Thanks Lee

I went over to Lee's to continue a 6mm game we are currently playing, lets call it the last big play test before Waterloo. He had already said he had accidentally bid on a painted SYW Prussian Hussar unit that if he won I could have. Turns out he had also bid on some painted Prussian light infantry as well which had arrived by the time I turned up for the game.

So Lee handed these over as a thank you for painting up his 6mm ECW that I am part way through. Indeed these and mine will see painting time during the challenge. I was dropping off a gun crew and three command stands for said army.

Neither Lee or myself know the maker of these figures so help would be appreciated. We also talked about basing up the light infantry as standard battalions as they have roughly the same establishment as regular infantry battalions. This is why I am showing bases with six figures rather than the three I was basing them to before.

I had six figures left over so decided to base these up so I can swap two of the six figure bases for the three to show they are in open order. So I get to add a unit of infantry to my army with the only effort on my part was to base them, not bad at all.

Lee meanwhile is still adding to his Russian and Austrian armies so we are not that far away from being able to play a fully painted game. Whilst I am low on cavalry figures I have plenty of guns, crews, infantry and command to make a reasonably big force. As such I suspect I will only be adding more cavalry to my lead pile for the time being. The Boy though will be needing both infantry and cavalry for his French but he will wait till the next show we attend I think as he still has plenty to keep me busy.

Challenge Accepted Clearing The Decks

You are probably already aware that the 7th Analogue Painting Challenge has already gone out and of course I have accepted the great opportunity that Curt has so kindly offered us. After all one cornerstone of blogging is to bring your work to a wider audience so the chance to be seen by so many more of my peers really is a great incentive to give it a shot.

Today has seen my prime hundreds of figures to join the hundreds already primed. The fact that all those primed today have been 6mm should not detract, well that's how I see it. The next batch should be 15mm

All part of this prep is also the finishing off of some of the figures I have waiting around for me just to do that last bit. I should finish off my Santa Clause before the weekend and that just leaves me a couple of command stands and a battalion of converged grenadiers for my SYW Prussians then the queue will be cleared. I will then probably paint up a few more figures as the clock clicks down to 20th December, the start of the challenge.

These limbers have been waiting finishing for twenty years! originally bought for my ECW army they will be seen with my SYW Prussians for the time being but when I finally get a game with my ECW they will be back home.

I can't remember who made them or even if the drover came with them. So a bit of a mystery but I bet someone remembers.

Another limber that will stay with the SYW unless I get told it is incorrect for period. Not only do I not know the make but am sure the limber and horse combination are likely not to have originally been together. The metal looks a little different and I seem to have plenty of these two horse models but this seems to be the only limber I have!

Still it can be used with the Prussian horse artillery I have yet to paint. That will be another of the challenge projects I must make sure happens. During the challenge a fair bit of French and Prussian SYW will be seen, possibly the biggest supplier of points for me in the challenge.

In a recent game against Matt I was short by at least one command stand so thought I should make up one as soon as possible. The centre figure is an old Chariot Miniatures figure painted many many years ago whilst the other two are Essex that a mate had not quite finished.

Again they have sat on my desk gathering in dust since before the last challenge. Whilst the middle figure has had only a slight touch up on the metal area's the two others have almost had a complete repaint as the paint was either missing in parts or been shined up from being rubbed.

I wanted to keep Martin's original look as much as possible though I did change the leather armour from blue to brown on the nearest figure in the pic above and turned the back and brest to a brass/bronze look.

I left the horses alone as much as possible though I gave a ink wash to them and tails and main needed a fair bit of help. The new stand will allow me to be more flexible in the next game. I also have another two or three command stands to paint that will again see light of day during the challenge.

It's a great feeling to have cleared up the half painted left for ages figures, just a shame it's taken so long given how quick it was to do once I sat down and got on with it.

Regiment 3 Truchseb Dragoons - Prussian SYW

In a recent post regarding my second regiment of Cuirassiers I mentioned I thought the Dragoons were better looking models. Well you can now judge for yourself.

These are Regiment number 3 Truchseb Dragoons originally raised at the end of December 1704 by baron von Derfflinger (just had to mention that!) It saw service in the Spanish Succession and Dragoon Regiment Number 4 was formed out of part of this regiment.

The regiment was renamed Grenadiers zu Pferde in 1714 but before the SYW replaced the mitre cap with the tricorn. Friedrich Ludwig Truchseb count zu Waldburg commanded the regiment at the start of the SYW.

The regiment was part of the army that invaded Saxony which is the army I have been basing my own army on. This makes less sense than you would expect given my main opponents will be Austrian and Russian but it works well enough for me.

The horse figures are nicely shaped and sized. These are figures I will be happy to reorder, indeed will be reordering soon. I have enough figures for a second regiment but aim to have at least four regiments by the end of the painting challenge. 

The figures are from Lancashire Games Prussian SYW range and needed some clean up but nothing more than normal. They painted up quickly with the right amount of detail for me. I could have painted the cords off the right shoulder but I ignored that bit of detail.

I just gave them three black horses as I suspect most of the available blacks would have been taken by their heavier friends. I was attracted to this regiment as the mix of colours make them that little bit more interesting. I have five to six regiments to choose from for the invasion of Saxony. After that I will have to spread my net a bit wider if I feel the need to expand it further.

Before the Challenge starts I would like to get that second regiment painted up but standing in the way is a couple of command stands a regiment of grenadiers and basing up of a few more SYW bits I finished off this morning instead of sleeping.

I was walking The Boy to school this morning and chatting about how many unpainted figures I have left and was wondering how many were not 6mm. Well I have a total of 5007 figures awaiting paint of which a little over 700 are between 32 and 15mm and you guessed it the majority do happen to be SYW!

As for the 6mm the vast majority are Napoleonic, the surprise is that Ancients are not the second largest subset. That is the ECW and having read quite a bit on the ECW expect more of these crossing the table during the challenge. 

6mm Ancients in fact is mostly done. I have a few big units to paint up as well as command bases but I can see Baccus getting another order before the challenge finishes, mostly for more pike as I will certanly have some of these cross the table during the challenge.

The Wargame Curse

Something most wargames have done at least once and few actually enjoy is the rebasing of figures. I actually did not find these an issue but ask me again when I have finished doing them all.

After my last game with Matt I decided I really needed to rebase. The movement trays work well enough but when you have six or more units in a line it adds quite a bit to the length.

It also means I will be able to change the actual basing style to my current look which in itself is a major improvement.

So this makes two blocks done with I think five to follow. I also have the figures in hand to paint up another two blocks. I will be buying two packs of pile from Age of Empires that will give me another three blocks but that will be something for next year. This year I hope to paint up a couple of Companion cavalry units I bought in March!

Meanwhile a lot less painting this last week though I have managed to paint up a few bits. My main focus has been prepping figures ready to paint. Not only for the Challenge but also the run up but I have now prepped more than I expect to paint during the Challenge itself.

 I hope to get a couple more blocks done before the challenge starts but I doubt more will be done during the challenge. I also plan to rebase all the other units with the old flock finish, that's a lot of figures so if I have them all done for this time next year I will have done well.

I already know I can't make Warhammer in March and with Triples cancelled I can only hope I make York in February, otherwise it's going to be a long gap between shows. I still have plenty of figures in hand (over 5,000) and actually still have plans on painting most of them but I still find myself needing different figures LOL.

Regiment No.7 von Driessen Cuirassiers 15mm Lancashire Games SYW

I have to admit I was not really too happy with the finish on my last unit of Cuirassiers, mostly because I had not bothered inking and over painting the jackets white area's. The result was a rather bland blanket white. With these I made the extra effort which I am much happier about. Of course it helps that the colour in this case is off white not full on white.

I still find the Lancashire Games heavy horse too thin for my taste but I have not qualms sticking them on the table. Indeed I will be quite happy thrusting these into the next game. 

For £15 you can buy a 24 figure pack that you need to then add command too. In our case two sets of three figures make up, yes you guessed it two regiments of Cuirassiers. So two regiments of sixteen figures cost £19, not far from half the price of Old Glory (Timecast) so a nice saving. I am in the closing stages of painting up a Dragoon Regiment from Lancashire Games which to me are better than these guys and will happily buy enough for another four regiments when I next order.

These are more interesting than the first regiment (No.3 Leibregiment zu Pferde) to look at with more colour. I went with two standards as I had the spare figure allowing me to have the colonels and squadron flags on. These are the same supplier as I used for The Boys regiment of Dragoons.

As I mentioned above I have almost finished a Dragoon regiment for my army, just varnish and flag to do so I am cracking on with my aim of painting up enough figures to get a fully painted game played. Of course I set that task to be done by the end of the challenge so maybe just maybe I will have to think up a few extra units as well.

So I will soon have four units of painted cavalry to play with, I still need to finish off a battalion of converged Grenadiers and two command stands for this army that are already started. Once these are done it's onto more Dragoons for The Boy, after that I guess it will be a couple more guns and the last Dragoon regiment. However before that I plan to finish off a couple of other already started mini's.

Baccus Persian Colonist Cavalry

Rather than going into the painting Challenge at a nice slow pace I do seem to have been getting a few finishes done of late. These Baccus Colonist Cavalry APE21 are no exception. With these I am most of the way through the army pack I bought off them about a year ago(?) not bad at all considering I have been also painting up lots of other figures.

In total I have four units of these guys and all painted up at the same time. I still have two units of Satraps to do and then I will be all done for the Persians, well until I get more which will probably be post challenge as I will be working on the Macedonians and some Nap's in the challenge but you know that means nothing.

I went for a lot of mixed colours for these four. Originally I was going to go rather drab but instead went for a brighter finish.

I even remembered to leave room for the dice cells this time around. Once I get the next two units done that will give me eight units of cavalry. I should get painted up before too long two units of scythed chariots that are cleaned up but awaiting me getting more black primer, as are a few other prepped units.

So I am very happy where I am at with this project. I will need a fair bit more infantry and I have yet to paint up a single command stand (again waiting primer) but these will also get done either on the run up to the challenge or during it. Most likely during as I really want to get some other figures painted up and I have a few units that are already started to be finished before the challenge starts.

Wellington in the Peninsula by Jac Weller

I bought this book well over a year ago from a local second hand book shop called Scarthin Books a book shop near Matlock Bath (in Cromford) Derbyshire. A bookshop I can not recommend enough for both second hand and new books. I have bought many a book there through many years though it has taken on a greater proportion of new books than in times past.

When I finally got round to starting reading this a month ago I thought it was going to be too infected with the need to push Wellington at the cost of all others. This was born from the introduction that talked up the companion volume that read very much that Wellington not only won the battle of Waterloo but could have done so if the Prussians did not turn up and that the other allied troops held him back!!

Fortunately I pressed on and whilst it often points out failings in some of the Spanish actions actually seems rather more balanced to both the Spanish and Portuguese than I expected. I still have no desire to buy the Waterloo book but will dive back into this book whenever we are looking to play a battle from Wellington's Peninsular period both to get a flavour of the battle but also an aid to which troops to use and the ground we will be fighting over. 

Typical of a book of this one's age the maps are not a great help but the short paragraph at the end of each chapter discussing the ground is a definite help. Indeed I am rather drawn to the idea of fighting through all the battles described in the book one after the other in a kind of campaign. What more can I say?

Amazon UK has it in paperback from 1p and in hardback from £9.99 to £16.99 for a new copy. It's also available for 99p on Kindle so a few good buys available.

I found Weller's style very easy to read and I give it a big thumbs up for those wanting something that has a nice depth to it but at the same time does not feel like your wading through facts and figures despite the fact that you are indeed doing just that.