Painting 1:4800 ships

First experiment at 1:4800 napoleonic ships from Tumbling Dice. I bought them 2 years ago at Colors in Newbury and then forgot to have them.

 These are all 1st Class ships from the "Trafalgar Pack" and (as I did for the 1:2400) I painted them with yellow, red and pale sand sides. Even if they are quite small, there is some detail helping you in paiting them.

Next batch will be a dozen 74 guns. In my mind this scale could be OK for playing fleet actions (i.e. big naval battles) with my new rules.

What's going on

In the last couple of weeks, I've been busy playtesting both games I'd like to release in september: Steel Juggernauts and Drums & Shakos Large Battles.
Both are in their very final stage so..... let's keep fingers crossed for a future release.

For what concerns painting, I finished my box of plastic 28mm Prussian Landwehr and completed (finally!) both my mounted and dismounted Perry Dragoons.
I'm having troubles painting smaller scales: my eyes get tired very soon, and painting in the evening (what I usually do) is almost impossible. Therefore, my tons of 15mm will remain unpainted - for the moment.

My call answered (1)

Answering to my call, Stefano sent some pictures of his British Squads (all Perry 28mm., metal and plastic).
On the left, a Rifle Squad (Officer, 4 Rifles, 2 Chosen Men).
I see Stefano uses 25mm round bases for his miniatures.





Here is a Highlander Squad (42nd), made of
Officer, 5 Highlanders and 2 Veterans (OK one is a musician with a bagpipe...)



And finally, the 52nd Oxfordshire: an Officer, NCO, 4 Veterans (the group on the left) and 5 Line Infantrymen.

Stefano took some bold decision with these squads: always playing without a Flag means that every morale check can be particularly dangerous, and the absence of a drummer means that he hasn't any re-roll when activating Groups. More firepower, no doubt, but I would have been more cautious... :)
Anyway, well done mate!

Never without Cavalry...

To complete Roberto's Bavarian squad, here are his 2 ChevauLegere (28mm Front Rank) painted with his usual style. Once again, I am surprised about how he manages to paint his soldiers' faces, giving them an expression which is out of my painting possibilities.... Again, my congratiulations!

Roberto's new Bavarians (with pics)

Roberto was so kind to send me the pics of some of his Front Rank Bavarians.


Here is the full squad, the bold Officer and a couple of Schuetzen with their Rifles.
A close-up on the drummer and 2 Light Infantrymen complete this gallery.
Again - thanks to Roberto for sharing...

The Old Guard is here!

The second Squad sent by Marco is his French Old Guard.
It is a super-Elite squad with the addition of a Dragoon (just 5 models!).
Here it is....
It is composed by an NCO, 3 Guardsmen and a Dragoon , for total cost of 401 points. Marco chose not to deploy an Officer (legal) counting on the Q2 of the Old Grognards....

Voilà the 3 Old Guard: Q2 C4 Musket, Fear

3 tanks on the battlefield (for 93 points each).

The NCO follows...




And finally the Dragoon, a mounted guest in this squad.
Good job Marco, and thank you for sharing!

Roberto's new Bavarians

Roberto from La Spezia published his Bavarian squad on the WASP (Wargame Spezia) website.
It's a really excellent job (faces details are astonishing!). Hope we'll see this squad fighting very soon (maybe in Arezzo Tournament on may 9th??).

Grazie Roberto

http://www.wargamespezia.org/le-armate-del-wasp-the-armies-of-wasp/song-drums-and-shako/roberto/

A French squad from Marco

Marco sent some pictures of a couple of his french squads. I'm very happy to post the first one of them here.

Here we go: a mixed Garde National + Cavalry + Line Infantry, with Officer, Drummer and Standard Bearer.

The full Squad...


The Command Group: Marco uses 2cm. square bases for his squads, with an excellent flocking on them (I always envy him for the way his grass stands upright, while mine goes down helplessly...).





And the 6 National Guards (I guess they are Perry plastics) that Marco uses as a "cannon fodder". 2 of these guys cost less than a "normal" infantryman, but they still have a musket!

A brief Gallery

As promised, here are some pics from the "latest" releases of my working bench (some of them are not yet finished, but this morning the sun was shining so brightly I could not resist..).
Let's start with some cavalry: 2 French Hussars (3rd reg.), an elite Dragoon and an elite Chasseur.
(OK, I have to flock the bases...)

Cuirassiers and Carabiniers (Perry plastic)... a bit overexposed I think.










My new ITALIAN squad (2nd Line rgt., Front Rank miniatures) with 1 Light Infantryman in the front line.... and my British Marines (Steve Barber Models), soon to be joined by some ship's crew for a landing.

My new Russian squad

Here it is. I had to post these pics earlier, but it was a really busy week....
All figures are from Mirliton: it's a "slim" range but I enjoyed painting the miniatures.
Next in line is my first Italian squad, I hope to paint it during the week end.


An Officer, an NCO, 2 Cuirassiers, a Standard bearer, a Drummer, 2 Pavlov Grenadiers and 8 line infantrymen, with 2 scratch-built buildings.

Busy week end

I've spent the week-end with my group of friend playtesting the Tournament Rules and painting my new Russian Squad (Mirliton) and 4 french Carabiniers (Perry plastic).
Friday night we made a small 2 rounds tournament (6 people) and the rules seem to be OK. I had to watch carefully if the 1 hour round was too short to come to a definite result, and it did even if a couple of gamers were not familiar with the rules.
When an unclear situation occur, I take note and update the "Clarifications" page of the Tournament Rules so that we should cover most situations during competitive play.
I wrote the rules in Italian, as the first Tourneys will take place here, but as soon as we'll have them tested in a real life environment, I'll translate them in english and they will be availbale as a free download somewhere. More about this soon, and also some pics of my new (painted) figures!

Tyrolean squad

Here they are! I am quite satisfied of the result for these first 13 figures. I decided to paint the Command (Leader, Sub-Commander, Standard bearer and drummer) and 9 more rebels in different poses.
The "historical" figures (Andreas Hofer, father Joachim Haspinger and Josef Speckbacher) are painted according to contemporary prints. All miniatures are from Eureka (great job Nic!) and are part of a set of 46 including also some dead and wounded and a cannon with its crew. For the next step I'll paint some 10 more, all armed with pitchforks, axes and scythes and a couple of women with musket. The flag is also taken from pictures I found on the net and is scratch built with paper and painted. As soon as the other ones are ready we'll play a scenario against the Bavarians and I'll post the battle report here.



A zoom on the command group (from left to right: drummer, Speckbacher, standard bearer, Hofer and Haspinger). Father Haspinger is the character who inspired me for the special rule "Fervour" which is in More Drums & Shakos - in release next week.
I think that the miniature of Speckbacher has been modeled according to his statue in Halle, Tyrol.
These pictures have also been published in the Song of Blades Yahoo Group.
Cheers