Distracted but Happy

Not much happening on the LB front. The first unit of red coats has been painted and based now I'm waiting on warmer weather to seal coat them. The 10th U.S. Cavalry are coming along  with most of the first coat done. Pictures next week.

The distraction has been Pulse of Battle Ancient rules from Piquet. I'm not sure what prompted me to order these as Ancients aren't one of my major periods but I got in on the pre-order and the price was reasonable. Well I'm pretty happy that I did. They're a well laid out set of rules, an Army builder and short history lesson for several periods and two card decks. I've been a fan of Piquet for years and this looks like a great addition to the family.

Of course even though I had some Roman and Numidian armies for DBA there wasn't enough command figures and I felt I needed some more units to make a balanced gaming force. So it was off to the Viking Forge to see what was available. I wanted the figures to match my existing armies. Viking Forge sell the figures individually at $.40 a piece. I ordered about 50 figures giving me 5 command figures per side and an additional 10 units. I have to say knowing that these figures have been around for ages I didn't have high expectations for quality of the molds however they were cleanly cast with out flash and few mold lines. In fact the lines are so negligible that I may just wash and prime. I'm very happy with my purchase. Communication with them was good and shipping was quick.

I'm not unhappy with this distraction so far as every part has been top quality and I cut my original Viking Forge order down from 110 figures to a more manageable 46.

Next week should see the next order off to Spencer Smith.

Army recruitment.

As I thought of how to build my army or which armies to model I looked at the models available from Spencer Smith. The obvious choice would have been British troops but there weren't any historical opponents. Next was Franco/Prussian War but I had that in 15mm. I then thought of a American Canadian conflict set in the 1890's. A little research showed that there was quite an array of uniform types available to both sides with the colorful City militias on the american side and dress uniforms of the Canadians. I ordered the first troops based on this.

However, while on vacation I saw a box of Britans figures in a museum in Uruguay  and thought why not build units based on countries I'd been to. I felt this would add to the interest of the units and be a souvenir of sorts. Back to researching to see how plausible this would be.  Well is seems most countries based uniforms on the British, French or Prussian model so figures were available and color guides could be found.

So there we have it. Units based on places I've been. Now it's off to planing a trip to Scotland because I want a unit in kilts:-)

40 mm / 54 mm What to do?

Every few years I would thinks that I should build an Army in one of the larger scales. I'd surf the web and find blogs about the larger scale figures or manufacturers catalogs but nothing quite caught my fancy. I checked out Armies in Plastic and  Sash and Saber. The main problem was that I already had figures for most of the periods that they did. Now I'm being silly but I didn't want to have the same army in two scales. Then after attending a convention and seeing the 40 mm War of 1812 figures from Sash and Saber I decided that this was the period for me. I didn't have any figures from that period and we were approaching the 200th anniversary of the war, perfect.

Well I bought six bags of figures, cleaned a few and started painting. I then realized that I was looking for a more toy soldier look and that these sculpts were just too nice to not paint in the shading/highlighting that they deserved.  I sold off the lot and started looking again.

This next search brought me to the Home of Spencer Smith makers of the Shiny Toy Soldiers range. This range looked like the answer and I thought I could build a Mexican American War army with this line. Ordering from England took a few extra steps than I could find the motivation for so figures were never ordered. Then out came the Little Britons range. These hit home, the right size, uniforms, style and, variety.
The order for some samples went out. I painted them up and was ready for more. The first unit is ready

A second unit is ready to base and the third is primed. By mid 2014 I hope to have a game.

Start of the New Year.

Ok so it's a new year. Resolutions, goals, motivations and, dreams. I started painting the Little Britons range of figures last year but didn't get much done. Here's a few shots of the figures I bought as a trial to make sure I wanted to actually do this project.

I was pretty happy with these. So I ordered some more. Below is a shot of some non assembled figures. They are lbb06, lbh02, lba04.

The casting are fairly clean. Some mold lines have been tough to get at and the heads can be a challenge with their small size. I have to say that I wasn't excited about gluing figures together however the heads fit well and some practice has made it easier to attach the arms. I used a two part epoxy.