Ye 1:1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars: British 5th rate

...Whereupon ye protagonist showeth ye man-o'-war of 36 gunnes.

Langton Miniatures AD5: British 4th rate, 36-40 guns. As usual, the sails, shrouds and ratlines are photo-etched brass, and the base is resin. The flags and pennant are homemade.

Yes, here I am only a week into February, and my 2012 post count has already matched the impressive 2011 total of three (impressive, but not in the good way, you understand). Even more surprisingly, I'm delivering on my promise; this post is about an English 5th rate of the XVII century.

Side view. The upper gunports are mostly hidden by the shrouds. Much of the lower gundeck would have been buried in the waves in any kind of a sea.

The ship is another Langton Miniatures model, of course, in this case AD5: British 5th rate 36-40 guns. She's small. She's sexy. Okay, maybe that last is a bit of a stretch; in point of fact she's so small that her masts actually appear rather over-thick. But that's just niggling. On the plus side, with this code the Langtons seem to have gotten past their teething problems, and there is a noticeable improvement in sculpting and casting quality on product codes AD5 through AD21. Compare, for instance, the sharply defined ladders on this ship versus the ones on 7 Provincien. What's that, you say? 7 Provincien doesn't have any ladders? Yes she does, actually; they just didn't cast or paint very well, and are consequently nearly invisible.

The English royal arms on the stern. I'm not sure if I used to much primer, or if the lion and unicorn aren't quite as crisply rendered as on some of the larger ships. At least they're identifiable.

It's a quintessentially British ship of the day-- low poop (for the time), sleek lines, and the old lion-and-unicorn supporting the Royal Arms on the taffrail, indicating a King's ship. If not for this last, the model would serve equally well as a merchantman, particularly as there are no guns visible on deck. The sharp sheer of the deck aft would've been increasingly rare later in the 17th century, but would only have looked seriously old fashioned after the Dutch Wars were over.

The 5th rate men o' war were surprisingly uncommon during these wars, mainly because there were few jobs they could perform with any real success. These were not the speedy frigates of Nelson's day, purpose-built by the dozen for work as cruisers and scouts. Rather, they were miniature battleships, two-deckers with the same hull lines as their larger siblings, and with their gunports dangerously close to the waterline. Poor firepower kept them out of the battleline, but they also made poor cruisers; while they did tend to be more manueverable, their light weight and shorter masts actually made them slower than the big ships. With the added problem of low freeboard, their employment as cruisers was largely restricted to the North Sea and Mediterranean.

She's a little one: barely 4cm from the taffrail to the tip of the bowsprit.

One indispensible, specialized role was left entirely to the 5th rates, however: working alongside fireships. In the titanic sea battles of the 17th century, the fleets were divided into squadrons, each with its own small complement of fireships. These were small, lightly-crewed ships crammed with casks of oil, flammable pitch and resin, gunpowder and double-shotted cannon. The fireships' job was to sail up to an enemy ship, grapple it, and fire the cargo; under the best of circumstances, the enemy vessel would burn, while the fireship's crew escaped in a boat. The job of the accompanying 5th rates was to prevent enemy boats or frigates from towing the fireship off course, as well as the unenviable task of intercepting enemy fireships before they could be used against the English line of battle--a task which was pursued with understandably less enthusiasm.

The Copper Currency Comparison: a couple of pennies long.

 

Next time: an English 3rd rate.

Ye 1:1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars: British Armed Merchant

...Whereupon ye Protagonist showeth ye armed English shippe of 40 gunnes, and continueth ye naval project for ye XVII Century.

Langton's AD4: British Armed Merchant, 40 guns.

Yet another fine product from Langton Miniatures, in this case AD4, the British Armed Merchant, 40 guns. As you might guess, this ship is meant to be generic. This is very much a good thing, since making a different model for each of the innumerable ships that took part in the mammoth Anglo-Dutch wars would be prohibitively expensive, for both sculptor and for anyone who would feel obligated to collect them all.

Looking for trouble... or running from it? Hired merchant captains were not always renowned for conspicuous bravery.

As to whether or not this particular model is typical of an English merchantman of the time is difficult to say (the term 'British' is anachronistic). Drawing up construction blueprints was all but unheard of at the time, and consequently even similar ships from the same yard could vary widely in detail. Compared to the other purpose-built warships in the Langton line, the armed merchant is decidedly long and sleek-- not necessarily what you would expect in a merchant vessel, but given the lack of hard data and Langton's reputation for meticulous accuracy, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Stern view. Notice the narrow beam compared to the ship's length.

 Then again, the ship's design is in many ways ambiguous. The taffrail is relatively austere compared to the warships, lacking much of the heavy carving, not to mention the absence of the near-ubiquitous Stewart royal arms of the English men o' war. The design of the quarter galleries, the clinker-built upperworks, narrow poop and transom stern appear downright Dutch, while the comparatively low stern, high length-to-beam ratio, and the location of the catheads are more characteristically English. The aftmost gunports are also mounted lower than the rest of their respective tiers, indicating a "downhill" shear of the deck aft, which is--as far as I know--also characteristic of some English shipping.

Profile view. The low stern and oddly-placed gunports aft are clearly evident.

All in all, the ship is most useful as a merchantman hired or purchased by the navy; the full tier of guns visible on the upper deck wouldn't likely have graced the decks of an honest trader. A fair number of merchant vessels, mainly of the 4th rate (at the time, roughly 30 to 50 guns) were hired by the Royal Navy during the Dutch Wars to bolster the battlefleet, despite their decidedly chequered record. The merchantmen were frequently found to be slow, unhandy, lightly built, and, since they were often captained by their owners, rather shy of taking risks in battle. In hindsight, the hiring of merchant ships may seem odd, but at the time it was a common expedient; in fact until the crash warship-building programmes of 1665-66, the largest Dutch fighting ships were East Indiamen chartered from the VOC!

Starboard quarter.

The model itself is, like Langton's 7 Provincien, one of the earlier offerings in this range. The main drawbacks on this particular unit are clunky, difficult to install rudder, and the decidedly oversized guns on the deck. Not that these are major problems; at any kind of normal gaming distance they fade to insignificance.

The hull clocks in at just under 4 cm or 1.5 inches in length.

 Reflecting its origins as a privately-owned ship, I opted to forgo the usual gold/red/black/varnished wood colour scheme I've been giving to the King's ships. Instead, the upperworks have been painted a dark green, and I've made the insides of the rails a darker burgundy. I also used a much smaller red pennant; red flags and pennants were flown by the senior squadron of the Royal Navy, as well as by any warship not sailing with the main battlefleet. I'm not sure whether these flags and pennants were provided to each ship ready made, or whether they were produced aboard ship; certainly in the latter case any enterprising merchant captain might be sorely tempted to sew a smaller flag and sell off the excess scarlet cloth! I've also given the ship an English flag rather than a Union one; I guess the skipper of this particular ship just doesn't like Scotland.

Copper Currency Comparison: she's only about two pennies long!

One more for the road.

Next time: an English 5th rate frigate.

Ye 1:1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars: De Zeven Provinciën

...Whereupon ye Protagonist continues with his project of ye XVII Century, conceiving to show ye Dutch Flagship De Zeven Provinciën.

Langton`s 1:1200 scale De Zeven Provinciën from the starboard quarter.

So here I am, back again. To the surprise of no one, it's been more than two months since my last post, this despite my promising a "veritable flurry of posts" back in October. Clearly I'm not to be trusted.

Nevertheless, more time between posts means more time to work through the leadpile; much has been accomplished on the hobby front, and I'm eager to show it all off. What this means is that this time around I'm going to promise not merely this one pathetic post, but at least seven more posts in the near future! It's unprecedented, I know. but barring catastrophe (and the aforementioned caveat about my trustworthiness), it's going to happen. The Pictures are taken; all that's required is for me to sit my lazy butt in front of a keyboard.

View showing the tightly-packed gundecks. The largest Dutch warships were two-and-a-half-deckers carrying 80 guns, like De Zeven Provinciën. By contrast, the English required more space for their heavier guns; their contemporary 80-gun ships were all three-deckers.

But I digress. We're here today to talk about the lovely ship in all the pretty pictures. This is Langton Miniatures' AD1, 7 Provincien aka De Zeven Provinciën, or, in English, The Seven Provinces. The original ship was built in Rotterdam during 1665, at the beginning of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, as a special overall flagship for the United Provinces' combined fleet.

Some additional explanation is perhaps warranted here: unlike England, France, Spain, or any of the other better-known maritime states during the Age of Sail, the Netherlands had no navy-- instead, they had no fewer than five navies, each with their own ships, docks, shipyards, stores, admirals, and everything else. They had one Admiralty for the province of Zeeland, and another for Friesland; the other three represented different parts of Holland, the largest Dutch province. These were the Admiralty of the Maas/Maze/Maeze, representing Rotterdam, the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier, representing Westfriesland, and the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Each of these five navies was traditionally quite jealous of its prerogatives, and their flag officers were prone to bickering, even while they were ostensibly cooperating against the English. This organization (or lack thereof) had served them miserably in the first Anglo-Dutch war, contributing to a number of alarming defeats. Addressing the problem, the States General (i.e. the federal government of the Netherlands) opted to name a single commander-in-chief.

I`ve been putting lots of flags on these models; it really seems to make them stand out. For me, this gaudiness was one of the main draws of this period over the more popular Napoleonic age.

Another of the primary factors contributing to Dutch losses in the first war was the small size of their ships. Amsterdam especially suffered from shallow, silty harbours, and that city's economic and political predominance over the States General had allowed Amsterdam to impose severe size restrictions on the ships of all the Dutch admiralties. Only the disasterous test of war against the English--who possessed the largest and most heavily armed warships in the world--proved the folly of such limits. Consequently, between the wars all the Dutch admiralties embarked on flurried programs of construction, churning out a new generation of heavier warships, intended to wrest the control of the seas back from the English. There were still shortcomings in the new ships: the shallow Dutch harbours meant that there was still no chance of matching the largest English ships, either in size or in firepower; nevertheless, events proved that the new Dutch fleets were nothing to shrug off.

View from the waterline.

 De Zeven Provinciën was the pride of the new establishment, the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Dutch fleet. As built, she carried 80 guns: 12 36-pounders, 16 24-pounders, 14 18-pounders, 12 12-pounders, and 26 6-pounders. The mixture of different calibres was unavoidable; there were few large arms manufacturers in the Netherlands, leading to a chronic shortage of the largest guns. The ship was modified several times over her career, mostly in regards to armament, but was never seriously rebuilt; the light construction of Dutch ships (necessary because of the shallow harbours), and their employment in so many battles meant they never lasted quite as long as some of their foreign counterparts, and De Zeven Provinciën was finally broken up in 1694.

A portside view

Of course I shouldn't understate the importance of this ship to the Dutch. Its tempting to make comparisons to HMS Victory, but even that could be seen as an understatement; whereas the British have a long history of naval dominance and can consequently look back on a number of greatly renowned ships, De Zeven Provinciën stands alone as the best-remembered symbol of the single short age of Dutch naval preeminence. In a lifetime of only thirty years, she fought in no less than seven major fleet battles: the Four Days' Battle and the St. James Day Battle in the Second Anglo-Dutch War; the Battle of Solebay, the First and Second battles of Schooneveld, and the Battle of the Texel in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and finally the twin battles of Barfleur and La Hougue during the War of the Grand Alliance. As the flagship of the almost-legendary Admiral Michiel Adrianszoon de Ruyter, she frequently fought broadside to broadside against much more powerful opponents; during the St. James Day Battle, for instance, she defeated the massive English first-rate flagship Royal Charles in a duel lasting four hours, before being beaten in turn by another first-rate, the Royal Sovereign (ex-Sovereign of the Seas, ex-Sovereign, the most powerful ship in the fleet).

Stern view. The red lions on the stern decoration are well cast, considering their size, although the seven coats of arms (representing the eponymous seven provinces of the Netherlands) have been reduced to a single shield.

Like the rest of Langton's Anglo-Dutch line, the model is exceptionally detailed for 1:1200 scale. On the other hand, 7 Provincien does suffer from being the first ship of this series to enter production; the detailing actually seems to have been too fine, particularly on the quarter-gallery trim, and thus isn't as crisply cast as some of the other vessels. The guns visible on the ship's deck are also comparatively larger and more crudely sculpted. None of this is particularly noticeable on the finished model however, and I hasten to add that this is still very much a top-rate offering.

From stem to stern, the ship clocks in at a little more than 5cm or 2 inches. Yeah, I paint these things with a magnifier.

Choosing a colour scheme for De Zeven Provinciën was relatively easy; ships as famous as this one are always popular subjects for modelers, so pictoral examples abound. The only real decision was whether to paint the upperworks blue or green. I chose green, obviously.

The key test: yes, you could fit it in your pocket. No, you wouldn`t want to. Not unless you wanted to buy me a new one (and pay for me for the time and effort it takes to build these things).

 Next time: more Langton Anglo-Dutch, specifically an English 4th rate.

Ye XVII Century Men-o'-War in 1:1200 scale

...In which ye protagonist doth wax eloquently about ye Langton Miniatures ships, and how they doth be both exquisite and expensive.

A Dutch 60-gun ship

Well, this was going to be a post about some Borodino-related material, but the pictures I took didn't turn out. Being too lazy to take new ones, I decided to blather about this instead.

Stern quarter view, showing detail.

Yes, it's yet another new project: this time the Ango-Dutch Wars of the XVII century (that's 17th, for the not-Roman-numerally-inclined). These were purely naval wars (from the English point of view, at least), and so this will be a purely naval project. That's good, since one of my main motivations for getting into it was for a change of pace from painting ranks of infantry and cavalry. Strangely, this is going to be my first-ever naval project-- and I say strange, because I'm a huge naval buff, with shelves full of books on ships in general and many a sea war in particular.

English 2nd rate (82 guns) alongside Dutch 60-gun ship, with a pencil for scale.

Anyway, I felt it was high time to do something naval. My main area of familiarity is actually the age of ironclads and pre-dreadnoughts, although I confess a healthy interest in the navies of the two World Wars and in the age of sail as well. Unfortunately, given my preferences, I couldn't find many ironclad miniatures that matched what I was looking for in terms of scale, price, and quality. However, broadening my search, I came across Langton Miniatures.

Langton Miniatures' AD6 - British 2nd rate (Royal Katherine, 76-86 guns). The description is something of a misnomer; since the Dutch wars were fought before the Acts of Union united England with Scotland (and later Northern Ireland), these were properly English ships.

Langton is actually a company I'd been aware of for some time, mostly by reputation; they're held to be the manufacturers of the finest 1:1200 scale ships money can buy-- albeit the most expensive. Well, having now sampled their wares, I can confirm that theirs is a reputation well deserved: they look spectacular... and are spectacularly expensive.

Broadside view of the Royal Katherine. This was the first of these ships I did; consequently there are a number of errors in the rigging, and it isn't painted quite as nicely as might have been. A good learning experience, however. My previous work with small-scale modeling certainly helped.

The spectacular-looking part is what's really important though, and so I was pretty much doomed to make the attempt, regardless of cost, as soon as I got to looking through the Langton picture galleries, inadequate though they may be. And since spectacular-looking was now the goal, I quickly opted for one of the age of sail lines, since it seemed a bit extreme to spend £6 on some clunky-looking American Civil War ironclad, no matter how beautifully sculpted and cast. The Anglo-Dutch line finally got the nod because the ships' over-the-top baroque decor always seems to give them more personality than their better-known Napoleonic-era counterparts. A glance through the paintings of the Dutch Old Masters will show what I mean.

Langton Miniatures' AD15 - Dutch, 60 guns. The model is generic, not having been sculpted to represent any particular vessel. My rigging technique shows some improvement here, and tying the flags on rather than wrapping them around the masts also looks better.

Of course when it came time to get out the paintbrush, I quickly discovered that 'personality' can be a double-edged sword. Most Napoleonic-era warships were built in classes, and thus had one or more nearly identical sisters; paintwork too tended to follow broadly similar lines. Not so in the period of the Dutch wars, where ships tended to be one-of-a-kind, with very distinctive decoration.

Royal Katherine. The sails and ratlines are brass photoetch; the rigging is acrylic thread. Flags are homemade paper.

With this in mind, I decided to base my first pair of ships on specific historical examples-- insofar as any kind of examples could be found, of course! The 17th century was a long time ago, and record keeping back then wasn't quite up to modern standards. In fact, if it hadn't been for the improvement of painting techniques, and the increasing predilection of the aforementioned Dutch Old Masters for realistic nautical scenes, we wouldn't have much idea at all of what these vessels looked like.

Eendracht or Eendraght with rearing lion stern art.

 
Since the English 2nd rate was sculpted as the Royal Katherine, the Royal Katherine she would be. Some Google-fu turned up pictures of a model of the ship, whose accuracy I can't vouch for, but which at least gave me a colour scheme to work around. The heavy gilding on the stern facade was common to most English warships, and can clearly be seen as the ancestor of the more subdued decoration of Napoleonic-era ships. During the Dutch wars, English men-o'-war were rated by the number of crew they carried, rather than the number of guns; hence the Royal Katherine saw service with anywhere between 70 and 90 guns. She had a colourful history, fighting in all the major battles of the Second and Third Dutch Wars. Although never a flagship (there were always enough English 1st rates to serve those roles), she was still larger than any of the Dutch warships she opposed, and thus constantly in the thick of the fighting. During the Battle of Solebay in 1672 she was captured by the Dutch, but recaptured later the same day; in De Ruyter's raid on the Medway she was sunk to prevent her capture, but avoided being burnt by the Dutch. Refloated and repaired, she served in the wars against France, being renamed Ramillies after the Duke of Marlborough's great victory in the War of the Spanish Succession. Later, in the Seven Years' War, she served as the flagship of the unfortunate Admiral Byng during the Battle of Minorca.

Some of the extraordinary detail on these tiny models is visible here. Cannon and gratings are well defined and easily painted, as are the decorative quarter galleries and figurehead.

Choosing a Dutch ship proved to be somewhat trickier, as each vessel had a unique design painted on its stern, often executed by one of the great painters of the Dutch school. Out of all the +/- 60-gun men-'o-war I could find a picture of, the one that most resembles the Langton model was a painting of the Eendracht, one time flagship of the United Provinces, by Ludolf Backhuysen. Ironically, the painting was made after the ship's destruction at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665, and many of the details are considered incorrect; unfortunately most other depictions of the ship tend to disagree with each other, so no one is really sure what the Eendracht looked like. In any event, I used the Backhuysen painting as a guide, and if the end product doesn't look like the Eendracht, she at least looks like a Dutch ship with her fine lines and painted stern. The Eendracht herself had the same sort of chequered career as most major warships of the day; she saw service carrying as few as 56 and as many as 73 guns, being victorious against the Swedes in the Battle of the Sound, but later was blown up in the midst of a duel against the 80-gun HMS Royal Charles during the aforementioned clash off Lowestoft (The Royal Charles herself was towed away as a Dutch prize during the Medway raid).

Comparison between the Royal Katherine (left) and Eendracht (right). The brighter sails and higher contrast between hull, strakes and gunport lids on the latter really make it stand out. Sail placement, rigging, and flags are also much improved.

I've got a few more English and Dutch ships to assemble in due course, so you can expect to see those in the future, as I try to get a grasp on tiny model shipbuilding. Happily, this is very much a do-whatever-the-hell-I-feel-like project, since once again I have no particular ruleset in mind. Heck, this time I don't even have a particular order of battle to aim for; given the massive scale of the major battles (100+ ships per side), and the huge costs of the models (approaching $20 per ship, after postage and packaging), I haven't a hope of being able to assemble forces for anything big. I may just work my way through the range, and decide after the fact whether or not I even want to game with these expensive little gems.

Next time: something different again. Maybe.

A Little Prussian Sideshow

...In which our protagonist starts takes another miniscule bite out of his pile of accumulating lead, and begins yet another project unlikely to go anywhere, this time with Prussians.

Two battalions of the Prussian IR no. 49 Muffling. Colonel Muffling himself rides with the first battalion.

 
Another quick post this week (shocking, I know!). This rather small and whimsically-embarked-on venture is not so much a project as an experiment. I like to call it:

You can't have enough Napoleonics

Yes, those tumultuous decades bestriding the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries are the one period that I seemingly can't get enough of. To those in the know, it's pretty easy to see why: there were not one or two, but many competing powers of near-equal strength, all with expansionist foreign policies; the battles were big, the uniforms flashy, and all the shooting tended to take place at manageable distances. There were great personalities, epic battles, whirlwind campaigns and bitter slugging matches as well. In short, it's a great period for wargaming... except the only Napoleonic miniatures I've heretofore owned have been part of my Borodino project.

Adler PA 2C - Prussian Musketeer, bicorne, marching. Nice detail, as can be expected from Adler Miniatures. The hat lace is somewhat tricky to paint behind the musket stock, and the three multicoloured pompoms can be tedious, but hey-- you can't claim the detail isn't there.

Not that there's anything wrong with what I've done for Borodino. It's all turned out quite lovely, and I look forward to doing more. Sadly, the issue is that I don't really see myself gaming with them. I've barely scratched the surface of the Borodino order of battle, and I've already got more troops than I can comfortably fit on my gaming table.

Why just learn from someone else's mistakes, when you can learn from your own as well? 

Anyway, I wanted to do some period gaming, of necessity on bases smaller than the 60mm x 60mm I've been using for Borodino. The thought of doing 1812 again with different basing seemed redundant, so I looked at all the other Napoleonic campaigns I was interested in (which, admittedly, is most of them), subtracted the ones lacking complete 6mm figure ranges, and picked one. I blame Andy McMaster over at Another Slight Diversion for the end choice, since he was working on an 1806 Prussians-versus-French project during the time I was pondering all this over.

Adler PA 8A - Prussian Musketeer cmd (5). Again, very nice sculpting. Apparently the early Prussian range hasn't been that popular; on the plus side, this means that the molds are in good shape and the figures have relatively little flash. The officer's sword and the bottom of the colour guard's spontoon (or half pike, or whatever) are fairly flimsy.

Settled on 1806, it was time to figure out how to do it. I'd agonized over basing size, unit scale and figure choice for Borodino, and I wasn't eager to repeat the process. Many a 6-mil gamer before me has confronted the basing issue; their reminiscences can be found all over the net. Long story short, I went for 60mm x 30mm, because: a) I already had some spare bases, b) I knew I could paint enough figures to cover one in two or three evenings, and c) they would work for a variety of rule sets. No, I didn't have any particular rules in mind when I made the decision, and I still don't.

The arse end of the two battalions. By 1806, the Prussians had given up their powdered wigs, but evidently soldiers were still required to wear a pigtail. Also clearly visible is the straggling line on the 1st battalion; many gamers complain about Adler's singly-based figures, but I find the basing possibilities more than make up for the annoyance they cause.

For unit scale, I went with one base = one battalion; again, a common choice, and visually appealing to boot. The figures I went with were largely determined by what I was already doing-- I'd already done lots of French, so I decided to start with the Prussians for a change. I was already planning another order from Adler for some Borodino odds and ends, so Adler it was going to be. And since their 'advancing' pose tends to significantly increase how long it takes to base them, I opted for the ol' march attack. Lessons had been learned.

One step forward, two steps back

So am I going to plunge headfirst into the 1806 campaign on 60 x 30 bases? Well, no... Like I said, this is more of an experiment than an outright project. Also, I'm a dedicated fan of Richard Borg's Commands and Colors: Ancients and Memoir '44; and since I bought these figures, GMT has since released the new Commands and Colors: Napoleonics. I'd love to do armies for C&C:N, but that would mean Peninsular War armies, and multiple bases per unit. In short, I'm still pondering the possibilities.

Next time: something different. Hopefully with more and better pictures.

Some 6mm Huns

...In which our protagonist proves his continuing existence by taking his first tentative steps back into the blogosphere (and the hobby) in many long months, and decides to tackle a new project in the bargain.

Noble Huns... if that isn't an oxymoron.

Yes, after many a moon, I'm finally back behind the brush and keyboard! The long hiatus is over; I've been painting again, and what's more, I've actually been gaming, much to my own surprise. While some of you may be dismayed, it should hardly be surprising to anyone that break of the better part of a year has caused my old projects to fall by the wayside. So make way for the new Mike's Leadpile-- same great taste, but all new recipe-- now with 25% more salt (yes, you heard me: 25% more salt. It's not like you're eating it, so even you health-nut types shouldn't complain)!

Tell us about this new project, you blathering nitwit

Huns, I hear you ask? Seriously? Yes. And in 6mm, too. This despite the fact that I've already got Late Imperial Romans in 10mm. If experience has told me anything, it's that restarting a project in another scale is always a terrible idea... but here I go nonetheless. The thing is, 6mm is my favourite scale-- for me, the balance between physical size and amount of detail is perfect, and I'd much rather be doing something in microscale nowadays rather than anything larger. Also, Baccus has a more-or-less complete 6mm range for Late Rome and her enemies, while (sadly) Pendraken does not in 10mil, despite years of waiting for such a thing to be producted. Also a consideration is that Baccus has been so fan-friendly that I feel like they deserve another little burst of business from yours truly.

The ubiquitous Hunnic horse archers, in all their 6mm glory.

Anyway, my impetus for (re)starting with the Huns is that the range is really small-- only three figure codes, two of which are essentially the same. It pretty much comes down to "buy two units, and you've seen the entire Hun army range". Admittedly, this isn't a great justification for starting a project, but history gives us many examples of much more elaborate things being done for equally murky reasons-- and I've certainly done worse myself in the past.

Speaking of Impetus, that's the plan. Basic Impetus, actually, since my return to active gaming has seen the continuation of my previous shift towards the philosophy that Simpler is Better (within reason). Also, free is my favourite price, at least when I'm doing the shopping. Eventually, I hope to paint up a couple dozen miscellaneous bases from Baccus' Late Imperial Roman, Hun, Goth, and Sassanian Persian lines, which should allow me to field opposing BI armies of various flavours. Most of the marauding/migrating barbarian types of the period ended up fighting either for, alongside, or against pretty much everyone else (and frequently all three), so for a minimum expenditure I should be able to have a go at all sorts of different figures, and be able to game with them too.

Hunnic nobles, front and rear. The bright blue tunic on the one rider is rather jarring; I wouldn't paint it that way again.

So just how good are those 6mm Huns, anyway?

They're not bad, I'll say that much. That may not sound like a sterling recommendation, but in actual fact it's nigh impossible to sculpt a really good Hun. The problem is, no one knows what they looked like. No dependable picture has come down to us. The written descriptions of the ancient writers tend to describe Huns as hideously scar-faced and filthy-- but modern scholars point out, rightly, that these tend to amount to little better than sensationalist and/or propaganda pieces, hardly to be trusted. We don't even know if the Huns had oriental features, like modern Mongols, or if they were caucasian, like modern Turks. Some fortuitous archaeology has given us some examples of broken Hun weapons, but that's about it. This all leaves the enterprising sculptor with... not much to go by, actually.

Baccus AHU1 - Hunnic Horse Archers - Galloping

Consequently, the fine folks at Baccus have given us Hunnic horse archers wearing Mongol-esque clothing, right down to the fur-trimmed hats. Maybe this is anachronistic; maybe it isn't. As I said, no one knows. At the very least, these Huns carry bows with prominent 'horns' or 'ears', which is good; on the other hand the bows are sculpted with symmetrical upper and lower arms, which is bad (Hunnic bows were asymmetrical). The 'Galloping' horse archers come in three different poses, two with drawn bows and the other more relaxed. Notably missing are archers performing the "Parthian shot" and left-handed archers (the Huns were reputedly ambidextrous), which would have allowed for a little more variation in basing. Nevertheless, the quality of the sculpting is a definite step up from older Baccus work, and the casting is crisp; out of a dozen figures, the only defect I had was a single miscast bow, which was easily replaced by a bit of wire.

Baccus AHU3 - Hunnic Nobles

The other code I put to the brush were the Hun nobles. Unless the sculptor knows something I don't (which, admittedly, is perhaps likely), these seem to belong to the realm of highly-speculative-for-aesthetic-reasons. I've never heard of lance-armed Huns, although there are certainly other examples of 'Sarmatized' steppe peoples, so these are at least within the realm of plausability. Giving these guys lances was likely just an easy way of giving the Huns something visually distinguishable from the run-of-the-mill horse archers. The helmets are also a nice touch, with a clear Gothic/Sarmatian flavour to them. One thing that would've been nice is if these figures were available with open hands-- I suspect those lances won't long retain their straightness on the gaming table.

So do you have anything else to say for yourself?

Yes, actually. Keep an eye on the Leadpile, because-- I can't believe I'm saying this-- barring calamity, you can expect a veritable flurry of posts here in the near future! I'm hoping to show off some more new projects, revisit some ongoing ones (including the oft-promised Württemberg division for Borodino), and maybe even paint up some of the innumerable random figures that have been languishing in the pile.

More soon!

Russian VIII Corps in 6mm, Part 2

...In which our protagonist, conscious of his many shortcomings as a blogger, nonetheless begins what will doubtlessly be a brief and feeble comeback, and shows off his Russian 27th Division for Borodino.

Odessa and Vilna infantry regiments. These regiments weren't actually brigaded together, but I mixed the pairings up somewhere along the way. Crap. Kind of shows how my hobby activities have been going, recently.

Yes, it's been a long time since I've last posted-- an observation which begins all too many of these blog posts, it seems. I sincerely regret that, and I apologize to anyone (if there is indeed anyone) who has ever hoped for more frequent updates from yours truly. I wish I could oblige you! The current dilatory schedule of posts is distressing to me as well.

Another view of the Odessa and Vilna regiments. The Odessa reg't should properly be brigaded with the Tarnopol reg't, and Vilna with Simbirsk. In any case, the NCO brandishing his sword is a favourite sculpt of mine, from Adler's early Russian Napoleonic musketeer command (RA 10A).

In fact, I'm so distressed that I've decided to turn over a new leaf, starting with this post. Don't get too excited; I'm not going to promise that I'll post more often, or anything like that. Nor will I even promise to maintain the high standards of photography, reviewing, and helpful hobby-related articles that I (sometimes) feel like I've upheld thus far. That's right, fickle reader: for the immediate future I'm actually promising a drop in quality. Don't like it? Tough! It's the only way you're going to get any posts at all!

The 3rd brigade of the division, consisting of the 49th and 50th Jäger regiments. For some reason that currently eludes me, this brigade was commanded during the battle by Colonel Voyeikov of the Life Guard Preobrazhenskii regiment. Apparently I've been off my Borodino kick for too long to remember these things.

Wasn't this post supposed to be about Russians?

Right, Russians. Today's subject is the Russian 27th Division, yet another element of the VIII Corps which has been in the works for far too long. Commanded by Major General Dmitri Neverovsky, the 27th had been heavily committed during the fighting around Smolensk and the subsequent retreat. Having sustained heavy losses, the division was appended to the VIII Infantry Corps for Borodino, which consequently became the only Russian corps at the battle to consist of three divisions.

Adler RN 4B - "Militia, musket, advancing". Fairly generic looking, wearing trousers, coat and some sort of fur cap. Only one pose means that Opolchenye units will look rather uniform unless painted differently.

Since the 27th had suffered the heaviest casualties of any of the Russian divisions prior to Borodino, I wanted to do something special to show this. Reducing the number of figures in each of the component units would have saved me too much time, effort and money, so of course I didn't do that. Instead, I opted to fill out the second rank of each regiment with militia-- a practice that became common in Russian units later on in the war, as attrition thinned the ranks. For Borodino it's probably anachronistic, but that didn't stop me.

3rd brigade again. I've whined before on how much space the 'advancing' posture takes, and how difficult that makes it to cram bunches of them onto bases. The lovely hay cart is produced by Irregular Miniatures, purveyors of all sorts of scenic goodies, any and all of which can be obtained through the ever-helpful Angel Barracks.

Apparently, our Protagonist can't count. 

Yes, it's sad but true. Simple mathematical tasks like multiplication and division seem to cause especial problems. Take for instance my attempt to populate the second rank of each of these formations with militiamen: in order to make it look good, I figured at least half of each of the ranks in question should consist of militia. Easy, right? Nine men per rank means five militia per, times three bases equals... well, that equals fifteen, which, since they come in strips of four, is actually one less than I bought for the task.

Tarnopol and Simbirsk infantry regiments. The militia populating the second rank of each regiment can be seen clearly (well, aside from their rather nondescript paint jobs, that is!).

Of course the astute among you will have noticed before now that there are two regiments per base, and that means two second ranks for each one. The very astute among you will have realized that this in turn means thirty militia men would be required to meet my condition of "at least half" of each rear rank. Thirty, not fifteen (or sixteen, as explained above). Way to go, Mike.

Tarnopol and Simbirsk regiments. Again, this isn't a proper brigade, since I misread which regiments were brigaded with which. Not only can I not count, but evidently my literacy skills are in question these days as well!

Anyway, that's the Russian 27th Division complete. It doesn't quite finish the VIII Corps, as there's still another grenadier division, artillery and command to do... which I'm not going to promise anytime soon.

More of an eye level view.

Next time: part of the long-awaited Württemberg division (Württembourgoisie? Württembergers? Our protagonist doesn't know, but he likes them anyway).

Also, a special shout out to David F. I have no idea who you are, but apparently you became a follower of Mike's Leadpile while I was writing this! Man, it takes me a long time to write these things...