15mm French SYW Infantry and Vapnartak 2017

Posting is a bit irregular at the moment. Partly down to the painting challenge, ironic that. Also my computer is in the last gasp of life as it keeps freezing and is a right pain to use far too much of the time.

First up the show at York, not much to show for my trip as I only bought some double dice cells for our English Civil War armies as the rules I am working on will use unit strength and morale factors rather than just the one score to represent both. I also bought some roof tiles to use on the 15mm buildings I bought from Warbases a few months ago. The Boy did better out of me gaining two units worth of Heavy Cavalry and a battalion of French grenadiers all from Lancashire Games. This will complete his army from a point of view of giving him a viable force to play with. Being a wargamer though it's only the start of his army and will be added to as time goes on.

The show it self was heaving. I think it will need to change venue as it's just far too cramped to the point of contravening fire regulations. On a personal level the stairs ended up being just too much and I ended the day in so much pain that on getting home I was violently sick (sorry Lee but if you only knew the struggle not to chuck in your car) and was driven to bed only getting up to say goodnight to the kids, not good.

Anyway on to a more pleasant subject. Last week I finished these two battalions of French infantry for The Boys army. These are again Lancashire Games 15mm SYW figures and again ticked all the required boxes for me and The Boy.

Regiment 2 Champagne sport a white uniform with red waste coats just the same as regiment 3 so the only difference for these two regiments is the flags.

Being the first white coated units I have painted post discovering the ink wash technique I was somewhat in the dark on how to paint these up and had a minor wobble when I added the black ink wash. In the end it was mostly a case of repainting the white but as a heavy highlight and overall I can be satisfied with the result.

Regiment 3 Navarre had the same treatment but I had watered down the ink some for these and so had a better base to work to. In the end though you can't really tell any difference. I have two more regiments on the desk at the moment so will approach them with a bit more experience. I was considering using the system Tamsin suggested but decided to save this for some future ones when I have more time to get it right.

I continue to be impressed with the results I am getting with the Lancashire Game figures. The casting is not perfect and I missed some mould lines but I can't complain with the effort to results ratio and will be buying more Prussians for my army when I get to the end of the figures I have in hand at the moment.

The Boy will now have three battalions of infantry with another two almost finished so I will move onto his heavy cavalry next. I have been looking at some of the other regiments such as the Irish, Scottish and Italian, lots of uniform colour and interesting flags so looking forward to doing some of these for him once his basic force is painted up.