The silvery Tay and some 15mm/18mm units to paint

 

A non-gaming post. Today, to pick up some musical stuff, I was in Dundee. So I paused on riverside for a few minutes for a couple of pictures of the dear old silvery Tay. Not great pictures, but inspired by William McGonnagall.

        Beautiful silvery Tay, ...

        Along each side of your waters, to Perth all the way;  

This is looking south east at the rail bridge. The old foundations of the previous railbridge are just visible above the water line. 

And a view south west of the road bridge.  

And some gaming stuff. Here are pictures of a couple of Napoleonic units I must get back to painting. The French Light Infantry are CGM figures, the green are AB Miniatures Dutch Jaeger.  I was thinking about sort-of participating in the Analogue Painting Challenge that many others do at this time of year, just to give a focus and a bit of impetus to painting more. 

More later ... 

Vallejo paints and new nozzles on dropper bottles

Just an update, following on from the last post.

After I had identified all the bottles with split nozzles, I wrote to Vallejo asking if I could buy new nozzles. The kind people at Vallejo sent me replacements. 

And so last week, it was a case of out with the old ... 

And in with the new.   

So now I can shake away to my heart's content and there will be no spill.  

I think it would be good if Vallejo would sell empty bottles. Though the market make be limited, I'm sure some other painters / gamers would appreciate being able to buy spares. 

Finally, in gratitude and appreciation to Vallejo for their kindness, I made a donation to charity on their behalf.  

Vallejo Paints and split nozzles on dropper bottles

Not posted in a while, so I'll have to start posting more.  Not sure if anyone else has experienced this. 

And this is not really a complaint, but just a moan. I've had a wee problem over the years with the nozzles on Vallejo paints being split. I don't think they've split while I have owned them, and as far as I know, the paint bottles have arrived with split nozzles. 

When I pick up a bottle and give it a shake the paint comes out of the split and into the cap. It's just a bit of a mess; an annoying mess.  

Here are some pictures. Hopefully you can see the extent of the split. 

It's not too many in the grand scheme of things, but I now have 27 with spilt nozzles. So I have moved these paints out to a separate box.  

Here are all of my Vallejo paints, some 450 and more.  I missed a few from this picture.    

I'd like to replace the nozzles.  Does anyone know where to get them? 

I know I can buy complete dropper bottles, and decant the Vallejo paint into those bottles. But it seems a shame to get new bottles instead of just being able to replace the nozzles. 

I'll try to get back to painting and posting soon.  

And some current activity - 15/18mm Napoleonic again.

My seemingly endless fascination with the Napoleonic Wars stumbles on. 

Some time ago, I decided to start the forces for the initial fighting at Quatre Bras in 1815.  Actually, it's more like restarting a restart of a repeat of a repeat of a project I've been fascinated by for the past 50-odd years. 

I don't know how often I've done figures for this battle in different scales; maybe it's because of the wide variation in uniforms in such a small battle. There are French line and light infantry in blue, line lancers and chasseurs in green, possibly some of the Dutch lancers of the Guard in red, artillery in blue and for the real anorak geeks, cuirassiers with and without cuirass.  

Then there are the allies. Dutch-Belgian jaeger in green, militia and line in blue, Nassau in green and some in blue, British rifles in green, line infantry in red, highlanders and the good old 28th in the stovepipe shako. Some cavalry in pale blue. 

So here are the first couple of units, finally getting some paint splashed on them. Now, for some oddball reason, I put the flags of the 23rd fusiliers on the first British unit, even though they were not at Quatre Bras. I think I just had the flags available.  

These are CGM figures.   

And a unit of Dutch-Belgian militia.  

The painting style I've gone for here is my old favourite of basic but tidy, with the uniform colours just a little brighter than they might have been historically because I want to see them. They are, after all, just toy soldiers.   

The basing for these figures is mainly for Black Powder, with a 24 figure unit as my standard unit. I deliberately chose to spread the figures out on four 40mm x 30mm bases. The skirmishers at the front are just representative - for the look of the thing.  

I will try to keep the impetus going for this, though I've been recently tempted to try 10mm again, with lots of figures on a base. 

More later.  

first post for a while - wars of roses finished

This is some of my activity during the lockdown period.  

I got my Wars of the Roses force finished. Originally intended only for Lion Rampant, I managed a couple of small games of Hail Caesar with it, though I reckon I will need to get another box of infantry to give me a reasonable Hail Caesar force.    

Although Lion Rampant has units of 12, I decided to paint up the figures in livery in groups of 6 so I could have more colour schemes. 

The long swallow-tailed banner with the knights is Richard of Gloucester.  

And the foot banners and the commanders. The main banner in the middle is for the Earl of Warwick. 

And a picture of the full force. 

More posts soon ... 

Recent activity - old books, Wars of the Roses and some Malifaux

Here is some of my ongoing activity. 

First a couple of vintage books which I was prompted to read. The Spike Milligan book is a recent edition of his classic. 

I think it was painting the Wars of the Roses figures that prompted me to read Donald Featherstone's book again. I don't care if there are more shiny and current publications available, this is still a great little book. 

I'm also borrowing all Spike Milligan's other war books from a friend.  I reckon at least two of them, "Rommer. Gunner Who?" and "Mussolini. His Part in my downfall", are two of the best first hand accounts of British soldiers in world war 2. If you haven't read them, I would urge you to do so if you have an interest in the era.  

And on to game stuff. Some of my Wars of Roses stuff is now looking the part.  

And a couple of home made banners help to make these mounted figures.  

Another little project is Malifaux; a skirmish game that mixes steampunk, wild west, samurai and gothic horror. Though I don't like the horror elements in the game, I do like many of the figures. 

Here, I'm getting around to finishing the Lady Justice crew. These are the original metal figures and the crew is is made up of flame-haired Lady Justice, the Judge in white and three death marshals. I've still to finish off the bases.   

And finally, after a bit of reading about Saxons and Normans, I decided to watch this again. It's a Channel 4 docu-drama from 4-5 years ago. 

 More later ... 

Club activity - Black Powder and Lion Rampant

Here are some photos from recent club games.  

First a Black Powder game of Briar Creek from the AWI. I was commanding the British advancing here from left to right. And there are a couple of interlopers in our game; Great Northern War cavalry as painted substitutes as the chap who owns the figures doesn't yet have AWI cavalry. 

Here is the mounted clash. The British came off best. 

The lines come together. My British are advancing up the table. Two units have charged.  

To the British left, the rest of the lines clash. 

And the fun part ... the British lose a unit on the right, but win the remaining combat shown below. And the American militia are already Shaken with 3 casualties and have failed their saves and taken 4 excess casualties this turn. 

However, the American player rolls a 12 for his Break Test, and survives. And for the 3rd turn. The British are beginning to lose heart. 

And here my British are falling back, morale failing all round.  It was a great game, played in great spirit.   

And now Lion Rampant. This was the first game in our annual tourney. My Free Company is advancing towards the Hungarians.  Not long after this, I lost my commander to a Lucky Blow.  C'est la guerre. 

Here are my mounted serjeants, relegated to the baseline after about 3 turns and completely failing a courage test.  

My crossbows advance. They and my longbows proved to be the game changers. 

My half-painted skirmishers sneak round the hedge trying to avoid the Hungarians.  They took some casualties and failed a Courage test a few turns later. 

In the end, victory went to my Free Company. Just. I won by 2 points. Another great game, where the advantage swung from side to side, till my bows finally did enough to win. 

More later ... 

How to mess up perfectly acceptable figures

I'm sure everyone has done it at some point.  You have some painted figures, well painted, perfectly acceptable, and some voice in your head says "you could re-do that bit; make them better." 

Well, I started from 6 bowmen here who are part of this group. They are the ones will the blue / deep red livery.  Here, they are fine; nicely done and ready for the addition of some flock grass .

Now, there's a colour used in medieval and Wars of Roses times called Murrey, Sanguine or Bloody. No one is quite sure just exactly what the colour is, as different authors describe the same colour by different terms. It's often described as a purplish-red crimson.

These bowmen were intended to be in blue / murrey livery.  And for some 3 years they have been fine; they've been used in many games of Lion Rampant and some games of Hail Caesar. They've been fine for me and neither has anyone else.

And so this week a little voice in my head says "You could re-do that half of the tunics, make them better. Make them more murrey-ish."

And so I reached for purple wash, purple ink and paint and tried to "make them better". I didn't. I just made a muddy mess. This picture doesn't do justice.

I then moved into damage-limitation mode. The figures on the left of this picture are still the mistakes whilst the figures on the right have had some of the ink and wash removed. 

I then gave the red half of the tunics a couple of thin coats of white as a fresh undercoat, and reached for some reds that were close to hand. I chose the Citadel Red Gore colour as a base representative of murrey. It's good enough and gets me back to where I was a few days ago.

And here I am again. I've added some shading with the Miniature Paints Burgundy colour and some black was carefully applied in folds.

The pictures don't readily give justice to the mistake and the repair, but it's a little lesson in not listening to the voices. If figures are fine and look good enough for a game, then that's what they are - fine and good enough.

My next task is to get back to tidying the rest of my Wars of Roses figures.