Last three regiments of 15mm ECW Royalist Foot

With only three regiments of foot out of the total of eight Royalist foot left to go, I decided to tackle them in one hit so I can clear the decks and make a start on the Parliamentarian foot. The last three regiments are Stradling's, the Duke of York's and Hopton's regiments of foot, dressed in red, white and blue coats respectively:

Painting three different coat colours kept things interesting and provided the motivation to keep going:

Here is an individual picture of Stradling's regiment of foot:

The blue-coated Hopton regiment:

And finally, the Duke of York's regiment:

I also completed two more elements of red-coated pike which will live with the King's Lifeguard of Foot, in case I want to increase the ratio of pike in any of the red-coated regiments:

That's the Royalist foot completed, with 392 figures in total:

I have some dismounted dragoons still ahead and if I have a few spare pikemen left over after doing the Parliamentary foot I'll probably add a couple of elements for the Royalist regiments.

Next up however will be a few more WWII ships, which represents another slight diversion from the ECW project. This is mainly because another gaming friend of mine is interested in playing a few games of 'Nimitz', the new WWII ruleset from Sam Mustafa. The perfect excuse to delve into the lead pile and dust off a few more boxes from GHQ.

18mm ECW Oxford and Apsley's Regiment of Foot

Two more Royalist red-coated regiments completed in the Oxford and Sir Allen Apsley's regiment of foot:

I did both of these at the same time in three batches of 32 figures each and seemed to fly through them, always the case when I am enjoying a project. I found myself constantly misnaming Apsley's regiment as 'Aspley', the name of a suburb a bit further out here in Brisbane, and even accidentally put the wrong label on even though I had immediately reprinted it with the correct spelling (but have since replaced the label below with the correct one):

The flags are from Maverick Models and the flag for the Oxford Regiment is equally as exciting as that for Apsley's Regiment:

As we know, in the Napoleonic era soldiers would lay their life on the line in defence of their standard, but I'm not sure many would have been equally as bothered in the English Civil War. The shotte are the same as the figures for the other regiments, with the Oxford regiment apparently having been issued with red breeches which I painted on about two thirds of the figures for that unit:

I went with the pike forward pose for these two regiments just to add a bit of variety. These are nice poses as they are at slightly different angles which provides a nice irregular look, and yet they don't stick into the backs of the figures in front of them:

That's five regiments and 240 figures completed for this project to date:

The order for the remaining Medieval German figures needed to complete that army has arrived so I have returned to that project to now complete it. In many ways this is a shame as I was really moving at a cracking pace through these ECW figures, but hope that the same motivation will be there when I return to them in a few weeks' time.

18mm ECW Newcastle's Regiment of Foot

After having done a red and a blue-coated regiment, I wanted to try one with white coats and so decided that the Marquis of Newcastle's regiment would do nicely:

The same organisation as before, with four stands of pike and eight of muskets. I will be doing a few spare stands of pike for each army so I can make larger regiments as required, but am enjoying painting 48 figures for each unit as I am finding that a manageable number:

The flag for this unit, like so many in the ECW, can probably best be described as 'uncomplicated'. Maverick models do offer a resizing option and I went with the standard after having had problems fitting them on some 15mm Samurai. As per Peter's, from Blunders on the Danube, suggestion I may yet end up re-ordering them from Maverick Models, but will use the current stock for the time being. The majority are colonels' flags anyway, and they may simply have been stingy with the material:

I will continue to use an assortment of figures on the bases. There are six variants in the standing/firing pose, but I am finding it really helps to keep the interest level up by adding a few others into the mix:

That is three regiments now completed, with two more on the painting table and which should both be completed at the same time:

The medieval German crossbowmen have also all been prepared, so I will return to that army shortly to finish the last eighty or so figures.

Thanks also to Jonathan of the Palouse Wargaming Journal's suggestion on the thumbnail workaround https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2023/02/blogger-under-my-thumbnail-ii.html. It worked like a charm, and a lovely bit of IT support on his part.

18mm ECW Prince Rupert's Regiment of Foot

After the red-coated King's Lifeguard I wanted to add a blue-coated regiment, and Prince Rupert's Regiment of Foot fitted the bill nicely:

Prince Rupert's Regiment also has an interesting flag, at least compared with some of the other rather plain flags carried by other regiments. The flag is again from Maverick models, and the figures are all Eureka miniatures:

I have the man himself along with his dog, Boy, and will be doing them both at a later stage when I get to the command figures. I have settled on eight elements of shotte with four of pike (including the command stand) as a standard configuration but will be doing a few spare elements of pike for the Royalists to bolster their regiments as required:

I was originally going to do six regiments of Royalists and the same for the Parliamentary army, but now have plans to expand these to eight each which will mean around four hundred foot figures for each army. Nothing like a bit of project creep when the project has barely commenced, but I am enjoying painting these figures so much that I am hoping the eight hundred foot figures will be achievable. I also have six regiments of horse of eighteen figures each planned for each side.

There is a bit of a shine on these figures in some of the above pictures which thankfully is not apparent to the naked eye after my usual two coats of Dullcote. The pikemen at the rear in the picture below are probably more representative of the blue I used for these:

That's two regiments done now, with the third nearing completion. 

18mm ECW King's Lifeguard of Foot Regiment

While I was awaiting the arrival of an order to complete my medieval German army I decided to make a start on some Eureka Miniatures English Civil War miniatures which have been sitting primed for the best part of twelve months. The first regiment to be completed is the King's Lifeguard of Foot:

I decided to do each regiment with four elements of pike (including the command) and eight of musketeers, with four to a base for each element so 48 figures in total. I was originally planning on putting just three figures on each musketeer base but, at this scale, quite liked the look of four so went with that:

The figures are sold as 18mm which they most certainly are, but are no larger than some other manufacturers' figures marketed as 15mm.  The flag is from Maverick Models who do a nice range of Civil War flags:

The King's Lifeguards were noted as having red coats, breeches and montero caps, into which I mixed some variation. The red could perhaps have been a little darker given the photos of some re-enactors I viewed online, but there seems to be a lot of speculation over what was actually worn and I felt more comfortable using the Foundry British Redcoat red at this scale:

I went with armoured pikemen for this regiment. The figures were not supplied with pikes but I had purchased extra from Xyston Miniatures for this purpose and was pleasantly surprised how easily they fit the models with no need to drill hands:

It is always enjoyable starting a new project and I managed to paint this unit in less than a week:

 

The Khurasan order has now arrived, but I will try to get a few more Royalist units completed before getting stuck back into the Germans. I know I had better not leave them too long however, before I disappear down the ECW rabbit hole.

Spanish 15mm Army

Even though the bulk of it was completed two years or so ago, I have only in the past month put the finishing touches on this Spanish 15mm Napoleonic army to the point where I can now consider it complete.

It is probably self-indulgent but, as I probably won't get the chance to assemble it again in its entirety, I thought I would set it up for a a few group photos, if nothing else than to remind me what I actually had actually managed to assemble.

Firstly, a view of the army from the front:

And another view of the same from the flank:

The figures are all Essex Miniatures 15mm, apart from the staff figures which are from Warmodelling who have an excellent range of Spanish personality figures covering most of the Peninsular war.

Here is a shot of the Warmodelling General Jose Pascual de Zayas figure in front of some light cavalry, who was one of the most ably performed of the Spanish Generals and performed so creditably at Albuera (primarily because he had taken the time to put his troops through several weeks' worth of manoeuvres prior to the battle):

All of the flags are GMB, with the exception of those of the Spanish Guard and Swiss which I again purchased from Adolfo Ramos in Spain:

The flag of the Guardias Royale in particular is amongst my favourite Napoleonic flags as it is quite distinctive:

Twelve regiments of cavalry in all, including five of the yellow-coated dragoons seen here from the back, with a unit of guerrillas at their rear (which I am not sure I would be completely comfortable with):

Here they are again from the front, with two hussar regiments and a line of artillery spread before them:

I managed fourteen artillery pieces in all, with the number of figures representing how many pieces there are in each battery, with either three or four crew figures on each base:

I attempted to add a bit of variety to the limbers by including a few ox-drawn pieces, to represent the difficulty the Spanish had in finding decent horseflesh. Notwithstanding that, the Spanish artillery was one of their best-performing arms:

Also included are six units of light infantry to provide the army with a decent skirmish screen, seen here spread across the front:

And with the also very able General Don Pedro Caro y Sureda, 3rd Marquis de Romana, and his staff visible in the background:

The one nice surprise I found when putting together both this and its larger 28mm couterpart was how much colour and variety is to be found in a Spanish Napoleonic army, particularly that of the earlier part of the war before the rather more drab British supplies found their way through as replacements. Some of that may be seen in the following overhead shot, which includes elements of the line, converged grenadier battalions, the Swiss, the Guard, an Irish battalion, along with some hussars, dragoons and heavy calavlry:

In case anyone is interested (and to help my own failing memory), the final numbers for the army is as follows:

23 line battalions of 24 figures each
3 Guard battalions of 25 figures each
6 composite Grenadier battalions of 12 figures each
8 provincial militia battalions of 15 figures each
1 urban militia battalion of 20 figures
4 light battalions of 20 figures each
2 light battalions of 16 figures each
1 band of guerrillas of 20 figures
14 artillery pieces with 48 crew
12 limbers with 20 figures and 50 horses and oxen
5 dragoon regiments of 16 figures each
3 heavy cavalry regiments of 16 figures each
4 light and hussar regiments of 16 figures each
25 mounted and 9 foot staff figures

This gives a total of 1,265 figures along with 267 horses.

Probably more than I will ever need, but hopefully enough variation to cover most scenarios:

Now to complete my 28mm Portuguese project, which I am optimistic enough to believe might be achieved before the end of the year.