15mm Ghaznavid Palace Ghulams

After a year and half painting 28mm AWI figures I thought I'd get stuck into one of the 15mm DBMM armies I have in the pile as a nice change of pace. After seeing Phil of Toy Soldiers Studio's beautiful Ghaznavid army (Toy Soldiers Studio) I was keen to make this my next project and started off with three command elements and six stands of Palace ghulams:

The Ghaznavid empire was centered on Ghazi in modern Afghanistan and covered large parts of Iran, Pakistan and north western India between 977 and 1186 AD. I wanted to put together an entire army of Forged in Battle figures and found these to be true 15mm figures rather than the larger18mm often associated with other manufacturers. There is enough variety to cover most troop types in the list, but no dedicated general figures so it was a matter of picking a few commander-type figures from the cavalry packs and nominating them as generals:

Ghulam means slave or servant in Arabic, and the Ghaznavid ghulams were either mercenaries, prisoners of war or sometimes slaves who had been purchased as young boys. Many Turkish soldiers were employed in the ranks alongside Afghans and, later, Indian soldiers following seventeen individual campaigns over a fifty-four year period. The Palace ghulams were responsible for protecting the royal family and were the most elite and heavily armoured so again I selected the most appropriate-looking figures from the packs:

I splashed a bit more colour on these than I am planning to do with the regular ghulams, and attached some Little Big Men Studio banners to more easily distinguish them:

I didn't have enough of the banners I originally wanted to use and thought I'd have to purchase some more. I noticed in the course of doing so that they have gone up from £3.50 a year ago to £12 which is quite a jump in twelve months (although still worth the money at that price in my opinion), but a quick search in my stash of flags and transfers unearthed several sheets I had forgotten about and so I was able to apply them immediately without holding things up:

That's the first nine elements completed:

Next up will be fifteen elements of the regular ghulam.

AWI Continental Staff and Townspeople

After seventeen months I have finally completed the last of my AWI figures with ten Continental staff and camp, and eight townspeople. The staff are a mixture of Perry and Front Rank to provide a but more variety, even though the Front Rank figures appear much better fed alongside their Perry counterparts:

I have ended up with two George Washingtons, one of them the Perry figure which comes with three boxes of plastic Continentals, and the other a more solid Front Rank figure:

Rather annoyingly, I have also ended up with two Benedict Arnold figures and three instead of the four Front Rank ADC figures I actually ordered, but I suppose he did switch sides so I can potentially field both of them:

Here are the remainder of the Front Rank ADCs:

And some Perry mounted officers:

I individually based some leftover foot figures in the hope they might come in useful in a few Sharp Practice games:

I also completed some Perry AWI civilians, an interesting mix of figures:

And a camp vignette:

The final count for the project came out as:

British:    595 foot and mounted figures

                60 horses

                11 artillery pieces

Hessians: 179 foot and mounted figures

                3 horses

                2 artillery pieces

Continentals:    498 foot and mounted figures

                          28 horses

                          6 artillery pieces

All up, 1272 foot and mounted figures, 91 horses, 19 artillery pieces and 8 wagons. Now to get them on to the table for a few solo games of British Grenadier, hopefully followed by some Monday evening Sharp Practice games.

Two Grand Manner Napoleonic Houses Completed

After languishing in the pile for nearly fifteen years, I have finally got around to completing the first of many Grand Manner buildings I have accumulated:

This post should probably have been titled 'How to Disappear Down a Rabbit Hole' as I hadn't intended to make a start on them yet. A few weeks ago I started work on some 15mm Najewitz Modellbau 3D printed terrain; a rather nice Spanish town with eight buildings sitting on a sculpted base which I thought we were going to need for a game. 

I completed the buildings but the base is made up of twelve individual pieces and I realised that I would need to affix them to a large MDF base. 

I purchase all my MDF bases from a guy in Adelaide who offers free postage on orders of $75 or more. I then remembered I have a rather nice 28mm Medieval stone church with graveyard which I had purchased from Grand Manner ten or so years ago and which would also require an MDF base.

Thinking that this and a few other odds and ends would be good to get me above the required $75 I then set about trying to locate the church so I could measure the required footprint.

The problem is that I must have purchased over seventy buildings from Grand Manner and they are all in their original dense packing spread across five very large boxes, so I spent a few hours cutting my way through bubble wrap only to find I had now unpacked ten buildings from their Napoleonic Europe range. There was no way I was going to repack them again so I thought I may as well make a start.

The first of these is called a Lindenau house, modelled after one in the Leipzig area. This is I believe actually the rear of the house:

While this is the front and side:

The houses all have lift-off roofs with, in this case, two levels of interior. Perfect for skirmish gaming, but I debated whether it was worthwhile going to the effort to paint it and if I should just glue the roof in place. In the end I decided that since it was there I may as well put in a bit of additional effort:

All up, I estimate this model took me over twenty-four hours to paint, mainly because it was my first attempt at these and there was a fair bit of trial and error.

The second house is styled after a Holzhausen cottage, from the village to the south of Leipzig:

I was a bit quicker on this one, although it still took me around twenty hours or so:

These models are two of the smaller pieces and cost me around £50 each to purchase in the raw resin. They were however destined to become available only as painted models as the owner transformed his business into more of a painting service, and the cost for each was then around £240 when painted to a collectors standard. 

After painting them myself and given the detail I can see why, which makes me think the price that Mark of 1866 and All That is charging for his works of art is an absolute bargain. 

All the Grand Manner terrain is now sadly out of production, so I am glad I scooped up what I could even if it means they have been sitting untouched for over a decade:

I again painted up the interior, albeit doing a much quicker job on it:

That then is my first two pieces of Grand Manner terrain completed:

I have another ten or so of these central European buildings to go, plus a dozen or so Eastern European and the same number of Spanish buildings ahead of me. I also have a fair bit of Thirty Years war, WWII and Ancients to plough my way through, but they are such nice models each with their own individual character, that I am looking forward to it.

Speaking of terrain and storage, I finally cleared out one of our spare rooms, set up some shelving and moved some of my storage boxes with completed armies in:

This has freed up more space in my painting and storage room. I took the opportunity to also move in my long-unused table tennis table and throw a bit of terrain on it to try the area out for space:

Not much room either side and certainly not conducive to comfortable gaming, but it should be good for a few solo games at least. I have to admit I don't relish the idea of solo gaming as much as I do playing against a live opponent, but once the last of my AWI Continentals are finished I'll try out a game or two of British Grenadier.

I just need to stop any further distractions until I have finished the last ten staff figures. I still haven't found that church though.

AWI Continental Light Dragoons

While I ended up doing four regiments of cavalry for the British I calculated that two of nine figures each should be enough for my Continental army, so I settled on the 2nd and 3rd light dragoons:

The 2nd light dragoons or Sheldon's horse, named after their colonel Elisha Sheldon, were an accomplished regiment, detachments of which also formed part of Washington's bodyguard:

As with the 3rd dragoons, these Perry figures are one-piece castings with the horse and rider being single sculpts, although they all come with a choice of several arms which allows for quite a variation in pose and armaments:

It surprised me a little to find that the trumpeters were in reversed colours and I wondered how long that remained the case in practice, but it does make for a nice variation in uniform:

The flag is from GMB and sets off the command stand nicely:

An option for one of the figures is an arm brandishing a pistol which I think is my favourite pose:

The 3rd dragoons or Baylor's horse are almost the opposite in terms of uniform to the 2nd, so complement them nicely:

The trumpeter is again in reversed colours. If research ever discloses that this was not actually the case in practice, I suppose I can simply swap them between regiments...

Another GMB flag for the command stand:

That is the Continental cavalry now completed:

This just leaves ten Continental staff figures, which are currently on the painting table, and a dozen or so civilians to go before my AWI project is completed.

I have however managed to get slightly distracted along the way with some terrain pieces. I hope to have the second of these completed this week, and then it will be back to the final push to complete George Washington and his staff.

AWI Continental Artillery

The completion of six Continental artillery pieces over the weekend means I now only have two regiments of light dragoons, ten or so staff figures and a few sundry civilians ahead of me. The artillery is comprised of four 6 pounders and two 3 pounder pieces:

The 6 pounders have two different crews, one firing:

And the other aiming:

The 3 pounder or 'butterfly' guns also had an option for crew dressed in hunting shirts, which makes a nice variation alongside the regular uniforms:

I also completed some dragrope men on individual bases, to accommodate the rather strange requirement in the Sharp Practice rules to have five figures per gun rather than the more usual four:

For a slight change of pace I also started work on the Najewitz Modellbau 15mm Peninsular village. This is a large piece comprised of eight buildings and a scenic base. I have purchased quite a lot of Jens Najewitz's pieces over the years, but rather than invest in a 3D printer I bought them from a licensee in Western Australia who closed down several years ago. 

It is only now that I have finally got around to painting the first of them I realised there are a few missing pieces, including the onion dome from a 28mm Borodino church which, aside from painting an actual onion and sticking it on top, knew I was never going to be able to replicate. 

I contacted Jens directly who emailed me the STL files for the parts which I have sent on to a friend from my Saturday group to print. Anyway, here are the first couple of houses and the church from the Peninsular set:

I gave the houses quite a heavy drybrush of antique white although they look a little more yellow here than they do to the naked eye, probably due to the light. The roofs and floors are secured in place by sturdy pegs, to allow figures to be placed inside:

I am a big fan of Jens's designs, and they represent an absolute bargain for anyone with a 3D printer. Next up, the Continental cavalry.