Keep Your Powder Dry

Regular readers (hello both of you) will know that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Wargamer Facts ™ . Here's the latest Wargamer Fact ™ to go under the KeepYourPowderDry investigative microscope. By default this post has become part of my coat colours series. You can find the rest of the posts here: Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part 2  Royalist coat colours Part 3  Scots coat colours Part 3B  Montrose and the Irish Brigade Part 4  Dragoons, Horse and the New Model Army coat colours The Trained Bands Scarves   Having seen the phrase "the London Auxiliaries may have received blue coats" many times I decided to look into the source of this information. Just as another  wargamer fact™ asserts that the London Trained Band wore red coats*, this "blue coats" fact™  would   seem to be on equally shaky ground. 1939 Player's Cigarettes card: Trained Bands of London But first, who were the London Trained Bands ...

I suppose this post was inevitable; I started wondering what colour palette I would need to use to paint my forthcoming Montrose army. I've already investigated coat colours , general dye colours and how that roughly translates to paint codes , but I needed a rough idea of tartan colours, shirts and in particular those colours favoured by the Irish. Just as there is a wargamer fact™  that 'the London Trained Bands all wore red coats' so there are also quite a number of well established wargamer facts™  concerning the clothing of the Irish and Highlanders. But how factual are these facts? Highlanders Wargamer Fact™: the Highlanders wore yellow shirts .  Highlanders did wear shirts, and some, at least were dyed yellow. Highlander's shirts were made from coarse linen, they certainly didn't lace up at the front (in an Adam and The Ants style). James Gordon's History of Scots Affairs 1637-1641 (written 1841) has this description “As for their apparel; next the skin,...

As I was about to post about the Tower Hamlet's Regiment of the London Trained Bands, and about to go down my usual ranty rabbit hole about coat colours I thought it better to write a general post about Trained Bands. This got out of hand a little and became the coat colours series, without even touching upon the Trained Bands.  When I first started my ECW project I took at face value lots of information from what I believed to be 'trusted' sources: it only took a little  cursory reading to quickly realise that many of these 'trusted' sources replicate the same errors. Which is why my original Tower Hamlet's Regiment wore red coats and carried the 'wrong' flag. They were quickly given the correct flag, but the red coat issue was slowly nagging me. They have since been rechristened John Birch's, and the Tower Hamlets LTB has been raised anew. This post is a bit more than  Coat Colours Part 5 Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part ...

Welcome to part 4 of my coat colours series. I had originally planned to write blog entries on the New Model Army, Regiments of Dragoons, and Regiments of Horse but, as you'll see those pages would be pretty sparse and barren. The rest of my coat colour posts are here: Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part 2  Royalist coat colours Part 3  Scots coat colours Part 3B  Montrose and the Irish Brigade The Trained Bands London Trained Bands Auxiliary regiments Scarves   And if you are stuck wondering how to convert this information into what colours to use and what model paint colours , the links might help you start. Parliamentarian Regiments of Dragoons Colonel Richard Browne Red November 1642 ( National Archive SP28/144/pt2/28-35 ) Grey 1645 (National Archive 144/2 f30r; British Library MS Add 18982 f409v) Parliamentarian Regiments of Horse   There are a number of records detailing the issue of helmets, back and breas...

The latest instalment  of the coat colours series looks at the Scots. A set of coat colours that you can really go wild with the colour palette. Or maybe not.  When I wrote this I was only really interested in the Covenanters; for a slightly more in depth look at what well dressed Highlanders and Irishmen wore around town have a look  Coat Colours Part 3b: The Army of Montrose . The rest of my coat colour posts: Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part 2  Royalist coat colours Part 4  Dragoons, Horse and the New Model Army coat colours The Trained Bands London Trained Bands Auxiliary regiments Scarves   The  too long didn't read  answer is: paint it Hodden Grey.  Here's a list of regiments that have a reference for coats being issued - those coats issued, were 'probably Hodden Grey'.  Those regiments with a specific reference to Hodden Grey are described as 'Hodden Grey'. There are a handful of regiments...