1/700 Napoleonic Warships

From Paul Browning

Some pictures for the SAS website from my collection: 

From Wednesday evenings game and the age of sail / Napoleonic era:  A win for the French  - a successful blockage run. 

Ships are 1:700 scale from Warlord Games and their Black Sails collection:  https://store.warlordgames.com/collections/black-seas and from Meridian Meridian 1/700 scale Trafalgar ships – Navy Models & Books. 

Wreck in the distance was scratch built from spares.  In fact I made 6 wrecks from spares after making 24 ships of varying sizes/ types. 

The water effect was achieved via pressing crumpled tin foil onto damp Tetrion filler. After painting, apply a  layer of PVA glue. Initially you think, oh my god what have I done, this isn't going to work, but after a few minutes everything starts to become transparent. If you wish to create perception of depth, repeat process until desired effect is achieved.

AHPC XII: From Mike W - Egyptian Undead Adventures - Odds & Ends

 Here is another selection of the various items I have been working on for the Egyptian Undead Adventures side show that I have continued to work on over the last few weeks, hopefully they are of interest.

More Arab Cultists, this time based upon Gripping Beast's Arab Infantry Set

Firstly more Arab Cultists, after the success of last week's batch I found three Gripping Beast chaps on the sprue and so pressed them into the Cult! The guy firing the Jezail is a Gripping Beast figure with a Perrys' Afghan Jezail and arms added, I had to cut and fill the right shoulder to make the changes fit well.

The guy on the right looks a bit like a Grimsby Trawlerman's Wife in a headscarf - but that 's still scary enough!

The guy with the sword has Perry Afghan arms added, plus some trailing head dress parts, whilst the guy carrying the Jezail has Peery Afghan arms again and a spare head form an hooded Oathmark Human, again with trailing head dress parts added. 

Alongside the Gripping Beast Recruits, I also found 3 x Wargames Atlantic Afghan figures to add to the recruit list. These figures are ever so slightly smaller that the gripping Beast figures but not so much that they look out of place. 

Three more (Wargames Atlantic) Arab Cultists

I have kept the same look and feel for these figures but opted to arm one with a modern German rifle and one with a Luger pistol, courtesy of the Warlord Games Afrika Korps set (see below). The other is stuck with just a sword

That's a total of sixteen Cultists

All were painted and based in exactly the same way as last week's figures, I've claimed 1 Squirrel Point for these 28mm Arab Cultists - as I forgot to label the previous post as such and want to keep within the Squirrel rules

Next a is a group of 6 x Afrika Korps soldiers who every knows are only in Egypt to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant, or such like! These are really test pieces as I'll build up a small force of figures that can be used in various scenarios as they come along.

Test Group of Afrika Korps, extreme left is a Perry figure, the rest are Warlord Games

As such I'd acquired a sprue of Afrika Korps figures from both Perry Miniatures and Warlord Games to compare and contrast - and hopefully allow for some kit bashing to make some unique one off figures.

Close-up of three figures, I like the action poses and the selection of heads that can be used.
Left hand and right hand guys both have cigarettes in their mouths!

Both sprues have a wide range of options but I was almost immediately drawn to the Warlord Games sprue in preference to the Perry's one. The figures were simply more dynamic in my opinion and they were noticeably larger that the Perry versions.

Prone Machine Gunner, counting half points!

What's more the Warlord Games figures are comparable in size to the Arab Cultists above, its a shame as the Perry figures are really nice but due to their smaller size not really useable for Kit Bashing!

That said I have painted up one Perry figure to show and photograph to allow all here to compare sizes etc.

All figures were undercoated white and then I used Citadel 'Tallarn Sand' for most of the uniforms, historically the Afrika Korps used a green uniform that faded quickly in the sun so I have made a nod to this by giving one of the figures a green jacket and making all soft caps green. For this I used Foundry 'Phlegm Green'.

Direct comparison of Warlord Games )right) and Perry Miniatures (Left) crouching figures.
By being smaller the Perry figures are more fiddley to build and accessories can't easily be swapped between sets.

Straps, Weapons and equipment were coloured according to historical schemes I found illustrated online, I did the helmets in Citadel 'Bubonic Brown'. I used an Army Painter 'Dark Tone' ink wash on the weapons, helmets, boots and equipment packs on their backs, whilst I washed the uniforms in Army Painter 'Light Brown'.

I then gave the figures a dry light brush of Tallern Sand to highlight the uniforms and help tone down the base green used. Matt varnish was applied to all figures and then based with fine sand and dried grass & stone tufts.

AHPC XII: From Mike W - 28mm Mostly Anglo-Danes Again!

 Well I have now reached the stage where I'm having to scramble to get figures together for my painting projects to do for this challenge. Almost all the pre built figures that I'd prepared are now done, so this batch plus some of last weeks are now being built and then painted as I go!

Latest batch of 28 figures

So these guys are all based upon the old Wargames Factory Saxon Thegns set but I have 'upgraded' these by adding arms, heads & shields from my spares box of alternative Victrix, Wargames Atlantic & Gripping Beast figure parts. Basically, in my opinion, the Wargames Factory (now Warlord Games) figures were the first generation of 28mm plastic figures available on the market that were designed and manufactured using computer technology rather than human sculpting. As such the figures are not the greatest from an anatomical point of view, whilst the current figures are much, much better.

The old box of Wargames Factory Figures, ready to be repurposed!

Luckily as they are all basically the same scale you can mix and match parts to give what I think is a better final figure. I particularly dislike the Wargames Factory arms and heads - hence the upgrades concentrating on these.

Close-up of a trio of the figures that had to stay with the Wargames Factory Arms,
as I'd run out of alternatives. Limbs are all quite straight & stiff and look a bit Zombie like to me!

This batch represents 26 Anglo-Dane warriors, one Archer and a Norman (just because I was experimenting with the spare parts!)

These seven all had the original arms as in the close-up above.
Shields are from Gripping Beast and heads a mix of Victrix, Gripping Beast and Wargames Atlantic.

The heads on Gripping Beast figures are designed with a neck on the figure torso being in place. On the Wargames Factory figures, the opposite is true, so I had to add a neck to each torso, before then affixing the head. luckily cutting the spare arms on sprues into thin slices, mimics a neck rather well at this scale.

Another view of the above figures, showing shield designs

For the remaining figures I was able to use spare arms from the Gripping Beast Arab Heavy Cavalry boxed set, these are moulded with armoured sleeves, I think they are designed to be scale armour for an Arab flavour but when added to the mail clad torsos and a paint job they look like a passable representation of chain ail as well.

Another group of seven completed figures

Third group of seven figures

In addition to creating a number of warriors I was also able to create three Earls to help lead the forces. These were denoted by wearing a cloak

Three Earls, left has a Victrix a Housecarl head, centre a Victrix Norman head and right a Gripping Beast Arab Heavy Cavalry head. Cloaks are from Wargames Atlantic or Gripping Beast Irish. I know that the figure on the right might not be truly historically accurate - with a scarf around his helmet but it is what it is!

Four 'specials' to go with with others. Left a fighting monk, left centre a guy who has taken an arrow to the shoulder
(there were a lot of them flying around at Hastings!), next an archer - just because I could.
Finally on the right another spare Norman, as his head was handy when building this figure.

So there  we are 28 more figures for the Hastings battle - when I get around to putting it on! All brought to life to fuel this challenge and it goes to show, never throw out  figures you don't instantly like - especially plastics as you can so easily convert / upgrade them to something better.

John's Napoleonic Mega Game

On the 4th & 5th March the club participated, en masse, in one of John's infamous Mega Napoleonic games, the venue being Rupert's house.

It was the great might of the Russian Empire facing off a retreating French & Allies column as winter ravages the landscape, one end of eth table being covered in snowy landscape whilst further to the south the snows were clearing.

Participants were:

FRENCH

Rupert, Dave, Steve & Mark

RUSSIANS

Phil, Nigel, Warren, Paul, Mike N, Mat (Friday only) & Mike W (Saturday Only)

UMPIRE

John

Setup and 5 Game turns were completed on Friday 4th March  during which time the Russian forces closed most of  the potential exit routes available to the French. Saturday 5th March saw most of the fighting as the French tried their best to punch a way out of the closing trap.

It'd be too tedious to add captions to all photos but below is a roughly sequential series of shots showing how the game developed, with a few notes added.

John noted - Eleven players at one time or another is a huge turnout and really makes it all worthwhile. It was great to see some old friends once again who also made a big effort so thanks for that Paul and Warren. I for one thought it went really well and everyone seemed to enjoy it and without too many umpirical slip ups as well, Phew!!

And most importantly of all the Umpire's judgement of the outcome was as follows:

Well, a tactical win for the French (not again I hear you groan!) by getting off all the baggage train and the best part of two Divisions plus the elite Brigade of Steve’s. Napoleon will be pleased. With no regular cavalry to dispute the movement of the French the Russians would have had to let them go. Although Phil’s Cossacks would have harried the rear meaning Steve’s cavalry would have had to deal with them, but he still had two brigades of Light cavalry to counter them plus his Cuirassier Brigade in reserve, plenty of resource in my view. Well done Frenchies.

However, strategically a good result for the Russians, Rupert's French Division of three Brigades was destroyed despite Rupert's valiant efforts to hold Liakhova against the might of Mikey, Paul and Nigel, a force too hard to resist. This has denied Napoleon valuable Frenchmen to assist with the retreat and will not go unnoticed amongst his Marshals plus Densisov is still in the field with a decent force despite losing his regular cavalry and one of his infantry Columns. Well done Ruskies.

Russians advancing on the town of Liakhova 

Specially made snow drifts

Cossacks, Thousands of them!

The French Polish Legion

Lots of Russians enter the fray

Nice looking terrain pieces

Many, many more Russians

French fight to defend Liakhova 

The supply column slowly heading off table

Bavarians in French employ...

Fighting in the Pine Forests

Most of the Gang in action

The French leaving the scene