Mon du, this water is cold!

Napoleonic French Pontoonier/Engineers

I came across a small bag of rather roughly cut nude torsos whilst digging in my boxes.  These were remnants of the re-attaching correct torso to the legs of a large group of Ancient Celtic warriors.  Found in the club's B&B,  the seller had obviously randomly glued bodies to legs not realizing until too late his mistakes and then gave up on the endeavour.  Some damaged torsos from my cutting of the offending bodies was the result.

But now I took a second look and thought they could be used.  The attached heads of some were removed, the torque neck chain scraped off as were any wrist bracelets, etc. The hands were utilized if possible, or removed and replaced with ones holding various construction implements and some with muskets from spare Zulus arms, among other sources.

The rather exaggerated wide-arm pose of these ex-Warlord ancients was kept but justifying the posing was challenging!  Much far reach of the mallet or shovel.  Waist high in water and not wanting your 'powder wet" the figures seem to be wishing to keep them dry, their cartridge boxes are bits of sprue frame and paper belts.  I added some more belting to be held to one of the musket men as my wife thought he was holding a purse!  I agreed sheepishly, so needed to do that alteration.  But she does enjoy their manly physiques.

To make them ‘Napoleonic’ I added some of the many spare heads giving them mostly French forage caps.  These now can be added to engineering units building a bridge across any contested river.

Medieval artillery

The ballpoint pen ran out of ink.  Of course I did not throw it away but I looked at it, took it apart and used the parts.  Hey, it is still part of the recycle, reuse, repurpose phrase is it not?  :)

The main "chassis" on this particular pen is quite thick and the inner dimension of the tube not so large.  Medieval casting of a cannon sized actually, and needing a cannon for my crew I set to work cutting the plastic tube after removing the inner ink tube (that to be used to allow me to envelope with a flag thus allowing it to be slipped over an existing standard-bearer wire pole to have different flags for the same unit).

The cut tube was placed within a balsa wood frame, itself reinforced by additional bits to handle the cannon's recoil.  Metal straps were of paper softened by a water and PVA(white glue) mixture.  The whole was then primed and painted.  A very quick, easy project which I "needed" to do.

While that is the medieval 'modern' version of artillery, they still had the old-fashioned weapon very much still in vogue (at least for a couple more years) in the shape of the catapult.  Here is one I came across in the fantasy section.  It comes already primed.  While the wood is probably a bit rough and weathered for realism,  I will be using it for objective purposes for scenarios (I don't have any figures suitable as crew at present).

Just piddling away at the many diverse projects I have on the go....

my Monitor

Another of my forays into the bottom-most boxes revealed my good 'ol Monitor model of the famous ACW ironclad.  The model is some 10" long made very simply from foam core and a plastic lid for the turret; a straw for the funnel and painted black and crudely drawn iron plates using a pencil.

The intent was to make several of these size of ships for games but so far have failed to do so. While I like the naval aspect,  I really never seem to play it.

Napoleonic Russian Casualty Field Station

With my normal way --- paint all the 'cool' stuff first, before diving in to do the masses ---  I decided to indulge myself and complete my Russian eye candy and use the very nice Perry Apothecary Wagon and Infantry Casualty Packs and make a piece to sit in any bare corner of the tabletop.

getting right to work...hundreds more will inevitably arrive

the casualties start to arrive

view of the Russian Casualty Field Station 

The "African Queen" - ish

Once again a sale item gets me into trouble.  Well "wargamer trouble" I should say.  This trouble is generally not bad but perhaps troublesome is a better word.  Troublesome because phrases are uttered such as  "Hmm, I could do a campaign if I get another 200 figures", or "Perhaps if I just....."

This is what I was thinking as I bought this "African Queen" style boat at the Bring and Buy for a very small amount.  Can't help myself.  But what to use it for??

So it lingered in one of the boxes for a couple of years until the other day I found it and had a look.  It is made of a simple MDF bottom and styrene sides cut not particularly straight, a thick wood canopy and steering rudder with a wooden stir stick roof.  The open engine is of wooden thread dowels and a plastic straw!

I had a separate group of sailors (Foundry for Crimea era, I think) painted but not based.  Reason?  Unknown.  They are mine but when painted?  Apparently years ago.  Anyway,  I just used small bits of card for their bases painting and giving those a wash to match the existing the wood decking.  The boat got a bit of a clean up adding a couple of barrels and the boilers were given a bit of rust for effect.

The actual interest into the boat was the discovery of primered Foundry Napoleonic sailors.  These were in fighting mode holding swords and pistols.  I have done sailors already with Brigade Games types but the two do not match well.  With the thought to crew my "African Queen" , I cut off hands holding swords and replaced with plastic ones, trimming remaining hands holding belaying pins which cannot be cutoff into tool-like shapes.   One of them I cut off the head as the hat seemed a little too Napoleonic and replaced by a French fusilier forage cap appropriately trimmed of the piping lace but now nondescript!  Hopefully all are looking mid-19th C. to go along with the rather crude steam engine.

Now I have the crew and armed sailors ready for action up a river.  Which river and against whom is unknown.  I am happy with my little endevour but have no plans for a campaign with them....yet....

ACW balloon

While tossing about boxes in the household storage looking for something, a box of very old and unused Christmas stuff fell and out rolled a plastic tree bobble.  I intended to quickly stuff it back in, when I was stuck by the shape and size.  My wargamer brain kicked in immediately and I thought...hmmm....it may just work!

So later that evening I put everything else aside and tried to be inventive.  What I had seen was a balloon, a 15mm-ish sized balloon from the 'ribbing' typical of the Christmas tree ornaments.  Well, long story short, I finally came up with a facsimile of a period balloon.  Certainly not historic by any means and certainly not even structurally feasible, probably not aerodynamic to be sure, but kinda looks the part.

Absolutely no mathematics was involved in the following!  I merely started by eyeballing the height which I thought was high enough to look the business but as low as possible to not make it too top heavy. (ed. ~8")  Needing to firmly anchor the, thankfully, light weight bobble/balloon I used a rod of aluminum which I twisted around a real twig/ scale tree. It was further anchored by using one of the 15mm OldGlory weird poses, in this case a soldier heaving a large rock over his head (!) and drilled a hole through what would have the rock and fed the rod through the now grasping hands and then up into another hole drilled in a solid cube of balsa wood forming the basket and thus finally into the hollow interior of the upside-down bobble.

"Engineeringly speaking" I have thus placed all this light weight directly over the anchor point for stability which is further helped by the tree "buttress". All this on a card stand with a surprising and welcomed, small table "footprint".
 I gathered some 'green stuff' to to create the loose part of the balloon under the inflated part which further hides the wire.  The wire, while very thick in scale (hey it was what I had at hand!) was painted to look like rope. While ideally I would have liked to have more soldiers holding the rope none were at hand, so I would hate to be that poor soldier who seems to be that close to being suspended himself, but he makes the use of the wire look like a guiding rope hanging from the basket and thus perhaps the illusion of a flying American Civil War observation balloon.

 A few quick photos before I get on to other more pressing stuff.

my forgotten HYW artillery

I find it funny that with any new rule set, wargamers will immediately set about creating variations for different eras than that intended.  "Lion Rampant" is no exception.  Already there is the setting about for rules for artillery, gunpowder weapons "handgonnes" and the like.

The author has created his own forum site ( forum link   http://duxrampant.yuku.com ) and has indicated that he dropped the artillery from the rules as not really in the scope of the action he envisioned.  However a suggestion for its addition was added.

Why I mention this is I had overlooked my one artillery small gun and crew of my HYW collection as I also did not really consider its addition.  Already thinking about the next game scenario, I could see it as a "target" for a besieged minor lord while it slowly fires balls to destroy his tower.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it has the required 6 crew members which for LR can be a full unit of dubious fighting ability in its defence should the opposing retinue get past my retainers.
I suppose a stand of spears might be required to suggest they could fight rather than merely run away.....

early artillery of the HYW 

Story of red tails: modeling with plastics

Overheard between two miniatures wargamers: "Those are very nice figures." "Thank you",says the second wargamer, "the new plastics are beautiful aren't they"  "Oh", says the first,"well, for plastics, anyway"

Wargamers seem to have a liking for, or contempt of plastics. Frankly, once sitting on the table, can the difference be seen other than perhaps the better proportions.  While I am not a great fan of the 1:72 scale boys, the hard plastics coming out now by Victrix, Warlord and certainly the current Perry productions offer good value and a great opportunity for the modeler to have, um, fun.

While all the units I have been creating are offered in metal, I want the light weight for transport.  OK I must admit that I have fun creating different units from the bits at hand.  For example the 6th Dutch Hussars I decided to make from the Perry British Hussars. No problem all hussars look the same.  Yeah, OK the equipment is a bit off, but no one will care. I will not have the elegant saddle cloth but hey, this is campaigning is it not?  The covered shako which is often portrayed for this unit, can be from the French bits box, so no worries there.  So as I am gluing the horses together, I notice the 'docked' horse tails!  I forgot the British cavalry still cut off half the tails of their horses.  But the Dutch did not. Oh, darn.  However I remembered I had some plastic fantasy horses and so the cutting and gluing continued.

While they look a bit odd now , once primered and painted, they will certainly play the part.

Other particularly interesting mixes are:

Dutch Jagers who have Perry British bodies suitably shaved of the button lace, with added French packs but British canteens ,an Austrian shako with all the big cockade and stuff removed and with a British shako plume added.  As you can see from the white limbs of the photo Victrix French arms were used as they have the necessary cuff flaps.  Being ex-French, the Dutch might still have a stock of Charville muskets, right?.....

The entire British 52nd regiment had all shoulder 'wings' of the flanker companies.  I so happened to have the large box of Victrix Highland Flank Company with lots of extra bits and so made the unit "in waiting". The arm position of this particular figure suggested holding something so I gave him a spare canteen -- from his own back of course! -- and added cut strip of plasticard for the strap.  The shako, extras included in the box by the Perrys for Peninsular use, had their plate scraped off awaiting perhaps the horn badge of the Light Regiments. Also note the far lad holding his shako in hand -- try modeling THAT in metal....

Hesse-Kessel gun color of the SYW

So I am paddling through the Net, looking for neat things of wargaming or military history and I come across this well researched blog on ordinance of the Seven Years War.  http://crogges7ywarmies.blogspot.ca/



and the entry about the Hessian artillery is interesting if not aggravating. 
LINK







                                                                         
Why aggravating?  Well, if to be historically accurate, I will need to not only repaint my cannon (a difficult proposal as they are glued to terrained bases), but I must paint them in white and red!  The colour scheme seems very gaudy to these 21st century eyes.
With much else to paint, do I go back and spend some time on this?  Hmm.

White and red?!
Yes, yes, the ducal colours and all that. But really.  Tough colours to paint at the best of times......