The Whole Bloody Regiment

First post of the year, so happy New Year to all of my readers.

These are actually the leftovers of 2024's painting queue, as I ordered most of the figures back in April I think, so they took a while to complete.

Anyway, here's the entire batch of Bloody Miniatures foot figures, kind of looking like a rag-tag Swedish unit from the Deluge period (at least that was my intention) in an impromptu set-up of two wings of seven shot, two blocks of nine pike, extra officers and Spötte the dog.

By the way I collected the pebbles that decorate the bases in Stockholm (they use this kind of grout there for extra traction when it snows or freezes as far as I can tell), so the figures are definitely extra Swedish.

TYW Cuirassiers

Here are a few snapshots of four recently completed 28mm scale mounted figures, two Empress lobsters and two Warlord plastic demi-cuirassiers. I mixed them up to make a three-figure unit in Pikeman's Lament, with one extra rider. I have six more Warlord plastic riders, three of which will be mounted Mousquetaires and three Finnish/Swedish galloper cavalry.

Light conditions aren't optimal for photography right now, but I tried my best.

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.

Frostgrave Crewmen Conversions

Mention was made of these fellows before, the North Star plastic figures box for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. With some kitbashing work, the figures work just fine as 17th century unarmored bods, highwaymen, robbers or other rabble characters. They are also good for pirate skirmishes - I experimented a bit with making a planked base and a dirt base for each figure, but it did not really work that well.

Now the figures are a bit stocky and there are large mold lines to remove, but they are at a decent price and can be purchased from within the EU (this box is from Fireforge Games).

Warlord plastic and Bloody Miniatures metal accessories were used to create this first group (the rest will mostly include Arabic/Berber types so less conversion work is required). I included explanations for each figure on the picture below:

Now that I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, I can also make resin copies of various headgear I can use with other figs, mostly big hats and morions from the Warlord figures which are destined to arrive soon.

Bloody Miniatures - The Fighting Men

In this third, and most likely final (for a while) installment of Bloody Miniatures showcase, we turn our attention to the warriors and fighting men.*

(*Since then another order has arrived, so I will be able to post some later.)

In the first image, a forlorn hope, fighting with halberds and partisans.

17th century 'Civilians'

Continuing with the Bloody Miniatures theme, here are a few more painted figures, this time perhaps with better lighting conditions. And I also made a makeshift background.

First up, some females armed to the teeth and ready to defend their fief, their honor, and/or the family cutlery.

Bloody Miniatures - Heavy Cavalry

 (And a reminder to learn to take pictures with my phone properly)

I've come across Bloody Miniatures by accident, on the '17th century Wargaming' Facebook group. At first I hesitated to purchase them, because all I had for the period were Warlord plastics, and the Bloody figs were quite bigger than those. 

In the end I bit the bullet, and since then made two more orders (including one for Christmas), because, in all honesty, these figures are amazing and they sort of brought back the enjoyment of painting into my life.

Now these horsemen were in the second order, and I will most likely not post the rest in the order of purchase, just the way I can get them out of their storage boxes.

This is 'The Lobsters' pack of three figures and horses. They painted up rather easily, the only hindrance being that I could not paint the dark bay horse with the rider attached, so I glued them together after painting. I'm not entirely content with the bases so might redo them later.

Usually when I paint larger units, I make the horses uniform as well, but as these figures are a character each, I thought the nags should be a bit different as well. I think the paintjob turned out to be rather nice.

Guardhouse and Livestock

I wanted to put some scratchbuilding advancements I learned to practice on a larger building, so I completed this 28mm scale two-storey one, the bottom tier built of stone and the top from wattle and daub. The first floor and the roof come off and figures can be housed inside. The building itself is suitable for a variety of periods, so I sincerely hope it will be of use.

The stone fence is an experiment in a more solid type of corkboard, I think it came out nicely so I'll be producing more.

There is also a Bloody Miniatures fig for scale, and some Warlord plastic animals I gave a simple paintjob to, scored during their previous sprue sale.

GabiOff, GabiOn

For any respectable 17th century artillery force, gabions are a must. I know there are commercially available ones, for example the injection-moulded pieces offered by Renedra, but I went the cheap way.

After experimenting some, here's the complete method to Build Your Own Gabion, also called the Gyros Method:

1. Glue some corkboard together in layers, up to your desired height
2. Once dry, using a scalpel shave it down to a cylindrical form (hence the name)
3. Place it on a washer (I used wooden buttons from Pepco)
4. Place six or so bamboo sticks around the gyros meat's circumference, evenly distributed
5. Dunk one end of a long thread into CA glue and tug it under one of the supporting bamboo sticks
6. Once that end of the thread is set, wind the thread around the thing, going from bottom to top
7. When it's covered up to the desired height, cut the thread and add a few dots of CA glue for extra sturdiness
8. Once dry, coat the thing in PVA, the thread will swell and become less pliable
9. Add some PVA and dirt on the base and the top of the gabion
10. Now you can paint it, I used simple brown colours and a beige drybrush (it is preferred to wait 1-2 days for the PVA to dry completely, otherwise the layers of paint over it might crackle).

First I tried making the wicker basket and filling it up, but the force of the thread wound around the supports made it look a little bit weird. By creating the core from corkboard first, you can also be assured of a regular shape and size throughout your production line. It's also a good way to dispose of corkboard scraps left over from other projects.

These are for 28mm figures, but I guess they could be replicated for any other scale as well. Also the same method could be used to produce wicker fences.

Culverin

As I've had no luck with 28mm ECW/TYW artillery during the Warlord sprue sale, I fancied a large-ish cannon from an old souvenir shop trinket. You know, the type of key chain that uses a small amount of combustible to make smoke and noise. 

I added some GS details for the barrel, filling up things where required. 

The carriage uses the original wheel, with the axle strengthened a bit, and pieces made from 2mm balsa wood. I went with a polished brass barrel and worn wooden colour combination.

 

Warlord Sprue Sale Loot

Not necessarily in the order I've painted these, just wanted to humble brag about them. I scored two sprues of infantry, two cavalry, one firelocks and one foot command during the Warlord Games sprue sale a while ago, and I actually managed to paint up most of the figures by now.

First I hesitated between these and the Marlburian range, but then I thought if I do 18th century I'll do pitched battles with large battalions, so 1/72 is still the way to go, and for skirmishes the ECW/TYW range is more suitable.

TYW/ECW Rebasing

In accordance with my tricorne foot figures, I've started updating the pike&shot collection as well.

Maurice in the 17th century

I was keen to try Maurice in a different era, and set up this small battle, probably an ECW one with Scots on one side. There is no historical background here, just a bit of smashing heads in.
The attacker has a force morale of 10, with six units of infantry and four cavalry. Two regimental guns are brigaded with the infantry force, and there are two separate heavy guns. This side has the 'Professional Train' national advantage and a Notable who has a Bombard activation for the guns.
The defender has a morale of 9 with one less infantry unit (5), the same amount of cavalry, four heavy guns and a notable with a Charge activation and bonus to cavalry melee.
Still somewhat limited in the number of my figures, and not wishing to reduce unit sizes, I went with 12 infantry / 4 cavalry. The cavalry units had two figures for a crew, so with any disruption caused I could just remove one, and remove the hole unit on the second DISR.

I decided not to change the game rules too much, so did not add a 'caracole' effect, allowing cavalry to shoot, and just calculate that in their charge. The infantry, however, could form up as to not have any flanks, but reduce their shooting dice. Otherwise, the four dice per unit rule remained unchanged; I borrowed this solution from Victory Without Quarter, where the two stands of shot could still pour out a lot of fire. Of course the illustrations on the cards looked a bit odd, but this did not interfere with gameplay.

You can see the initial setup above, a plain battlefield with thick woods in the center, a hill on both flanks and a small manor, surrounded by stone walls and hedgerows, as the attacker's objective. As the force morale was low for both sides thanks to the few units, I suspected the battle will be over sooner than the attackers could capture the building.

A Call to Arms ECW infantry

A very large painted showcase, at least of recent times. These are three boxes of 1/72 figures, all made by A Call to Arms: 2 boxes of ECW Royalist infantry and one of ECW command, 94 figures in total.

One regiment of foot (the Reds) were submitted earlier and without command figures. The other box is the Green regiment. They are in two massed formations here, one is a 'fortress' type square with wings of shotte on the corners, the other is the standard linear.

A Call to Arms Royalist Infantry batch #1 (Red Regiment)

As was suggested by the previous post, I'm back to the pike&shot era. To this end, I've collected three boxes of A Call to Arms ECW sets, all from the Drum&Flag ebay store. Very good service. 

To have some distinction between the troops, one lot has red as the main color and the other has green. Both are finished now, but lack standard and commands. With the musketeers from the command set, the musketeer 'wings' will be manned up to 12. Now they are 10-10. The box originally had a 1:1 pike to shot ratio, but I converted the four pikemen standing on guard to harquebusiers.

ECW Artillery part 2.

Warlord Paul's advice on bending the bases back to shape worked just fine (thanks again) and because I was not very contended with those photos here are some more, including close-ups on the figures. I am still experimenting with photographing distances, camera settings and lighting. Some of these (the brighter obviously) were taken with camera flash, some using a desk lamp. Also relocated the mini-studio to a suitable place in my room.

A Call to Arms ECW Artillery repainted

Previous paintwork here

The trouble was not with the paint but the Revell acrylic varnish. Never again. Sadly for me all acrylic varnishes worth no more than gluing sand and flocking on to bases.

But here they are again, sixteen figures and four guns. They could take two sides for example if the fight was between the Swedes and Poles.

Buff and brown colors are dominant with some green and blue at places. I used Sepia wash on all the figures, it gives a higher contrast but my Umber is running low.

A Call to Arms ECW Artillery

Good news is I finished this set - the guns and figures are based. The acrylic varnish holding static grass still hasn't dried at places but I had to take some photos because the battery recharger still hasn't been found - these are the bad news. I could take only two photos before the batteries failed.

I used some Vallejo inks on the figures - while the finish is still too glossy (and I am not happy about it - maybe it's the varnish after all and not the black paint ingredient) they look proper at least. I'm still unsure about using washes but these ones (namely Sepia and Umber shades) work well and ease the process a lot.