Catching up

Well it has been a long time since my last blog entry.

As I have mentioned before, I do most of my sharing of progress and photos via Facebook these days as it is much faster and easier on a mobile device. Blogging really needs me to boot up either a Chromebook or a decade+ old laptop that really isn't up to life in the 2020s!

I thought it was time though to add a general post showing the various things I have been up to in recent months. There's not a huge amount as life has been rather busy, but things have still ticked along.

Napoleonics (6mm)

Most recently (last weekend in fact) I deployed part of my large collection of Austrians and French in a game using scenario 1 from the old WRG Scenarios for Wargamers book written by CS Grant. The scenario itself is based on Fontenoy and consists of a larger force (Austrians in my case) attacking a smaller one (French here). I used my own napoleonic "squares" rules that you can find on one of the pages of this very blog and found they still worked well. I was able to play through the scenario twice in a couple of hours.

Today I have refreshed the formatting of the rules as I hadn't previously noticed that when I changed the blog's background theme it had made rather a mess of the rules, such that some parts couldn't even be read. It should be much better now.

I might even set up another scenario this afternoon.

Just after Christmas I did finally get round to adding some Wurttemberg light cavalry to my collection. This was a base of mounted jager. I still have more light cavalry and a light infantry/jager brigade to sort out.

Ancients (15mm)

In the second half of 2021 I was quite busy with refreshing my collection of 15mm ancients. This involved repainting older figures and adding in some new stuff. I mostly use Essex miniatures and Chariot castings (from Magister Militum). These are based for DBA and in November we managed to arrange a reunion of the Newark Irregulars' members where some of us played games of DBA 3rd edition using armies old and new (but all "ancient"):

Myself, with Laurence Baldwin and James Morris pondering over our game in November

The mighty Roman army faces off against Pyrrhus of Epirus

I actually got quite a large number of ancients painted and based but rather ground to a halt when I started the Achaemenid Persians, but am sure I'll get back to them sometime soon. Here is a further flavour of the ancients collection:

Numidians (well, a mix of "new"midians and "old"midians). I really like this army as it is a challenge to command and play against. There are some interesting options within the DBA list including imitation legionaries and an elephant. Even without these, an army composed of psiloi and light horse can be pretty fearsome if used with care:

Selection of troops for the Pyrrhic and Punic Wars:

Greek village buildings from Westwind, a home made scenic base and some Italiote infantry by Chariot

Pyrrhic elephants (Essex)

Pyrrhus of Epirus (Xyston general, Essex bodyguard)

Tarantine light horse (Chariot)

Spearmen (Essex)

Romans (Essex) and roman buildings (Warbases)

Tarantine infantry

Pyrrhic and Tarantine pikemen (Freikorps 15 and Essex)

Italiote hoplites (Chariot)

Peloponnesian and Persian Wars

Persian (Median) infantry (Essex)

Persian general in chariot (Essex)

Athenian army (Chariot and Essex)

Spartan army (Chariot and Essex)

American War of Independence (28mm)

Following the Battle of Eutaw Springs in the ... err ... spring, I haven't added to the collection until recently. My thoughts are currently turning to rounding out the Saratoga collection with loyalists and rangers so I have painted up light infantry from the King's Royal Regiment of New York (Johnson's Greens) using Perry figures sculpted as British infantry for the Saratoga campaign:

It isn't entirely clear what the uniform of this unit was in 1777 so I have opted for the green coats and red facings common to loyalist units of the time, with buff smallclothes and linings. The light infantry have modified their cocked hats to resemble the caps of their regular British brethren. The shoulder wings have been painted on.

I have also painted a unit of Butler's rangers, again using the red-facings interpretation for their earlier uniform. Even so this is still appropriate for 1778 but not the Saratoga campaign when Butler commanded a small number of rangers but had not yet been given authority to raise a regiment of his own. These are the newish Perry sculpts and I had a go at some different techniques for painting black skin:

Currently on the painting table are the figures to form the main-body of the KRRNY for which I have mostly used Perry plastic continental infantry figures with some arms and hats from the British box. I'm also working on some loyalist rangers more suited to 1777 using spare Perry riflemen and hunting-shirt figures from the lead pile. More on those at a later date.

I'm also considering some amendments to my Bloodybacks AWI rules, so keep an eye on that page of the blog!

I think that's it for my quick update of autumn and winter activity. See you soon.