Newton Galleria Matt Varnish

Worked brilliantly with no frosting.

The picture shows the result.


Now I need to base them up.

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Roman and Punics on Parade

I had the table out for a game last night. This morning I thought that I would get a visual representation of how my Punic wars armies are coming on. So here are some pictures.



Romans



Carthaginians

A few close-ups

Republican Romans

Just a few pictures of my Renegade Republican Romans.



Velites - two small units for Hail Caesar


Two more units of Velites


Two of Hastati


More Hastati


Two Principes


The other two Principes



One of the two units of Triarii


Small unit of Equites


More Equites


The whole lot. Javelinmen in front are from Crusader.





Overview shot.

Hope you like them.

Carthaginians so far

Attached some shots of my 28mm Carthaginians. Figures are mostly Renegade. The Elephant is from Aventine. Slingers and Numidians from various manufacturers.

Bases will be finished when I have most of the army painted.






Spanish infantry. I am building the army for Hail Caesar. Standard units will be 160mm wide. Medium infantry will be 12 figures per unit. Heavy infantry will have 16 figures.







I will add some shield transfers later.












The army so far. I can add a good horde of Celts and I have two more units of North African Infantry to paint.

Current Projects

Not updated this for ages.

Just thought I would pop in a quick update on what I am working on.

Ancients
Carthaginians - I have almost enough to play a game with. These are 28mm renegade figures and I am really pleased with how they look. I will try to post some pictures soon. They will match up against my Republican Romans.

Medieval
Wars of the Roses is coming along very slowly. I have half painted the horses from the fantastic Perry plastic set.

ECW
I have been working very hard on these. I now have a credible army and they have had some outings in "Pike and Shotte" games.

The Wargames Room

Most wargamers long for a place to call their own, the Wargames room. I now have mine. It is not strictly speaking mine, I have to share it with the kids, but its pretty close.

I have a good sized space in my recently converted garage, with a table and plenty of storage.

Table from far end of the room, painting desk in the background. Lots of military history and rules in the book cases.

Table and storage (Kids TV and Sofa)

Storage for figures etc

The table is made up of two 6 foot trestle tables from Amazon. They are very sturdy and a bit wider than I expected at 2 foot six each.



On the table is a solo game using Black Powder and my 28mm ACW figures. These are a mix of Perry, Sash and Saber, Redoubt, Crusader and just a few Foundry.

View of the table, Two brigades and a battery each side

The Zouaves are Redoubt figures

Perry Union troops peer across the teddy bear fur field

Perry Union artillery

Front regiment is made up of Redoubt "Ragged Reb" figures

Confederate firing line of Sash and Saber miniatures

These Rebs are a mixture of Crusader and Foundry figures. Home made fences.

The game ended in a draw. Both sides had a brigade break in the same turn. With the stats I use for ACW with Black Powder the games are pretty attritional. Units tend to blaze away at each other trying to do enough damage to make a charge worth-while. (I lower the hand to hand value to 5).

Next step. Play some real games in the new room.

WoTR Ready to Paint

I have now assembled, based and undercoated all 120 figures for the first part of the project. I have organised them into units as show in the photograph.

 

I know that there are only 118 figures in the picture, I had two casualties as I set up.

I have painted a few of the fully armoured nobles already as they need no livery colours.

I have been researching the livery colours and badges that I am going to get started with. They are as follows:

Yorkists:

Edward IV – Blue and Murrey, Sun in Splendour

George, Duke of Clarence – Blue and Murrey, Bull (Black)

Richard, Duke of Gloucester – Blue and Murrey, Boar (Blck) or White Rose

William, Lord Hastings – Murrey and Blue, Lion in Yellow

Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers – Green, Trefoil in Yellow

Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk – Red, Lion Rampant in white

Sir William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele – Orange and Red – based on shield ! Or White ? Unicorn Head badge ?

Sir William Blount – Blue, Sun Bursts in Yellow ?

John Bouchier, Lord Berners – Yellow and Green, Bouchier knot in white

Sir Humphrey Bouchier, Lord Cromwell – Black and Green, Badge ?

Lancastrians:

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick – Red, Ragged Staff in White

Sir Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter – White and Bloody, Wheat Ear in Yellow

Sir John DeVere, Earl of Oxford – Orange, Boar (Black)

Sir John Neville, Lord Montague – Red and Black, Griffen in Yellow

William, Viscount Beaumont – White, Broom Cods in Green

Sir Richard Tunstall – Black and White, Cockerel in ?

All of these nobles appear to have been at the battle of Barnet on 14th April 1471. The information is mainly from "Standards, Badges and Livery Colours of the Wars of the Roses" by Pat McGill and Jonathan Jones.

The first retinue on the painting table will be King Edward's, attired in Blue and Murrey (purplish-red).  I will probably use Lord Berners for the other Yorkist retinue here as they do otherwise seem to have a lot of Blue and Murrey.

For the first Lancastrian retinue I will go with Warwick's, followed by Exeter.

The mercenaries are a problem. They were supplied by Burgundy but were probably Flemish. I could put them in cool Burgundian Blue and White with a red cross. But, my guess is that they would have had Edward's livery to make it clear to all who they belonged to on the battlefield. So I will paint them up in Edward's colours.

Next time I should have some figures painted.

Wargaming the War's of The Roses

It is all the fault of those Perry twins! I keep on seeing blog posts, forum entries and magazine articles about their plastic Wars of the Roses figures and I want them.

So before buying any I thought that I had better start to understand these "wars".

Books

So, what books do I have. Well I hoard books so I already had some. But of course why read those when I could buy new books. So I bought two books on the military history of the wars. First John Sadler's "The Red Rose and the White". Then Philip Haigh's "The Military Campaigns of the Wars of The Roses". Read them in double time. Both very good, Haigh has the edge in writing style and detail but Sadler tries to bring in more of the first hand experiences of the politics and the fighting.

Then I pulled out the Terry Wise men at arms book, the WRG Armies of-the middle ages book, the army lists (WRG, FOG, Impetus). More army and troop type information.

So I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, now I need to start building an army.

What Side and When?

These are a complex series of wars. People change sides, change alliegency, they even change their titles as the wars go on. I first leant towards the Yorkists, after all Edward IV was never defeated in battle and they wear cool colours (more on that later). But, I don't have an opponent in mind yet, so best to collect both sides.

Now the side changing and treachery comes in to help. Warwick, the arch Yorkist, changed sides in 1469 and was suddenly a Lancastrian (actually I think he was always on his own side and changed his allies). So collect both sides for 1469-71 and you have a larger Yorkist army for the 1455-64 war. Genius!

Another plus for this particular phase of the wars is the presence of Burgundian supplied mercenaries on the Yorkist side. That gives me an excuse to use the Perry Mercenaries box to add in pikes, crossbows and handguns.

Figures

As is usual for me, this has been opportunistic. I went to Colours 2011 at Newbury and found Dave Thomas selling the Perry Plastics at 15 quid a box. So I bought two of the WotR infantry boxes and a mercenary box to get me started.

Once home I started to assemble them. I actually enjoy assembling plastic figures and these go together like a dream. The parts in the two boxes are interchangeable, so you get great variety.

After assembling a few figures I sat back and thought about actually organizing the little chaps. Many troops were raised as retinues for the various nobles so I decided to work on a number of these. How many figures? For no real reason I settled on large retinues (for kings and the main magnates like Warwick) of 24 figures, standard retinues of 16 and small ones of 8 or 12.

I cannot find a definitive view of the relative proportions of bows, bills and men-at-arms in the books or online so am going for 50% bows and a 3:1 ratio of bills to men-at-arms.

Basing

It is going to take me a while to get these painted and it would be good to get some gaming done early on. That means that I need to be able to use the figures for skirmish games. So they need to be on individual bases. Whilst thinking about this I came across Warbases. They have movement trays that will take figures mounted on UK 1 penny coins. So I collected all of the 1p coins in the house and started sticking the figures onto these. I have covered the coins and bases with PVA and bird cage sand before painting. Once I am ready to move to big battle systems (I am open minded about rules as long as I can base things my way) I can pop the figures into suitably decorated movement trays.

Next ...

For the next post I will share my thoughts the retinues that I plan to build, the colour schemes involved and get started on painting. Pictures will be posted of my progress.