Quotes

Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile. - Samuel Longhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

Friday, June 22, 2012

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.

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. ECW is a nice period. I still have to paint a bulk of plastic infantry and cavalry bought with the "plastic fantastic" offer many months ago...by the way in the same offer I bought an imperial Roman army...

    But about the rules I' ll check the new booklet from the Impetus author.

    Marzio.

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    1. I have worked with the plastics and just miss the sharpness of the detail. If Perry Miniatures were doing this in period in plastic I would happily buy their plastics. So this will be an all metal armor for me.

      What is the name of that ruleset?

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    2. Baroque. You can download the ligth version at this link:

      http://www.dadiepiombo.com/bbaroq1.html

      The full version will be published in October, at least the author says so...;-)

      Units, 28mm, 18cm x 6cm, so you can use 3 6x6 bases.

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    3. Thanks! I'll get over there and check those out. Have the FoG and Pike and Shotte rulesets but it never hurts to take a look at another one. I was a little disappointed with Pike and Shotte since the author decided to completely skip the Danes in his book.

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  3. If you want to get rid of any of that let me know.

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    1. I will definitely let you know. I'll probably show up on a Thursday night with what ever I don't need and we can work something out to get you started.

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  4. So you're sticking with FoG for now? How do the Pike and Shotte rules compare (or can you tell yet?) Is the basing significantly different? I'm going to guess FoG is better for club games, with the lists and point values... any thoughts?

    thanks
    -Scott

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    1. At the moment I'm sticking with FoG. Well, let's put it this way, I'm basing my units for FoG since Pike and Shotte doesn't really have a standard basing scheme. So basing for FoG won't preclude me from using them for PnS. Since I really haven't played either system I can't really say I like one more than the other. My biggest beef with PnS is that he completely skipped the Danish army even though they were heavily involved for a 4 or 5 year period. Both systems have lists and point values, the ones for FoG are just more complete than in PnS so in that respect it might be a better set of club rules. If Warlord Games is going to release more army lists either as a book or online that would certainly make it more competitive with FoG. I really need to sit down and just through some empty stands on the table and see if I can get a better feel for both rule sets. I think ideally you build a scenario and then play it using both rule sets, probably some of my old WRG scenario books would be ideal for this.

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    2. If you decide to try that out with bases, let me know. I'd definitely want to play, and I've got plenty of FoG bases.

      It is odd they skipped the Danes... They were a major player during that period, both on their own and as mercenaries.

      -Scott

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