Oliver's Army

 

"And how much did your father spend on those models?"

As I may have aluded in previous posts, it's New Year, New Project here in the shed. It is English Civil War, but my inclusion of Cuirassiers makes it a bit too early and South-Western for Cromwell to be in the title. Ho hum. Not enough songs about Edgehill in the popular consciousness I suppose. 

So the project: an English Civil War army, suitable for Kings of War, Pikeman's Lament, and any other rules I can squish the bases sizes into. The backbone of the army is Warlord's plastics, but especially in the infantry there are plenty of metal models for variety (and in some cases, better poses). Although nominally Parliamentarian, the laid back attitude to uniforms (and even flags) means I can comfortably use it as a Royalist force too.

Horsemen rather uncomfortably mounted for painting. I have subsequently discovered that just sticking them to the horses and painting all at once is probably the easier solution.

One of my goals with this army is to make the process of deployment before battles as painless as possible. As such I have forsaken individual bases wherever possible in favour of 4 foot on a 40 mm square, or 2 horse on a 50 mm square base. These will be stored (following consultation with the Hivemind on Lead Adventure Forum) in Really Useful Boxes. Not sure how exactly I will then carry these around. Current thinking is hiring a car.

First set of musketeers based. Front rank are Warlord Plastic, rear are Perry Miniatures.

Painting everything has been good so far, although the musketeers are a bit of a pain due to the large numbers of belts and straps, holding swords, powder flasks and snapsacks. I don't like too many fiddly bits and extraneous details on models. You spend ages fiddling about on miniscule details, then stop to take a look at the overall effect and it's like nothing is any different for 2 hours ago.

First complete Kings of War unit: Troop of Musketeers (would be a Division in 17th Century parlance)

Having spent a whole 20 minutes reading guides on painting the period, I've added some exciting new techniques to my armour painting arsenal in addition to the old reliable shiny "white armour" look. Painted black (black, highlighted with increasing amounts of dark grey), black-from-the-hammer (black, highlighted with increasing amounts of gunmetal), russeted (left to rust and then treated with oils) (basecoat of dark brown and bronze mix, brown ink wash, drybrush with gunmetal) and most exciting, blued steel (blue basecoat, diluted black inkwash, drybrush with a very fine layer of silver). 

First two bases of Horse. These Warlord Plastics are really solid, no-nonsense models.

One of the more curious things I found online, on a re-enacting website (devereuxs.org.uk), is that People of Colour were more prevelant in 17th Century England than we would think, and not just in the more metropolitan ports such as London and Bristol. They brought up references to propagandists complaining that Barbary pirates (from North Africa, who were raiding the South Coast at the time) were being released from jails by the other side to be recruited into the army, as well as other more reliable clerical evidence that not all of the soldiers were white. 

Black musketeer. The skin colour is less obvious on Pikemen who tend to wear big helmets and leather gloves.

Well that's it for this update. I'm finding myself unusually motivated to paint of late. Long may this continue! I've got rather a lot of things to paint and ideally want to take them out to play this year.

First lot of pikemen done. While very robust and bend-resistant, the wire pikes do have a terrible thirst for human blood.

"But there's no danger, it's a professional career/ though it could be arranged with just the word in Mr. Churchill's ear..." Mr Churchill in this case, while also being called Winston, was a Cavalier who raised a regiment for the king. Doesn't quite fit here, does it?

Cheeky work-in-progress snap of a cuirassier in blued armour. Took the photo now in case varnishing ruins it. The colour is a little more subtle in person.