Workmen and Generals

Astute regular readers will think that they have seen the last civilians of below before...well you have, because when I placed this order I put down the wrong code and reordered a set I already had. Still, at least I have done them in different coloured clothes.

Finally there are three Swedish generals. Now, they are not really Swedish...no one makes Swedish general for 1807-08 so I needed to convert. The nearest I could find were the three figures that make up the Perry Prussian high command set that were decapitated and given new plastic heads. They still are not correct - contemporary illustrations dhow them wearing leggings and high boots rather than overalls. I could have cut down the overalls and given then green stuff boots, but since the cavalry wore overalls on campaign, I figured that it was probably not unreasonable that senior officers might too...well that's my theory and I am sticking with it!

There are still a couple more Swedish generals to be done, but they may not be done until the New Year.

More civilians and a game...at last...

I have completed another seven civilians for the Napoleonic era. There is one field worker, left over from the previous set, and six townspeople.

We also capped off the weekend with the annual birthday game and lunch for one of our group. This year we played an English Civil War game using "For King and Parliament" rules. Parliament won the day.

Down on the Farm

After a two month hiatus from painting, I am back with a few bits and pieces.

This batch continues from the Napoleonic civilians. 

The milkmaids, with three cows.

The field workers.

There are a few more civilians and some Swedish commanders to come.

A Bit of Scenery Work

Stew is going to be disappointed with me. In an exchange of comments of an earlier post I said that in my next batch of terrain tiles I was going to make some tiles with trenches in them and he was keen steal my ideas! Well I have finished this final batch an there are no trenches made and no ideas to steal!

Not that I am worried at all about anyone stealing (actually I prefer to say 'borrowing') my ideas...Hell I encourage it...I like sharing. I mean, I borrow  plenty from others. Afterall if Picasso said "good artists copy, great artists steal," then surely theft is the highest form of flattery!!!

There are three reasons I decided not to make trenches. First, since my tiles can only accommodate a below surface depth of 20mm, a proper 28mm trench system would require some sort of construction above the tile surface and that creates all kinds of storage problems. Second, with tiles that at 300mm (12 inches) square I couldn't find a way to make a trench system that could accomodate my existing figure stands that would actually look like a trench system. Third, even though I have armies for periods that made extensive use of trenches (Crimean War, ACW, Great Paraguayan War, Russo-Japanese War and WWI), how many times would I really use them? Plus I already have a trench system that I made way back in February 2013 (link) - maybe I'll just tidy these up.

Instead I have made some rather boring plain tiles, because you can never have too many plain tiles, right? Four represent dips in the ground as I made last time, but unlike the others sets that are square to the tile edges, these run more or less diagonally. Four are just plain tiles. 

Only one tile is a mildly interesting, a river section that widens to almost double my standard river size. It's not that I really needed any more river sections - I have sixteen of them already...enough to run my table length more than one and a half times - but this piece is made specifically to accomodate the recently presented Renedra pontoon bridge - you can see below:

This takes the total number of terrain tiles to 111, allowing me to cover table almost twice and more than enough for my needs.