Got my Mojo back

Although to be honest I hadn’t realised that I had lost it.  Let’s be clear we are not talking Austin Powers style of mojo loss this is a family friendly blog after all, no, it was my figure painting mojo that had evaporated.  Mrs Elenderil and I adopted a rescue dog back in February and one thing led to another and we ended up with two - Barney and George. 

Barney came first and wasn’t any real trouble, he settled in pretty quickly and with a minimum of fuss.  George turned up a couple of months later as a fostering arrangement.  The couple who had agreed to adopt him couldn’t cope with him.  I can understand this as he needs quite a lot more attention than Barney as he is a particularly energetic breed and heis at the top end of the energy levels even for his breed.  Fostering appears to have evolved into adopting so I’m pretty sure that we are now the proud owners of two dogs!

Barney is furthest from the camera, George is working very hard at being cute at the front

So what with training, walking and general care and feeding our free time reduced dramatically.  Something had to give and it was my painting time.  I don’t like to start painting if I’m tired and by the time the dogs were sorted out it was late in the evening so I kept putting it off.  Before I knew it I had gone a couple of months and not done any painting.  I kept meaning to get my painting table set up but as George has an inquisitive not to mention acquisitive nature, that is to say he likes to grab anything that looks interesting and run off with it, I was a bit worried about the effect of Vallejo’s finest on his digestion!  He has settled down a lot now so I thought it was safe to set up and I have managed to make some inroads into my lead pile, not much  but it’s a start.  As a bonus I haven’t spotted any rainbow poos so I’m pretty sure he has left the paint alone!

Project Naseby - 3

Although for purposes of describing progress I have broken the project down into distinct parts in reality the parts overlapped.  For example I couldn't write rules without knowing what figures I would be using,  or how the units fought.  Period drill manuals gave me the answer but raised new ones as well.  I decided to create units based on the most common distances between ranks and files.  I had to take into account that in the real world formations can change but little lead casting are immobile.  Once I started to read some of the drill manuals I started to realise that so much of what I thought I knew I couldn't show to be accurate.  For example Horse attacking Foot, once I knew the size and footprint of a Foot Battalia I started to ask if a pike hedgehog was a defensive formation used in practice.  Can 400 musketeers really hide behind 200 Pikemen?  If it isn't possible what were the real mechanics involved.  Would Horse really charge home into well formed and well trained infantry?

On the plus side the formations I settled on do look like the those shown on the deployment maps created by De Gomme so something was going right.

Pictures or it didn't happen

I have been a bit lax over posting pictures in my last couple of entries.  so here are the pictures of some examples of my 2mm figures I promised.  First up is a regiment of ECW foot

 

 

These are never going to win any competitions but they do what I want them too.  Next comes some horse.  I was using up some odds and sods to build this unit including some rare miscasts normally the castings are far better than these.

 

 

 

 

Last but not least a look at an artillery piece.

 

 

The photos could be better but as I was using my phone I don't think they have come out too badly.





Project Naseby pt 2 - selecting the figures

So with the terrain researched it was time for me to buy some lead.  Off I went to Irregular Miniatures website with a burning desire to spend money!  Problems arose within moments as I realised that I needed to ensure that the 2mm blocks were going to have the proper footprint on the table and the website didn't (and still doesn't) provide details of the size of the castings.  A quick search on Google later and I had found the Tiny Tin Troops website: http://www.tinytintroops.co.uk/Res/2mm/2mm_blocks.htm which gave me the details I needed.  Backed up with frontages, depths and descriptions from that site I was able to decide which castings looked to be the best fit to the fighting frontages commonly quoted in the drill manuals of the period.

Not wanting to waste money I bought a few samples first before settling on the Horse and Musket range of infantry castings (BG32 48 foot in 3 ranks or BG31 48 foot in 6 ranks) for shot and the large Swiss/Landschnecht pike blogs (RBG9A&B) for the pike armed troops.  I had to trim flags off the shot castings until Irregular started to provide a version without the flags.  For the horse I used the Armoured Pistoliers (RBG31 15 horse in 3 ranks).  On top of which I used a variety of different castings for generals individual foot figures to add to bases etc.

I used one block of pike to represent 100 pike in 6 ranks and two blocks of shot to  create 100 shot in 6 ranks.  Three blocks of horse side by side give 45 horse in 3 ranks plus some individual single figures as officers to bring it up towards 50 horse per element.  A mix of artillery types was used from the renaissance list with the addition of limbers and ammunition wagons to the base to make it look like a working gun team.

As I'm blogging this in my lunch hour I don't have photos to hand so those will have to wait for another time.

Project Naseby - The story so far

Project Naseby - The story so far

I have always had a bit of an obsession with trying to create a complete representation of any army involved in a battle that interests me.  A while ago I decided that I wanted to do Naseby.  But not just one army but both sides.  Then I thought why not do it to a figure ratio of 1:1 its not quite as insane as it sounds when you realise that I am doing this in 2mm using Irregular Miniatures range.

That's when the megalomania started to really kick in.  I could match the figure scale to the ground scale if I aimed for 1mm to 1 yard/metre.  How hard could it be I thought.  The armies are not that big and the battlefield isn't huge.  All I need to do is get the respective orders of battle, recreate the terrain based on the OS map adjusted for the more open landscape of 1645, buy some figures and that would be that, easy..... right?  And so Project Naseby was conceived , or should that have been misconceived?

Early research went quite well, I created a contour map of the area of the main fighting area and was able to make the adjustments for the period land use based on the English Heritage battle field report.  Problems started with creating the two orders of battle.  I quickly realised that most of what I thought I knew was wrong.  so off I went to the best primary sources.  Symons diary is good for Royalist Horse but information on the foot is variable.  On the New Model side pay returns give an indication of numbers for the foot but not for the horse, and so it went.  In the end I based my forces on the Naseby Battlefield trust information.  That allowed me to buy some figures.  Although I did have to decide on a few other points first like frontage and formations so I knew what to buy.

More on that and my attempt to write rules in a later blog.