9th Lancers to Kandahar

 From the very beginning of my NWF efforts a painting by Orlando Norie kept fascinating me:

Thus acutally since 2015 I've been pondering about painting a unit of lancers to represent those brave men. To be honest those figures have been lying on my lead pile for a while but during the last weeks I finally took the time to finish the horeses (they've been primed ages ago...) and to paint the riders. All in all I aimed for a twelve men unit to have them ready for any rule set from 'The Men who would be Kings' to 'Blackpowder':

The miniatures themselves are from Perry Miniatures' sublime Sudan range. Actually they represent the 10th Hussars fighting against the Mahdi rebellion with improvised lances to catch prone enemies. After I compared them to Norie's painting I came to the conclusion that they should serve rather well. There are a couple of small inaccuracies: The blanket on the back of the saddle is missing, the 9th lancers on the painting appear to carry an Indian style water bottle, it's not clear whether there are pugrees on the painting. Anyway I was ready to accept those minor flaws. Especially since I didn't find any better models.

There are several photographs of 9th lancers during their tour of duty in 1880. On these the fellows show a variety of clothing: home service pieces, padded winter jackets, khaki jackets etc. After some pondering I decided to paint the unit uniformly in khaki jackets and blue home service trousers.

For painting the figures I employed my trousted Vallejo paints. The khaki sheme is bases on VGC 'Khaki' while most other paints where from the Vallejo Model Color range. For the first time I didn't employ Wargames Foundry's skin colour sextette but Citadel's contrast paint 'Darkoath Flesh'. I'm really pleased with the result. Especially because it safes loads of time. It's just one layer. No more no less. With the Foundry colours I painted fours to six layers to build up shades, highlights etc.

For the lances I decided to use steel pikes rather than the delivered lead ones. My experience showed that the latter tend to bent and never get straight again. Although those don't represent the bamboo lances used at that time perfectly I appreciate their durability. The pennants are self-made. I cut them from common printer paper and apprlied super glue to give them a plastic like stiffness. Finally painted them red over white.

To pretect the models I applied a couple of layers of gloss and flat varnish by airbrush.

That's it for now. Soon there is more NWF stuff to follow but not now. I hope you like them. Please feel free to leave a comment to let me know.

Ships of the Desert

A couple of years ago Iron Duke released some wonderful sets with camels, elephants, pieces of load and other useful bits and pieces to bring a table to life. Thus on Tactica I bought a couple of these camels from Empress and they've been lying on the lead pile for a while now. Finally last week I found the time to paint them:

 

 

 

The figures are of excellent quality. The sculpts and nice and detailed and the casting is superb. Literally I didn't have to clean any flash.

 

This time I combined Citadel Contrast Paints for the basic fur colour and the red blanket and Vallejo Model Colors for the other parts and the highlights. Afterall I'm pretty happy with my first camels. Later there's loaf to come and maybe more camels for the Camel Korps as part of the Gordon release expedition. 

This blog needs a doctor... John Watson at your service!

It's far too long since I posted some lines here. Maybe a last attempt to bring this blog to live again...

At Tactica 2018 some fellows and me presented a participation game featuring the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War. To decorate the battlefield we wanted some vignette which lead me to the humble piece.

Since I've already added a detachment of the 66th Regiment of Foot (the unlucky Berkshire regiment) it was a no-brainer that I had to add Dr Watson as well (in the introduction of "A Study in Scarlet" it's mentioned that Watson served with the 66th and was wounded during the battle of Maiwand).

The vignette is based on the excellent hospital set which Perry Miniatures have in their Sudan range. After consulting a couple of reference books and an interesting conversation with sculptor Michael Perry who is very studied regarding the mentioned conflict I realized that the only real hindrance might be the helmets and the characteristic puggree. Luckily in their NWF plastic set there is an officer’s head with a cap bearing a 66 (for the 66th Regiment) which I put on Watson’s body after removing the given pit helmet. Although the neck looks a bit strange I’m rather satisfied with my humble conversion work.

The stretcher bearer who's standing by had the puggree just grinded away slightly. Then I painted it khaki to resemble the helmets with the iconic covers.

As usual I employed mostly Vallejo Model colours as well as the splendid set of skin colours Wargames Foundry is offering. Finally I added a coat of matt varnish and a couple of grass tufts and a couple of pieces of clump foliage.

Cheers
Stefan

NWF Update: Current Troops

Just a short one before the year comes to its end. Currently NWF is my main project. Although I'm a lousily slow painter my collection of British / Indian troops is growing constantly. Here's a quick view at the latest additions:

45th (Rattray's Sikh) Regiment of Native Infantry

Second Lieutenant Walter Rice Olivey

My interpretation of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot was finished a while ago. At least as a smallish 12 figure detachment. But I needed some more time to prepare the flags. Thus those two brave ensign - who both fell in the battle of Maiwand in 1880 - had to wait some time.

Second Lieutenant Arthur Honywood

9pdr Royal Horse Artilley

Of course there's some heavy stuff needed as well. Here's a 9pdr to start with.

Heliograph Team

As well as in the Sudan and in Zulu land the British deployed Heliograph teams in Afghanistan to maintain a certain amount of communication. To have a team different from the excellent Sudan models by Perry Miniartures I built up some chaps from a combination of the NWF plastics and the Zulu British plastics by the same company.

That's it for now. Just a short post to show that I'm still alive and painting.

Have a good new year's eve tomorrow and all the very best for 2018!

Reviewing 'The Men who would be Kings' - A NWF game

Having finished my twelve men of the 66th Regiment of Foot I was eagerly waiting to give them their first appearance on the battlefield. Finally last Friday their time came when my wargaming fellow Michael and me gathered for a test match of 'The Men who would be Kings' the new colonial ruleset by Daniel Mersey who is well known for his '[...] Rampant' series. To get into the rules we decided to play a simple scenario with two of the recommended field forces from the appendix of the rulebook. Thus we fieled the following 24 pts.:

The battlefield showing Michael's wonderful terrain pieces.

British attackers (yours truly):

3x 12 Men regular infantry @ 6 pts. each

8 Men refular cavalry @ 6pts.

Afghan defenders (Michael):

2x 16 Men tribal infantry @ 3 pts. each

1x 12 Men irregular infantry @ 4 pts. each

1x 12 Men irregular infantry upgraded as sharpshooters @ 6 pts.

1x 10 Men irregular cavalry @  3 pts.

1x Poorly trained gun @ 4 pts.

66th Rgt. of Foot finished... For now.

A while ago I presented a review of the British infantry plastics for 1877-1885 by Perry Miniatures and my first painted figures from the set (here). As some of you might remember I wanted to have a unit of those splendid figures painted as members of the 66th Regiment of Foot that fought a heroic battle near Maiwand on 27th July 1880. So here we go:

Shrubbery from Rubberised Horsehair

A while ago our fellow Dave presented an excellent tutorial about making hedgerows out of rubberised horshair. Actually it's a stuff from upholstery business but in the days of disposable low-budget furniture and synthetic padding it's pretty unusual. Due to this I foundered on acquiring this stuff until Dave kindly and generously sent me some of his clippings. Actually a pretty large amount of horsehair so I'll be able to tart my NWF collection up with enough shrubbery for a medium sized battlefield. Many thanks again, Dave!

Finally during those holiday weeks I managed to try working with the stuff and prepared a couple of test pieces myself. 

1.) Bases:

As most of us I have a pretty large amount of those green plastic bases which are supplied with the Perry plastics. Now I found a proper use for them and employed a couple of them as bases for my shubbery test pieces. For this I simply unsprued a couple of them and rounded the edges. Not perfect but sufficient for test pieces. For the real terrain pieces of course the shape should be much more irregular.

66th for NWF - Perry British Infantry 1877 - 1885

Ten days gone since my last post. Holidays are really a hustle... Currently I'm having my yearly summer holiday and we spend part of it at home but part of it in East Frisia by the sea as well. Although I enjoy any time out and especially having time for the family things tend to go somehow stressful to hang around together all the time. Particularly when the girls are missing their common playfellows. However there'll be a couple of day trips to mention here...

During the last days my blog crawled over the 300,000 hits step nearly unnoticedly. Many thanks for your recurring interest in my humble pieces of work!

Be sure that I'll cover this step in a seperate post and I'll create a appropriate raffle for that. But I have to postpone this in the aftermath of our holiday.

But now in medias res. Actually this day's post was meant to introduce and review the rather new plastic set by Perry Miniatures. The spring after Salute the twin published a set I'd been waiting for since it was announced last year: British Infantry 1877 - 1885.

As you know the Great Game and the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War have been keeping my attention for a while. So I didn't wait too long until I assembled and prepare a couple of those figures. Finally the first five are finished and I wanted to take the chance to show you the set as a whole.

As most of you might know the plastics come as a box of 36 multi-part 28mm figures. Once again they come in a handy box with a tremendous artwork by Peter Dennis:

72nd Highlanders - Unit completed. Finally!

My apologies for being absent lately but besides some more zombies I tackled a trio of figures that took a bunch of time. Finally I managed to finish the last three daring scotsmen for my NWF highlanders:

The last trio...

Once again it took a while but you know how lousily slow I'm painting from time to time.

... and from another angle.

So now we have the second unit for NWF finished after those more or less generic Brits I painted more than a year ago (here). In addition there'll follow those wonderful new Perry plastics, some mounted troops, artillery and whatever seduces me to complete the collection:

The whole unit of twelve figures.

More 72nd Highlanders

After a lot of zombies here is a post about a historical theatre of war again. Finally my unit of 72nd Highlanders fills the ranks having nine brave Scotsmen ready for action now. This meaning that yours truly managed to finish six new figures by now:

72nd Highlanders for NWF - First trio finished

During the last days I kept working on the first batch of my NWF 72nd Highlanders. 'First batch' actually means five figures but I've got some work to do on the sergeant and the drummer. So here are the leading officer and two privates:

Three men finished... Nine to go.

Monty on tour - Hobby weekend abroad

Last weekend I had the great pleasure to attend a sublime hobby weekend. A fellow from southern Germany invited a couple of hobby enthusiasts to his home to share a weekend of painting, chatting and gaming with him. This time I had the honour to belong to the group of guest and thus on Friday afternoon I took a train to Stuttgard and gathered with Alex, Thomas, Christian, Michael and another Michael there.

It started with the wonderful and hospitable welcome at Alex's house and then we went to our first painting session. This time I was lucky enough to have Michael at my side who introduced me into painting with oil paints to paint horses quicker than before. The advantage of this kind of colour is that you can manipulate it for a very long time using little pieces of sponge or brushes moistened with turpentine. The horses aren't finished yet but for my taste the technique worked really well and granted a new experience to yours truly.

About 03.00am on Saturday morning we went to bed and took a snatch of sleep. After breakfast then we returned to the painting table. While the horses kept drying I started with my NWF 72nd Highlanders. It's a rather special unit because they wore the Indian Service Dress combined with reddish tartan trews. Most of you might know the pictures of them in the Osprey book about the British Army on Campaign:

Picture from the Maiwand Day Blog

Starting the march on Kandahar

The last two weeks were pretty quiet here. Actually too quiet which I really apologize. But somehow I didn't feel that there's too much worth be posted here. My workbench was still covered with stuff for the painting challenge but somehow I wasn't able to finish anything but the figures for the next bonus round.

After all here they are:

With these figures I'm starting my Victorian Middle-East project. The focus is the 2nd Anglo-Afghan war but I'll include some forces for a later Sudan campaign as well. More or less my idea to include as many miniatures from the stunning ranges by Perry, Artizan and Wargames Foundry without mustering three or four different armies.

Well, these figures are from the excellent Sudan range by Perry Miniatures. I chose a couple of British with Indian Service Dress which was worn in Afghanistan as well as in the Sudan. During the next months another bunch of those will follow as well as a couple of lancers as they all are on the Lead Mountain already.

As usual I used Vallejo Model Colors to paint these chaps. Many thanks to Mark Hargreaves for his priceless hints about the khaki uniforms. I are appropriate more or less.

This time the bases are really simple with some sand, some colour and a tuft of static grass here and there.

Please don't forget to head to Curt's page to vote for your favourite entries of this bonus round. I promise that there are a lot of pleasing entries which deserve your vote much more than my humble work.