Danes TYW/ECW - First Four Cavalry Units

The initial fiasco with the oil wash at least let me catch up all the cavalry so its all ready to prime. Each unit will consist of four bases with three mounted miniatures on each one. Christian IV had pretty deep pockets at this point in time having defeated Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus during the Kalamar War and controlling the shipping into and out of the Baltic.

All of these are Bicorne Miniatures and mostly out of the California lot that I purchased.These required the most work. Horses had to be removed from the bases (and I'm most impressed on the amount of super glue that was used for this purpose) and I attempted to removed the riders. I think he may have used epoxy to glue the riders on because they aren't budging from the backs of those horses. None of the mold lines had been so that took some extra time too. The last unit came from the Colorado lot. Riders and horses were still separate and a start had been made to clean up the castings.  So some 50 odd castings later I'm ready to try and apply primer again.

Danes TYW/ECW Bad Start

So I was pretty excited and Thursday I was ready to give my first attempt at using the oil wipe technique. I pulled out my water soluble Windsor Newton Burnt Umber and mixed up a nice wash, a little thicker than my acrylic washes but thin enough to flow into the depths of the detail.

I grabbed five of the Arquebusier Cavalry and applied a nice liberal wash and in my high dry climate I figured that was a long enough wait, I didn't want it to dry on me. I took a some cotton rags and started to lightly rub off the wash. Looked good at the start but then I noticed that I was rubbing down to bare metal. I tried it on the next letting up on the pressure I was applying. No go, still taking paint down to the bare metal.

I finished rubbing the five figures that I started with and could see quite a variation on how much metal was now visible. Clearly not a successful evening. I have used the Vallejo acrylic primers with a lot of success but I have never subjected them to this kind of pressure before and obviously it was not up to the task. My only good choice was to strip everything down to the bare metal again and go with an enamel or lacquer primer.

I have a couple of different paints I'm going to try this time. First up will be Army Painter Leather Brown (and actually is a primer) and three Tamiya colors: TS-33 Dull Red, TS-62 Nato Brown and TS-34 Camel Yellow. Why not Humbrol as used by Metal Mountain? Because Humbrol is not readily available in my area except in small pots and I wasn't going to be home this weekend and wouldn't have access to my airbrush. I figure what I have on hand right now should do the trick.

Of course now that I have everything stripped (and found a few more mold lines to deal with) its raining hard and it looks like its going to keep on raining for the rest of the evening. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some primer on these guys and they will be ready for the oil wash on Monday.

Here are some pictures of the bare pewter showing through after I wiped off the oil wash. It varies a lot, from a whole patches to just some buckles.

TYW/ECW - The sorting - ID request

I have been going through these miniatures this weekend and picking out which units I would like to have ready for the army painting competition at the convention. I was sorting through the cavalry first. There is a ton of Wargames Foundry Cavalry in here and its significantly smaller than the Bicorne Cavalry. In addition at least half the horses are missing for the WF Cav. Which is a shame, I'll have to see if they will sell me just horses. Sorting through the Bicorne Cavalry I'm definitely going to have to purchase some packs to fill out the units. There is a Danish army list in FOG; Wars of Religion Western Europe 1610-1660. In this list is a requirement for a unit of Arquebusiers which is armored (or unarmored) horse with carbines.  There are eight loose miniatures that look like they would fill out this unit pretty well, unfortunately I have no idea what the Bicorne stock number is nor does Bicorne have picture of all their minis in their shop.Even if these guys are pictured it would be almost impossible to tell if they have carbines from the front photo that Bicorne has of their miniatures. These guys are in buff coats with pistols in hand, and carbines slung. Does anyone know what the stock numbers for these are?

These have been identified: ECWC004 (Trooper w/ Pistol, Buff Coat, Mixed Headgear). I will fill out the unit with ECWC019 and ECWC020 which are actually holding the carbine instead of the pistol.

There are four figures here with kind of front and rear quarter shots.

I swear they followed me home - Thirty Years War TYW/ECW Minis

The Thirty Years War is a period that I have always wanted to do and a year or so ago I picked up the FOG rules and Warlords plastic stuff. I got a lot of that together and just decided that I didn't like the looks of the plastic and they weren't much fun to paint so they fell to the wayside. Over the last two nights I have picked up a couple of collections of ECW/TYW miniatures, mostly Bicorne and Wargames Foundry with some Perry Miniatures and Warlord Games thrown in for good measure.

The first box came from California with a very odd mix of troops in it, like a dozen three horse artillery limbers but no artillery pieces and about 40 officers but only in 3 poses (and what am I going to do with that many officers anyway?). I think what really made it worthwhile though are the 94 Cavalry miniatures. About 2/3rds are Bicorne and the rest are Wargames Foundry. I have pawed through the foot troops and there should be plenty of musketeers but there doesn't seem to be enough pikemen. Will do some more sorting of these over the weekend. There is one very odd pose for some of the pikemen as well. Odd enough that I'm not quite sure how they are supposed to be holding the pike. I have gone through the Bicorne site and I'm just not quite sure what figure it is to even ask for advice on it.

The second lot was much cleaner and had a mix of Bicorne, Perry and Warlord. I probably won't bother with the two boxes of plastic Warlord Games infantry although I may pull some officers out of there. Again there is a bunch of Cavalry (including Dragoons!) from all three manufacturers. Plus a lot of Bicorne Pikemen and a smattering of Warlord Games metal Pikemen. There are some personality figures from Bicorne and Warlord Games.

Included in the personalities is the Warlord Games' version of Fairfax who is on one of the worst sculpted horses I have ever seen (the sculpt of Fairfax himself is quite nice). I think the best use of this horse is to use it as a dead one, that would give me the added satisfaction of getting to stomp on it (I learned that little trick from Chris Fitzpatrick, owner and primary sculptor of Crocodile Games. He has also sculpted for GW and Ral Partha). In general I dislike Warlord Games pewter horses, they just never seem to be quite right and the plastic ones drive me crazy since all of the manes hang off on the horses' left side. Crazy enough that I'm probably going to convert at least half of the ones I decide to use to hang off to the horses' right side.

Since it doesn't look like I'm going to get my Normans in time for the convention painting competition this is going to be the army I put together for the show. I'll go through the FOG rules and figure out what I need for the Danes but I think I need five units completed for the convention so probably three pike and shotte units and two cavalry units. Should be fun but I have a lot of work in front of me to get these done in time. But then my entry for the convention is almost done now so that's pretty much all I need to work on.

So here are some pictures of the preliminary sorting. I'll do a lot more over the weekend so I can figure out what I need to order for the competition, if I need anything. I think I maybe coming up short on command figures for the various units, but I'll figure that out this weekend.

Warlord Games Boxsets. I'll use the Cavalry boxes for sure, the horses are plastic but the riders are pewter. Probably will skip the Infantry box. I have a box of Swedish infantry as well but it has metal command figures that I will swipe out of it.

 Warlord Games blisters; Woohoo two packs of cannon! Not sure what I will do with the dead livestock pack

Gotta love those little black boxes from Perry Miniatures! The larger boxes contain Cavalry, and the small boxes have musketeers in them.

 This is the Wargames Foundry Cavalry that I pulled out of the box. Its going to take some work to get in shape for painting though.

 This is the stash of Bicorne Miniatures stuff. Pike, shotte and more Cavalry!

 Ziplock bags full of the various infantry and other oddball piece that made up the CA lot. Mostly Bicorne with maybe a third of it from Wargames Foundry.

Some of the oddball stuff included, not one but two copies of the Sedan Chair and three copies of the Surgeon's set, will go right along with the dozen or so three horse team limbers.

Maverick Models Thirty Years War (TYW) Danish Flags Arrived - Awesome Service

I'm not sure how I missed this envelope, and I was watching for it too because one had already gone astray. However, one of my boys placed this on my work desk yesterday and upon opening it I discovered the flags that I had ordered from Maverick Models (and be careful googling that one because the first link will most likely be for a bunch of real life human male models, although perhaps if there are any women reading this that's the link you might want to see first). Stuart and I recently had a conversation about the Danish flags from the Thirty Years War. At the time he said he would love to do some if he could find some references, something I have had a hard time coming up with. He then mentioned that he had a dozen or so Imperial flags that he wanted to put up but couldn't identify. I mentioned that the Danes were among the first (if not the first) to include a national emblem on their flags, the red field with the white cross. Sure enough the flags that Stuart had featured this emblem and within a day or so he had them up and ready to go on his site. I mean can you ask for better service than that?

Of course I had no choice but to order one of each (in 28mm)! After one mishap in the mail, they arrived sometime last week and apparently into the mail stack for one of my sons rather than my stack (I'm not sure why they though they should be getting any mail from the UK, maybe I should check into that). They came out great and that's going to push me to get at least one unit of Danish troops painted up soon (along with all my other soon projects), just to use these flags.

The only one I might question as a regimental flag is the one for "unknown infantry regiment - 7". This certainly looks like the coat of arms for King Christian IV and I'm thinking this might be used as a second flag issued to actual Danish regiments. Finding good references for the Danish military during this period has been very difficult. If someone else out there has been researching this period and has some good sources please drop me a line or leave a comment.

Anyway a huge thank you to Stuart at Maverick Models for the high quality flags and really taking the time to work with me on this little project. You can find his website here: Maverick Models

Thirty Years War, the Danes and Maverick Models

One of the periods that my local gaming group plays (on occasion) is the Thirty Years War. Currently we are using FoG, but we are also looking into Pike and Shotte to see if its a better fit. Of course, I need to play something a little different and opted to build an army for Denmark. Well, the research has been less than forthcoming with answers. I have enough to get troops painted but flags for those troops was a whole different story. On a whim I contacted Stuart at Maverick Models to see if he had anything. After a brief email exchange it turned out that some flags he had made but really couldn't identify turned out to be for the Danes. The next thing I know he has them up on his website ready to go. What more can you ask for, so I fired an order off for one of each! You really can't get service any better than that. I haven't used his flags before but all the images on the website (which I have added to my website list) look great. You can find Maverick Models here: Maverick Models If you need flags for some of your troops definitely check Stuart's stuff out, from 6mm on up and he will do custom orders as well.

Here is an example of one of the Danish flags.

First Impression - Warlord Games Pike and Shotte

While I should be working on ReaperCon competition entries, I can't do that on the train ride into work. I just received my copy of Pike & Shotte from Warlord Games and I have been working my way through that on the train ride.

This is just a first impression of the book itself, not a review of the rules or how the game plays. I see some interesting concepts and I'm eager to get some miniatures on the table and try it out but that will have to wait for later. I did receive the free mini with the rulebook and he's very nice and is going to look marvelous when I get him painted up.

As with the current trend this is a full color hardback rulebook for the period running from 1500 - 1700. It is a sharp looking book and so far the spine is holding up great. That seems to be the first thing to go lately but so far I have mishandled it repeatedly and haven't lost any pages yet. The interior pages are a heavy weight and there are great pictures on every page. In particular I do like the diagrams and how they are handled in the book so big plus right there. Anything that gives me a visual clue to how things work is great. I have, of course, run through the sequence on shooting and charge attacks. There are a couple of key pieces that are kind of buried in the text and could have been highlighted better (and in fact are also missing off the quick reference sheets as well). There are a couple of things that I'm disappointed with; the army lists and the scenarios. I was hoping for a more extensive set of army lists and it didn't provide nearly enough information for covering such a broad period of time. In particular I was hoping for at list one list for Denmark and that was pretty much glossed over and off we go straight to the Swedes (certainly a more interesting army, I admit). For the most part I think this is a pretty minor quibble and maybe there is a more extensive army list book in the works. The scenario section overall is great, beautiful maps and detailed orders of battle for six very specific scenarios. My beef with these is that there is no scale on the maps. All six maps are the same size and I have no idea if they are meant for a 6' x 4' table (doubtful) or maybe a 6' x 8' table (I'm betting on this). Another small knock is that there are no generic scenarios provided although there is a section for how to point out your own army, again its less extensive than I would have liked. Really these are pretty minor issues and certainly should not be something that keeps you from adding this to your (if you are like me) extensive library of rulebooks.

One trend that this book doesn't follow is that of providing a healthy section of modeling information. There is nothing on how to paint and base your troops or how to make scenery. I think this is great. I know that GW considers this a must include thing but I don't feel that these things should be included in a rulebook just to increase the page count (and the price). This information is readily available in other places and really doesn't have a place here, I didn't even realize it was missing when I went through the book till I went looking for it.

That's it, just a first impression. Its a well done book and I'm certainly glad that its found its way into my collection. Now I just need to paint the mini that came with it and the several hundred other TYW miniatures that are strewn across my workbench.