Starting the Thirty Years War project

As I mentioned in my 'state of the union' post for this year, one of the projects I might start this year is the Thirty Years War. This post is the first visible sign of the genesis of this project, and will be a bit of a rambling, brainstormy, stream of consciousness type of post on unit selection for this project.
Initially I had thought to base the units for this project on a specific battle or campaign, as I have done with my Great Northern War and Napoleonic collections (the Russian campaign 1708-1709 and the Danube campaign 1809, respectively). I quickly ran into an issue with that however. Depending on which period of the Thirty Years' War you represent (Bohemian Revolt, Palatinate phase, Danish intervention, Swedish intervention, …) the units used different formations and compositions, all of which would need to be reflected in the miniature units.
On the one hand, if I wanted to base the collection on a specific period or battle, I felt obliged to represent the units in the (more or less) correct formations for that battle (e.g. big Tercio vs Dutch style battalions for the Imperialists / Catholic League). On the other hand I also wanted the freedom to mix the cool looking tercio formations with just about any other formation that existed (and there were quite a few), both for looks and to be able to conform to possibly different rulesets and their ideas of said formations.

So I was in a bit of a pickle with regards to picking a battle and sticking to it, until I had an epiphany (which, as all epiphanies are in hindsight, is of course quite obvious): instead of going totally historical, why not mix some of the concepts of imagination gaming with historical gaming? While I will base the collection firmly in history (i.e. it would be Swedes and Germans instead of, say, Forkinglingians and Thingamabobs) I will not stick to a fixed historical OOB, nor any fixed chronology of units (i.e. the units might well be early, middle or late war all in the same army), but just pick some units or unit names that I like and model them. This is the approach taken by Charles S Grant in his Napoleonic Peninsular collection (as mentioned in his latest Wargaming in History volume), so I'll be in grand company :).
With that decision taken, I've gone through some references and have come up with a number of 'must represent' units:

• The Swedish 'Rainbow' regiments - Yellow, Green, Black and whatever other colour was around. One cannot have a Swedish TYW army without these (even if they are German :) )
• The Walloon Tercio - because they recruited where I live
• Schmidt Infantry Regiment - because they were hard as nails
• Ungefugt IR - because of the name, which appeals to my slightly (or even seriously) off beat sense of humour
• Pappenheim CR (Cavalry Regiment, a mix of Cuirassiers & Arquebusiers) - because they were some of the veterans of the early war, and because of the name
• Obentraut CR - see Ungefugt
• Alt-Lowenstein CR - because this is a nostalgic name for Schild en Vriend veterans :)
• Lamotte Arquebusiers - because there used to be a brewery in Mechelen (near where I live) with that name
• Stalhansk CR - because of the name
• Hakkapelli cavalry - see Rainbow regiments

That gives me a nice variety of units to start my collection with. This will be a long term project however, as I have just bought a house, meaning that my disposable income for the next couple of years will be quite a bit lower than it has been in the past. But expect to see the occasional Thirty Years War unit from the list above on this blog in the next few years :)

Painting for the weekend

Here's what I've done painting wise this weekend, in a single shot:



In the back are three 18th century / Napoleonic civilian types, by Front Rank (the man) and I-forget-who (the serving ladies). In the front row are 4 packs of modern British GHQ micro armour: 10 Chieftain tanks and 10 FV432 APC's.

That's all folks!

Goblins! The Bad Moon Bunch

And here are the next results of my mass fantasy push for this year:



Please welcome the Bad Moon Bunch, a bunch (well, what other collective noun is there for goblins?) of Foundry goblins. Lovely, characterful figures. As you can see, I largely went with the GW 'Orcs are green' convention, though I also snuck in some other colours (see if you can spot the reference). Maybe I'll add another unit goblins in Tolkien brown later :).

And a bit earlier in time now

Some more stuff off of the painting desk. First up some Warlord Games Roman sentries, to man the watchtower shown earlier:



And next, freshly painted (literally minutes ago), some Carolingian Frank archers from Artizan Designs. These will feature in a SAGA game soonish:



Update: replaced sentries pic with a less out of focus one

Some finished things

It's been a while since I posted pics of painted stuff, so let me show you what I finished in the last couple of weeks.

First is the French Légère unit pictured before, now completely done:



This is the first battalion of the 10th Légère, around 1809, using Front Rank figures. If all goes well, these figures will have their first game this Tuesday.
Something else I have been working on is this:



That's 4Ground Scenery's full option (extra detailing & insides) pre-painted Roman watchtower. Assembling it was fairly simple thanks to the very good instruction sheet provided with the kit. This tower will feature in a future scenario, which might or might not be called 'All along the watchtower'. Watch this space.

ACW: Action at the crossroads

As mentioned before on this blog, we use houserules for our ACW games. These rules have evolved over the years, and have focused on hex-gridded gaming mechanisms.

Recently, we tried to use these same rules in a setup using continuous movement and measurement. The conversion are of course quite easy to make (1 hex = 10cm), but surprisingly, some quirky effects came up: distance between units, terrain effects are now continuous rather than discretized, formations and footprint of units suddenly become more important, etc. Nothing too drastic, but still enough to turn the game into an altered experience.

Below are some (unedited) photographs of our game, based on the Command Challenge in Battlegames #32.

Wet Paint: three companies of 10th Légère

Next in the series of gratuitous post count increasing pictures, these are the carabinier and voltigeur companies and one chasseur company of the 10th Légère, 1809 edition (they were in St. Hilaire's Division of Davout's III Corps, which I am basing my French collection on):



The figures are Front Rank, with very minor conversions. I probably should not even call it conversions as all I did was snip off the plume of the chasseurs' shakos, as I have a reference (the Osprey MAA on French Light infantry) that describes them as only having pompoms (the Légère units were notorious for their many deviations from standard uniform).

Better pictured dwarfs

Here are the Crossbow Company of the Watch of the Seventh Deep, completely finished:



Currently on the painting desk are the first 12 of a unit of French Napoleonic Légère infantry, modelled after the 10th Légère in the 1809 Danube/Aspern/Wagram campaign. They should be finished in the next few days, so expect a Wet Paint post on them soon.

Wet paint: the first fantasy figures

These are the crossbowmen of the Watch of the Seventh Deep:



Figures are Mantic Games Ironwatch Dwarfs. You have the option of equipping them with crossbows, as I did, or with rifles. They are very easy to put together (only four parts: upper and lower torso, crossbow/rifle and heads) and paint up quite nicely and easily.

These people will be leading my Celtic army

One of my projects this year is the expansion of my Roman and Celtic armies to decent Hail Caesar size (about 10 units of infantry and 5 units of cavalry / chariots, plus various skirmishers per side). The Romans already have a set of commanders, and now the Celts have too:









These, yet to be named, will become wing / division / mob commanders under great leader Bartolomix himself. Any suggestions for names are welcomed in the comments.