Six 18mm ECW Parliamentarian Horse Regiments Completed

After having completed my six planned Royalist Horse regiments I thought I had better get stuck into the Parliamentarian horse while I still had the motivation, managing to complete the same number of regiments over the past four weeks:

First up is the Earl of Essex's regiment of horse:

These were described as having mixed coat colours so I stuck to mainly buff, tan and dark brown for the troopers:

Lord Fielding's regiment were apparently coated in grey, which is a nice change from the usual buff and raw hide coats:

Sir William Balfour's Horse appears to have mainly worn buff coats, and I chose this regiment because I like the standard which is again from Wargames Designs:

The Earl of Stamford's Horse wore blue coats, and I again included them to provide some variation:

And I painted up Lord Fairfax's Regiment of Horse with their red coats for the same reason. These are comprised of the slightly more dynamic charging pose, but I found the figure shooting his pistol a little difficult to position anywhere but on the left of each element:

The sixth and final regiment had to be that of the famous Sir William Waller, even if it did mean having to apply four coats of my least favourite colour, yellow:

Finally, I realised that I had mistakenly given the Royalist Prince Rupert's Regiment of Horse red coats when if fact they should have been blue. This was in spite of the fact I had done his foot regiment in the correct colours. Prince Rupert's Lifeguard did apparently wear red coats (which is what I was mistakenly looking), but that was only about the size of a single troop of Horse so too small for the number of figures completed.

Rather then muck around I realised his brother Prince Maurice had outfitted his regiment in red and I had his standard on hand, so a quick change of flag and label seemed the most sensible thing to do:

This is now all the Royalist and Parliamentarian Horse complete, apart from two regiments of cuirassiers and four of dragoons. 

I have started work on the four regiments of dragoons, two for each army. Even though these will be smaller units at only four elements and twelve figures each I am planning on doing them both mounted and dismounted with attendant horseholders, so at least another couple of hundred individual figures. I am planning on giving this project as much of a push as possible as I would very much like to see these two armies fully completed before Christmas, and perhaps even get the last of my Scots Covenanters prepared and in the queue.

18mm English Civil War Artillery

With sixteen pieces in all, I decided to tackle the English Civil War artillery for the Royalist, Parliamentarian and Scottish Covenanter armies in one large batch. I generally do not enjoy painting the artillery pieces themselves; the crew are fine, but I find gun carriages and wheels a bit fiddly and uninteresting. However, the Eureka models are quite nice which took away much of the boredom:

I gave the Royalists and Parliamentarians six pieces each, comprised of two cannons, two culverins and two sakers:

And allocated two culverins and two sakers to the Scots

I did half the pieces in plain wood, but gave the Parliamentarians and Royalists two red carriages and the Royalists two in blue, just to brighten things up a little. I put in a bit of extra effort to paint streaks on the carriages and wheels to give the effect of wood grain. The models themselves had a wood effect, but not enough that it rendered itself easily to dry-brushing.

Speaking of bright, the blue looks very bright here but thankfully is a little duller to the naked eye:

I also completed a few petard stands, one for each army. I'm not quite sure when these will be used, and received one from Eureka as a free gift anyway, but they might come in handy as an objective or for a siege game at some point:

That is it for the artillery and I now just have sixteen regiments of cavalry and three of dragoons across the three armies to go. I have decided to paint the bulk of the horses first but, once that is done, hope to be able to roll them off the production line reasonably quickly.

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.