2mm Scenics

 I bought a few terrain items to go with my original batch of 2mm WSS stuff some years ago.

A small town, three villages, two farms and a chateau complex. All Irregular, tbh these are all a bit on the small side, more like 1/2000th than 1/1000th. I've never been hugely happy with them, not because they are small but because they just blend into a sort of blob with the bases. If you look really carefully, I have painted the houses and roofs different colours etc, they just aren't differentiated enough from any sort of distance.

So, when I was getting my latest 2mm increment, I wanted to get a few more scenic items and also brighten up the the existing ones. I got some more buildings from Irregular as I was ordering from them anyway, and here are the slightly more extensive holdings.

Here are the original three villages and two farms. I left the roofs alone but brightened up the walls with white, cream, light grey and a useful pale grey I picked at Partisan. Think whitewash, sandstone and limestone rather than glowering granite! I also highlighted the walls in much lighter colours which makes them stand out a bit more.

Much the same treatment on the town. I re-did some of the roofs in lighter colours too which helps a lot. The larger church is in a lighter grey which contrasts well with its slate grey roof.

The chateau/large house got a complete makeover with white walls, which makes it really pop. I also went over the various trees and shrubs in a lighter green highlight.

Two of the new farms, done in pale colours from the outset. Perhaps a bit of a La Haye Sainte vibe going on? The big difference between these and the older ones is that I didn't flock the inside of the enclosures, instead I did them a mid mud tone and the difference in textures contrasts much better with the flock outside the farm walls.

I was very impressed with the 6mm Irregular tents so I got some of their 2mm tent strips. These are great for military encampments of any era, and these particular ones come cast in strips of four. As the bases are quite thin I based them up on the same sized bases as my troops.

My last indulgence was this 'eighteenth century fort'. I'd completely forgotten I'd ordered it and was hunting for one of the Brigade models star forts at Partisan, so I'm glad they weren't in attendance.

I think poor old Vauban would be turning in his grave at this monstrosity, about 30% of the walls are not covered by flanking fire from artillery bastions and it apparently has the need of no less than three doorways! Despite that, it clearly looks like a fort and will do as a scenic item in a corner of the table for sieges or whatever.

I did the walls in a pale cream, similar in colour to the beautifully preserved Vauban forts around St Martin de Re on the Ile de Re off the southern coast of Brittany where we spent many happy summers camping when the kids were little.

Otherwise it was briskly military, white walled internal buildings with (fire resistant) slate roofs and a mud coloured courtyard. I flocked the scarps (correct term? external walls anyway) and I think it has come out OK. A bit of a learning curve with this very small scale stuff, like the figures you need to exaggerate the details and go with lighter colours than normal.

These are all useful additions to my range of ultra small scale scenics and expect some to appear in a battle reports soon! They aren't quite finished yet as I need to edge the bases and add some doors and windows with a lining pen, but I was keen to get them photographed.

2mm Prussians and extra bits

 Along with the Swedes and Russians, I also got some 2mm Prussians and some extra bits to supplement what I already have. Partly with an eye to doing some more Dominion scenarios I currently haven't got the right kit for, and partly some longer term flexibility.

Quite a bit more stuff in this batch than the Russians and Swedes!

Prussian infantry, like the Swedes and Russians, in 7YW uniforms. These are 2 rank deep strips, and due to the vagaries of the pack size, I ended up with nine bases although I prefer even numbers. Two strips per base, and basic uniforms are dark blue jackets and white trousers, although the two Guards units have ochre trousers.

As with the others, I did the faces and hats, which make a surprising difference.

National colour strip for these is dark blue. As with the Russians, the flags are an utter nightmare, every unit is different. The two Guards regiments have the right flags, the others are just random base colours and contrasts. Using the Posca paint pens for the contrast worked OK, and as before, I did the Royal coats of arms with micron liner pens.

Just like the others, two bases of Heavy Cavalry and two of Lights. The heavies are all done as cuirassiers in buff uniforms with breastplates (a very useful addition along with the Russian cuirassiers) and the lights in jaunty Hussar style uniforms. They also have my standard range of horse colours denoting heaviness.

First lot of extras are four more of the excellent 'Tercio' bases, a single piece casting of a central pike block and sleeves of shot. I've got a couple of these already, but they are perfect for Spanish and Imperial seventeenth century infantry formations. Some of the Dominion scenarios require more Tercios than I currently have.

The figures were drybrushed a random variety of colours, tending towards the earthy. There are a couple of officers cast in the front rank so I did them in a contrast. The pikes were drybrushed wood and given and ink wash then I picked out the tips. there are also a pair of large standards on the front of the pikes. 

I didn't do contrasting trousers but I did paint the forward facing faces and all the hats. I love these castings, they are just great.

I have four bases of 'skirmishers' already, and I find generic skirmisher bases very, very useful to denote all kinds of things about units. These are eight extra bases of skirmishers, each with two of the 2mm skirmisher strips. I think my other ones must be 'dismounted dragoon' strips as these figures are clearly cast in a range of kneeling positions and it is very hard indeed to tell which way they are facing.

I did six of the bases in dark green (a popular colour for jagers in the eighteenth century) and two in dark blue (Chasseurs maybe?) and put faces on them to make it easier to tell their direction. All my generic strips have a plain white rear edge too.

I had a few spare cavalry strips lying around, so I made up four bases of skirmishing cavalry, or at least in extended order. These could be used for anything a bit out of the ordinary, Cossacks? Mounted arequebusiers? Anyway, they don't look like the more regular cavalry in two ranks so I'm sure they will be handy.

I did them in a range of uniform and horse colours. Don't look too closely but a couple of the horse strips don't have any riders, presumably from dragoons or something. In 2mm it really is very hard to tell.

Three bases of wagons. I already have bases of covered wagons and pontoon trains, but these are open backed so a bit of a contrast and you can never have too much transport!

And finally three command bases. Again I already have various command bases, but if you look really carefully you will see the officers are in Prussian, Swedish and Russian uniforms. Yes, I did these at the same time as the three armies but forgot to take pictures of them at the time. Well here they are now. 

And that is it for the new figures. Although they aren't painted as well as my old stuff, they will do and I'm pleased with them. 2mm is very much about impression rather than microscopic accuracy and I expect they will spend most of their time standing in for other stuff in any case. 

I got some more 2mm scenics as well, but I'll cover those in a sperate post.

2mm Swedes and Russians

 After having many Pike & Shot and Horse & Musket games of Dominion, I was inspired to expand my 2mm collection a bit. Although tbh when they are on the table the 'figures' are largely interchangeable as they are so small, it is nice to know you at last have some of the correct troops with the right flags, uniforms etc.

This was also my first order to Irregular since the 2mm/6mm business was hived off, and I was pleasantly surprised that the order was fulfilled quickly and with nothing missing. I've got plenty of figures with pikes, so I wanted to get some more of the line musket infantry types more suitable for the seventeenth century.

First up some smallish contingents of Swedes and Russians. I didn't get masses of them as I can always make the numbers up from other base types.

The casting were pretty decent, some of the them had the familiar Irregular heavy flash on the base underside but most were pretty clean. Perhaps 20% (?) of the strips had significant flash lines on the upperside too, so possibly just one duff mould section. They are easy enough to clean up on this scale, although you have to be careful not to accidentally file off the flags.

For 2mm I usually put them on their final bases before undercoating them, it makes them much easier to handle. I undercoated them matt black them misted them with white to raise the highlights.

First up eight bases of Swedish musket infantry. Each base has two of the three rank deep strips with flags. My 2mm Horse and Musket stuff is mainly painted up for the WSS, but as Sweden didn't take part, I did them for the 7YW. They have mid blue jackets and yellow trousers, and I added faces and hats, which really makes a difference. Doing the faces is a sort of mixture of dabbing and drybrushing, but it  is well worth the effort. If you do paint the faces though, you have to do the headgear as the flesh paint goes everywhere, but a simple black drybrush (carefully) does the trick. When I was younger with better eyesight I even painted the muskets, bayonets and hands, but that is beyond me now.

I did each base with one regimental flag (essentially white with the royal coat of arms in the middle and a tiny dot for the regimental distinction) and one national flag - the Swedish blue flag with a yellow cross. In a sign of ageing I really struggled with the flags and they were a right dogs dinner. In the end my micron lining pens and Posca paint pens came to the rescue, and I ended up doing the colour detail bits with the paint pens and edging them with micron liner pen.

Back when I started with 2mm I was able to hand paint union flags on the British infantry stands, but sadly no more.

It is a bit hard to see but I put the national colours on the rear base edge. It helps with troop identification and to keep them pointing the right way! Yellow was already taken for Imperial troops and Blue for Prussia so I did the Swedes half yellow and half blue.

They are flocked which I think looks much better than painted bases. Woodland Scenics Blended Turf which is quite fine. 

I also did four cavalry bases, two heavy and two light, each being a pair of the eight figure close order strips or six figure open order strips.

For the SYW Swedish heavy cavalry uniforms were pretty boring, just blue and yellow, but they had at least one Regiment of Hussars in black, so I did one of the light cavalry bases in black uniforms and the other light blue.

The horses are a range of shades of brown, light shades for the light cavalry, one unit of heavies even has a whole rank of black horses. Looking back at my old figures, I have even painted some white socks, noses etc on some of the horses so I might go back and redo that.

The cavalry guidons I just did in red and blue for the heavies and yellow and green for the lights. No idea if that is right, and I have a strong suspicion those colours were inspired by the horse colours in 'Totopoly'!

Ten bases of Russian infantry, more than the Swedes as there are a lot of Russians. Two of them are Guards. I had vague ideas about using some of these guys for Napoleonics, but no chance with these. Although they have green jackets, they also have bright red trousers, very un-Napoleonic! No real problem as I have tons of 6mm Napoleonics. I later found out that the red trousers were a short lived innovation of Catherine the Great which was rapidly reversed. Oh well, I can't be bothered to repaint them now.

Much the same process as the Swedes, but different colours this time. Quite a bright green on the jackets so they stand out. With their red trousers these guys could be ACW Zouaves! These troops are also three rank blocks.

I used the jacket green for the national colour on the bases (again, hard to see, sorry). The flags were a nightmare though, every single Regiment was different and there isn't even any consistency as to whether they have vertical or diagonal crosses. I went with a similar scheme to the Swedes with one regimental and one 'national' flag per base, which sort of repeat the contrast colours across them.

For these flags I just block painted the base colour and then dabbed on the contrasts with paint pens. The two Guards Regiments have the right flag colours, but the others are a bit of a random collection of colours which look nice together. I drew the Imperial eagle symbols with a micron pen, and en masse they don't look too bad. 

Similar to the Swedish cavalry, two bases  of heavies and two of lights. A lot of the heavies in this period seem to be cuirassiers in buff uniforms with breastplates, so I did them buff and dabbed on gunmetal for the breastplates. I need more cuirassiers for some of the Dominion scenarios, so these will do nicely.

Russian hussars in this period were very jazzy however, so I did a Regiment of 'yellows' (Hungarian I think) and one of 'reds' (Moldovan?). They do look pretty smart and pop more than the boring Swedes.

Like the Swedes the heavies got a higher proportion of dark brown and black horses with red and blue guidons, the lights had lighter browns and red and yellow guidons.

Pretty pleased with those although volume-wise they are about the same size as my Bavarian and Dutch 'armies' for the WSS. I do the bases in pairs as I still have in my head basing for Twilight of the Sun King. Two bases per brigade means you can do line formation, supported line, square and march column just by aligning the two bases differently, and having two strips per bases means each strip represents roughly a battalion or cavalry regiment.

I do have a slight hankering to do 'big base' 2mm with lots of strips on a base representing a large brigade or a division, but the smaller strips are so much more flexible, if a bit fiddly without a sabot base. I put magnetic strip on all of them so I can use my steel covered sabot bases.

6mm Napoleonic British

 Another finished Napoleonic 6mm 'pocket army', this time the British. All freshly re-based, again (fourth time for these boys iirc). The British are that salutory lesson in always buying both sides. Back in the 1970s when I started with 6mm Napoleonics, I bought all the French, and my wargaming pal David, bought all the British. The inevitable happened and I was left with a French army with no opponents. I still had both sides in 20mm so it wasn't a problem for a while,  but at some point the 20mm figures disappeared (I can't for the life of me recollect what happened to them, as I still had them in 1987). Anyway, at some point I had to buy some 6mm British so the French had someone to fight.

Here they are in their bit of the box, plus some guns and leaders from the other box.

The British set originally had three artillery pieces and limbers. They are all from one of the Irregular Army Packs I bought from 'Gamers in Exile' back in the mid 1980s. As ever, if I need more guns I'll just grab them from another army, in 6mm I really can't tell the difference. I'll use the limbers if I need to indicate horse artillery units.

As with the French artillery, all the guns, gunners and horse teams were tarted up to a greater or lesser extent, in particular new brass gun barrels, complete overhaul of the horses and horse furniture etc and adding epaulettes etc to the gunners where appropriate. Their hands, faces and hats needed re-doing as well.

These are the only two explicitly 'British' leader stands I have, the other more generic ones in dark blue get added in as needed. The one on the right is Nosey. The original pack included five of these stands I think. Like the other leaders these were tarted up a bit, particular the bling like bicorne edging, saddle cloths etc. as well as hands and faces.

British cavalry. Just six stands in total, all that was in the original pack I think. As ever I can supplement these with other cavalry, as they are just blokes on horses in gaudy uniforms.

These were originally painted as heavies, and the riders just needed bit of touching up. I redid all the horses up to 21st century standards with manes, tails, socks etc and a brown wash.

Some of the infantry. I couldn't be bothered to get them all out of the box. For the last iteration of HFG I'd based these two ranks of six, and they were moulded that way on the Irregular strips. Back in the dim and distant past however, I'd carefully cut them into strips of four with my razor saw for WRG, and it was easy enough to pry them apart again and do them in two ranks of four.

I've done similar permutations of basing as the French. This lot have the rear rank in close order, and the front rank a bit more spread out to represent (some) skirmishing. Yes, the Union flags are all hand painted. I used to have good eyesight and a steady hand.

These guys didn't need much tlc as they had been renovated for the last iteration of HFG basing. I touched up their weapons, shakos and hands and faces and also added the pack straps using the same micro dot method as the French, and that really makes them pop. I also added their water bottles, which were unaccountably missing from the originals, another nice splash of colour.

The other major basing permutation was both ranks in close order, in which case the command stand was in the front rank. I've got a couple of spare command bases too so I can do various combinations of base type as a way of modelling troop quality or whatever.

They've only got four stands of riflemen, but tbh that is all I'll need and I already have a load of other riflemen in dark green in the Prussian and Russian armies, so if I ever need more (say for some of the CnC Napoleonics scenarios), I can just use them as a supplement.

The original figures were pretty awful in a pale green, so I repainted them completely, but after all that, they ended up looking much like their Prussian and Russian counterparts. 

So, that is the British 'pocket army'. The figures have seen much action in various guises over the decades including at least two Waterloo refights, lets hope they have some more fight in them in future.

Rebasing step 1 complete.

 Before I went away I made some progress on my 6mm Napoleonics. For the first step I decided to focus on getting the Napoleonic figures back into useable elements without worrying too much about their rather ancient paint schemes! 

This was essentially the tedious job of prising them off the existing bases, reorganising them into sensible units and then sticking on their new bases. This process would also show up some gaps which needed to be filled, but fortunately I still have a moderate sized box half filled with even more  ancient Napoleonic figures of various types (including an embarassingly large number of Polish Lancers and Imperial Guard Grenadiers!)

After a few days, I ended up with the British, French and Prussian infantry and cavalry. Everyone is one 30mm x 20mm bases, so the same size as my recent ACW stuff and the on the same frontage as all my nineteenth century stuff - which means I can use my 1860s Austrians, Italians and Bavarians as supplementary units. In 6mm the uniforms look virtually identical to their Napoleonic counterparts, as do the flags.

I was slightly tempted to go with 25mm x 25mm but in the end decided against it. The main thing was getting the infantry in two ranks, which gives a lot more flexibility in terms of representing different types of elements - some of them had skirmishers as the first rank, some were just close order infantry, and the command elements also occupied various positions.

The other box has all the Russian infantry and cavalry, plus everyone's guns, leaders and wagons, limbers etc. In total there are 248 individual elements with around 1,400 figures and 25 guns. It isn't a huge collection by any standards, but adding in the useable nineteenth century figures adds considerably to that. I'm also fairly liberal in terms of swapping cavalry around, one bloke on a horse being much the same as another in 6mm, and there are 54 elements just of Napoleonic cavalry, plus a load more in the nineteenth century box (who again, are wearing uniforms virtually unchanged, especially the Hussars and Cuirassiers).

In the main I've gone with notional units of 3-4 infantry elements or 3-4 cavalry elements, but I tend to mix elements up for higher level games where formation strengths are so varied. A typical infantry 'unit' has four bases each of eight figures in two ranks, one of which is a command base with officers, drummers, flags etc. The cavalry elements have four figures on, purely for convenience as that is the standard Irregular 6mm cavalry element size.

The elements are deliberately set up so there are gaps at each end - contemporary sketches show that units always had gaps between them, not a wall-wall line of troops shoulder to shoulder so beloved of wargamers. 

Next job is to review the paint jobs on the figures. Many of these haven't been touched for 40 years, I've learned a few tricks since then and we have access to much better uniform sources now.

Re-basing the 6mm Napoleonics

 Ah, re-basing don't you love it. I'm hoping this will be the very final iteration for my 6mm Napoleonic stuff. I've been somewhat inspired to do it by the various ACW games we've played recently, as I've realised that a cunning rules-agnostic basing system will always be best. I also wanted to do some modelling/painting as I haven't picked up a brush in ages as I've spent the last few months playing Fallout 4 (again) instead.

Here are some of them in one of the boxes. Some British on the right, various French on the left. I've already re-mounted several leader stands onto pennies and cut down the artillery. This lot are currently based for the second version of Horse, Foot and Guns with various 'brigade' sized elements with typically 12 x foot or 6 x horse on them. 

The British figures are mainly Irregular, from one of the Division packs they did back in the mid 1980s, although there are some newer additions. They were originally based for WRG, and then HFG version 1 from the late 90s, so this is their fourth re-basing. They generally have two ranks of six infantry on each base.

The French are much older and are my original H&R figures from the mid 1970s. They were also originally based for WRG, but prior to that they were based for a long forgotten 6mm set which used  individually based figures(!) on 10mm bases. This will be their fifth re-basing. The infantry are arranged in little columns of twelve figures in three ranks - a few voltigeurs, then the line companies and a couple of grenadier figures on each ie my original WRG battalions all glued together in a big mass!

Some of the French stuff. The HFG artillery bases are huge, but I've kept the 30mm frontage so in most cases all I had to do was (carefully) cut the bases down after prising off the integral limbers. In the foreground are some Lancers based in sixes, also on huge 30mm deep bases. These  started life as Polish Lancers, but I repainted or at least tidied up, a lot of the figures when I rebased everything for HFG 2 back in the noughties.

Some Prussians. These are also Irregular,  but unlike the British they are based in columns like the French (three ranks of four). The Line units usually have some Fusiliers or Jaegers in front, while the Landwehr are just in massed columns.

The general plan is to thin them out a bit as the figures are really crammed into the HFG bases. Phil Barker was always a big optimistic about figure counts and base sizes. I'm looking at something similar to the ACW basing with eight infantry per base or four close order cavalry. I like using two ranks as it gives much more flexibility about how the figures are arranged, which can be used to give visual clues as to what unit type and quality they are. 

The general process for some cavalry. They are currently based sixes, so lever them off the old bases with a sharp craft knife - some are still stuck down with two part epoxy, so it can make it a bit challenging to get them off.

Then rearrange them neatly on their new 30x20 bases in groups of four. The Irregular stuff is cast in fours, but I had to cut quite a few of those bases up for the individual figure removal required by WRG, and the H&R figures are all individual but if you are lucky they come off the old bases in groups. These chaps look like French cuirassiers.

I'm aiming for generic infantry and cavalry 'units' of four bases each (ie Neil Thomas style), but with some extras to mix and match, and obviously the bases can be used as individual elements in their own right or mounted in appropriate groups on my ever increasing collection of sabot bases. The units can be anything from Battalions to Corps, depending what I'm doing, but I'm a big battle sort of guy so they will more commonly be on the bigger end of things. 

It is going to take me quite a while do the whole lot, and I'll re-paint some of them as I go along, so I'll post updates as they occur. I nice Autumn/Winter project.

6mm Boats

 I fair few of my games seem to feature rivers of various shapes and sizes, so along with the tents I bought a few boats as I thought they might be useful. 

Irregular do a selection of boats in their 6mm accessories range. tbh I'm not sure why I didn't get some years ago. I got two packs as they have slightly eccentric contents.

First up are this delightful pair of rafts. Ideal for cable ferries, or improvised Soviet river crossing equipment in WW2. Yes, the bases are blue, because everyone knows water is blue (my river sections certainly are). 

Some bigger wooden boats with rounded sterns. I seem to have got an extra one for free in the pack, which is very generous. These are nice deep mouldings and packed with character.

A pair of smaller boats with flat sterns. I did all the boats in a range of browns with an ink wash and a drybrush to finish.

The packs also include these upturned boats. I guess they are meant to be terrain items on the shoreline

 although I suppose you could use them as upturned boats in the water to show some sort of nautical disaster. Might be useful for marking river crossing points or something.

Here is a little flotilla sailing up one of my Hexon rivers.

And a busy river crossing scene, with some boats drawn up on the banks. 

Like the tents, they were  nice and cheap and I'm sure they will be very useful in a range of periods. I wish I'd had them for the Nijmegen Crossing game. The only reservation is that maybe they are a bit big for some of my terrain setups and perhaps I should have looked at 2mm boats instead. I could probably do with some modern assault boats and landing craft too. Oh well, that is a project for another day. In the meantime I've got a couple of ideas for these boats already.

6mm Tents

 While playing around with my Baccus ACW armies and various scenarios I realised that some tents would be useful as both scenery and status markers. My 6mm Napoleonics have a few tents which I made out of paper, but I wanted something more substantial and which I could use for a range of periods and scales. 

I did a bit of research and Irregular Miniatures seemed to be the best bet, doing a range of tents in different sizes in a mixed pack in their 6mm accessories range. I got two packs which yielded a dozen  tents, which I'm sure will be plenty.

First up are these two big tents, which will be useful for Army HQs and suchlike. I undercoated them all in mid grey then did these in VJ Iraqi Sand with a light drybrush of pure white. I think offwhite looks more like weathered canvas.

Then there are are half a dozen mid sized tents. These are a pair of ridge pole tents, also done in cream.

And a couple with what look like external ridge poles. 

I decided to base them as the tents are all slightly different sizes, but putting them on the same size bases equalised them to a certain extent. In retrospect, I should have probably done the bases in earth brown flock to make them more generic, but the blended turf is OK. I edged them in brown which breaks it up a bit.

These two sag in the middle so obviously don't have ridge poles. I did these in Dried Earth with a white drybrush, but they ended up looking much like the Sand ones.

There were also some much smaller pup type tents which I based in pairs on the same size bases as the larger tents. I did these in Dried Earth too. Being smaller, they will do for my 2mm stuff as well.

The bases mean they all line up quite nicely into tent lines, should I wish to do such a thing. Ideal for parades! 

The only outliers are a pair of what I think are supposed to be Bell Tents, but tbh they look more like yurts to me. I painted them up anyway and based them on pennies, I'm sure they will be useful for something.

I'm pretty pleased with those. They were inexpensive and painted up well, and are a useful addition to my ever growing selection of 6mm terrain bits. I've got a couple of scenarios in mind already which will make use of them.