English Civil War - Cuirassier or Heavy Horse or "The Lobsters"

A mighty gift from Jeff (of Saxe-Bearstein fame) for Yule in 2014 was a Warlord Games set of Cuirassier, for I was working on the Army of Parliament and Jeff was doing the Royalist muster.

The Cuirassier unit of most note in the ECW was Heselrig's Lobsters, which performed field duties for Parliament.

It has taken me many years to finally break them out from the box again and this year I was determined to have them finished.  For now with Rob of Codsticker's Historicals we are continuing the English Civil War project that Jeff and I started.

Enough of the background now onto the work:

bare metal

mounted on fender washers, the plastic horses were then put onto wood spacers that I use to hold the minis while painting, the riders are mounted onto cut card, then 'combined' once ready for the (now) matte coating

after grey base, the mix of black & brown paint is liberally applied

a white 'damp-brush' layer on everything to pick out highlights

reds, oranges and yellows for the horse and equipment 'under color'

inks to capture the details

second inking for the horses and cloths are colored, as the riders get more attention to detail, for many of the riders in the armor, I did a mix of 'black' and 'burnished' metal looks along with a brown 'rusted' look that was achieved historically by actually exposing the bare metal then using a varnish 'polish' to lock in the red-brown coloring - I did it with a mix of thinned out silver with lots of brown ink.

horse blankets get details and the riders get final highlights

transfer to horses for the matte coating

final product now on the magnetic stands (flash photo)

 
At long last my heavy horse is ready, just in time too as Rob and I will be moving forward this spring with the ECW war in the west campaign.  A battle coming that calls for none other than Heselrig's own!

English Civil War Dragoons & Horses at rest

With a busy winter schedule I have not taken the time to document all of the painting that has been done.  I finished the pirates in January and after looking at the coming games planned in the English Civil War period there is an acute need for more dragoon miniatures and for horses that are not yet mounted or as horses 'held' back from where the dragoon line was fighting.

This set of dragoons were done from the last week of January to the 10th of February, then had to wait for dry weather to get their matte coating.  Yes matte coating, I am in the process of re-coating all of the English Civil War miniatures with a matte coat since it appears they photograph better when along side the matte finish of Rob's many troops and wonderful buildings.

2 sets of 'horses at rest' to be used as held horse

two more sets of 'horses held'

Royalist Dragoons

Parliamentary Dragoons

That catches me up on the painting, next will be the two campaign battles of Stratton and Glastonbury that have been played over the winter of 2019-20; where history was changed ...

Pirates Painting English and Spanish

Been a while since I posted about the painting progress over the past few months.

This December 2019, I started on 54 pirates from the wonderful Firelock Games for the Blood & Plunder game system.

The detail and research on these minis is really beyond comparison with others that I have encountered.

The minis are a bit larger in scale and have wood textured bases, so the finishing process takes longer.

In this posting I shall cover the finished product then some of the working done to reach this end.

a closeup of the whole English Pirates crew

There are some feature officers, including one Henry Morgan:

with flash

without flash

Then there's an officer that comes as part of the pirates crew boxed set:

English Officer

Then the crew:

militia

freebooters

sea dogs and forlorn hope

Then a shot of all of the English:

the whole English crew

Done at the same time were the Spanish pirates:

again there's a special officer, Manuel Rivero de Pardal:

with flash

without flash

Then the officer that is part of the boxed set

Spanish Officer

Then the Spanish crew:

lanceros

marineros and indios milicianos

milicianos

My wide angle shot of the whole Spanish forces were all out of focus (grr)

Progress of the minis below, as you can see getting a good photo of bare metal is really hard.

bare metal

base coat and 'dark brown' mix that I put under nearly all of my military minis

highlights and then color blocking

inking

color definition and boost

detail works

Finally there were two extra officers that came because of the web special order that I did to obtain these first forces:

I have turned them into somewhat particular pirates for planned games:

Orion Pirates

King George III Map Collection

An amazing resource, the map collection of King George III in digital form:

LINK to Maps of King George III

Just one section of many in this amazing collection.

Interestingly there were only 10 maps (or documents really) for the War of the Three Kingdoms.
or English Civil War

just a piece of the detail from the Battle of Edgehill

Pulp Action - Mandalorians in the great South Seas!

Rob's new addition to the pulp island board.

The Mandalorian League called "Deathwatch", having been mis-identified as robot men and appearing to support the Chinatown League "The Yellow Peril" in a recent encounter, have decided to re-group at their hidden, though damaged, transport ship.

They made this choice because a strange man had been found to have a truck filled with parts from their ship, drawings of systems of their ship and he went down before he could be questioned.

The Deathwatch League had captured another apparent member of these strangers and she was willing to inform on them ...

The Yellow Peril had determined to find out what these strangers were up to and booked passage on a steamer to follow up on the clues that they had found, which were telling them an island in the South Seas was going to be a hot spot.

Meanwhile the Adventure League RODIO (pronounced Rodeo) newly led by Fang had also found clues leading them to this strange island in the South Seas.

overall view of the table

a known 'major plot point' was in a perilous area in table center

while other plot points were in other areas

The jungle table always puts on a good show

The leagues then closed in on the little clues they had for follow up ...

Yellow Peril arrived in boars

Rodio had been moving across the island

a definitive action was planned by Yellow Peril

The Yellow Peril's captive provided information which brought them quickly to a plot point

moving with caution Deathwatch League were using al available cover

This was a combined action scenario, with a need for both combat and non-combat skills.

the 'Parley' card was played to keep the action focus only on the plot points

Cards were fast in action this game, with the first turn done (one 'cartridge' removed)

Local natives, often termed 'ooga-booga-men' jumped out when disturbed by The Yellow Peril

Deathwatch League were fast in getting their first plot point and allowing them to engage the major plot point.

Upon closing up to the entrance of a strange region, the first Mandalorian is engaged by an agent, with good tech ...

The Mandalorian "Deathwatch" were now becoming aware of an opponent that appeared to have at least equal tech ...

another Parley card played brings the combat action to a halt

this caused a cautious standoff to build up for The Yellow Peril

more ooga-booga-men bring the Deathwatch to a similar stand off

while the captives, the redhead in the lower right, were busy looking for ways to get away

The Yellow Peril captive also has taken action to escape, though failing to really break away

 The game got a 'spare' turn with a card play and this was enough to permit, one member of each league to enter the dimension doorway before it closed and shifted away from the South Seas Island ...

Rodio had already lost a League member to this strange dimension doorway in Chinatown

Now the adventure will shift to a more 'role-play' focus with one member of each league holding a captive from the strangers and the strangers holding one of each league ...

While each League has started from their own background and had only a few points for development, now these leagues are going to combine into their own new 'title' or line.  I am going with Planets of Peril as a new 'logo' over the 'covers' used on their character cards.

The new adventure series logo.