A Game, Some Prussians and a Moment of Madness

So I'm still mad busy and to be honest a little worn out. But I've still done some stuff.

1st up I hosted a remote game with Matt last weekend. Matt was a section of French Foreign Legion in 1894 Dahomey. They landed by boat at an abandoned trading station and had to undertake a sweep and clear of the area. Fon army soldiers would appear at random. Matt had to collect a series of red skulls and return to the boat. We used IHMN, one of my favourite sets and not played for ages.

The board

Matt's troops, Captain, Trialleur, hunter and 3 Legionaires

Trap, there were loads of these and killed off 2 legionaires.

And then i took no more photos, hard to run and photograph. Matt made it, just, with the captain and  trialleur Roussel making it back to the boat chased by a horde of warriors. 2 legionaires died in traps, the hunter got hunted and 1 legionaire was captured. It was great fun.

All streamed via my new tablet tripod.

My final troops for the battle of Lobositz arrived from Pendraken, all the Prussians plus a few extras

battalion guns

1 battalion of Anhalt infantry, oddly these had 3 battalions and not the usual 2. Therefore this was made up from the random odds and sods that you always get

Paper flag, not the usual handpainted. in fact the new batch of prussians only have one flag per pack and not the 2 that the last lot got. Odd is they are only supposed to have 1 flag

Coach, a good general figure, and a freebie from Pendraken

Szekely Hussars

And now my moment of madness. I've had a refund from Easyjet for a not going to Ireland in May. Nice. I was doing an Ebay trawl and found this, which came today

Nice big box from the post woman

It's contents are 1000 10mm Landsknechts, renaissance Poles and Turks. All Pendraken and will go nicely with my collection of, well actually I have absolutely no figures at all that these will go with but there are enough to play with themselves. It does mean I will have to buy some more cavalry, artillery and other stuff. Should keep me busy for a couple of days

Off to read about the Italian Wars

7 Years War Prussians, Austrians and Galatians(?)

I've been quite productive this week and I have next week off, weather forecast shocking, but shops are open as I need stretchy clothes and more exercise.

I've finished off the last of the 7YW figures I have, but fear not dear reader I've ordered loads more.

Austrian 12lb Artillery

My original plan was to build the 2 opposing armies for the 1st battle of the 7YW (old Glory). However they are a little unbalanced, lots of Prussian guns and not a lot of Prussian Infantry. So I've tinkered with that and evened up the number of heavy artillery with these 5 Austrian 12lber guns

Prussian Limbers (Pendraken) Heavy artillery from Pendraken come as 1 cannon and 1 limber with crew, whereas Old Glory come as 12 cannon only. A bit a shuffling as there are loads of spare artillery men in the Pendraken 3lb battation gun pack, enough to crew the 12lb artillery. Limbers are neither here nor there. Generally they look good but large artillery is often static.

Prussian Grumbkow and Keist Grenadiers. Prussians not only used ad hoc combined grenadier battalions but also had standing battalions like these.

Prussian Braunsweig Infantry

Prussian Von Brandenburg Cuirassiers. Love the white and sky blue uniforms with the orange pompom on the hat!

Not only I am working through the 7YW forces but I am also working on the 15mm Ancients project. 

These are galatians but could double as Gauls which is why they are an attach column with skirmishers in front, no wait that is a different French period

Have fun 

Loads of Prussians and the Amazon Postman rings the bell loads of times

I've not been doing a lot of painting this week, Suicide Squad, Star Trek and 2 series of Castle to watch. I'm a big fan of Castle, it reminds me  of Buffy without the vampires, i.e. it's very random, generally well written and funny, but now it's finished so will need to find a new favourite TV show.
Last week and today I did paint some more of the 10mm Prussians, I'd added to the original army with some more infantry, to paint, and some Uhlans.

Staff Officers. The Prussians had better officers than everybody else on continental Europe so givng them more than anyone else will help

Infantry Regiment of 3 Battalions

And another

3 field guns with limbers. The limbers are ACW bought from Col Bill but some hat filing gave them Pickelhaubes 

Dragoons 

Close up - uniforms very similar to infantry

11th Uhlan Regiment (2nd Brandenberg)

Yellow cuffs and epaulettes

Love these figures

Followers of my adventures will know that I am lucky enough to play VBCW in Matt Crump's dungeon. We fight VBCW and Matt has a couple of 1:48 biplanes to give his forces air support - I shot one down last time which was revenge for our first battle where his biplane caused me great damage. They are mounted on telescopic car aerials and look brilliant. So, as it's Christmas and I haven't bought myself a present yet I bought this from Amazon for £14.99.

 .

Went out of production in 1937 so is the perfect age. However it is at least 35 years since I built an model aeroplane and this is quite complicated. Looks like tomorrow is sorted

These also arrive - 10 for £7. I broke my 2 main paint paint brushes - 10mm figs are rough on brushes

Sorry Curt, wrong blog.

The Analogue Hobbies 7th Painting challenge has arrived. If there are any of you out there who haven't signed up then do so it's a great laugh and full of inspiration. Paint as much or as little as you want between 20th Dec and 20th March, no pressure.
In the mean time I've painted some more Prussians, a regiment of dragoons,  3 artillery batteries and a General

I hate painting limbers, but they are done now. Only 2 more Prussian regiments to go and I have a couple of divisions ready t fight each other. I've also found some rules on the web - Days of Iron by Adam Stone. They look very simple with some minor tweaks.

This will do to celebrate the Challenge Launch

More Tiny Prussians

I'm continuing with the 10mm 1864 Prussians. These are the 13th Infantry Regiment. They are made up of 3 battalions of 1000 men each, although only 2 would have gone on campaign. The opposing Danes fielded 2 battalions of 800 men each. So at 1:50 scale the Prussians have 5 bases of 4 men, this doesn't quite tally with 4 companies of 250 men but it will do.
I enjoyed painting these, even the red trim on the trousers, although the moustaches were beyond me. The tiny scale is beyond the scope of my camera focus.

General

Hand painted flag

My order from Newline came today

Ancient slaves and merchants

10mm ACW regiment - ideal for the Danes

Artillery, little large and out of date but can convert into suitable field pieces

Have fun 

Prussian Jaeger Regiment - all other titles were just as witty

Fun afternoon chatting with Dave and Tamsin on the video chat.  Tamsin making terrain, Dave continuing with his 1:1 recreation of the Mahdist uprising and me painting this 10mm Prussian Jaeger regiment by Pendraken.

These are much better sculpts than the Danes and were enjoyable to paint. I'm pretty chuffed with them.

Roy Williamson, the king of getting me to buy stuff, well him and Gordon Richards (I'm sure they are on commission), pointed me to the Newline Designs site where they have a sale. I bought some 10mm ACW infantry a they are almost identical to the Danes which will give me another full brigade..

TTFN

1864 and all that

About 18 months ago I purchased some 10mm Danes and Prussians from Pendraken with the aim of trying out something new. I found the painting a pain and not much fun. I also didn't really like the rule set I'd picked (they Couldn't hit an Elephant from 2 Fat Lardies). So the idea petered out. You can see some of my work here.
Any way I was trawling through the blog of my Secret Santa recipient and he (or she) has a lot of 10mm stuff and it repeaked (is that a word?) my interest. So I dug them out and have spent a couple of days finishing of the Danes. I now have just over a completed division at 1:50 figure ratio.

 I have almost 7 infantry regiments, 2 half regiments of dragoons and 3 field guns with limbers. Not the biggest army in the world but should work well on my small table.
I have the same number of Prussians to paint and they have the challenge written all over them. The overall plan was to fight the beta version of WW1 set in the 1860s - and 1870s with the various powers resisting or supporting the the unification of Germany. Pendraken have lots of these forces.
I'm off today, had to fix the guttering whilst the weather was nice. That is hopefully done so I'm going to write some rules this afternoon, I find bought rules somewhat underwhelming and tend to nick the best ideas and incorporate them into my own.

These are small but Those are far away

Went to the Durham wargames show today. Had a nice time, met Roy Williamson and spent too much money. I always suffer a degree of regret on leaving these shows, there are things I wish I'd bought and things I wish I hadn't, hindsight is bleedin' awful . Did enjoy the show though. Didn't take any photos as my hands were full. The venue is small but about the right size. The demonstration games looked cool and I wish I played the Grimsby Wargamers Zulu game, it looked great.
I bought some more VBCW figures, this time from Reiver Castings, a local company with an eclectic catalogue. I bought some Highland infantry in kilts and Tam O' Shanters. I was looking for some mortars but despite making them in 20mm and making civilian artillery crews they didn't make 28mm scale mortars. They were surprised at this omission from their ranges and offered to send me a couple of 20mm scale 81mm mortars to use as 60mm mortars for free to go with the civilian crews I bought. I think I've just expanded their range and as a reward for their generosity I bought a Lloyd-Carden carrier. Good business for both parties.

The main reason for going was that I had pre-ordered some figures from Pendraken - my first foray into anything other than 28mm since I was 14. Hence the title and not just an excuse to link to the funniest scene from Father Ted, if not in the history of the world. If you've never seen Father Ted then you must watch it, and Black Books.

I had ordered an 1864 Danish division and an equivalent Prussian division to fight the 2nd Schleswig war.

These look really great and I also found 6 x 4 horse ACW limbers from Colonel Bill's which will work nicely with both sets of forces with a little tweaking. Got the maths wrong and only bought enough Prussians to build 800 strong battalions not the 1000 required. however going back to reading "Bismarks First War" by Michael Embree the Prussians didn't call up their reserves and so were only 800 strong. If this period turns out to be as interesting as I think then there is lots of potential for bringing in the other European nations.

At the Bring and Buy sale there were bargains galore, including a 1:200 WW2 German Armoured Division fully painted for £15 which I wish I'd bought. What I did buy was "A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages". Volume 1 by Sir Charles Osman, I already have Vol 2. I also bought a selection of 10mm buildings for £8

Finally I have been building some terrain for 10mm and stumbled across this website for a paper model of a German village in 10mm. The building are great and in full colour, although I only printed them in black and white.

Unfinished village

And finally my current favourite song - Thunder Road - not the one you were expecting and I do love the original