In the beginning...

Think I've already mentioned that, for me, the books came before wargaming.

So I just thought I'd post something about those early influences.

This is the earliest one I can date...

Mainly because it's inscribed and dated...

True, it had Greeks and Persians...

Plus some strange WW2 artwork...

But the major influence was Newnes Pictorial Knowledge - don't know the date, could even be earlier than The History of the World.

A lot of the stories in this are still remembered today - for example the story of the Spartan boy and the fox. his picture doesn't show that story! Actually, in the story the boy is hungry, steals a fox cub, hides it inside his tunic, is stopped by someone in conversation, and the fox bites him to death. A true Spartan, he doesn't let the pain show.

Another story remembered for life was the Song of Roland. One of the strange aspects of that is that I never did any armies of the period!

The Newnes Pictorial Knowledge set is not my original one - that suffered major water damage a few years ago, this replacement set is in poorer condition than my pre-damaged one and was acquired off ebay.

Prussian Landwehr finished

And it's certainly getting harder to be able to put all the dots in the right place and at the right size! Eyes are letting me down more and more these days - sometimes I'm basically guessing where the paint goes. So tending to simplify things more and more.

I've painted them in a simpler fashion than some others that are around - as I said, eyes not up to it as much as they used to be.

Collar and cuff colours are regionally based - my other units in white are Pomeranian, light blue is from Elbe, East Prussian in red, Silesia yellow.

Command group I had finished earlier though I've overpainted webbing white.

Something from the past

And that I've finally gotten round to putting up somewhere.

The antlers were in my dad's office when he got the job at Norman's Riding. That was in 1957 and I haven't the faintest idea how long they had been there when he arrived.

I inherited them and they spent years in the attic. Until I finally got round to putting them up on the side of a shed.

German cavalry uniforms 1900-1914

It's always worth remembering that I was reading history books before I was buying Airfix figures and the two are probably of more-or-less equal importance to me. So a recent ebay search found two books that seemed ideal for the 42mm German army I had started building.

The books were published by Almark back in 1974/5 and give a lot of useful information about their subject. Plus some nice colour pictures that include things like standards and lance pennons.

By R.J.Marrion, this is the bigger volume with 128 pages. Short history of the units, uniform details, horse colous of trumpeters... a lot of information!

A bit slimmer at 96 pages but still full of information. Author D.H.Hagger.

There is a third volume to this series - Cuirassiers and Heavy Cavaly - which I haven't got yet. I intend to!

Some recruits from New Zealand

Received earlier today... some Russian Pavlovski Guard RN1 and RN2 from the 1972 catalogue.

So two extra figures from the original ranges to be added...

But before they can be sent off they need to be stripped. Seen here next to some of the other figures on the hell hole known as my painting table.

Probably 2-3 weeks in Dettol, then I'll get round to getting everything together and sort out moulds.

In the meantime, thanks Matthew.

German 1st Hussars

Having finished the 3rd, really had to do the 1st!

Colour scheme is pretty spectacular

Horses cast well apart from the reins - not going to worry about that!

Almost didn't post this picture - it's not the most impressive view.

The 1st followed by the 3rd - think that should be enough German Hussars for now.

 At this point I'm really going to have to stop the 42mm figures and get down to finishing the 20mm Prussian Landwehr!

I've noticed that Tango has posted this in the Napoleonic Board on TMP so thought it would be a good idea to add a bit more to this.... the figure is based on a Knotel print of a Prussian unit in the German army  'Lieb-Husaren Regiment No. 1'  in 1903, homecast from a Berliner Zinnfiguren mould and part of my Great War in England 1897 collection that is based on the 1894 book by Le Queux - in that book, Germany was on our side, in his later book 'The Invasion of 1910' they were the enemy.

Bushes and Lamposts

The Zinnfiguren horse moulds come with a terrain piece. In the case of the Hussar it was a lampost, the Uhlan horse has a flat bush.

Simple models with a quick spray of paint, one extra piece of detail colour each then spray varnish - very toy soldier. I'll probably try a couple of different greens before I find one I like for the lampost.

The bush is a better scale fit than the lampost - which should do quite well with 28mm scale figures. However, they should both be very useful figures - and I'll probably do more bushes than horses eventually!

Salute, moulds and scammers.

Should be at Salute today but for obvious reasons I'm not....

Problem was, Salute and Partizan are two of my main sources for paints (the other one is in Norwich). Happily, sorted that issue by ordering off ebay.

On the other hand, got a delivery today to make up for it. The second batch of moulds have arrived from Berlinner Zinnfiguren. Uhlan, horse and a couple more artillery figures.

Again, all 'second hand', though the boxed ones were actually unopened.

The Uhlan artwork was very useful - pennants here and inside how to convert parade ground models to campaign - basically, plain black helmet, take plume off and plain coloured tunic. Mine will be campaigning in a simplified parade order!

Meanwhile, the scammers bit...

Every now and then passwords finish up in the 'public domain' - for example, 770 million last year.
Sadly, this is just one of many. So last few days I've been getting threatening emails trying to blackmail me into paying a ransom. Quite scary, saying there's a keylogger following everything I type and how they've been making videos of me because they've hijacked my webcam, etc... as I said, very scary. Very clever people as well. They're making all these videos and... my PC doesn't have a webcam...

Seriously though, seems a good time to warn people and suggest regular changes of passwords.And, of course, be very careful opening any emails or attachments without being sure who really sent them.

1897 German 3rd Hussars

Lots of hussars seem to have carried a lance around this time - but not sure about the 3rd. The uniform is taken from Das KLeine Buch vom Deutschen Heere published in 1901, though the horse furniture is actually from a picture of  the 3rd Hussars in a Knotel print showing the dress in 1861.

They paint up well and have a real 'toy soldier' feel about them. Couple of issues on vasting this first batch of horses - mainly bridles - but later horses coming out OK.

Must admit I found the scalloped edging to the saddlecloth hard. Time was I could do a lot better on 20mm figures! I didn't even try to do any of the fancy lacework...

But overall very pleased with these and can see quite a few hussar squadrons appearing in the future.

42mm 1897 German command group

Started painting these a bit after the hussars but finished first because there's less to paint.

However, before that I thought I'd just set up all the Prussian Zinnfiguren homecast figures I've got including the ones I bought off ebay - it's building up to a nice little army.

This is the command group from the newly-acquired moulds - the officer is actually an artillery officer.

The light blue cross on the standard doesn't show up very well on this picture.

Bit better here. They've turned out really well though to get the standard to cast I had to use the mould with very little pressure on it - which meant a lot of flash.

A package from Germany.

Technically I shouldn't have opened this as it's been costed as a birthday present and that's still a couple of weeks off - but Sandra said I could so...

So five new second hand moulds.

Naturally I had to try them out straight away.

My initial aim was to cast a cavalry squadron....

Done... don't usually use officers, originally I just wanted to use the hussar as a hussar but then decided - why not have an officer for once?

April 2020 Review

Seems a good idea to just draw breath and put everything together I've painted and/or cast so far this year - some armies are starting to get up to a useable size (?)

So, this is the current head count:

6 battalions, 7 squadrons and 8 guns. That Austrian cannon looks a bit lonely out there.

View from the back of the Allied line as the Prussians arrive! No particular battle suggested of course. I have neither the terrain or the figures!

View from behind the French.

The Prussian infantry pass the Russian and Prussian cavalry.

The British.

And the French.

Not forgetting the 42mm Zinnfiguren homecast Prussian infantry and reclaimed Irregular Russian cavalry.

So quite a productive time so far this year.

Next Prussian Infantry battalion finished.

To a certain extent I'm inclined to call them units rather than battalions. 'Correct' battalions should probably have different companies, ie Grendiers, Line, Fusiliers, etc - Whereas I just have every figure the same.

Thought about captions but not really anything to say. It's just the second battalion finished.

 

Prussian artillery

I know I said I was painting up another Line Infantry unit but I was also doing a couple of guns in tandem. As the infantry have various rucksacks and stuff on them, the artillery were simply finished first!

Guns backed by the first regiment I painted. I painted the guns Vallejo flat blue.

As you may have noticed, I tend to experiment. Uniform dyes would be very variable even within a unit so seemed reasonable to do uniforms using slightly different blues.

So the artillery crew are dark Prussian blue, the infantry dark sea blue. On balance, I think the Prussian blue looks'prettier' but the sea blue perhaps has a more 'authentic' look.