The big bang

Hello again.

As I have complained before, life, work and the changing seasons have all conspired to limit my painting and modelling time to, well, "very limited"...

The FIW project is crawling along at a pace a snail would baulk at, but here are a couple more photos of something I have managed to finish, in the form of a battery of two French 8lbrs.

The figures are, as is now usual with my efforts for this project, Eagle Figures, and this little set up constitutes the whole contents of one of their packs, namely two guns with eight crew figures. I also have a pack of 4lbrs, but I have got nowhere near those as yet.

The crew are painted as French Royal Artillerie as, although few of them made it to North America, I still have visions of using this entire French army in Europe at some stage and the alternative of painting them as Cannoniers-Bombardiers was not viable as a result as far as I am aware. So, the massive distinction of yellow instead of white hat lace was duly made!

I am not entirely happy with the bases, which are 100x80mm Games Workshop movement trays in-filled with two layers of artists' mounting board to avoid warping. Not only do they look a little thick but they have also warped slightly anyway! Oh well...

G

I had to fabricate the rammers myself as the pack was missing them. I used brass wire with a strip of sticky label wound around the foot end and a piece of sprue, scribed and hacked to represent sheepskin, at the top.

Aeons in the making

Hello again.

When I start a project, and whilst wending my excited way towards its ultimate conclusion, I do a sort of project management thing, one of the aspects of which is timing the duration of various tasks involved. In this way, I can plan in activities and track their actual completion against when I thought they should have been done and amend things accordingly as necessary.

Every so often I get it wrong, but never so wrong as I did with these two worthies.

I painted the rank and file for my 60th Regiment of Foot several weeks ago. In fact, they were the first regiment of troops I painted for the French & Indian Wars that were not part of the original "Muskets & Tomahawks" set up. I set the command figures aside because a) I had to do some work on the ensigns to remove the cast on standard poles and b) I wanted to set the flags aside as a separate project as they needed their own special time window to complete properly without distractions.

That time window opened. That time window stayed open. That time window grew to such an extent that season passed into new season, birthdays were passed and all the while the light started getting shorter and worse as Winter hove into view.

So, after what has felt like aeons, I have finally finished painting the two standards for the 60th Regiment of Foot.

The figures are Eagle Figures and, as I said above, I chopped away the cast on poles and replaced them with brass wire. The flags themselves are calico. Since taking these pictures, I have at least managed to get the whole unit stuck down on the requisite bases but, as yet, none has seen the advent of any texture or terrain work. By the end of November, perhaps.

It is at times like this that I realise exactly why I concentrated my efforts on the French initially...

On another note, given the amount of time this single regiment has taken me to get thus far, it really does call into question my ambition to have the FIW game ready for the WMMS show in March 2018. A postponement of a year is unheard of for me, but it may well have to happen. Fortunately, I have other things I can largely drop into place with which to attend shows next year, so the "Wyrley Retinue" will see you somewhere!

G

I am not sure about the pose given what must be a truly hefty piece of drapery, but I am happy with the flag.

Possibly my favourite union flag, the 1707 to 1798 version. I just think it looks better without the red diagonals.

Not quite what I asked for...

Hello again.

Picture the scene.

You are at a wargames show. The shekel in your pocket is burrowing furtively through your trouser pocket cloth t find its way in the world, eager to make the acquaintance of a trader. You know what you want to buy, but there are just so many goodies on display form so many purveyors of fine wargames materials. But you know what you want and, there, just to the left of the guy with the shiny books, rests the emporium of one whom you know has "the business".

You sidle over, you act as calm as your frantically beating heart allows, you casually enquire of their ranges and they proffer you the show catalogue.

"Hmm," you think to yourself, desperate not to betray the fact that they could sell you anything and you would happily part with your coin.

"I think I'll have half a dozen of code X," you announce, looking at the floor lest the purveyor of fine wares catches the gleam in your eye for his leaden offerings. "A code Y, two code Z and..."

Your eyes flick from side to side, your breath bursting from your heaving chest with too much gusto for one who is neither exhausted nor having a cardiac arrest.

"And one of those cannons with crew."

Job done.

You get home later that day, broke financially, but elated at the offerings, trinkets and baubles of yet another wargames show, high on the elixir of expenditure and safe in the satisfaction that you have, with professional-level deviousness, managed to sneak a backpack full of a hundredweight of lead figures, a half ton of books, sundry sheets of magnetic materials and scenic matter and the odd board game past the love of your life.

Some time later, perhaps days later, when the emotions have cooled again, you trawl back through your purchases and sift through in a more diligent and leisurely manner than is afforded by the mad press of the wargames show, salivating and delighting at your delightful new toys.

And then you come to the cannon and crew.

It's a mortar.

"And one of those cannons and crew," you said to the imp who knoweth not his catalogue.

It's a mortar.

You want to fire roundshot straight down the necks of those scoundrels the Redcoats...

It's a mortar.

"I don't (insert your favourite expletive here) need a mortar!"

You secrete it away in a fury of realisation that you have been duped and dismayed by the bounder. You forget about it. You put it down to experience.

Then you decide you are going to do a show game featuring a FIW siege...

"How foresightful of me to buy that mortar," you muse to yourself.

So you build it, you base it, you paint the crew, you paint the officer it comes with also and you offer it up on the altar of the blog post.

Cue one Redoubt Miniatures French mortar with colonial Cannoniers-Bombardiers crew figures, together with said officer.

G

One mortar, which I obviously meant to buy really (!), duly mounted on a base made with coffee stirrer planks and my usual ground cover around the edges. I intend to build a little firing position in which to house it, with gabions, planking and built up soil banks, but that is a while away yet. I need to get the figures done first!





"I said lob it over there!" One officer of the colonial Cannoniers-Bombardiers in siege armour.