More Musketeers

Painting is continuing at its normal, slow pace. All very routine really: I have finished the first company of the fourth (and last) infantry battalion needed for the Action! refight. It's just a straight forward painting of Stadden musketeer figures, in this case to some semblance of Prussian IR12.

Stadden Musketeers

I usually have twelve rank and file in an infantry company so, as the photo shows, one man has gone AWOL. What's happened is that one figure had a broken musket: I'd rather not waste valuable painting time on a figure in that state. I'll hopefully be able to fix the musket with some wire and milliput: a little project that will provide some variation from the task of painting all those musketeers.

With this company out of the way my metal mountain - which is never really more than a mole-hill by normal standards - has dwindled to just a few odd figures. I have another order from Tradition of London somewhere in the post, but in the meantime I can indulge in the pleasant pastime of fiddling around with individual figures rather than painting in bulk. I have a Suren Duke of Cumberland that looks like he may end up defecting to take up high command in the Imperial Army. I am also starting on the extra terrain I need for Action!, of which more in future posts.

Methode d'Equitation

No, not Baucher's work, but simply a bit more on the correction of the bad habits of a Prussian dragoon officer. I haven't read the book anyway, I was just looking for a title, and a pretentious one will do fine (I came across a reference to Baucher while reading a biography of Louis Nolan). I've gone ahead with my plan, the remodelling of the draggon officer being done in a number of stages.

The big problem I find is that I have a bad habit of holding the wrong place and so damaging other bits that I've just done. This is a particular hazard when the milliput decides to misbehave (a common occurrence) and I concentrate on the immediate problem and forget about other, vulnerable parts of the model. The only solution is to let the milliput harden before continuing. So what should have been a simple, quick modelling task took a few days while I allowed the milliput to harden between each stage.

Step one was the easy bit: mostly a matter of minor vandalism as I attacked the figure with a craft knife. I removed the horse furniture (reins on the horse, and blanket and pistol holders on the officer). The officer's scabbard was lost along with the blanket that it was attached to, so a pin hole was drilled to accept a wire scabbard that would be added later. The officer's coat at the rear was also pared down a bit. A paper saddle blanket was then glued onto the horse, and the officer was then glued onto that, now of course, in the desired upright position. So far so simple.

Step two saw the application of milliput to form the lower parts of the horse furniture. First up was the rear of the saddle aft of the rider's buttocks. The front of the saddle was next added although this is invisible and serves only to support the rider and the pistol holders, which were then placed on top. The square pads beneath and to the rear of the rider's legs were then added. Lastly, the horse's mane, where it was damaged when removing the reins, was also repaired. None of this is particularly difficult as it involves only simple geometric shapes. The figure after this stage is shown in the photo.

After Minor Vandalism and Some Milliput

The next step started with a wire sword scabbard being pushed into the hole drilled in step one. With this in place I could then add more bits of milliput to extend the rider's coat downwards. This requires rather more skill and judgement than previously, and I found it easier to do in two steps: the first being to add enough milliput to establish only the general look of the tails. Once this had hardened I tidied up with a needle file and then added a few more touches of milliput to refine things. I also added the top covers of the pistol holders and the pistol buckets at this point.

The final step saw new reins made out of thin, beaten wire glued onto the figure. The officer's hand holding the reins was also remodelled using milliput (as little more than a blob, I'm not a good enough sculptor for anything better). After that it was done to a paint job to hide all faults: the final result is shown below.

The Riding Master's Star Pupil

Well, from my admittedly biased viewpoint, I think the remodelled figure is a big improvement. At the very least there will be no unkind remarks from the ranks about the officer's riding ability: Captain Nolan would have approved of the change.

Forwards!

The command Forwards! in this case is not the signal for yet another desperate advance of Prussian grenadiers across a cannon swept field. Rather, it is the instruction of the regimental riding master to his pupil. The centre of attention of all this is the Suren dragoon officer (mounted as usual on a Stadden horse) in the photo below.

The figure is a beautiful piece of work, as is to be expected from anything sculpted by Edward Suren. But picky idiot that I am, I do not want to use the pose that it has been given. Suren has sculpted this gentleman to be leaning well back in the saddle (the lean looks rather more pronounced in real life than in the photo). I must emphasize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the pose, it just doesn't fit with my personal goals.

I am trying to acheive a certain, consistent, effect with my armies. Its detractors like to label this as the "clone patrol", a description which really is fair enough. Perhaps the phrase "drill instructor's dream" is kinder: what I'm trying for is the impression of an 18th Century army locked into rigid formations, responding with clockwork precision to the commands of its officers. So - for instance - the ranks of my line infantry are in march attack and, on a good day with no use of alcohol or any other aid, you can fairly hear the crunch of a thousand boots hitting the ground in perfect time. In my vision there is a certain scope for the odd animated figure, but this is limited to personality figures who don't exist on the table in multiple copies. Or to express this as a simple rule - personality figures are allowed to have personality.

Now dragoon squadron commanders don't qualify as personalities under this scheme. I'm planning on having three squadrons per cavalry regiment so three of these gentlemen leaning back in the saddle would, for me, be all too much of a good thing. But as I have noted before, this is where anyone building only a small army has an advantage: we can afford to expend a much greater effort on a per figure basis. So I can look at modifying the figure a little.

The first thing to note is that the entire figure is involved. The feet are tipped forwards to counterbalance the weight of the torso leaning backwards. So cutting the figure in half at the waist and tilting the upper body forwards will not work - unless we want to give the impression of the officer being gut-shot. Instead, the plan must be to pivot the entire figure at the point where it sits on the horse. Doing this means that the rear of the saddle blanket is then raised markedly above the horse's back, so the metal blanket must go, to be replaced by a paper one (this is really no greater loss, paper ones are easier to paint). The horse furniture at the front presents a similar problem, this needs to be raised so that we can pivot the figure at it's seat rather than at the pistol holders. So I'll cut these off, and glue them onto the horse separately.

Well, that's the plan for today. The sun is shining, there's a nice cool breeze: I think a few hours spent sat in the conservatory fiddling about with these figures are called for.

More Dragoons

We must, I think, sympathise with the travails of fathers in days gone by. There was once a time when a child, left to his own devices, might take up such unworthy pastimes as flute playing. And there was little the enlightened parent could do, other than perhaps chop off the head of one's first born's best mate. My current slow progress has, I'm thankful to say, nothing to do with flute playing.

An 18th C Hoodie Caught On Camera

For my next planned battle - Action!, from the Wargame - both sides will possess a full regiment of three squadrons. So its time to start recruiting my cavalry. First up is a second squadron of dragoons: the new two squadron regiment is shown in the photo. That leaves me with a further squadron to add to each side: something I'll do at intervals to add some variety as I work on the additional infantry units that I need.

Cuirassiers & Dragoons

Decently sized cavalry units will be something of a novelty for me. As youths my friends and I fought battles with Charge! rules, but with sadly understrength units. This was not down to any policy on our own part, but a result of the size of a box of Airfix figures, plus the inclusion in the box of such eccentric figures as 'trooper crouching behind dead horse and waving sword'. And somehow we never used multiple boxes of the same figures, but preferred variety: even to the extent of mixing in units from the AWI up to the ACW.

Military 'history' is an unreliable witness. So if we are to believe French accounts of the passage of the Somosierra, Napoleon smashed a Spanish force of 9000 men and 16 cannon, entrenched in a strong position, with little more than a single squadron of cavalry and his own iron will. Whereas, if we read Oman we discover that the Emperor sacrificed a brave squadron to no effect and was forced to wait for the attack of his infantry to develop.

My own metal heroes are subject to the same faults: my dragoons will willingly relate how they held back twice their number of cuirassiers at Blasthof. My cuirassiers will tell you that they overthrew the dragoons, who were only saved from total ruin by the intervention of their infantry supports. And my cuirassiers, it seems, do not perform head counts.

Ten Months And Counting

I have some sympathy for Frederick and his problems with Croats. In my case it is not irregular infantry hovering on my flanks that are causing concern, but various garden pests that launch their attacks on my veggies. Add to that the sun suddenly going AWOL, and the joys of modelling seem all the greater.

With painting metal soldiers, I can blame only myself if they don't turn out the way I want. I suppose in a way this might be seen as a disadvantage: no excuses are possible. So when I see all the mistakes I have made on the figures I have painted so far, I have to shudder. Indeed, I have to marvel at the sheer variety of them. If I look back I'd ascribe 70% of them to impatience, the urge to get on to the next step before properly completing the current job. The other 30% are due to sheer cack-handedness and lack of talent.

It is now ten months since I started on my SYW 30mm army (the blog didn't start until much later) after a break of roughly twelve years since last wargaming. The internet has changed the hobby markedly during my long period of inactivity. We now have easy access to information of all kinds: uniform details, orders of battle, descriptions of tactics etc. that were hard to get hold of when our only ready sources were the local bookshop, library and periodicals. But, for me, the most crucial change has been the manner in which we can all communicate our own thoughts on every topic to our peers. We can now all play a part in forming the opinions on which the future direction of wargaming depends.

On a more personal note I can take stock of the progress made in the last ten months: nine companies of infantry, three cavalry squadrons, and two guns and their crew. Counting all the supernumaries, it works out at about twenty Olley painting points a month: rather more than I imagined before I sat down to count. I think ten months is a good enough basis to be able to figure out future timescales. The maximum size of battle I'd envisage doing would be that of Sittangbad. Any greater number of figures and I suspect the chore of moving them individually would be excessively tedious: I should have to use a multiple figure basing system if I wanted to do this. I make Sittangbad to be roughly 840 Olley painting points: so, subtracting progress already made, that would take me a little under three years.

Ten months work

Henry Hyde's post on hisFaltenian Succession armies mentions the hazards of being drawn into different periods. For those fortunate enough to be fast painters this is not a problem: for slow painters like me it is 'madness' as the authors of Charge! put it. The most tempting for me would be WW2 as this presents a very different game. Luckily this problem is solved by the simple fact that the best WW2 wargames I have played have been on a computer, using Close Combat 3 (in my humble opinion Close Combat 4 is nowhere near as good a game). I'd recommend this to anyone wanting to try out WW2: you get all the advantages of using a computer, including concealment, accurate morale, proper determination of the effect of suppressive fire (the last is key to allowing proper tactics), all leading to an excellent wargame. And the biggest benefit of all is that you don't have to paint another army, so your modelling efforts don't get diluted by period creep.

At the moment I am working on adding a second squadron of dragoons. This takes a lot of time as I have multiple parts to attach with epoxy glue, so there's not much to show at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to show the enlarged regiment next post.

Messing About On The River

I'm currently working on bits and bobs at the moment: with the weather having suddenly switched from winter straight into mid-summer there's too many jobs in the garden to occupy my time. Its a fact of life that unpainted metal figures have infinite patience, while vegetables require attention when weather permits. And anyone observing Mitchell Towers at just the right time of night will see me out there, torch in hand, engaged in a savage battle of man versus slug.

One task have have finally gotten round to is to add a little polish to the river sections I created for BlastHof (hence the Cheesy title). The most accurate representation of a stream would use subtle colouring to indicate the reflection of sky and banks in the water. I decided that wouldn't do at all though. I think that with 'water' thats really no more than a few coats of varnish, this would not give the effect of depth that I want.

So my stream sections use a black undercoat with nothing more than a fairly light drybrushing of medium blue on top. The drybrushing is concentrated towards the centre of the stream so that its 'banks' are casting their shadows. Its not realistic: I don't think I've ever seen a stretch of water at all like this, but it does give the impression of something with a depth of more than a fraction of a millimetre.

Stream Sections

I've glued sand onto the banks themselves using PVA. I also experimented with using static grass to represent aquatic plants at the stream borders, but this didn't work too well so I abandoned it after a bit. I think you'd need larger bristles to represent this type of vegetation. There are other embellishments that could be added - such as grit to represent rock - but as stuff like this would make it harder to place figures I think we are moving away from practical wargames terrain into the province of diorama makers. After all, I've already deviated far from the chalked-on water features in Charge!.

On the figures front, I'm slowly painting an officer to lead the Cuirassiers. The Suren figure has its hand sticking out to the front in an attitude that doesn't seem to serve any particular purpose. So I decided to bend this down to a position close to the reins; a pose that looks far more natural. The problem here, of course, is that metal figures don't have elbows so the entire upper arm bends in a gradual curve rather than getting a sharp bend at just the elbow (which would probably snap the arm if you managed it anyway). To fix this I filled in the inside of the arm with milliput and then filed the outside of the arm to remove the curve.

As the only officer painted so far, this gentleman will get to lead the entire regiment (albeit of only two squadrons at the moment). Later on he'll be demoted to squadron commander: the final complement of officers will have two more like him, plus a converted 'special' in overall command.

Suren Cuirassier Officer (Stadden Horse)

I am starting to think I ought to photo my figures before I start painting them: I can see a bit of mold line in the photo that had quite escaped my notice. Oh well, time to get the file out.

Fusiliers

Given the title of this blog, it's about time I added some of these gentlemen. As usual (when the range includes them) the figures I have chosen to use are Staddens. The first company, of twelve men, is done and shown in the photo below.

I've painted these figures to represent Fusilier Regiment 41. Bleckwenn shows the coat for this regiment being of a slightly lighter shade of blue than the norm: I've tried to indicate this by using a heavier highlight than usual. Bleckwenn does show some variety of shades of blue amongst the many regiments of the Prussian Army, but as I cannot read the german text of his books I'm not sure why this is. Duffy says that FR41 was transferred from Wurttemburg, so I wonder if the difference in shade in this case reflects the unit's origins.

I did paint these a little hastily. Sometimes I find the urge to get a unit finished is overwhelming, particularly when its a new figure. As a result, I've missed off some detail on the cuffs, and I am still wondering about whether to fix that or not.