Organising my Royalist ECW Army in 28mm

With a fair chunk of cavalry painted in Curt's recent 4th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I've been turning my mind to sorting out what's left to paint to complete the army.

It's not a historical order of battle by any means and this post is intended more for my own reference than anything else, but it may be of interest to others I suppose. Where I've got a related blog post I've linked it up in the interests of sharing some eye candy.

The King's Party & Staff
King Charles I, 6 x Gentlemen Pensioners
Sir Edmund Verney with Royal Standard
Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Major General, Colonel General, Surgeon General, Scout Master, 2 x Buffoons

Prince Rupert's Blewcoate Regiment of Foote
16 pike
2 x 12 shotte

Sir Allan Apsley's Regiment of Foote
16 pike
2 x 12 shotte

Earl of Northampton's Regiment of Foote
16 pike
2 x 12 shotte

Sir Gilbert Talbot MP's Regiment of Foote
16 pike
2 x 12 shotte

Loyale Goodfolk of Ye Three Leggged Duck Publick House
16 x Ill-armed recruits / clubmen

Prince Rupert's Lifeguard of Horse
6 x Gallopers

Prince Rupert's Regiment of Horse
10 x Gallopers

Earl of Northampton's Regiment of Horse
12 x Gallopers

Lord Byron's Regiment of Horse
12 x Gallopers

Sir Thomas Tyldesley's Regiment of Horse
10 x Gallopers





Sir Arthur Aston's Regiment of Dragoons
12 x Dragoons

Colonel Henry Washington's Regiment of Dragoons
12 x Dragoons

Trayne of Artillery
Master Gunner
1 x Culverin and Crew
1 x Saker and Crew
2 x Falconets and crew

With the exception of the dragoons everything is complete. I've also got a unit of Scots foot that I'm unsure of how to paint at present. There's a temptation of start buying more figures and turn them into Irish. Which would inevitably lead to a whole extra army. Or I could just paint them as a generic Scots foot for use by myself or others as required.

And that's it as it stands. In total something like 250 figures and some guns.

Cheers,
Millsy

4th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Wrap Up

Wow, what a ride! The 4th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is done and dusted for another year. It's actually a full three months long but looking back it always seems more like three minutes.

Curt is a living legend (at least of the blogosphere) and deserves truck loads of kudos for putting the event on. When Sarah finally decides she's had enough and throws you out there's always a bed for you at my place mate.

This year there was a total of 60 participants from all over the globe battling it out and producing some truly amazing entries in terms of quality, quantity and breadth. I finished a pretty creditable 9th on the points tally which is an improvement of 4 places on last year. It's not really about that for me though even though it is fun to be a bit competitive. What's more important is sharing the fun with all the other amazing participants and seeing all their wonder and inspiring work.

Some highlights of my challenge...
Final ranking: 9/60
Points total: 1948 (beating my initial target of 1250 and just short of my revised 2000 target)
Bonus rounds: Submitted for all seven and snuck home for a win on the final Last Stand round.
Achievements: Painted something like 250 x 28mm miniatures and a swag of other stuff. That included a complete Dystopian Wars Britannian fleet and also an entire 2,500pt Warhammer Fantasy Battle army (that one inside of a month!)

Not bad at all and I'm pretty chuffed with what I achieved. Here's a quick visual recap...

A fair chunk of Dystopian Wars

My favourite entry, Kemmler and Co

2,500 points of Undead in one month :-)

Watch out Cromwell, Rupert's coming for you!

I'll show you where the Iron Crosses grow!

They call him the Cereal Box Kid

And lastly my winning entry from the final bonus round, The Retreat from Moscow in 28mm. Cheers to everyone who voted for me. I was very flattered and a little surprised to take the podium given the quality of the opposition.

And that's it. When I list it out like it makes me wonder where I found the time. Just putting the list together took a good 20 minutes alone. Now it's time for a breather from the painting desk and maybe a little something medicinal to tide me over the depression from it being all over for another year.

Thanks for looking and please leave a comment or three!

Cheers,

Millsy

The Retreat from Moscow in 28mm

This is my final bonus round entry for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge in 2014. You can view and vote on the entire list of amazing submissions here, mine included. If you have a spare 30 minutes I encourage you to make the effort to visit, you won't regret it I promise you!

Now about my entry...

I've been fascinated by Napoleon's Russian endeavour ever since I was a kid. The epic nature of taking half a million men and attempting to conquer one of the largest nations of the time and in the worst of possible conditions just staggers the imagination.

The Retreat is a story that begs a modern blockbuster film but for some reason has never inspired one. It certainly inspired Adolphe Yvon's truly wonderful 1856 work Marshal Ney Supporting the Rear Guard During the Retreat from Moscow.

The painting depicts Ney and rag tag band of soldiers of all ranks and arms fighting a desperate rearguard action, one of literally dozens that occurred during the horror march homewards. Whilst for Ney it proved not to be a last stand, for many of the others it certainly did. Presumably Ney himself at times thought "This is truly it now!" only to be proven wrong over and over again.

Pulling it all together...

Conveying the entire battle in the painting is near impossible so I chose to compress the action. I focused on Ney and the men surrounding him, plus picking individual scenes from the fore and back ground and merging them together to create a sense of the overall situation.

In total there are 11 foot and 2 mounted miniatures, plus a pile of other items like a converted dead horse (was once a Renegade ECW mount), broken artillery, doors, lanterns, etc. etc. etc. The miniatures are all Perry metals apart from Ney who is from Gorgon Studios. He's the only miniature I'm aware of the captures the scene from the painting even though he is not exactly the same.

All the colours, battlefield detritus, dirty snow encrusted clothing and men jammed together is as close as I could get them to the painting. I've never tried a snow base before so I'm absolutely chuffed with how my baking soda over tile grout groundwork came out.

I'm not sure I'd do another of these as it took inordinately long and proved somewhat stressful at times. Give me a week and I'll likely change my mind... :-)

That's it for now. In the next couple of days I'll post some WIP shots and talk about more about the process of putting it together.

Cheers,
Millsy