Wet Paint: Arthur

This is a Foundry Arthur (one of many in my collection :) ) which has been on and off my painting desk for a couple of years now. In a bid to clean out the painting queue before my move, I finished painting him yesterday evening. This figure was painted in full–on–four–layers–with–knobs–on style (it goes to 11)—deliberately so to see if I could still do it. This of course takes time so I have generously awarded myself 5 points for painting it.

I plan on finishing the basing of this figure and then selling it (Ebay or through some forums). With the current popularity of Saga and Dux Britanniarum it should hopefully fetch a good price.

Wet Paint: Hortistari (Celts) and some civilians

It's been a while since I've done one of these posts, mainly because it's been a while since I painted anything that was not a 1:300 tank of scenery item, but here's the latest on my painting desk:



The unit of Celts are the Hortistari. I'm trying something different with them. Instead of basing them individually and then putting them on a movement tray, as my other units of Celts are, I just plunked these guys down on one big base. It's a bit difficult to see in this photo, but the figures are glued on in a sort of wedge, to suggest a charge into battle. The big advantage of this is that you can get away with a unit that has a normal footprint of 6x4 miniatures only having 16 miniatures (in this case). Also, four of the miniatures on the base were painted some time ago but had not been incorporated in a unit yet, so painting only 12 figures got me my sixth war band of the army. For those keeping score, the others are the Malini, Zemstiani, Larii, Arboretes and Avertendi. Most of the figures are Wargames Foundry, with a few Old Glory sneaking in.

The two figures in front are civilians for my horse & musket collection. The guy carrying the flaming torch is an old Ral Partha Ravenloft 'angry mob' figure (donated by Phil). I have no idea any more what make the woman carrying the bucket is - possibly Eureka?

Final unit for 2012: Roman auxiliary archers

Painted a few days ago, photographed today, the last unit completed in 2012:



They're reinforcements for my Roman army, which I hope will see lots of action in 2013. The figures are Warlord Games Western Auxiliary archers, I strung the bows with normal-ish sewing thread.

Wet paint: beware, dangling bits!

Next off the painting desk are two Warlord Games Celtic druids: Stomachabundix and his somewhat more free spirited nephew Loonix.



The pictures were taken on the painting desk with my iPhone, hence the their 'softness'—the camera on the iPhone is a royal pita to get to focus on something you want and not on what it wants. In this case, the letters on the paint pots seemed much more interesting to focus on to the camera (which is quite logical, they're black on white so much more contrasty for the AF algorithm to lock onto). Better pics to follow when I have based them.

Cossacks!

I'm painting up some Cossacks for my Great Northern War armies. After the mounted ones earlier this year, here are two small units of their footslogging cousins:

Mad Oleg's bunch:



Dashing Dmitro's rabble:



The figures are again from The Assault Group, except for Mad Oleg who is from Foundry (where he is called Red Renko).

Austrian Generals

As usual, Crisis seems to revive my painting mojo, so here's some Austrian Napoleonic generals (or rather, field marshals) including none other than Archduke Charles himself:



The figures are from good old Wargames Foundry.

Napoleonic vignettes & stuff

Past weekend saw the 2012 edition of Crisis in Antwerp, where we presented a game based on the battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809 between Napoleon's French and Archduke Karl's Austrians.

For this game I painted up a number of extra vignette and scenery figures. First off, Foundry's marvellous Bavarian looters with accompanying angry farmer (a Ral Partha Ravenloft 'angry mob' figure kindly donated by Phil). As an aside, the Bavarians were painted up as being from IR 11 Kinkel, inspired by the wonderful plate in Osprey MAA 106 featuring the soldier from that regiment dozing off on the job while holding a piglet (of unknown regimental lineage):



A vivandière (Warlord Games) and a fellow who has sampled too much of her wares (from the Foundry Blacksmith set):



And finally some French casualties (again Foundry):

Cossacks

Continuing my tradition of only showing newly painted figures after they have been used in anger at least once (in this case in the first game or our version of the Raid on St. Michel mini-campaign):



These are Cossacks from The Assault Group and were painted to fulfill the role of light cavalry for either side in my Great Northern War armies. More are to follow. This particular lot I named the Siniĭ Cossacks. If you know Russian and Google Translate was correct, you'll see why :).

The basing might seem a bit funny - they're on 60x20mm bases which look a bit too long and narrow. But that's intentional, as the unit of 6 figures will have the same footprint as a regular cavalry unit (which I base on two 60x60 stands) when closed up.

Engineers / pontooneers / bargemen

Here are some more figures I painted quite a while ago (they have featured in more than one game since) but only got round to photographing now: a number of pontooneers / bargemen / pioneers for a vagueish horse'n'musket era:



They are all Redoubt ACW engineers, but with a number of the heads replaced by Victrix French Napoleonic heads. They were painted up as 9 generic pontooneers or engineers and three barge- / boatmen. Useful figures!

Painting Log: 1st company Åbo och Björneborgs läns cavalry and a major general

The first of the Swedish cavalry are done - they're the first company (half squadron) of the (and I shudder to think in how many creative ways I'm spelling the Swedish here) Åbo och Björneborgs läns ryttare.

A company in 1:20 for Swedish cavalry regiments around the time of Poltava comes to (very roughly) 6 figures, so a squadron is 12. I'll be trying to paint a squadron for each of the regiments present in the main battle at Poltava (11 or so) - these are the first.

The figures are Reiver Castings whose horses look absolutely horrendous in the metal, but who luckily do look the job when painted and based up.

I also finished the first command figure - major general Roos, who took a third of the infantry strength of the army off to swan about trying to capture redoubts instead of bypassing them. He'll be based on a somewhat elaborate base, so he gets three points instead of the normal 2 for a mounted figure.

As always, pictures to follow, but I'm counting 15 points for these - 12 for the 6 cavalrymen, 3 for Roos. Next up is probably a bunch of Romans again, as my black primer has run out for the moment (and the Romans are grey primered).

Painting log: Uncharted Seas orc fleet & human flagship

And another bunch of tubs is ready to set to sea. This time some ships for [The Uncharted Seas](http://www.spartangames.co.uk/uncharted.htm):

* An Orc fleet pack consisting of:
* 1 battleship
* 3 cruisers
* 6 frigates
* An Orc battlecruiser
* An Orc assault ship
* A human flagship, the _Empress' Cynical Smile_

According to some ridicilously arbitrary formula I made up (2 points for the 6 frigates, 1.5 points each for the remaining Orc ships and 2 points for the flagship - many sails to paint) I'm giving myself 13 points for these, for a total of 32 so far this month. Next up on the painting table are some Swedish GNW cavalry by Reiver Miniatures.

Painting log: Dal Regiment, 1st Battalion

And that's the final of Roos' battalions done, the 1st Battalion of the Dal regiment. Here's a quick badly lit pic I took of them on my painting station awaiting basing:

Again all Musketeer figures. I did a very minor conversion on the officer and NCO (central and right hand stand respectively), swapping their heads around to keep some variation going, as there is just the one figure for these essential positions. The flags are printed copies from the Höglund book.

Painting this, the classic Swedish blue / yellow combo, and going over my notes for the remaining battalions, it suddenly struck me that the non traditionally coloured regiments (Närke-Värmlands and Jönkopings with red facings and Västerböttens with white) were all with Roos at the redoubts, while the more traditionally coloured ones were in the main infantry battle (with the exception of the second battalion of the Närke-Värmlands). Funny, that.

That makes 19 points. Next up in the queue is an Orcish fleet and a human flagship for Uncharted Seas.

Painting log: 12 Bavarians, and some musing on wargame unit structure

I finished 12 Bavarians last evening (well 11 Bavarians and one -- presumable -- Bavarian horse), which until about a week ago would have completed the 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment, _König_ or _Leib_.

However, I decided that 24 figures is a bit meager for a single unit, and that at the 'classical' 1:20 ratio 36 figures better represent a battalion: the average Bavarian battalion that entered Russia in 1812 had about 750 men (they came back with a lot less, of course -- the Russian campaign was a disaster for the Bavarian army), which at 1:20 is 37,5 figures, close enough to 36 to not matter. So, both of my 'finished' battalions will be expanded with another three stands of 4 figures to bring them up to 36 figures each.

As to basing, I'm going to keep them as 4 figures to a base of 30x40mm (15mm frontage per figure). The rules I'm eyeing, [Republic to Empire](http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com), work with 'combat groups' of four figures, which fits perfectly with that basing, and it would also mean no rebasing of the figures (which I already did once for the first unit -- they were initially based on 20mm frontage but looked, in the words of a member of the [Steve Dean](http://www.steve-dean.co.uk) forum, looked like a skirmish line instead of a ranked unit).

Another advantage is that a number of formations in the rules actually look pretty good when executed with 4 figure stands. More on that later.

The disadvantage of staying with 4 figure bases is that this no longer reflects the theoretical company structure (6 companies, 4 of fusiliers, 1 of grenadiers and 1 of lights) of a Bavarian battalion -- 6 figure stands would reflect this perfectly. But as not all battalions would have adopted this company structure, and real life military units of course varied wildly from theoretical establishments, I don't feel that weighs heavily enough to abandon the 4 figure basing.

So, that's 12 points for January. Up next is another battalion of GNW Swedes, and probably the first GNW Russians after that (the Preobrazhenski Guard Grenadiers).

"Painting" log: French 7th Cuirassiers

This isn't quite a 'painting' achievement, but I'm going to count them anyway -- I just finished 13 French cuirassiers.

They're a bit special, as I did not paint the figures myself. At the bring and buy at the Crisis convention earlier this year, I picked up a 28mm French Napoleonic army for a very cheap price. The figures are painted in a basic single colour style and have suffered a bit from use and transport. However, given the price, they were a bargain.

The idea with them is to touch up the paint jobs where necessary, give them a dip in [Army Painter Dip](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000347.html) and finally rebase them. I have done just that for the cuirassiers: touched up a few scuffed paint areas, painted in little '7's on their saddlebags (cognoscenti may now correct me with the correct Napoleonic term :) ) and dipped them.

Even though it is not a full paint job, there is still some time spent on these 'transformations', so I'm awarding myself half points for them. That means these bring me 13 points (out of a normal 26 for 13 cavalry figures), or a total of 44 this month. Painting is picking up again, it seems.

Photos to follow as their basing is finished.

Painting log: Jönköpings regiment

And the boys in blue with the red facings and stockings (hi, Koen :) ) are done. They're currently recovering from their layer of gloss varnish (read, the varnish is drying). That finishes four of the five battalions with Roos, the final one being the second battalion of the Dal regiment.

Pictures to follow as and when the basing is finished (more on that anon).

That puts this month's painting total at 19 points (the 19 figures of this battalion), trumping last month's abysmal 12 points in the first week of the month. That said, while I did not paint much last month (essentially just the Celtic cavalry of which you can expect photos tomorrow), I did work through a huge backlog of basing figures. I based three battalions of Swedes, one of [Bavarians](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000335.html), some Celts and Romans, and a whole bunch of [modern microarmour](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000343.html). Giving points for that would be cheating though, as I already 'scored' those figures after finishing their paint jobs. So I am now left with the moral question of when to score the figures: after the paint job or when they are fully based. I suspect the latter will result in a more accurate reflection of what I can finish in a certain period of time (the entire idea behind the painting point thing), so maybe I'll have to switch. We'll see.

Next up (having just been basecoated) is the second battalion of Bavarians. I'm going to paint this in two lots of twelve as opposed to one of 24. I did the first as one lot of 24 and I suspect that is partly responsible for my drop in painting output afterwards. So let's see what happens with this lot.

Painting log: Celtic cavalry

That's 6 old Wargames Foundry Celtic cavalry done. Together with 6 more which I painted a *very* long time ago (they are from my first ever army - a 25mm DBA Celtic army. Ah, the memories) they form a 12 man cavalry unit reinforcement for my [Celtic army](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000197.html).

Pre basing pic:



The front rank are the newly painted figures, the rear rank the over a decade old ones.

I tried something different wrg glues on these figures. Normally, I glue the riders to the horses and the shields to the riders using super glue. On these, I used hot glue (which I also use to fix the horses to the bases, but I do that more often). I had expected there to be horrible blobs of solidified glue splurting all over the place, but I'm pleasantly surprised as to this: no blobs and everything sticks quickly without the need to do the press-together-for-twenty-seconds-and-then-find-out-if-it-sticks-to-the-figure-or-my-finger routine one does with super glue. Recommended!

That brings this month to 12 painting points. Next up are some more Swedes (finally), this time the Jönkopings regiment.

Painting log: Roman auxilia

To augment my growing plastic Roman army, I just finished a unit of 15 of [Warlord Games](http://www.warlordgames.co.uk) new [plastic auxilia](http://shop.warlordgames.co.uk/plastic-imperial-roman-auxiliaries-1945-p.asp).

While I like their legionaries, I'm not an undivided fan of these auxilia (which is a bit of a shame, as I've got 4 boxes of them :) ). They are nice figures, but they have a few drawbacks. One of them is that it is virtually impossible to build them differently than intended - the seperate arms are so specific to each pose that it leads to extremely silly results when you combine them with the body of a different pose (spot the auxilia with the extremely small arm in upcoming photos). Secondly, the spears they are armed with are plastic, and just in handling them while painting I already broke 3 of them - I shudder to think how much they will suffer in a game.

That said, this month's total is now 15 points. Last month, I got up to 62, just shy of my target of 70 per month.

Next up is 6 metal (old Foundry figs) cavalry for [my Celtic army](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000197.html).

Painting log: Bavarian Napoleonic regiment 1

Finally, they're done. 24 Bavarian infantry, painted up as the 1st Regiment, _Konig_.

These guys took me longer than I expected, which is probably normal due to the large amount of detail that goes into a Napoleonic figure. Therefore, I'm going to award myself 1,5 points for each of these, giving 36 points for the entire unit. This is not cheating, I feel, as the painting point thing is supposed to give one a measure of one's painting throughput, and is thus directly related to the time it takes to paint one figure. These figures take me about one and a half time to paint as others, so 1,5 points it is :).

I am considering doing the next Napoleonic regiment in two batches of 12 though -- I found my enthousiasm lagging at several points during the painting of these. 24 sets of leather webbing (in white!) might be a bit too much. We'll see.

Oh yes, pictures to follow tomorrow, as usual.

Next up for painting is a unit of 24 Roman auxilia. As I'll be doing these with 'the dip', painting 24 in one batch won't pose the same problems as did the Napoleonics, I hope.

Painting log: British fleet at Trafalgar, part 1

While the smell of varnish is still in the air, I'm calling these finished. 16 ships, being Nelson's column along with four frigates and _Africa_ that was in neither Nelson's nor Collingwood's column. Add another 16 points for a total of 26 points this month.

Pictures will have to wait for the varnish to dry.

Next up are the first battalion/regiment of the Bavarian Napoleonics. They've been cleaned and primed and are set for their first layers of paint tomorrow. As an aside, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy these figures were to clean up - these being old figures I had expected them to suffer horribly from flash and mould lines -- something I hate removing. However, apart from the obligatory flash at the tip of the bayonets these figures were clean as a whistle. Good job by Foundry!

Painting log: modern British 1:285 infantry and support

First finished figures for this month:



And yes, they *are* painted, it's just that between the still black bases and the crappy phone camera, it doesn't really look that way.

There's 8 infantry stands, 4 mortar stands, 6 snipers, 4 Milan AT and 4 Blowpipe AA. As these have a very basic paint job only (there's literally only three colours on them), I'm giving myself 10 points for the 26 stands. 60 to go for the month :)