Not just infantry

The town of Mdina, in Malta's interior, was entirely unmolested by the Turks during the Great Siege of 1565, so much so that the garrison there went about their business pretty much as they pleased whilst the Turks busied themselves against first Fort St Elmo and then Birgu and Senglea.

This major error was brought to light when the Turks, finally making some headway in yet another assault on the Christian defences, made a hasty retreat when cavalry from Mdina attacked the Turkish camp. So, the Christians had cavalry and we had to follow suit!

A unit of six figures is not really a unit to the purist, perhaps, but does constitue a unit of regular cavalry (or two elite ones!) under the "Donnybrook" rules we may use for our demo game, with suitable modifications. The figures are Border Reivers I bought many years ago from a Partizan show and dug out of the lead mountain when I started this project. When they have finished in Malta, they may take up sheep rustling at a croft near you, alongside some of their erstwhile/ future Maltese colleagues on foot. At least half of these cavalry figures are Vendel, but I cannot remember where I sourced the others from...

G

The Armstrongs, sorry, Armigeri, in all their finery



The boss. I can also see him and his colleagues chasing Kern around some bog in deepest Ireland at some point



Conversions for "Malta"



I see this fellow as leading a band of Barbary Corsairs out of Tunis or Algiers.



Another Perry Mahdist figure, this time with a "By Fire & Sword" flag as supplied with their 15mm Ottoman Turkish sets. I made a hash of sticking it round the pole straight, so had to try and blend the edges to hide the white glare. Can you tell?

This one started life as a Perry Zouave I got free with WI magazine several months back. The head is from the Mahdists set.

The shield is a drawing pin, with the pin cut down and the whole thing stuck into a pre-drilled hole in his back. IA tip for the crescents for anyone who wants to try - find a small, round thing of some description, hold it on the flag, paint gently round three-quarters of the circumference and then fill in the middle bit. This is the only way I could have painted these quite so neatly short of using transfers!

Another Mahdist with a Turkish-inspired flag. Stars, stripes, crescents - all suitable material for Moslem flags

 

And this one will lead a bunch of fanatics in the assault on the Christian lines. Another Mahdist, his right hand simply drilled through to accept a brass wire spear. The falg is again a computer label.

It is not necessarily one of the stranger quirks of being a wargamer, but surely most of us risk the structural integrity of our humble abode with not a care by constantly buying more and more for our respective lead mountains. Reaching ever upwards towards the heavens as we pile more and more new offerings on the pyre of unpainted, anatomical loveliness, the mountain never grows smaller for long, no matter how long we quarry with size 1 sable and acrylic medium. Even wholesale clearouts of supposedly unwanted aspects of the mountain are only of partial help, as the regenerative powers of our personal edifice see growth renewed in short order.

What is perhaps rather quirky, however, especially in wargamers like me who spend a fair amount each year on new stuff we know we will get around too soon (...), is the desire to not just buy more, but convert so we not only have more but we have that something unique. We may not be good at conversions, but we do it anyway. We may be able to buy something very much like what we end up building, but we cut and carve away, stick on non-standard parts and still head off with more hope than skill to achieve that somethign different.

So here we have some of my recent efforts, all built from Perry-originating plastics, built simply to satusfy a desire to provide somethign a little different.

G

More Turks

Just to prove that I do actually paint patterned clothing once in a while, though I have so far baulked at the thought of 28mm Celts...



Five-sixths of the entire spearmen I have painted for this unit, Old Glory figures with brass spears from Vendel




Close up of the left




And the right



The side my opponents will not be seeing (?)

And again. I enjoy the colour of these figures, even though they are lowly types rather than Spahis, Janissaries and the like.

Cozy Mehmet



Or perhaps Collins Pasha



Back again!

The Prodigal Blogger returns!!!

Through reasons not entirely of my own making, it has been ages since my last post:

1. The World Cup was on and, even with the (less than) mighty English doing rather less well than at least 16 other teams, it was still compulsive viewing.
2. Workload has been manic at, erm, work...
3. Family members will insist on me taking them to football practice/ matches/ tournaments, hockey training/ matches, swimming, Guides/ Brownies/ Beavers, shopping, etc.
4. Equipment failure of the PC (as in personal computer) kind.

Yet, at the risk of sounding like Yoda, "Idle I have not been."

Which leads me nicely to the X-Wing tournament I entered on 12th July at Stafford Games. I only played my first ever game a week or so earlier, but took my TIE swarm along to test my Dark Side out against all comers. Four enjoyable games, two wins and two losses (to the two guys who eventually finished first and second), and not finishing last was a bonus! Both my defeats were against a four X-Wing set up, with named characters and a few additional skills thrown in. My TIE swarm was 5 Academy TIE fighters (read "crap") and two Avenger Squadron TIE Interceptors (read "rather better than crap, but hardly elite"). Do I intend to stay with the Dark side after being bested by X-Wings??? Well, my two wins were against other Rebel ships and I have not even used my TIE Advanced (Darth Vader's ship at the end of Episode 4) or my TIE Bomber...

We also took "Kirkburn Bridge, c1314" to Phalanx back in June for a third outing. The (less than) mighty English took the wrong football boots to this event too, however, and disappeared faster than an ice cube in the Sahara, but we did at least manage to wound Robert The Bruce! It did not help when Nephew Paul rolled 10d6, needing 5+ saves, and made 8 of them.........Occasional Wargamer Brother Kev was most gracious as Gloucester's knights raced back home via Berwick, northern jeers ringing round their great helms. OWBK even agreed to give Nephew Paul a lift home after my vociferous threast of violence and abandonment drew further mirth from the other side of the table. OWBK is known to be rather more mellow than I...

And what have I smuggled past my lady wife these past two months? Well, apart from Star Wars space ships, my main single purchase was some 1st Corps/ Curtey's Arthurians, actually Saxons, with a view to resurrecting that ideal, using Dux Bellorum, when I have finished.......

the Turks.

The "Malta" project has continued apace, and I will post photos soon, with around 180 done so far. I have also purchased another 180 varied Turks/ Moslems and Christians to finish this off, along with some plastic Arabs who will be converted (as models, not in any religious sense) to bear ladders, etc., for the storming of the town walls in our proposed game. Yet, I have shelved this project temporarily to concentrate for the rest of this month on....

Turks.

15mm ones to be precise, so I can enter another Stafford Games tournament on 6th and 7th September using the "By Fire & Sword" rules. Only 30 more cavalry to finish as I type and I have only played once, using Poles against Cossacks, so a few practice games through August would not go amiss.

So, reasons good and bad aside, I am still here, I am still painting, I am still buying and I am now posting again!!!

See you soon.

G

The first of the opposition

After Janissaries and North Africans, it is time for a few Christians to show their faces, eager to save the Med from the growing shadow of the Crescent.

Using Old Glory figures again, mostly, from their "Bravos & Swashbucklers" pack, I mixed in some old Vendel Border Reivers I had lying around. In all, I managed to cobble together around 40 figures, including a few cavalry, so that should keep me going for a while whilst I source and fund the remainder I decide on to complete the project. I expect Old Glory will feature strongly in the burgeoning collection, mainly their "Wars of Religion" range, but I am wary of having to buy all my figures in packs of 30. I can always mix and match, I suppose, to use up any spares. £24 for 30 figures is pretty decent too. Redoubt may also feature, the advantage being single figure purchases so I only buy what I need, but they are more expensive.

Then there are all the odds and ends..........This could get expensive.

Even more expensive still if I choose to expand the collection to enable the provision of a few French Wars of Religion encounters, save Ireland from the Irish with some of Good Queen Bess' admirers or just have at the Dutch with Don Quixote and his mates..................................

G

A unit of arquebusiers led by that indomitable Flemish mercenary and part-time playwright, Willem Wagheldagger.

A close up of Willem Wagheldagger. Who can forget his classic works, written in his non-mercenary moments, such as "Little Ado About Something", "First Night", "A Midwinter Day's Nightmare" and his seminal piece about a Scandinavian prince, "Toilet". 

A trio of Vendel gunners, dead-eyes the three of 'em.

Over exposed by the hot, Mediterranean sun, we have some tough natives ready to sell their lives dearly to the hated enemy. Front rank Vendel, rear rank Old Glory.

Don Quisanctuari and his Spaniards

Don Quisanctuari himself, hardened veteran of the later Italian Wars and the bordellos of Seville.

Favourite troop types

Like, I suspect, a number of people, I have favourite troop types.

As a child, it was French Napoleonic Cuirassiers, inspired by the Airfix set we all no doubt had loads of at one time or other. I like cuirassiers of all sorts in truth, and heavy cavalry in general, but the French heavies are still a big favourite. Moving on through life, along came Spartiates, Sassanid clibanarii, Swiss pikemen, Indian elephants and, the subject of this little feature.....

Janissaries!

What more could any guy want? A horde of well-trained, well-armed, disciplined regular troops fired by that extra-special religious fervour borne of the convert, equally able to shoot you down or hack you to death in the ensuing charge. And they look so cool!!! I want a zerkulah!!!!! (That's the hat, by the way).

The figures are again Old Glory, from pack OXT 8 I think. The 30 figures include 6 command figures, 2 each of musicians, standard bearers and officers, which very nicely provides 3 drilled units for Donnybrook plus enough characters to give some good options to accompany them.

So, here are the first of the Janissaries, with more to follow if you count those in the picture (11 missing from the pack of 30, you see!) I wonder if I will ever get around to the Sassanids and Spartiates......

G

Lots of figure variety again to start with, with heads at different poses, arquebusses at different angles and so on. Add in my usual different sash colours, sash patterns, hair colour, undergarment colours, arquebus colours and patterns and I have my desired variety.

I like different metal and leather colours too. Janissaries could famously choose whatever weapons they wanted from the armoury before leaving for campaign, so variety was a given.

A variety of sash colours and patterns, as well as undershirt colours.

And patterns on weapons to add some detail.

The three command to go with the blue Janissaries. I should probably have gone to town on patterning the officer's robes...

New Project Time!!!

With the success of our Kirkburn Bridge offering at WMMS still fresh in mind, we Wyrley Retinue bods were not keen to rest on our laurels and put our heads together for 2015's excuse for a day out at a show. Inspired as usual by the relevance of the year to some 50th/ 100th anniversary or other, we plumped for.....

Malta, 1565. (450 years ago next year if you can't do the maths after a tough day at work...)

No, we will not be doing the siege, but the game will be an amphibious assault set in that theatre in that time, much like Kirkburn wasn't actually Bannockburn, but that theatre, etc.

I got the figures to do, all 300+ in the eight months or so till December, whilst Nephews N & P are sorting out terrain. We have been trialing "Donnybrook" as a ruleset which, with our house tweaks, we are quite pleased with. Loads still to do, but since I started the figures in the middle of March, I have so far managed a total of 83, the first of which I show for you here.

I had a very slight head start in that I bought a number of bags of Turks for yet another stalled project many years ago at a Partizan show. I also acquired a handful of Border Reivers at the same show, both lots of figures languishing on the slopes of the lead mountain ever since. All 83 painted specimens so far have been mined from the mountain and I have another 50 or so to go before I need more purchases. That is excepting the various conversions I have attempted from Perry Mahdists, some spare plastic musket arms, drawing pin head shields, the odd ACW zouave, etc, which puts me up to around 150 effectives so far.

So, first up are some Old Glory North African Marines.

G

All figures for the project will be singly based to allow for maximum flexibility of use in what will be a grand skirmish in effect, but also to allow them to rank up on movement trays for more conventional games.

Two shy Berbers....

These are of the solid and dependable category of wargames figures and highly suitable for such a project IMO.

As is customary in even my most uniform of armies, I like to ring some changes in pose, hair colour and skin colour where appropriate. I think I used five different ways to get skin tone on these 31 figures, each giving something slightly different.

The dentists in Algiers must be good...

"How do you play this £$&%*& thing?"

A little more variation is afforded by simple patterning of clothes and sashes.