Danes TYW/ECW - Still Prepping

I didn't actually manage to paint anything this weekend but I now have 2 dozen or so cavalry ready to be primed. Hopefully there will be no interruptions and I'll be able to do that tonight and then do the oil rubbing tomorrow and if I'm really lucky start painting them up on Wednesday.

As I said no painting this weekend so there was no love for my Rohan Helmingas. This issue with these right now is that I want to paint them but I have no reason to paint them since the tournament was cancelled. So they have been set to the side for a bit while I work my TYW Danes. I'll probably pull them out and do some work on them just to ease the monotony of painting horses and what not.

I also find myself in something of a painting slump. I have a bunch of stuff that is more than half finished, some of which wouldn't take long to finish, and I just can't seem to get the brushes out and get it done. Hopefully sitting down with the airbrush and priming will get me back on track. Hope everyone has a good week.

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.