Birthday and Rules Sale

Since it's my Birthday, and a significant Birthday at that, I've put the To the Strongest! and For King and Parlaiment rules on my traditional Simon's Birthday sale, whilst I settle down, with a war film and a cuppa, to address at least some of my epic basing backlog (currently I have several hundred minis and around 30 elephants part-based).

I had hoped to run a huge Birthday game to celebrate, but clearly that's not going to happen before the spring, at earliest. But I will, at the earliest (safe-ish) opportunity next year, declare an "official" birthday and get a load of lead on a table. This might be at Salute or a local venue, we'll see how things are looking after Christmas!

Italian knights take #2

  

I've discovered (courtesy of some research, confirmed by asking Simon Chick) that all my Italian knights are on the wrong hosses, at least the wrong hosses for the late c. 15th. Apparently the pesky Italians almost invariably rode leather-armoured hosses, not at all like the metal ones that my current Italians ride. Also the pesky riders wore a distinctive sort of tabard called a giornea; who knew?

Essentially, I find that I need to convert 80 or so knights to form an entirely new army, and convert the existing 50 or so knights to become a different army of an early c. 16th nature. Such is the hard life of a mildly OCD gamer.

The upside is that the leather horse armour was richly decorated with heraldry and I can give them great big plumes. Simply ginormous plumes, in fact, from Mirliton in Italy. Onwards and upwards!

Dungeon Level, explored

 

...since there was so much interest in the hatch, I thought I'd post some images of the new dungeon level at the BigRedBatCave. Above is the larger end of the space, with the old, damp, clinker floor removed. This will, shortly, be covered with a concrete slab.

Here's the area under the hallway, before painting. 

...and after, now coated with a damp-resistant slurry, in a dungeon-friendly battleship grey. I may add some manacles.

Next step is for the concrete slab to go in. In the coming weeks, I plan to get the pipework tucked away and put in some ventilation.

New Dungeon Level for the BigRedBatCave

 

During lock-down, it dawned on me that I have, at last, completely run out of figure storage space, with every corner of the house currently packed with miniatures. Nil desperandum, dear viewer! I've decided to extend the BigRedBatCave by excavating a new "dungeon level". The first step is to install a trap door, which you can see marked out, above.

Above you can see the initial hole cut, exposing the beam, and below the reinforced hatch.

Finally, below, is the finished hatch from above- I just need to remove the labels I used to mark it out.

In a later post, I'll show some photos taken within the new dungeon level, itself, which is currently being excavated by a crack team of dwarven miners.

New Medieval Army list eBook released

I've just released all of the TtS! Medieval army lists in a new, free PDF eBook, instead of the previous six separate Excel booklets. The format is much more user friendly than before, with hyperlinks from a contents page that you can use to whizz around them. The Medieval lists are now in green, to distinguish them from their purple Ancient peers. I also took the opportunity to edit the style of the lists and buff the spelling and grammar. I think you will like them! 

You can download them, for free, from here. 

You might also like to download the equivalent Ancient list eBook, if you didn't, last month, and the index which has of all the lists in chronological and alphabetical order. Enjoy!

Mild wargamer OCD

 

Here my mild wargamer OCD is demonstrated by the fact I am collecting armies for both 1672 and 1685+, despite the fact that the differences in uniform are pretty trivial. I suppose I'm also driven, in part, by the somewhat different sculpting styles between North Star and Front Rank ranges which I both like, in their different ways.

I've picked up around 800 painted minis so far. The plan is to form large battalia of c.40 minis, similar to my ECW battalia, but with a slightly different configuration. Also many will need grenadier companies and sometimes battalion guns. I'm planning to look at the 1672 fighting between the French and the Dutch, Sedgemoor in 1685 and possibly the Boyne in 1690. I'll need to write some rules, too.

More knights and coustilliers

 

I'm in the process of adding rear ranks to my six units of Italian knights, bringing each unit to 18 strong, and adding a seventh unit. I need a total of 63 coustilliers for this- I'm now around 2/3 of the way there. Above are 15 painted by Shaun McTague and finished by me, and another 8 that I almost completely repainted from an eBay purchase. I'm just about to start another bunch, this time armed with crossbows. I love the Perry miniatures- such great models! The picture is clickable.