Tee-shirt weather

Very limited activity on the wargaming front since the early part of the month. That's largely down to a work trip which ate up the best part of two weeks. I did intend to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War Jonathan whilst on the Texas leg of the trip, but when I actually looked at the route planner the time taken to drive would have been nearly two hours each way and that wouldn't have left long to spend looking around.   But you can read about it on Jonathan Freitag's blog post from last month: https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2022/09/national-museum-of-pacific-war.html

It was like stepping back into the hottest summer over there, but apparently 30+ degree Celsius temperatures are usual during Fall* in Texas. It was cooler but still very summery by British standards on the West Coast. It was back to reality in Blighty, where I was greeted by grey skies and downpours. We're in the middle of a series of warm weather though, blowing in off the Atlantic. Today here it's reached 22 degrees and a walk in the park meant tee-shirt order. Not particularly sunny at first, but boy was it warm!

Ladies of leisure: these beauties were sat close to the path.

Looking back the way we came, up a long slope. Surrey hills in the distance (south).

View to the north east from the nearly same spot. A bit too hazy for my camera. I figure that is Hampstead Heath/Parliament Hill in the background. Makes you realise that London is surrounded by quite high hills.

Wargaming wise, all I've managed to do, bar reading, is finish off the bases on six brigades. 1 French foot, 2 French horse and 3 Hanoverian horse. Hopefully I'll be able to crack on with painting the French foot that I started before work got in the way.

My how Britain has declined in recent years

Even the new James Bond is looking a bit, erm, worn.

 

Surprising Progress

Right, this will be the last update for a while. Promise.

Over the last couple of days I've managed to finish painting 2 bases of French Infantry (Grenadiers de France), 4 bases of French cavalry (Gendarmerie de France), 6 bases of Hanoverian cavalry, and fully painted, based and 'textured' 2 bases of French cavalry (Regiment Raugrave). Plus got a further 4 bases of French infantry 50% painted, and 12 bases of Hanoverian infantry undercoated* and 'fleshed'. I've still got 4 bases worth of infantry and 2 of cavalry completely untouched, and a bag of assorted horse and foot to assemble into units.

* managed a quick trip to Games Workshop for a can of black spray paint and a pot of silver. Just in time.

All of this has entailed clearing some FR boxes that had been full of terrain pieces, for the new armies. The French are now spread over three boxes, and the Anglo-Hanoverians have their own box which will likely spread to a second when the job is done.

Anglo-Hanoverian box. Six bases (2 brigades) of Hanoverian horse on the unfinished bases.

French infantry box with the Grenadiers de France on the unfinished bases. (Swiss and Germans have been moved to their own box).

French cavalry. Raugrave right front. Gendarmerie on the unfinished bases.

Said Gendarmes

Minden and Fontenoy are within sight. A bientôt mes amis. A bientôt.

British Re-inforcements

Off the painting table today (well yesterday now) come five bases of infantry and two of cavalry. Whilst 2 bases represent a 'brigade' in TOTSK, I've chosen to paint each base or pair of bases as representatives of one regiment. 

One thing I've noticed that makes all the difference when painting these fiddly figures is to paint the hat lace. It needs a steady hand (I have shaky hands so I push my wrists into something like the edge of the desk) and paint of just the right consistency to flow on easily without going on too easily. It doesn't need to go all round the hat properly, and it doesn't even need to be in the right spot. Just the hint of a triangular shape will create a decent impression for the typical tabletop view. Another thing I could do is get some silver paint for the swords, musket barrels and bayonets rather than the natural steel colour I'm using.

So now the total musters:

2nd Foot Guards (Coldstream)*

11th Foot (later the Norfolk Regiment)

12th Foot (later the Suffolk Regt)

23rd Foot (Royal Welch Fusileers), 1 base only

33rd Foot (later the Duke of Wellington's (West Riding) Regt), 1 base only

42nd Foot (The Black Watch), 1 base only

Combined grenadiers, 1 base only (2 battalions in TOTSK)

Royal Horse Guards (The Blues)

2nd (Royal North British) Dragoons (The Scots Greys), 1 base only**

15th (Light) Dragoons (later the 15th, King's, Hussars), 1 base only

3 General/staff group bases

So a total of 10 foot and 4 cavalry bases (5 and 2 brigades respectively).

I plan to do four more bases of British cavalry next. I fact they should be done tomorrow. Then it's a toss up between Hanoverians or more French.

Update

A quick check showed that I had enough British infantry and cavalry done for Minden. Slightly too many in fact. So those two brigades of cavalry in red coats waiting to be finished would have to be Hanoverians. No wait a minute, they wore white coats. OK, French then. There were ten squadrons of Gendarmerie who wore red. That’ll do for one brigade in red then. There might be more, but I already have a bunch of red coated French cavalry. More checking needed.

So, wishing to crack on and do something, rather than spend more time checking what I should do, I painted up two bases of horse grenadiers as Regiment Raugrave who were also at Rossbach (but didn’t feature in any of my games as such). Job done, and glued to their bases with a coating of chinchilla dust for texture. Tomorrow should see the basing finished. Despite wearing bearskins I don’t think they were particularly good, just ordinary line cavalry not in tricornes.

I’ve got 30 squadrons worth of cavalry (six bases/three brigades) stuck on lolly sticks ready for undercoating. These will be the Hanoverian cavalry. Not sure if I’ll get these finished in the next couple of weeks though as I have a long work trip coming up. Time being sociable with the Margravina is important at the moment (the lady being particularly attached to your correspondent, much to his evident pleasure) so time available for marshalling one’s forces is at a premium. Affairs of state must be balanced with affairs of the heart.

* I couldn't make my mind up which of the three Foot Guards regiments to do, so I took the average and did the 2nd.

** I decided on a whim to convert an already painted base from the Horse Grenadiers to the Scots Greys and dabbed white paint on the horses at the last minute.

Blogger is having one of its glitchy spells again, buggering up the positions of the pictures.

Top down view of 33rd, and 12th Foot

The Royal Horse Guards. Bases to be completed

33rd, 12th, 23rd and Combined Grenadiers

11th Foot

The Minden Regiments

The other day I got a shift on and started painting the new H&R delivery. I undercoated enough figures for over a dozen brigades, and did faces and coats on the British. Tonight I ploughed on and finished two bases of line infantry (a brigade) and two bases of grenadiers. One base of grenadiers I did as the 23rd Foot or Royal Welch Fusileers, who wore grenadier style mitres. I based the line infantry on the 12th Foot (later the Suffolk Regiment). Both the 23rd and 12th were at Minden and Fontenoy, so that's handy and I have nostalgic reasons for doing these regiments. Many years ago, my late sister had a holiday in Wales with her husband and brought me back a guidebook from the regimental museum of the Royal Welch Fusileers. Round about the same time I found some old Look and Learn magazines, one of which featured the 23rd and the other the 12th, referencing the Battle of Minden. The full page colour pictures were of the SYW uniforms.

So here they are based, and with a coating of sand, ready for painting and flocking when the PVA has dried. Whilst there were six British foot regiments at Minden (each 1 battalion strong),  four of them, including the 12th, had yellow facings, cuffs and turnbacks. Easily enough to be a whole brigade. The base of grenadiers also have yellow facings etc, notionally being the detached companies from the foot regiments.

I've also included some pictures below of some H&R infantry almost fresh out of the packet. The only thing I'd done at that stage was to file off the flash on the bottom of their bases. I thought these might be of interest for those not familiar with these models. I think you get a good idea of the quality of these tiny models.

These are 6 packs of Austrian infantry marching. In each pack you get 9 ‘stands’ of 5 marching infantrymen, two ensigns, 2 drummers, 2 NCOs, 2 officers on foot, 1 mounted officer and 1 pioneer (in grenadier bearskin). Prussian infantry are the same but the pioneer has a mitre. 

These models in marching are easier to prepare and base than other poses (advancing with bayonets forward, firing and all cavalry) because they come in rows side by side. the other types come in stands of 5 but one behind the other. Much more fiddly! Naturally I forgot this when I made my order. Of course most of the Brits that I’m painting are the firing pose. 

If you are going down this route learn from my mistakes!