Four More 18mm ECW Royalist Horse Regiments

These four recently completed regiments represent the last of the Royalist harquebusiers, making six units in total. The figures are again all Eureka with standards by Wargames Designs:

The first is the Queen's Regiment of Horse:

I did these in predominantly blue coats to contrast with the red of the King's Lifeguard. As most would know there is a lot of uncertainty over Civil War coat colours and saddlecloths etc., but I found a source which suggested blue so that was good enough for me:

The 10/12mm standards fit these figures nicely, even though they are a scale down:

The second regiment is the red-coated Lord Moylneux's horse:

The next two regiments are comprised of slightly more dynamic charging figures and mounts, with the first being Prince Rupert's Horse:

The man and his dog aren't included here. I have three Prince Rupert and Boye figures which I will be completing separately along with the other command figures I have n the queue, with one based for DBR and the other two for the For King and Parliament rulesets:

The last regiment is Sir Richard Astley's Horse:

I chose Sir Richard Astley's regiment partly because it has a distinctive standard, but mainly because it amused to paint one commanded by an 80's pop synth star:

I have three Royalist regiments left in the queue comprised of two dragoon units and a small contingent of cuirassiers. While the latter is quite conjectural I'll paint them up as the King's Gentlemen Pensioners who may have been so armoured. The dragoons will be a big task as I'll have to do both mounted and dismounted figures along with horseholders, so my plan is to defer them for the time being while I complete my planned six units of Parliamentary harquebusiers. 

First Two 18mm ECW Royalist Horse Regiments

With the recent completion of my Dark Ages Welsh I was keen to get stuck back into my 18mm English Civil War project. Having completed all the foot and artillery for the Royalists, Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters I put it on hold for a couple of years while I delved into the American War of Independence. With the three armies so close to completion though it makes sense to get stuck back into them and see whether I can complete the horse and command elements in a final burst.

First off the queue then are two regiments of Royalist horse, the King's Lifeguard and behind them Sir Thomas Tyldesley's Regiment:

While there is much uncertainty over coat colours, portraying the King's Lifeguard in red coats seemed a fairly safe bet:

Although I deviated from this for the command figures:

And threw in a few buff coats for the troopers:

Sir Thomas Tyldesley's Regiment was apparently a mix of coat colours, so I varied these between buff, rawhide and dark brown:

As with the foot and artillery, the figures are all Eureka which are terrific to paint and I think come up nicely:

I struck a small problem with the Wargames Design cavalry standards in that the 15mm version is far too large for the cornet's pole. The foot flags fit those figures perfectly so this is an issue with the pole rather than the flags. 

Instead of replacing the poles with wire I decided therefore to order the 10/12mm version of these standards which fit the pole vertically perfectly. They do perhaps look a little on the small side from the horizontal perspective, but I am generally happy with the result:

A quick count reveals I have another twenty regiments across the three armies to complete, along with fifteen command elements and around the same number of dismounted dragoon elements. Much more than I thought I had, but I'm going to give it a real push between now and Christmas to see how far I can get.

18mm ECW Scottish Covenanter Regiments Completed

I spent most of December and the Christmas/New Year break working on six regiments of Scottish Covenanter foote, and completed the last of the basing over the weekend:

The six regiments are comprised of Ker's regiment:

The Duke of Hamilton's regiment of foote:

Sir John Haldane of Gleneagles's regiment:

Barclay's regiment:

Home's regiment:

and Lovat's regiment of foot:

Of course this meant using a lot of grey, although I did mix in a few different coat colours to provide some variation:

The pikemen offered a little more variety, and I also mixed in a sprinkling of armoured figures:

I equipped two of the regiments with pikemen in the 'pike forward' position. Not my favourite pose as they are not easy to pick up and become quite easily entangled with the rank directly in front, but at least they look as though they mean business:

The flags are again from Wargames Designs. I am very pleased with them and the size fits these larger 18mm figures well:

Including 6 spare musketeer figures which will find their way on to some forthcoming command bases, that is 294 figures completed in total:

Next up, the artillery. I have sixteen pieces to be painted, with the Scots to receive four and the Royalist and Parliamentarians six each. I have made a start on them and hope to have them all completed by the end of January, so I can then get stuck into the cavalry in February.

Last Four Parliamentarian Regiments of Foot Completed

I put on a bit of a push over the last couple of weeks and have completed the last four Parliamentarian Regiments, to make eight in total. The first of these is Thomas Fairfax's regiment of Foot, which I beefed up with an additional four elements of pike to represent a 'pike heavy' regiment if required:

The flag is again from Wargames Designs, and I used a mixture of armoured and unarmoured pikemen to provide some variety:

Two more red-coated regiments in Onslow's and Birch's regiments respectively:

And the blue-coated Aldrich's regiment complete the quartet:

Aldrich's regiment has three lions on its flag, which is a nice change from the usual simple white circles:

I also added a few more elements to the King's Lifeguard regiment, to provide a similar 'pike heavy' unit for the Royalists:

And added an additional command element and flag to this regiment as well, to lend it a little more gravitas:

Here are the four completed Parliamentarian regiments assembled together:

That is now sixteen regiments completed, eight each for the Royalists and Parliamentarians, with six Scottish Covenanter regiments left to go.