Thirty Years War Dragoons & Guns

Dragoon unit (mounted & dismounted) from Warlord Games' "Epic Pike & Shotte" range.

I will borrow Mike F's recent and perfectly expressed sentiment - this is another "Dereliction of (Posting) Duty" post...I have been absent from blog posting for months owing to a series of work projects and a change of computer. I don't know what it is about getting a new computer, but each time I get a new machine it is harder and harder to get the access to the blog. Life getting in the way doesn't help, but, well, that's life, right? There just hasn't been time to sort the posting stuff out.

Judging by the blog posts, it would seem my brushes went still at the end of the last Painting Challenge and have stayed that way since. Not so! I have been painting. My mental health tends to stress when I can't paint, after all. But my painting has been really scattered - even by my own already scattered standards. There has been no constructive focus on a single project. Rather, it has been a couple figures for one project here, a stand of figures for another project there...nothing is really accumulating. Between demands of work, a lot of travel and other life things it has been tough to find the time to really power through and focus. My painting has instead been just a few minutes at the end of the day...finishing part of on 28mm figure, or three or four 10mm figures or whatever...

Anyway, there are a few things that progressed sufficiently to count as "finished" - among them are these additions to 30 Years War project. Here we have a unit of Dragoons and a group of light guns. These are all plastic from Warlord Games' "Epic" Pike & Shotte range. 

Dragoons

Officer and ensign. I think that is an Imperialist flag?

In the "Pike & Shotte" games the dragoons rate as lighter cavalry, but ah, not only can they skedaddle around the battlefield, they can dismount and fight as infantry! Thus Warlord Games provides sufficient figures to represent the unit mounted or dismounted. 

Rear detail on the sculpts - not too bad, they manage to keep a lot of character on the cavalry, and the poses look fine from an arms-length away.

There are fewer mounted figures than in the usual horse units, to convey the lighter/thinner aspect of the dragoons compared to the other mounted units while in the saddle. 

The sculpts look best "from the side", as you can see there are some challenging "cuts" (I think that is the right term?) on some of them, especially those carrying the muskets, but overall I still like the look. They get the job done. 

The small flag is meant to represent an Imperialist unit, but I couldn't tell you anything about the flag, and if you told me "well, actually, that is a Protestant unit" I could not prove you wrong :) I mostly just want to ensure I use the ensigns where I can to add some character to the unit. 

Dismounted dragoons, ready to hold some ground...

I like the mix of poses in the group....some firing, others grappling with getting those old-timey muskets loaded and ready to go!

The flexibility inherent in the idea of "mounted infantry" is a tempting thing for gamers...but it never seems to have been a major factor in large battles? I'm so used to the whole "oh, the dragoons are actually just used like other cavalry" thing common in many later horse & musket historical settings that I don't know what I would actually hope to accomplish with the whole mounted infantry aspect of these troops in a pike & shotte engagement...but it would be fun to try!

Light Guns

Light gun battery, ready for action!

These three guns would/could represent a single battery of lighter guns for the 30 Years War period. Again, I am in the process of painting up an Imperialist force, so I suppose these are Imperialist/Catholic guns, but really nothing about them in terms of their colouring marks them as one side or another. 

So much red cloth on that one crew...the officers will need to keep an eye on that lot!

They are ready to open fire on whoever they are told to by those paying them, or promising to pay them!

So that's all for this post...I hope I can regain some discipline/focus both in painting and in posting photos on the blog! I have to say, seeing photos of the chaps all set up does give a little boost of motivation, so I'm hoping that will help a bit as we go through the summer. 

AHPC Submission #11 - Thirty Years War Artillery

Guns ready to tear up Central Europe...plastic figures from Warlord Games' "Epic" range.

My 11th submission to AHPC XV was another historical miniature subject, an assorted battery of Thirty Years War artillery. These are all plastic from Warlord Games' excellent Thirty Years War "Epic" figure range. 

Lighter artillery base - smaller carriage, two crew.

Larger gun - bigger carriage, more crew.

Warlord have two different types of guns & crews in the "Epic" range. The heavier guns are not only larger on the base, but have more crew around them, while the lighter gun is of course a touch slighter, but also has fewer crew on hand to serve it. I opted to use a wide variety of colours on the clothing of the crew and the gun carriages.

Another one of the heavy guns.

Great details on these Warlord "Epic" figures.

I have been working on Imperialist/Catholic forces so far, but when it comes to artillery in the Thirty Years War this branch of the military was still somewhat early in its development/evolution - and this was a setting where mercenaries were commonly employed on all sides. As such, these guns could serve on any side when the time comes on the gaming table, firing in support of Catholic Imperialists or Protestant rebels. 

That's all for this bit - thanks for reading! More to follow shortly. 

Painting Challenge Submission #7 - "Epic" Imperialist 30 YW Cavalry

Imperialist cavalry from Warlord Games' "Epic" Pike & Shotte range.

My second submission for this week returns to my nascent 30 Years War project. This is a regiment of Imperialist Cavalry. The figures are all from Warlord Games "Epic" Pike & Shotte figure range.

Caracole, anyone? Sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon!

Warlord Games has a way of taking a great idea, and only executing on 3/4 of it - but even when they stumble, they often keep pushing through and improving. And I see the Pike & Shotte "Epic" range very much through this lens - of all their various "Epic" efforts, the Pike & Shotte stuff is, IMO, far and away the very best, and the cavalry frames really deliver.

Close up of the command base...

When you get a calvary box, you get three frames that contain multitudes, everything from the "horse" to dragoons (mounted and dismounted), to a few cuirassiers, as well as some commanded shot, an officer/ensign and two different types of artillery! Three frames of that is pretty great, as far as I'm concerned...

Another close up showing various bits of armour, swords, and a couple of awesome pistols!

Cavalry for the 30 Years War period is fascinating. I love the huge honkin' cavalry "pistols" these guys carried, and am intrigued by the idea of these units who ride up, and try to shoot the pike blocks enough to rattle them before charging in. I love the mix of armoured bits, swords, sashes and - of course - pistols galore!

Some jaunty feathers on some of the caps! Although the other chaps have helmets...

The banner is from the handy sheet that comes with the box...it is, supposedly, an Imperialist banner, but...well, I'm just going to go with that, as I still don't know a lot about the flags from this era. 

You can see a few "fusils"/muskets in addition to the pistols - so much shooting!

These guys were a lot of fun to paint, and I hope to add another couple of cavalry units to my budding Imperialist forces before this edition of the AHPC concludes!

Deployed in line, ready to advance!

That's all for submission #7 - stay tuned for more, and please continue to visit the AHPC XV main page to see tremendous work from hobbyists around the world - including many fellow Conscripts!

Painting Challenge Submission #4 - Imperialist Pike & Shotte Regiment for Thirty Years War

Imperialist foot regiment and officer base - figures from Warlord Games' "Epic" range.

My initial submission's to Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XV touched on a familiar theme - GW's "30k" setting. My fourth submission switched gears rather significantly, although the number "30" still makes an appearance...for this post we run the calendar back about thirty-thousand years (give or take) to the early 17th century in Central Europe an the conflagration which would come to be known as the Thirty Years War. This is an Imperialist/Catholic Infantry Regiment comprised of a solid pike block and a pair of supporting musketeer groups, along with a command base. The figures are resin sculpts from Warlord's "Epic" Pike & Shotte figure range.

Weapons leveled, ready to receive the charge!

The Thirty Years War has interested me for a long time, but I never quite titled into it - but I finally succumbed earlier this year. These figures provide, IMO, a satisfying "block" look for the pikemen while still offering many fun details to pick out. I tried to paint these in such a way that they look mostly uniform, but still have variance in different hats/caps/bags etc in order to provide a bit more of a varied look that seems more appropriate for the period.

Another view of the pike block.

A single frame provides the entire foot unit with 80 models all together. 70 of the figures are in strips of 10, and then 10 individual pikemen with their weapons forward to provide a bristly-looking front rank for the pike block. The strips are clever, providing a nice, compact look to the formation. The cavalry/artillery box is great too (stay tuned for more on that), and the collection has been augmented by a few specialist units in plastic-resin. Really the only thing I don't like is the "Epic" brand name...for grognards like me, "Epic" is the 6mm Horus Heresy game from GW, and nothing else :)

View showing some of the rear detail. 

When Warlord released these figures, they also did a re-issue of their "Pike & Shotte" rules which appears to be intended to be specific to this scale, but in fact provides some very useful updates to the rules - changes they just sort of skate across pretty quickly but are actually very important, particularly the idea of the mixed pike/shotte unit just like this one, making it much more clear how units like this would act/perform on the tabletop - an oversight, IMO, in Warlord's original "Pike & Shotte" rules. 

Musketeers ready to support the pike...I tried to mix up some of the hat colours. The fellow in the red hat is probably some kind of dangerous independent thinker...

This project is definitely a "slow burn" one for me - and with the advent of "Never Mind The Matchlocks", I might just try out 28mm for kicks - but I'm hoping to get a good start on a decent Imperialist/Catholic force during this edition of the Challenge, while saving the hopeless Protestants for Challenge XVI. My ambitions are modest here - looking more to run smaller games featuring rear-guard actions and other such encounters, as opposed to hoping to run White Mountain or anything like that. I figure a few blocks like these on each side, along with some cavalry and supporting guns will do the trick. 

Rear detail of the musketeer figures.

I also still have a lot to learn about this period - for all I know, I put the wrong flags on? These seemed like Bavarian Catholic League flags...I think...but whatever. We have chaps with pikes, and other chaps with muskets...let's go!

Mounted officer & Imperial ensign. 

Lovely little details on these figures.

That's all for the fourth submission! Thanks for reading, and as usual, be sure to check out everyone's excellent work over at the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge page!

30 Years War - "Epic" Pike & Shotte from Warlord Games

Imperialist infantry for the 30 Years War - figures from Warlord Games' "Epic" range.

So, something a bit different to share here in this post. This is an Imperialist infantry unit - a block of pikemen and two "sleeves" of musketeers - from the 30 Years War. These are plastic figures from Warlord Games' "Epic" range, which clock in scale-wise at somewhere between 10-12mm and 15mm.

A "sleeve" of musketeers.

I have been curious about "Pike & Shotte" gaming for a long time. It is a periods/settings which has lurked in the back of my hobby mind ever since I watched the film "The Last Valley" (a viewing which was, in turn, inspired by an awesome foreign-language version of a poster for that film which held pride of place in his gaming room back on Fawcett Avenue in Winnipeg so many years ago...). 

Close-up of the other "sleeve".

Rear detail on the musketeers.

Of course, the hobby mind is warp-addled location of insane aetherial clutter! Even though my hobby desks are littered with new projects which escape from that dangerous world, the more terrifying fact is that the ratio of notions-to-actual-hobby-attempts is quite skewed, and the majority of my hobby notions never get started, owing to the conflicts of time/work/life and the desire to work on the (many) projects which have already started...the 30 Years War was thus an object of hobby interest, but never quite launched...so what changed?

Rear detail of the pikemen...some are wearing armour, others just cloth.

Well, Warlord Games' "Epic" range for this setting sort of took it to the next level. This seemed like an ideal size/scale for this setting, and I liked how the figures looked, bunched up in ranks. And so the 30 Years War idea wriggled a bit more free in my mind, entering the dangerous phase known as "the test figure/unit". I picked up one box of the infantry and one box of the cavalry, and decided the infantry would be the first thing to try - after all, if I can't get the pikes done, then I probably won't get much "Pike & Shotte" done, right? 

Basically a single frame of infantry gives you pretty much what you see here - two bases of pike-armed troops (including some lovely sculpts of figures with the pikes slightly lowered) to act as a central pike block and two bases of musketeers to serve as the "sleeves" for the block, thus creating the iconic gaming look I associate with the setting. 

39 pikemen...turns out I messed up on my basing, and I could not squeeze in the 10th guy in the front rank...oh well, a lesson for next time!

These were painted as a block of Imperialist infantry - or at least, they are supposed to be! While I have tried to "study up" on the hobby aspects of this setting, I still have much to learn, and I expect I likely either messed up or totally missed certain details. Peering closely at the box only takes one so far, especially as my eyes get older! But, in masse, I really like how this first experiment turned out. The level of detail on these plastic strips is actually pretty impressive, and I enjoyed working on them. Even if I made mistakes...well, something to work out for next time!

One other take-away from these exercise is that I really need to figure out/up my game when it comes to ground work...my usual system did not hold up well, and I hope to compensate with some grass tufts etc at a later point. 

This was a fun summer experiment. I hope to return to this in the fall...watch this space for more experiments with this new setting!