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 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.