Category Archives: Historicals

Historical and quasi-historical gaming of various sorts. English Civil War and Thirty Years War, the Great War (World War One), the Russian Civil War and other interwar conflicts, and whatever else we wander into!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Links, Misc

ECW Painting, Other Randomness for 28 May 2011

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An entire week since my last substantial post! The horror, how will our dedicated readership cope?

I’ve been painting up an English Civil War/Thirty Years War storm this week, filling that inevitable post-Lead Painters League void with 40-odd plastic pike-and-shotte foot and a dozen horse. You all saw 5 of the horse in one of my LPL entries, of course, the rest are taking shape nicely and all of the foot now have most of their basic paint on them. Sunday the 29th we’re running a 1000pt Field of Glory: Renaissance big battle, and I’m breaking one of my long-standing rules by fielding figures that aren’t even anywhere near finished just to get something on the table. At least they’re not straight-up Primered Legions — there are depths to which I will not stoop.

No pictures of my WiP paintjobs, but I’ll take the camera to tomorrow’s big game and try to get some reasonable shots to share here.

The Lead Adventure Forum is, of course, one of the greatest collections of creative wargaming minds I’m aware of. A random sampling of current coolness there that should be more widely known: Chicken Race on the Arumbaya, in which the estimable Hammers plans a pulpish steamboat race with a South American feel and some great-looking boats. Also, Boggler’s converted Improvised Back-of-Beyond Armoured Truck, very nice conversions of diecast toy trucks.

Elsewhere on the web (elseweb?) An Evil Giraffe has done his own versions of my riverbank pieces, and very nice they are too. He used broken cork sheet for his banks, so it has more texture (but also more height) than mine.

Finally, also via LAF but worthy of being mentioned on it’s own, Sarissa Precision have started selling a very, very nice looking line of 28mm laser-cut and -etched urban buildings that are perfect for pulp! Information here on the Sarissa site, and on sale here in their online store. I can’t wait to have some spare money to throw Sarissa’s way, the buildings are a good size (6″x4″ or 8″x6″ footprints and stackable for extra floors) and a fair price with enough detail to be interesting but not too fussy that they’re impractical. Hopefully at some point they offer their windows, doors and other details seperately, or even just the building fronts for those of us comfortable cutting our own side and rear walls.

Photos tomorrow or Monday of the ECW/TYW big-game madness, I promise!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Painting

LPL5 Week 9: The Horse Again, I’m Afraid

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Week 9? There was no Week 9. Well, OK, there was, but it involved me running my ECW Parliamentarian Horse again, and them getting beaten. Again.

However, I still like the models and the paintjob I managed on them, so here they are again for everyone to admire:

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For God And Parliament! 28mm English Civil War horse charge down a country lane. As always, click for full size.

In better news, LPL5’s final, ultimate round, Round 10, with the bonus theme of “A Scene from the Movies” is running right now. All sorts of great stuff, including a bonus-worthy set of miniatures from me that I really like, and that other people do too, judging by the voting!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Painting

LPL5 Week 8: For God And Parliament!

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For the 5th Lead Painters League’s 8th Round, something entirely new from me: 28mm English Civil War/Thirty Years War cavalry!

These are Warlord plastic horse, nominally ECW Parliamentarian horse but really destined for our gaming group’s quasi-historical nominally-Thirty Years War games. They’re also the first 28mm cavalry I’ve ever done, the first plastic wargaming figures I’ve ever done, and the first non-20th C historicals I’ve ever done. All at once!

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For God And Parliament! 28mm English Civil War horse charge down a country lane. As always, click for full size.

Unfortunately they got beaten soundly by a nicely presented and very characterful set of 28mm Middle Eastern figures.

Still, I’m pleased with how the paintjobs turned out. I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit this Games Workshop article on painting horses with making the horse painting and the resulting horses both more interesting! (I’ve just said something nice about GW, in public… this might just be a sign of the End Times…)

(I also just noticed that this is post number 100 on The Warbard! Now, that includes a lot of old website material brought over as posts, but it’s still been a busy 4-and-a-bit months here! Many more to come! — Brian)

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 7: The Lewis Gun

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“Whatever happens, we have got/the Lewis gun, and they do not”

— with apologies to Mr. Kipling, of course.

My LPL5 Week 7 entry was more Brigade 28mm British, this time a Lewis gun team and supporting riflemen. The Lewis gun team are very nice sculpts, slightly more detailed than the riflemen from the same range. They got matched up with a rather nice set of pirates, including a great pirate ghost, and defeated, though.

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The Lewis Gun, my Round 7 LPL5 entry. As always, click for full size.

LPL5 Week 8 is on now!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 6: White Russians!

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No, not the (very tasty!) drink, but White Russian Rifles from sometime in the Russian Civil War; the figures are 28mm from Brigade Games and very nice.

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White Russian Rifles, my Round 6 entry for LPL5. As always, click for full size.

My Whites will, by the time you read this, have been fairly comprehensively beaten by an Irish medieval/Dark Ages warband with very, very nicely painted freehand shield designs, and Round Seven will be underway!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 5: Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek

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Week Five of the LAF’s Lead Painters League having just ended, here’s my entry. This was one of the bonus theme weeks; the bonus theme this time was “Africa”, with extra bonus points for producing an opposing team as well as your basic 5-figure entry.

I completely forgot about the extra bonus points for an opposing team, but that wouldn’t have mattered as I’ve no suitable figures anyway. I did manage to shoehorn the tropical British I’ve been painting in, as British and British Empire troops spent the entire length of the Great War chasing Paul von Lettow-Vorbek around various East African territories. They never caught him, he surrended shortly after the November 11 Armistice undefeated in the field.

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Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek, Tanganika 1917 (Click for a full-size version, as always)

Unfortunately my British riflemen got done for by a group of zombie nomads on zombie camels, but I’m still pleased with the paintjob on them and the photograph.

The larger base they’re on, incidentially, is a CD covered in sand and fine gravel, then painted to mostly match the bases of the British and some of the other figures I’ve been doing lately.

LPL5 Round 6 launched Sunday, go check out all the great entries!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 2: Command On The Frontier

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More goodness from the Lead Painters League, this time my Week Two entry, titled Command On The Frontier. The frontier in this case being the interwar Northwest Frontier, nominally. British officers and sargents attempting to control the volatile, dangerous border between what was then British India & Afganistan.

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Command on the Frontier, 192-. More Pulp Figures goodness. As always, click for full size.

Unlike my winning Round One entry, Command got soundly and deservedly thrashed by a spectacular field hospital entry from Hammers. Entertainingly, both cover the same ground — British interwar army — and even the same theatre (!) so the random match generation had a bit of a sense of humour about the whole thing.

Once again, the figures were all from Pulp Figures, a mix of PTB-1 British Army Tropical Command and a few from PHP-18 Rugged Sons of the Empire.

Anyway, onto Round Three, in which I have a much better set of photos, more colourful figures and (Dog willing…) perhaps a less overachieving opponent!

Historicals, Misc, Pulp

A White Russian, And Other News

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A bit quieter around the Warbard right now; I’m having most of my gaming time sucked up by the Lead Painters League 5 and real life; Corey is however away for the weekend at the Dak-Kon convention up-Island and promises lots of photographs upon his return. He’ll probably be doing a run of Amulet of Fire at some point over the weekend, too.

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A Brigade Games White Russian rifleman in fur hat, first of a unit. Click for full size.

I’ve been painting various things, most of which I’ll wait for the various rounds of LPL5 to reveal, but here’s one of my new projects – a small foray into the Russian Civil War with a unit of White Russian riflemen, figures from Brigade Games, paint scheme not completely historic but based on inspiration from the Osprey White Armies book and some of the great resources shared on LAF’s Back of Beyond forum. Expect to see five or six of his squadmates in a future LPL5 round!

Minor update, a few hours later: I posted this photo to LAF’s Back of Beyond forum and asked for feedback, and got some excellent advice from some of the local experts. I especially like the fact that Russian troops often had coloured cloth inner parts on their fur hats; this was news to me and it’s a chance to make them more colourful yet!