Floyet House WIP #1

On my 'auxiliary' Battle Campaigns blog I hinted at a mini-campaign, comprising five scenarios, which would culminate in the siege of a fortified house. 

Thus I've started building the house in question, a distant relative of the Hungarian hussar fort, the Romanian cula and the English/Scottish borderland bastle house. This will be the most ambitious of my cardboard buildings so far, being quite large in 28mm scale, with a playable interior, LED lights, and many other features.

Flossian Union Foot Battalions

The lesson of this post is that the most important thing about painting miniatures is not to stress oneself out over the matter. It is a leisure activity after all, and the great majority of us don't paint for a living. 

I found out that I still had more than five hundred(!) 1/72 eighteenth century figures from various produce, and since I sort of hit a painter's block with my TYW/ECW collection, these came in handy for a change. Some were painted and needed touching up only, some were primed and some just bare plastic. 

I did not really have a plan for them, until I made the mental connection with my Schultze-Böhnstadt Imagi-Nations setting, so here they are, three dozen figures in three battalions of the Flossian Union: a regular fusilier, a mercenary Glambrian and a local militia unit.

The Tiny Monkey Inn

I have a terrain-heavy seventeenth century 28mm skirmish project in mind, titled "Dark Nights in Trashburgh." It is mainly inspired by the Alatriste and Fortune de France books, and centers on urban combat, a sort of baddies vs. catchpoles/upright civilians type of game.

(The project title derives, obviously and sort of unintentionally, from Strasbourg, but it's also a sort of ironic reflection that most things we use for scratchbuilding would otherwise usually end up in the litter.)

For this, obviously, I need more buildings than the single guardhouse I built before, so I planned a few: an enlarged version of the old gatehouse I started in 1/72 scale, a multi-storeyed rich citizen's estate and a wattle and daub style inn, with accomodations on the upper floor(s). Some of these would have internal lighting and games could be played at night or dusk, using the light from the windows, bonfires, tokens with built-in LED torches etc. This is the first installment of the series.

As with most scratchbuilds, doing the inn was an on and off type of thing, with large intervals waiting for the glue and primer to dry, then shelving it for something else, all the while contemplating the next thing to do, but finally it turned out to be a rather handsome building. The most interesting and at the same time tiring part of such builds is to think well ahead about the construction process.

I started this project with my wife and the tiny monkey is sort of a catchphrase between us, hence the name plate of the establishment.

Bloody Pike and Shot

I was very excited when Bloody Miniatures announced their rank and file figures. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Warlord plastic foot figures, but they just lack variability. Larger pike and shot regiments are economically feasible by using plastics, that's for sure.

Anyway, here's the first dozen painted of that line, with a few Looters and Pikemen en Mélée mixed between them. Some have Empress wire pikes. There is an experimental casualty marker included, which I produced by taking a press mould copy of one of the figure's backs, its front side is entirely featureless. The base accepts a 14mm six-sided die to show the casualty score.

Saker and Artillery Crew

This is a scratchbuilt medium-sized cannon, with a long barrel made from the mizzen mast of the Zvezda 1/100 scale Nina sailing ship, wheels of a keychain souvenir cannon and a carriage made of balsa and coffe stirrers. The trunnions and ironings are made of green stuff.

It is crewed by four Empress (ex Bohemian Miniatures) early TYW gunners in tall hats, a group of splendid figures.

Since then I've managed to buy a plastic WSS era gun from Warlord, so my artillery for the period is steadily increasing.

Trashy Fleets WIP - HSwMS Äran and MNF Charles Martel

 

I try to post regularly these days (usually on Mondays because then I would have time to gather materials durink the weekend), but these past two weeks were our - now seemingly regular - holiday to close off the summer, including a trip to Greece, and a 4 hour delay followed by a return trip through a nasty storm on our way back home.

Anyway, after making some resin galleys (see previous post) I quickly got distracted, and as I've had these two hulls lying around, I decided to do some work on them for my 1/1000 scale Trashy Fleets project.

On the left is the assembled coastal defence ship HSwMS Äran, a utilitarian Swedish Navy vessel. I like these ships a lot, as they pack quite a punch compared to their size. She and the rest of her class would supposedly play a part in an upcoming Zinqaguri-Nordsburian naval conflict set in my imagi-world in the future.

On the right is proof that I sort of managed to master creating tumblehome hulls using balsa wood, the French pre-dreadnought Charles Martel, with its main hull complete and secondary (tertiary?) turrets attached. The four larger turrets are in the making - the two main ones are complete and await attachment, pictured right next to the hull. 

I mainly used balsa wood, plastic rods and spare 1/700 bits (like the secondary battery of a Kongo class for the Äran and main barrels of a USS Arizona for the Charles Martel) to get this far. The turrets on the Charles Martel are rods of magic sculpt kneaded to shape, then sanded, as the fibers in the balsa wood would be just too rough for such intricate work. Just as with my previous pre-dreadnought, I'm going to build bases for these ships as well.

The Armada of Venice

While my main interest is in the Age of Sail, recently my fascination with Renaissance galley warfare increased. Due to changing from larger scales to 1/1200, and other, more economical projects in the foreground, I thought I could scratchbuild some, to complement my Ark Royal ADW ships.

Fortunately I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, so my thought process was to create some masters from balsa, then a bunch of resin copies using magic sculpt. On the image above you can sort of see the evolution of the idea, from left to right.

A Couple More ADW ships

 

I've completed two more Ark Royal 1/1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars era ships, and a press mould copy I made of their generic 70-gun model. 

The ships were easy to assemble, paint and rig, the frigate causing some grief as despite the two layers of varnish I managed to rub some of the paint off when applying the standing rigging. Never mind, I corrected that.

The large one is obviously of a lesser quality, but it's only there to add to the numbers. I will most likely expand the project as I really like these models and the period, so I can downgrade the three resin hulls I made as I progress onward.

I'm going to stick with the basing configuration you see on the picture - 60x30 pill bases for ships of the line, 60x30 oval for frigates and smaller rated ships (also indiamen), and 20x45 (I think) for even smaller vessels such as this fluyt. 

Three more ships are varnished as I make more rigging line (which involves running the thread through some glue and hanging it out with a weight on one end to make it straighter and stiffer), and the opposing fleet's hulls are also primed, so the project is well on the way and I expect I can play a few games in the near future.

D6 Naval War: Battle of the White Sea

I've never before celebrated International Naval Wargaming Day. However, after our last move, I've still had the large-ish remainder of my 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt WW1 fleets hidden in my wardrobe, so I thought I could take some of them for an outing.