Keep Your Powder Dry

Finally! I hear some of you say. A Royalist Army reading list. Well, there's a problem. The Royalist Armies are nowhere near as well documented as the various Parliamentarian Armies.  Why is this the case? There are, potentially, several reasons. Parliament, at every level, consisted of committees who needed minutes, account books and audit trails. Parliament 'won' the Wars, so these records were transferred to what would eventually become The National Archives as State Papers. The records of the various Royalist Armies don't generally exist in The National Archives. Records tend to exist in the archives of the families of Royalist supporters, and are usually specific to the units that the family raised and equipped.  There may well be 'unknown' military records waiting to be discovered, but these records are not centrally held, and in many cases access is difficult or completely off limits.  Any researcher wanting to collate an "Old Robin's Foot" ...

On one of the rare occasions that I visit Facebook I was perusing the Victory Without Quarter page, and saw some beautiful 28mm storming party figures. In amongst the pictures were three figures carrying a ladder. Obviously a storming party needs ladders, but I don't have any! An idea germinated... Could I make a ladder party? Where any figures suitable to chopped and changed into what I wanted. I've got some ladders tucked into a corner of my Château Hougomont model, might have some spares somewhere. A rummage through my spares box found some standard bearers from PP pack 17 'foot command advancing' and a lowland pikeman from pack 82 'Scots pike 45' open hand'. Both have potential.  The 'raw materials' Couldn't find any ladders, they were from Magister Militum, who have now shut up shop. So no more available from that source, PP make a pack, but I didn't really want to spend the best part of £10 on just a pack of ladders (the £4.50 post and ...

 Two more PP characters are re-appropriated to be somebody else.  I had thought long and hard as to whether I would actually use these figures, the ensigns quickly made their way onto fleabay, the personalities have sat in a drawer awaiting their fate. Each figure has a much thicker base than the normal PP figures, which accentuates the size difference. Figures also have their name in raised detail on the base. I needed to trim down the bases. Thinner bases would help blend the personalities into the rest of my armies. Henry Bard, 1st Viscount Bellomont ( This is the Charles I figure. PP missed a trick by not sculpting the figure wearing his Order of the  Garter riband. Thankfully, by not having a garter riband it makes it much easier to change who the figure is.) Henry has graced these pages before with his Regiment of Foot . Bard had travelled considerably, having visited Paris, and journeyed on foot through France, Italy, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt. It is alleged tha...

  Bit of an eye candy post today; where I finally get around to painting the Royalist harquebusiers on foot (they've only been sat in the 'to do' pile for nine months or so). For those of you new to KeepYourPowderDry, or the Civil Wars in general, you might be wondering why anyone would want dismounted cavalry. In a nutshell regiments of horse joined in the besieging of houses, but as horses weren't particularly useful when attacking a house, their riders dismounted to fight. They were often in the first wave of assault troops as their buff coats and armour afforded them considerable protection (in comparison to infantry). Plus it also gave them a share of any spoils if the assault was successful. For more information about the role of harquebusiers in sieges, and a look at my existing assault parties see  here . These are Steel Fist figures from pack ECWF 09, but as I have zero faith in Steel Fist swords (they are much too slender to be practical) I have replaced th...

After much prevarication I finally took the plunge and purchased the Steel Fist commanders packs to boost my command figures representations. A gentle reminder that these figures are true 15mm sized; the names given but figure manufacturers and sculptors is 'nominal' at best, as they are too small to look definitively like portraits of the people that they are supposed to represent. Whilst some of the Steel Fist character figures do have more than a passing resemblance to portraiture, they can represent whomsoever you jolly well want them to be - very few will have any idea, and the few that do, probably don't have a magnifier with them. These figures are tiny. With this in mind, I have picked my Fantasy Football League team of Royalist command figures... Steel Fist list their Royalist command figures (pack ECWH 22) as King Charles I, George Digby Earl of Bristol, Sir Jacob Astley, officer with telescope, aide delivering message and standard bearer. The standard bearer woul...

Well we all knew that it wouldn't last. 'Finished'? You were right to scoff regular readers - and as an aside, it appears that the regular readership has advanced to the dizzying heights of nine! So, hello all nine of you. As so much conflict during the Civil Wars was siege or siege related, I thought it was only right and proper that I had a mortar. Which wasn't quite so straightforward as you would imagine.  I decided that I should have two siege mortars, one 'deployed' and another 'in transit'. The 'in transit' version being a useful scenario goal - stop the mortar being deployed! But first the tricky issue of sourcing all the parts. Blue Moon make an ECW siege mortar - but alas their figures are 18mm, and the mortar was just too big. Freikorps 15 are in hiatus whilst they relocate, plus their Civil War/30YW ranges have disappeared from their online catalogue.  Magister Militum have a couple of offerings, but their figures are a little small i...