First Finish of 2020

And just like that I equalled the posts of 2019 LOL. These are three battalions of French SYW infantry for use with Blackpowder and belong to my son. I actually started these in last years painting challenge and their they sat. In the end three painting sessions saw them finished. Always a bit embarrassing when they finish so fast given the time lapse.

He has three more undercoated so I should get those done in the next month or so. A few things ahead of them in the queue. I know after that he still has some artillery and dragoons but not really sure if he has any infantry left.

The three regiments they depict from the left are Picardie (Regiment 1), Due Roi (Regiment 12) and Briqueville (Regiment 23). The figures are Lancashire Games from their 15mm range. I find size wise they fit well with Old Glory. I also have the Prussians and I find those castings better than the French in that the French have a little bit of misalignment on the standard infantry figure (turnback slightly worse than the full frock coat) which shows worst on the cartridge box at the rear of the figure. Still at the price they are tough to beat for value for money and are really quick to paint.

The flags are from Cadogan Hobbies and are the best priced flags I have ever got my hands on. The print quality is not at all bad and you get all the available flags. I had difficulty finding the Prussians originally and at this point no French are showing but if you contact them they will make them available. They also do the cavalry ensigns as well.

I am waiting for a bust and brass rods to arrive so will be playing around with my airbrush which will allow me to play catch up with the other finishes I managed last year.

French SYW Artillery - Lancashire Games 15mm

The Boy's army continues to grow, he has had noticeable success in a recent game with his guns, blasting my poor infantry to bits as I advanced towards his troops so it was not surprising that he should favour yet more guns.

As such I painted up a couple of battalion guns and a medium giving him a little more flexibility. He will need a couple more battalion guns when I paint up a few more infantry battalions for him.

As he has a artillery Battle Pack from Lancashire Games so still has plenty of guns left to go at. I also have one as well as the Blue Moon gun pack so we won't go short.

In fact these have taken the table once already but suffered from the usual luck that first time used troops tend to suffer. Still The Boy's army continues to grow, he even has two regiments of heavy cavalry on my workbench at the moment that will soon be finished.

His next troops though are likely to be 6mm British Napoleonic's he is hankering after a few horse artillery batteries having played against my French ones a few weeks back.

Two 15mm French Seven Years War French Infanty

I continue to add to The Boy's army, this time with Regiment 43 Bourgogne and as usual these are from Lancashire Games but a slight change to normal I had included grenadiers on one stand.

Having painted a reasonable number of these fellows up it was straight forward, the flag is from Cadogan Hobbies I bought the sets for French infantry and cavalry and the two sets for the Prussians  so literally have hundreds of the buggers.

These have already seen action in a rare loss for The Boy. The three bases allow us to move them in march column or deploy in line. The cavalry come on 60x60mm bases that conform to three bases of infantry.

Just four grenadier figures on the right hand base allows them to have the correct position and adds a little something to the base. Difficult to believe we have been building these armies for over two years now. Still once I have a couple more cavalry units painted he will have a reasonable force for a full game.

It's never worth just doing one regiment so her we have Regiment 37 Royal Roussillon, The boy picks the units he wants painting based part on uniform and part flag. Mostly the flag is the driving force behind the regiment, here the two uniforms colour pops nicely.

Again I did grenadiers for this regiment, not sure how many more units worth of infantry I have for him left to paint but I have at least two units worth plus at least four of cavalry.

Not a fan of stiff flat flags I like a little movement in them so some repainting tends to be required where the flags show white crease lines but it's worth the extra effort.

15mm Lancashire Games French SYW Infantry

Well a month without posts and it flew past. Not having your own computer was a real pain in the backside. Though I was not aware it had been a whole month since I posted here. Well I now have my own computer again so expect more posts again, though I have painted far less than you would expect without the distraction of a computer.

Two more regiments for The Boys army, it's starting to take shape now and we hopefully will be getting a few more games in soon.

This is the 6th Regiment La Marine which fought it's first battle of the Seven Years War on the 26th July 1757 at the battle of Hastenbeck which was won by the French. This was to be the only major action the regiment was to actually fight. It was at a number of other battles but was never fully engaged, though detachments did fight a number of actions.

The regiment wore grey-white coats with black facings making them a little different. The red waistcoats are hidden on most figures but you get a good view of one in the first picture.

The colonels standard is fairly plain which is good as I don't want the whole army to be a blaze of the more fancy ones. Talking of which......

Having the odd blaze of colour and detail makes the army look better so I think he can be forgiven for picking these guys.

These are Regiment 16 Dauphin which also was part of the same army as Regiment 6 but these were more involved in future battles so look to have seen more action.

The coats are white as have been most of the regiments I have painted for The Boy and this really helps make the light blue facings pop.

So overall I am impressed with the Lancashire Games casting's. Some of them shave the ammunition pouch somehow cast so that at the mould line they are staggered and whilst it is not very obvious it's still disappointing when the rest of the figure looks good.

Above is the four regiments I painted during the Analogue Painting Challenge making five painted up all together for him. I need to add a few more and more cavalry and then he will have a more balanced force.

Talking of the challenge, it finishes on Monday. I have two small submissions so rather limp over the line this year but I have still painted up far more than I had expected.

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.

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.

French SYW Dragoons by Lancashire Games

Sorry it's been over a week since my last post. Not that I have nothing to post about, just mostly worn down by a busy end to our busy period at work along with being more than a little under the weather. I managed to resist posting about all my prep (well post dedicated to the subject). However that was what took up most of my hobby time but in the end the need to paint something won out and I got these almost finished before the Analogue Painting Challenge started.

These are Lancashire Games French Dragoons from their SYW range and are for The Boy's army. He now has two regiments of Dragoons, three guns, three command stands and a single battalion of infantry. Clearly I need to now pay attention to expanding this arm of his army.

The Boy choose the regiment for me to paint based on images of the regiments and their cornets. He has another regiment picked out that I hope to paint for him during the challenge but that is a bit down the list of unit to do. He will be receiving more Lancashire Games figures for Christmas, enough to make a further two regiments of dragoons and and four battalions of infantry. After that I will have to get him some heavy cavalry, hussars and grenadiers. That should keep me busy.

This is the regiment Languedoc which did not it appears have a very busy war but The Boy liked the colour of the uniform and the two colour standard seems he will be building a colourful army. 

Next up for his army will be one more battalion of his own uniform design then onto a couple of normal uniform colours so plenty to go at over the next few months.

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.

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.

Lancashire Games French SYW Artillery

Keeping with 15mm but switching to the SYW I have finished the first three units for The Boy's French army. Sounds impressive until you realise it's artillery so very small units.

I continue to be impressed by Lancashire Games products, true the cavalry let them down a little but these figures look the part and again paint up nice and quick. I went with a dark blue and crimson to make them pop, my son rather likes them so a score there.

The pack comes with three different sized guns so I crewed the smaller one with just three crew. The wheels go on the carriages with ease and they have enough detail to be interesting to paint whilst not too fiddly. The guns are a slightly darker blue than the coats of the crew.

The Boy has chosen his next unit which is infantry so I will be finishing a unit he started way back around the start of the year, also Lancashire Games. Today I ordered him the Schomberg Dragoons as he wants to have a unit in the distinctive green. These are Blue Moon via Old Glory along with a few higher command figures to lead his troops.

Meanwhile I have started a battalion of Grenadiers for my Prussians, seems to be all go and all 15mm on the desk at the moment. So I will be looking at getting a few more 6mm units across it sometime soon just to keep it fresh.

3rd Leibregiment of Cuirassiers by Lancashire Games

I managed to get a regiment of Cuirassiers painted up in the first few days of my week off work. Good job too as most of my hobby time post this was spent on basing up or painting more of The Boys figures.

These are Lancashire Games SYW Prussian Cuirassiers and I have based them eight figures to a base for a sixteen figure unit. Four figures more than I used for the Hussars and one or two more than the Dragoons will get. This makes my cavalry rather expensive given the price of 15mm but after seeing the game at Partizan this year it was the only way to go. 

The horses are a little skinny for my liking but have reasonable detail and take paint really well so overall I am pleased. I have enough figures for one more regiment then will have to decide if I am going to buy Blue Moon or buy more of these. Either way it's quite probable I will be buying more Lancashire Games ones just for the speed they can be painted. The cost is also a draw being rather cheap, price to quality is a real good mix.

Given that I will possibly end up with about nine regiments of Cuirassiers the lower price the better. I read somewhere that the Cuirassier and Dragoon regiments used black horses so I went for all black on these guys whilst the Dragoons will have to have a mix as I work on the idea that they would not have the pick on the bunch.

The ensign had a metal flag attached but I cut this away so I could add a Fighting Fifteen's flag. This is the same make as the infantry ones seen previously.

I still don't have enough painted units for a game but I took all my based figures over to Lee's last Friday for a game (camera ran out of battery on first shot!). The game was fun with Lee really mauling me at a few points. I beat back his cavalry - just - even though I outnumbered his but they were in such bad shape that I was not in a good position to fight the rest of his cavalry off. Meanwhile I broke one of his infantry divisions but only to see one of mine routed. As mine were holding the village and the loss of this meant Lee had a lot more infantry to throw at my remaining division I thought it better to scarper. So two games with Lee so it looks good at least for now.

Lancashire Games Prussian SYW Regiment

Having bought for The Boy some French SYW figures from Lancashire Games and being happy with the look and speed of painting I decided to buy into them for my Prussians. I was hoping they would paint up faster than the Old Glory and I can't lie the discounted price was very attractive. I made this more so by buying an army pack which has a good discount but also took advantage of the 20% extra discount that is offered when Lancashire Games attends a show doubling up on discounts certainly helps with the cost of a 15mm army!

A fairly quick paint up, less than two weeks for all three battalions. The figures were a real mix of quality in castings, some had a lot of flash whilst others needed very little work at all. In all cases the metal was quite soft so cleaned up quite quickly and for the most part I was able to get all the mould lines off missing just a couple. Speed of clean up was quicker than the Old Glory which have a harder metal to deal with.

The figures come with no pose variation for each figure though being soft I am sure some changes could be made. Some of the detail such as the straps is a bit over stated (not helped by my painting) but it works for me. I actually enjoyed painting these more than I did the Old Glory as they were faster and I found batch painting in Battalions rather rewarding. The tunic's, waistcoats and trousers were all done en-mass with the white onwards done by battalion. One big whoops however is that they are for some reason carrying their muskets on their right shoulder and not left as they should be. Indeed the French have got it right. This is not something that is too big a deal for me but I know it would be for many a gamer.

The colonels battalion has the two flags whilst the 2nd (above) and third get the one flag. This is just the second battalion but I have already moved away from my plan of painting up the army for the invasion of Saxony as the 2nd Regiment was in the area of Silesia but I had the flags (same sheet as 1st Regiment) and I could not resist the black flags. I have the flags for another four regiments (12 batts) so have plenty for now but I will be buying more from Fighting 15's when I need them as they are good quality flags.

The figures for me strike a good balance of detail to ease of painting making them reasonably quick to paint up. Something to consider if like me you are having to provide the painting for two armies! 

For the third battalion I used the musketeer advancing pose. Lee is not fond of this or the firing pose much preferring the upright muskets. I realise these are much easier to base and game with but I rather like mixing them up. I added a couple of upright figures to the rear of the command base figuring these would be less likely to be firing past the officers ears.

We based them so as to be able to put them in march column. Black Powder allow Prussians to form both sides of the command stand whilst other armies have to turn and march into position to turn to flank and face the enemy making them that bit harder to position than my Prussians.

For size comparison I have the Old Glory on the left and Lancashire Games on the right. As you can see they are comparable which is very handy. I still have a good number of Old Glory to paint up and I do see me buying yet more but I have a lot more Lancashire Games figures to paint up and yes I can see me buying more of those too.

Here is another shot of both companies. I now have five finished battalions and have made a start on my first cavalry unit, more on these in a future post. It's fair to say we have got our SYW project started and as soon as Lee and I can manage some FTF we will start trying the rules out. First up Black Powder to be followed by the Osprey rules if we are not feeling BP.