American Civil War Union Skirmishers and Walking Dead Zombies

A quick painting session as I had recently placed a large order with Perry Miniatures, including a box of their plastic Confederate infantry and I hadn't finished their first box set I had bought years ago. In addition to them I also had some of Sash & Sabre's Federal Infantry Skirmish or Firing Line (also bought around 2010) that I started painting a few years ago and then put on the back burner.

The photos below show my typical undercoat technique of raw umber craft paint (over a black spray painted undercoat followed by a ~5/1 highlight dry brush of raw umber/white. Then paint as normal (also with highlights, etc).

A simple job, but I wanted these done. There will be a whole lot of Confederates that they will face (an army for Rebels and Patriots) and some of them can be seen in the background of that photo above.

While I finished painting these, I also completed the Walking Dead zombies I had got from Jack at Christmas.

These will be used for a Flag of Our Zombies game I plan to have in the near future.

Start of a 28mm English Civil War Montrose Scots Army

Painted my first unit of 28mm pike & shot (well I still need to print the flag I designed). The miniatures are from Warlord Games and I got them for a beer. The bases will be done when I complete the next instalment: a command stand and two artillery pieces. That will give me a core for a division I can build off of.

This is the first "test" unit for a 28mm Montrose Scots army I have, in particular to represent a lowland unit of Captain William Innes of Tipperty’s, and Captain William Seton of Scethin’s (Shethin's), companies of foot. I discovered the (few) details of these units on the British Civil War (BCW) Project Regimental Wiki:
http://wiki.bcw-project.org/

Similar to the excellent Kronoskaf site that covers the uniforms of the Seven Years' War, the BCW Project site has details on units during the wars that ravaged the British Isles during the mid-seventeenth century. A worthy resource.

Reading about the Seton family also made it easy to design a flag for the unit, based on the Seton of Pitmedden family coat of arms. I chose this cadet branch as it's close to former site of Shethin Castle.

And because the family coat of arms is cool.

The uniform for the drummer was copied off this illustration (as it matched the colours I wanted in at least half the unit):

Which I discovered when I was reading on the origin of the Montero hunting cap:
https://the1642tailor.com/2014/03/30/montero-caps/

While painting these I was watching 'Rise of Empires: Ottoman' on Netflix, about the siege of Constantinople in 1453. Best quote so far:

"...pretty much for all of history, you will find a random British person involved in pretty much every war. And it’s always, well, more often than not, Scots. Because they just, for some reason, have that martial gene, I don’t know."

And the artillery is also coming along:

On the left is a Turkish pirate mortar from Eureka Miniatures and a Scots 9 pound Falcon cannon from Perry Miniatures.

Perry Miniatures' Farmhouse and Vegetable Garden

Finally finished the Perry Miniatures' farmhouse that I bought when it first came out. It’s such a lovely kit (only needing a little bit of filling between the chimney and the roof).

I used part of the fence that’s included to create a vegetable garden (cabbages from paper roses from Kaisercraft with some green ink to add depth). I'm currently building a pig pen and chicken coop to go with this, and will populate them with Eureka Miniatures’ farm animals.

I also finished two of 4Ground’s shotgun houses - but will take photos of everything in the sun as they are too big to photo under the desk lamp.

Pond Wars Frogs and Samurai Rabbits

Eureka Miniatures makes a lovely Pond Wars range, consisting of anthropomorphised frogs, terrapins and samurai rabbits (the full range can be found here: http://www.eurekamin.com.au/index.php?cPath=87_126_191&sort=3a).

I bought some of these miniatures years ago (since 2005 I think!), they were for a short-lived Mordheim campaign (I remember playing 1-2 games with them unpainted). They lay in the lead pile unloved, until I realised I could use them for Tribal (that would be probably have a Samurai expansion in the near future) and games like Ronin which catered for small-scale Samurai skirmish wargaming.

The range is sculpted by Kosta Heristanidis, who was inspired by Japanese Chōjū-giga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%8Dj%C5%AB-jinbutsu-giga), which has plenty of examples online (search for "Japanese art frogs", etc).

I bought a few extra bits before Christmas and spent the last two or so weeks painting them up to match the artistic style in preparation for a game of Tribal with Ara. Colours I used were Vallejo Germ. Cam. Beige (70.821) with White (70.951) for the bellies, and US Dark Green (70.893) with German Cam. Dark Green (70.979) patches for the backs and legs. They were not easy to paint, with plenty of large smooth surfaces and large eyes - but I'm pretty happy with the results. I also managed to paint an aquarium Torii and a John Jenkins Designs stone lantern.

Here's some pre-game photos (the Samurai rabbits are painted to represent my two dogs, with the Sashimono symbols matching their collars):

Their first outing was against Ara's Perry Miniatures' samurai in a game of Tribal. We played the 'Revenge' scenario from the main rulebook. I would be tasked with defeating Ara's yari-armed samurai. We also tested some cavalry rules, so it would be interesting how these would influence the game.

Some photos of the chilled Sunday session game:

I did manage (after an earlier, failed attempt) to take out the samurai:

I ended the game by once again sniping away (at point blank range!) to stop Ara's Chief from overrunning my tanegashima (matchlock)-armed Warriors by always winning initiative and shooting first (asking questions later). 16-8 Honour, good times.

I love these Pond Wars miniatures, they are just so damn cute. I just don't know why I took so long to paint them.

Last Game I Played - Tribal Maori and Koreans

Played again at Axes & Ales in the Tallboy & Moose brewery in Preston last night, this time against Liam's Koreans (Nic and Jack where on the other half of the table). I managed to get more rules right this time (I blame the great beer for hindering my ability).

As it was Liam's first or second game, we kept things simple; our 5 Honour warbands consisting of a Chief, 2 Heroes and 3 units of Warriors. No skills were selected, but they definitely add an extra level of tactics to the game. Deployment was uncomplicated (due to less terrain than normal), and we used the opening moves to reposition our respectives armies a little.

Liam's Koreans were from Perry Miniatures, and they paint up pretty well (whites always being hard to get right - these however look great):

He also quickly understood the mechanics of the rules, and was able to fend off my warlord - who charged the lone spearmen before being beaten back and ending up where he started his charge from (I couldn't tell you if this was the before or after photo!):

In the end with a little luck I was able to edge out a victory, but in the process taking a fair few losses in both in men and Honour (which you give up to you opponent when you loose a combat round or units - in this game we used shells):

The last of Liam's troops before we called it:

Even as a striped down version of the game, Tribal (mainly due to the combat mechanism) is always able to give a balanced and fun game.

Cancon Day 2 and 3 - DBA and Pike & Shotte

Day 2 saw me field my newly painted* Malays (list IV/37a) for the DBA tournament with 23 other players.

The format was a fixed army open competition - each player selecting their 12 element army with even dismounting elements fixed as either foot or mounted at the start of the tournament, playing six rounds based on a modified Swiss Chess format. For this, the second day of DBA, all armies were from the Dark Ages and Medieval Period (Books III and IV). The tournment on the Friday had been for armies from Books I and II.

My army consisted of 1 x El (Gen), 1 x El, 6 x 4Wb, 2 x 3Bw, 1 x Ps, 1 x LH.

The Canberra standard scoring system was followed:

• A win scored a flat 8 points
• A loss scored 1 point for ending the game plus the number of elements killed (capped at 3) with an extra point for killing a general or taking a camp
• A draw was scored as a loss but without the point for ending the game

In the first game I faced Emil's Ming (IV/73). Like a monkey I decided that if someone’s going to have to face the artillery it might as well be my elephants that rush it. My non-general elephant duly exploded across the battlefield, however the rest of my army won the game for me. I lost 3 elements to Emil’s 4, 8-4 win.

Game two didn't go so well, I lost 8-1 to a wall of knights in Josh's Medieval Scandinavian (IV/54b) army.

Game three made me learn some of the changed rules in version 3.0. Lost your general? Who cares! You can now continue to grind your opponent and pull a win out of what would've been a defeat in version 2.2. I had lost my general, but through the ability of my quick killing warband against my opponent's fast Samurai blade and hard flanking his cavalry with my bow I pulled out a 8-5 win.

The rest of the day pitted me against Asian (another Post Mongol Samurai (IV/59a) army was to follow) or medieval European armies.

At the end of the day I had won three, but also lost three games for an overall score of 29. Great to be able get that many games in, even if the weather was hot and humid.

The next day was spent wondering around looking at all the great games on display, doing a little shopping and talking to people.

I took part in a large Thirty Years' War game hosted by Adam, Lon and Mark for about 30 minutes.

Afterwards I did a little shopping. Final haul included a bunch of Knight Models’ Marvel blisters for $5-10 each (including the Avengers, The Thing, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, Brotherhood of Evil and Deadpool) , a couple of the Perry medieval plastic box sets, some MDF bases from Battlefield Accessories and a mix of Eureka stuff.

The drive back on the Sunday afternoon was long, but I'm glad I went. I miss everything that happens over three days of gaming.

* They'd only been in the lead pile for 10 or so years.