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.

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.