Keep Your Powder Dry

Just as Montrose's army has had some more command figures, so have the Covenanters. These are from Peter Pig Scots generals pack 40. All three have had headswaps. Sir Alexander Hamilton Hamilton was the Covenanter general of artillery until 1649 when he died. Known to friend and foe as 'dear Sandy' he fought for both Denmark and Sweden. It is believed that he may have refined the Swedish leather gun, but he is best known for inventing the 'Dear Sandy Stoups' - four light bronze barrels mounted upon a frame. John Campbell, 1st Earl of Loudoun Loudoun was more of a politician than a soldier, despite being the colonel of regiments of foot and horse. A leading light in the Covenanter cause, he was one of the commissioners sent to London to negotiate with the King after the First Bishops War. Appointed Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1641, in a vain attempt by Charles to win Loudoun's loyalty; his loyalty was with the Solemn League. He would venture south again: to ne...

Whilst perusing the Keep Wargaming (no relation) Naismith ECW listings I noticed pack EC11 mounted highlander with sword and pistol. An idea germinated that they could become highland commanders. But that would involve painting tartan again.  Undeterred I ordered them, and as usual mounted them on Peter Pig horses (tl:dr Naismith horses are 'esoteric' to say the least, their artillery limber horses are brilliant) . The pose was a bit unique and I decided that they would look a little odd all in the same pose. Only one figure would remain as cast, the other two would have more animation in their sword arm. Swords were cut and arms gently eased into position. The first figure went fine, the second... clearly a bit too adventurous and his arm snapped off. His arm was pinned back into place and greenstuff repairs carried out. Both had new swords fashioned from staples, and greenstuff hilts helped strengthen everything up. The first adjustment, the original figure, and the second sw...

 Just as my Royalist command got a bit of a spruce up, so has my Parliament command. 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 Parliamentarian command figures... This time, additional figures coming from Steel Fist's ECWH 21 pack: Parliamentarian Commanders. As a number of the characters in the pack are already represented in my Parliamentarian army, a little repurposing will be required.  My 'senior commanders' are ba...

I've never run a business that makes actual things to sell to real people; but if I did I would want 'samples' to be of the best quality, so that reviewers and buyers would know exactly what the finished, production item would be like. I assume that this is how the very successful Warlord Games runs their business. So, I was pleasantly surprised when Warlord got in touch about my Pike and Shotte Epic Battles cavalry sprue review . It is fair to say that there has been quite a bit of controversy concerning my review. Nobody picking me up on what my comments were, but about the pictures. I have had rather too many colourfully worded responses claiming that I am trying to disrupt the P&S Epic release, that I want it to fail etc etc Paul from Warlord contacted me: "...your post (shows) what I consider to be substandard castings that we should not be sending out" and he offered to rectify the issue. A fair comment, and of course I warmly invite them to show off the...

Enough of new stylised plastic figure ranges, time for another review. This time Andrew Abram's new book on 'Dragoons and Dragoon Operations in the British Civil Wars 1638-1653' (Helion Books). Hopefully this review won't unleash a torrent of abusive messages... but then the cut and thrust of academia can be quite vicious so I believe... Before I begin I must state that I received my copy from Helion free of charge, due to my image of dragoons from Sturt's Naseby being used as the background of the front cover. Dragoons, Civil Wars, everyone knows that they were the fellas who lined the hedges at Naseby. You'd be correct, but after that,  general knowledge of the role of dragoons is a bit lacking in the general wargaming population. Dragoons certainly had a habit of being deployed to give fire from hedgerows, but they were much more than that. Dragoons were the original mobile infantry (a phrase that unfortunately brings to mind imagery from Starship Troopers). ...

Unfortunately I have had to temporarily disable comments and the contact form. Why? It appears that my pictures of the Warlord Epic cavalry sprue have upset a number of members of the 'Epic community' who have taken it upon themselves to bombard the blog with foul mouthed spam. Apparently I am trying to undermine the launch, and bring Warlord Games to bankruptcy. (If I had that sort of power, I think I would try to 'fix' something more beneficial to society than trying to bring a toy soldier company to its knees.) All I'll say in response is: you do know that these are just toy soldiers? To all my regular readers, normal service will resume at some point.  

Bonus points to those of you who got the 1970s children's TV reference in the title. Having run out of things to paint, I was, as you do when you can't fall asleep, trawling a certain auction site in the wee small hours and happened across a small wooden box. I won the auction with a bid of £2.50.  An idea germinated... A little project came to pass. The box was an ideal size to store all my gaming ephemera (dice, measuring sticks, arc of fire templates, All Rolled Up folding dice trays, dice pouches). But it would need a little bit of corporate titivation first. The inside was sprayed Liquitex raw umber, and a print of Streeter's Plan was sized, cut and glued to the inside of the lid. Several coats of satin varnish sealed everything. Everything fits neatly, and snugly inside. The lid had an inset piece of navy leather; now that would never do. An engraved 'brass effect' plaque was sourced from an online trophy shop for £4. And there you go, I'm now Mr Fancypant...

As a follow up to my review of Warlord's Epic P&S foot sprue  here's my thoughts on the cavalry sprue that came with the latest (April) edition of Wargames Illustrated. April's WI: the Epic cover art reminds me of the Letraset style action picture scenes of the 1970s First off, let's have a look at the sprue as a whole. An 'interesting' choice of components for a 'cavalry' sprue, but I understand that the commercial need to 'have everything on just one sprue' dictates what is and what isn't on the sprue. I've already seen quite a few people asking which figures are which, on various forums and FB groups.  So here is a 'button counter's' view of the sprue. The un-identified figures are generic 'harquebusier type' cavalry. I note that there are two figures that look a bit more officer material than the others, and a cornet who could double up for either the dragoons or the regiments of horse. The major missing elemen...