After the excitement of the Cavalier show, hobby activity has been somewhat limited. But I have made a start on what I suppose I must call 'The Great Re-Basing', having come to the decision that my recently-acquired hoard (or horde?) of vintage Minifigs 7YW / AWI figures are going to have to be re-based to a standard format. There are at least 3 different types of base painting/texturing in the collection, from simple cardboard to heavily-textured with household filler (and then sealed with gloss varnish!), and even aluminium machine-cut bases (someone had access to metalworking tools several decades ago..), and non-matching base colours too - sometimes in the same unit! Here's the 'worst case', Polyfilla and gloss varnish:
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So I spent a bit of time thinking about what house standard I should use, and I think I am going to go with 40mm x 40mm MDF bases for line infantry, four figures per base, with the bases simply painted 'old-school' green, just like those in the Charles Grant/Young and Lawford books. I've always liked that unfussy look, and the base size fits with both Black Powder and Honours of War rulebooks - and probably most other sensible rule sets! Another consideration is of course, how many figures per unit? After a further bit of thought I am leaning towards 16-figure battalions, 4 bases per unit - the above-mentioned rulebooks would suggest 24 and 20 figures respectively, but I felt that would give rather large units for my expected table size (and those are also only suggestions, they don't seem to have any impact on the rules mechanisms).
Having decided, I've had a trial run with one battalion, being from the French regiment Saintonge, and here is the result:
I am pleased with them, I think they will do nicely. The basic musketeer figures are Minifigs AWI18 French Line Infantryman Advancing, The original unit 'as bought' had 23 figures, 6 of which were in a different 'firing' pose, and on aluminium bases, so they didn't really fit with the rest anyway! They can go to a 'spares' box and may join a different unit later, with possible adjustments to facing colours etc. For any real details nerds out there, I can confirm the bases are painted with Valspar paint-matching shade X117, the splendidly-named Ribbett, available in the UK from the B&Q chain of DIY stores.
Another reason to prefer 16-figure units is that they can be broken into two 8-figure units which fit nicely into my 100mm Hexon terrain hexes, and which therefore work fine with my existing Portable Wargame units.
I also had a little trial with a few figures which are mounted on Polyfilla and gloss varnish bases, to whit these three fine officers.
They have spent a couple of days soaking their horses' hooves in water:
After which I'm glad to say, the filler could be mostly broken off and the figures released from their heavily-textured captivity - see below for how much material came off them! Rather a messy job, I admit, and may be hard work for a whole battalion, but I think well worth it.
There is obviously a lot of work to be done to sort out this whole collection (over 1000 figures in all!), but I'm fairly happy that I've got the right approach, and a decent standard which will pull them all together. Now I just need to get going on it! Meanwhile, I still hope to set up a simple game to get them on the table regardless of basing - watch this space.
I've also been doing a spot of basing on a smaller scale, working on the 6mm 1859 Risorgimento armies. I've painted and flocked the bases for a couple of brigades of the future Austrian 2nd Divsion :
I have a couple of Jager units painted and just needing basing, then I need to add a couple of artillery pieces and the division will be ready for action. Of course it will need some oppostion, so I will need to get started on further Piedmontese, and French.
Finally a couple of other things to 'plug' - first I attended a very interesting talk at the National Army Museum last week - the subject being The Imperial Training Network: The Armies of Britain, the Dominions and India, 1939-45. Essentially a walk through a PhD thesis by its author ( so sorry I did not make a note of her name!), this covered the development of training for the 'DUKE' armies in WW2, after the shocks of Blitzkrieg in 1940 and Singapore etc in 1942 - taking in Britain, the Middle East and the Far East commands, each of which developed training for their different theatres but always emphasised inter-operability between the different national contingents. Fascinating stuff, and it should eventually be available on the NAM Youtube channel, which of course has many other excellent talks. I also had the pleasure of meeting and having a chat over lunch in the museum cafe with fellow gamer and blogger Chris aka Nundanket of Horse and Musket Gaming fame - always good to see you, Chris!
I should also mention another blogger - that being Elenderil (another David, I think!) of the Small But Perfectly Formed blog, who has posted a really fascinating series of discussions on the tactical formations used by 17th Century ( 'Pike and Shot') armies, the latest covering the Catholic League, Bavarians and other Germans in the 30 Years War. He's clearly done some serious research, and the result is a great resource, I think - I suspect that many Pike and Shot period gamers are not so well-informed about how the troops actually deployed and fought (I am very sceptical myself about the formations that seem to be suggested by the Warlord 'Epic Pike & Shotte' system, for example!). Many thanks to Elenderil for this series, a really good example of how useful blogs can be.
Upcoming hobby activities will include more painting of 6mm 1859 troops, and fairly obviously I need to get into a regular habit of re-basing the vintage Minifigs collectiom - 'little and often' should be the watchword. Also a bit of actual gaming is long, long overdue: I have an idea for a quick and easy Dominion Of.. solo game which I might be able to do next week. If that works, you'll see it here in the near future. Until then, keep well everyone..
