Old Glory 15mm 19/25th Converged Grenadiers

The last of the Old Glory are painted up as the 19/25th Converged Grenadiers. A few differences in the uniform add a little more fun to painting these guys up.

The figures are sold in a mixed pack of command and marching figures. I would like the option to buy extra command figures for all the infantry packs as their mix leaves me short of musket carrying cannon fodder. As may have been noticed before a handy way round this is to add a mounted figure. In this case making up for the two missing troops. 

Just like the previous post these are great looking figures with good poses and bags of character. The detail on the drummers for instance tick the boxes. 

I have already painted up the 19th Regiment but could paint the 25th which would give me the option of having the grenadiers with their parent battalions though that will probably be unhistorical for these regiments. 

I still have three bases worth of command figures and I suspect these are going to be close to the front of the queue. I have enough to play most games but if I get a larger game in I will need a couple more for sure.

Old Glory Prussian SYW 18th Regiment Prinz von Preuben

I have had these figures since I first started my SYW Prussian army. These (along with some grenadiers) were based up to allow us to play whilst building up a painted force. I just never got round to taking them off their bases and painting them despite their failure to get used after a few months at the start. It always seems weird buying Old Glory from Timecast and Blue Moon from er well Old Glory. I am sure their is an explanation and hopefully it will be added below in the comments section. The flag is from Cadogan Hobbies on Ebay. They do all nations but sometimes they are not listed and you need to get in touch.

The army is based on the Prussian invasion of Saxony something of a walk over given the size of the Saxon army. However it gave me something to build an army round. It fights against Lee's Russian's and Austrian's and Joseph's growing French. 

Old Glory are very nice figures, do tend to need a bit of a clean up but the mixed poses and quality of detail make them both a joy and a task to paint but once finished you can be really happy with how they look. These are one of the two last units I managed to paint before going back to work. I still have five battalions of Lancashire Games figures to paint up as well as a Dragoon regiment and a few more guns. Then the question is get more to build it up further or go after another nation? Of course I can just stick with adding to Joseph's French and not bother going further until I might actually need them?

Rather pleased with how the drummer came out with these. The three colour pompom's were fun too!! At least this was the last army I actually played with. I just need to get all my units out and check what forces I actually have!

Prussian SYW Artillery Old Glory

I add to my Prussian 15mm SYW army with these Old Glory guns that are supplied by Timecast and not the Blue Moon which are supplied by er Old Glory. Whilst I am not really up against it for artillery with my current infantry levels I do have enough figures for another division.

 Lee and myself show number of figures on a base to determine what type of gun is being used. Battalion guns have just two figures so as you can see here two of these are battalion guns. This will give me more flexibility with the current force I already have in play.

One gun has three crew showing it as a standard gun whilst four would depict a medium gun. As you would expect from Old Glory the castings are high on detail but do need a reasonable clean up. Not too bad with small numbers but the idea of cleaning up a few battalions is a bit off putting. Maybe that's why the infantry are still waiting.

I've not had a game against Lee in a few years and despite painting up a reasonable force of French for Joseph we have not got a game in in ages either. His force is coming along and will be the next up for painting in the SYW as I still have three battalions of infantry already prepped and ready to go.

The three figure gun in fact is a Howitzer though I don't think Black Powder makes different use of them it's more to have something a little different on the table.

I am getting through a reasonable amount of painting now I am getting back into the swing. Some of the things in the queue though are a bit more time consuming but I also have a number of quick paints to allow something to be coming off the desk every few days or so.

First Game in About Two Years

FINALLY I got to play again :-) So Wednesday night I went over to Matts and we played a SYW Blackpoweder game of 777 points.

I was the Prussians (on the left) and Matt had the Austrian's. Lee and myself had based our units to our own base size and unit size so Mat and my bases did not all marry up and Matt fielded two battalions together to look a bit more like mine.

Matt had loaded one flank with cavalry whilst I was mostly even. This meant I had to turn round one flanks worth and fly across the rear of my infantry to give them a hand. Meanwhile I was trying to fend off Matts dragoons with a dragoon and a hussar unit.

My Hussars lost the first round and Matt did a sweeping advance and against the odds then lost the melee becoming shaken. I lost the dragoon v dragoon one but not the unit.

This however allowed me to charge both his dragoon regiments sending them from the field but I did take casualties making myself vulnerable to his cuirassiers.

I should have been in a great position with three fresh regiments turning up but on charging his hussars I did really poorly and this left the whole of my cavalry with fairly high casualties. This was made worse when my C-in-C blundered.

One battalion of infantry had been disordered and I failed to get two moves so unable to pass through the forward unit and things would start to go bad for them from this point on.

Matt got two units of light infantry round my flank, of course I got disordered and suddenly nothing on that flank could move. Time for another blunder methinks.

Just before Matts cuirassiers carve me up my cuirassiers are shaken by Matts very expensive hussars. He was a very happy chap they had done so well. Lots of laughing in our game but at this point mostly Matts lol.

One of my battalions blundered (I referred to it above) and he moved right into close range for Matts artillery and a battalion of infantry and that is all she wrote for those guys.

We made a few mistakes and had heads in the rules as neither of us had done enough pre-game reading and remembered things a bit less than we thought but we still had a heap of fun. Next time I think we will have a better idea and should get a better balanced game.

1st and 5th Regiments, Prussian SYW Dragoons

I can now boast a fully playable Prussian SYW army, whilst of course Lee can boast TWO painted armies, these being Russian and Austrian.

I now have three of the six dragoon regiments that took part in the invasion of Saxony. I have the figures for the other three so at some point these will be painted up as well.

Regiment 1 von Norman these fought throughout the war with the same commanding officer. The figures are Lancashire Games and whilst needing some cleanup were not so bad as to make it a pain to do.

They are reasonably detailed, to the point I actually left some of the detail out. I did have trouble with the swords of both commanders with them breaking off. One was possibly due to being in and out of the pack a couple of times whilst the other was not helped by me dropping the figure. The other painted regiment had none of these issues.

The coats on this regiment (and the next) are quite light, much lighter than Prussian Blue so they stand out more. The regiment has black cuffs and coat tails which is quite different from the usual red. Overall I remain happy with Lancashire Games figures and it's hard to beat their quality to price ratio. It has certainly made it possible to build a 15mm army without excessive costs.

The second regiment is Regiment 5 Markgraf with the same bright blue coats but the more regular red cuffs and turnbacks. 

The saddle cloths and pistol holders are both red pipped with white where the other regiment was another light blue colour.

It really feels good to get to this point with my army, not that I have a game as yet planned with them as the next game with Lee will be 15mm Ancients, it's been two years at least since Lee got his army out for a game. In fact it's so long ago we were using Fields of Glory. I think Lee will like the change of direction Hail Caesar has taken. Of course this is helped by his knowledge of Black Powder.

Number 2 Regiment Zieten Hussars

This is the cavalry that Lee also managed to buy by mistake (so he says), They are a very colourful bunch as are most of the Hussars of the period.

We base our cavalry all on the same sized bases but the number of figures on the bases denotes the troop type. Last post had the heavies with eight to a base, hussars just get six figures a base. Whilst not smack you in the mouth noticeable the overall effect and ease of working out unit types really works for us.

Hussars don't carry standards into battle so that detail is wrong. I am just taking it as a captured standard, got to be good for morale.

The detail on these figures is quite good as is the standard of painting. By happy coincidence this is one of the three Hussar regiments that took part in the invasion of Saxony so fits with my planned army. I will not be getting the third regiment for awhile as two Hussar regiments will be enough till I have grown the army somewhat. With so many cavalry units (with another four dragoons in the wings) I will be concentrating on infantry, artillery and more command once I have the dragoons on my painting table finished.

These figures came based but Lee was kind enough to debase them for me making it quicker for me to base them up. So it took about nine months to get to the point where I have a full army ready for a game. I thought that was none too shabby, right up to the point Tamsin turned in A WHOLE ARMY after just three weeks of the painting challenge, not only that she was lamenting the slow start as having the first week of the challenge away from home LOL.

Of course this army is set to grow plenty more. Though I can start to spend more time on The Boys French now. Expect to see a bunch of French infantry here soon.

Santa Clause Gets Based

I was basing up my next entry in the challenge so took the opportunity to get these based up as well. I received these great looking figures as part of the Santa Clause. I wanted to get them based as soon as I could so happy to add them to the 6mm basing session Wednesday night Thursday morning.

These are Lancashire Games again and the same as the two other Cuirassier regiments as I have painted up so fit in perfectly. The amusing note that came with them informed me they are the 9th Prinz von Schonaich Carolath Cuirassiers and hoped I did not own them already. Well I did not so again a great fit for my army. 

The hand painted flag is great. I use paper ones because I don't have the skill to do such a good job so really happy to keep this fine example of skill.

So now I have three regiments of the heavies, just one painted Dragoon and with the regiment Lee game me two hussars (more on these next post). This means I have a viable force of painted figures for a first game. That's ten months after the first figures were bought. Not at all bad, I also have two dragoon regiments about to be started so will have quite a cavalry force to choose from. More infantry needs to be painted soon I think.

So again a big thank you to my Santa Clause, your a top man and these will get plenty of time on the table

Prussian SYW Infantry by Lancashire Games

My third entry for the painting challenge was back to the SYW with these two battalions of Prussians supplied by Lancashire Games. 

The basis for my army is the army that invaded Saxony at the start of the war. As such I have plenty of scope for what units to paint as the army was rather on the large size.

The 23rd Regiment Forcade de Biaix sports the usual red cuffs and turnbacks and was originally raised May 1713 and commanded throughout the war by Froedrich Quirin von Forcade de Biaix.

I have already painted up this regiments grenadiers as the converged 1/23rd so could in theory use the full regiment at times when it was fully fielded as a whole.

The second battalion belongs to 17th Regiment von Manteuffel which sports a most colourful standard I just had to paint it up. Raised 8th March 1693 and saw action in the east mostly against Turkish troops.  It was only incorporated into the Prussian army in 1714 after serving in the Dutch army during the War of the Spanish Succession. The commander throughout the whole SYW was gerd Heinrich von Manteuffel.

I have yet to paint up the grenadiers for this regiment, these were joined by the 22nd regiments grenadiers so they will be on the table at some point along with the 22nd regiment itself.

I will be finishing off basing my Santa Clause tomorrow which means I will now have enough painted units to play a full game without bare lead. I think Lee is at the same point whilst Matt has been there for years.

SYW Prussian Guns 1st Entry Into This Years Challenge

I wanted to get something finished on the first day of the challenge and was lucky enough to get the day off work so rushed these over the line.

Two are Old Glory via Timecast. As you would expect the figures and guns had a good level of detail which was nice to paint up.

 I have painted the smallest one as a battalion gun with two crew and the other much larger gun with four crew to represent a large gun. Medium guns will have three crew. I have rather more guns and crews than I expect to use as I also bought the Old Glory Jagger and Horse Artillery pack and having since bought the army pack from Lancashire games I had a load of guns from them. Still if the army gets huge I can always use them.

The figures are not quite this bright just the amount of light from outside on a clear winters morning.

The Lancashire Games light gun is even smaller and looks the part of a battalion gun. Blackpowder rules make battalion guns rather useful as normal medium and heavy guns can not move once set up so on the attack can quickly be left behind. 

I had already stuck the figures to their bases prior to painting (not the guns) this made it a little tricky to paint up the interior detail, especially on the four man crew. To get round the drying time of the sand and exterior paint mix I made use of a warm oven. This sped up the drying time no end though I found it still to be a little tacky in a couple of places. 

Other than that the usual finish of two highlights to mix (coffee and light flesh by MP Paints) some mixed static grass and a few tufts from Tajima1. This will give me all the artillery I need for now, though I will have to add more as the army grows. This challenge will see a growth in the SYW army as I plan to keep going back to the army. The two new cavalry units I have received will also help to expand my force and I have a pair of battalions on the table which should be finished before the end of the week.

Thank You Santa Clause

Can't wait till I can get these based up, my Santa Clause has been a big hit with me and a real big THANK YOU to my giver.

My gift is the 9th Prinz von Schonaich-Carolath Cuirassiers for my SYW Prussian army and is a perfect addition. This will give me three regiments of cuirassiers and will be a good base to build my cavalry around.

The figures are Lancashire Games and the paint work is really crisp and the colours pop. I could not have asked for a better present.

I also received as gifts from family enough Lancashire Games dragoon figures for four regiments so these will be added to the prep pile soon and also four packs of Baccus Macedonian pike to replace the ones I have just finished. Great timing.

So again a big thanks to my Santa Clause and of course thanks also to Chris for running the event.

Fredrick The Great in 15mm

I needed to add at least one new command stand for my army as it is growing at a reasonable pace. So who better than the gaffer himself?

All figures are Old Glory via Timecast and have a good amount of detail, not all of which I have graced with paint ;-)

Normally command bases have two mounted figures but this being the C-in-C gets three models on it. Being THE commander, i.e. Fredrick The Great himself I wanted a bit of a cameo look about it so here we have one commander pointing, a ADC looking and Fred ignoring. Classy yes...........? eh ok I get your point :-)

The base is larger than the other command stands so it's obvious who the boss is. I actually have another base with three figures on that is on the normal size so being a bigger base will help a lot.

Painting up three? well five takes about the same amount of time so why not get another stand done. So I should have enough to keep me going until I get a few more cavalry units painted up, then I will need more so I guess I will be painting up another couple of bases worth in the not too distant future.

I like everything about these figures except the standing horses front legs. They should really have a gap between them but are cast with this filled in. After too much time trying to cut the metal out on previous figures I have just left it well alone. No deal breaker but a little annoying as it did not have top be done this way.

With just under two weeks left till the painting challenge kicks off you won't see any big units cross the table but I hope to get a few more single figures and maybe a small unit or two done before it all goes OTT. I still have time before the challenge starts to finish off more prep. I am mostly slowed down by opportunities to prime prepped figures. I have plenty ready to prime but now have ran short of sticks to put them on, I need to paint something then!