I am the resurrection and I am the light.

Odd that although I am probably more Parliamentarian than Royalist in my real life leanings, I always tend to favour the under dogs in a wargaming setting. Hence my Royalist preference when gaming the English Civil War. None of this puritanical nonsense for me. give me feathers in hats and Christmas any day of the week.

Anyway, having sold off bits of several armies over the last couple of years due to lack of use, I have had a change of opinion and am now recollecting all that I sold. Whether they get used or not is now immaterial. I actually enjoy working out what I need, collecting and painting the figures. And if I get a game in with them once in a while all the better.

So a a return to the English Civil War. Peter Pig are working on a new edition of the Regiment of Foote rules, but based on the mechanics from Square Bashing. Sound odd? Well, having play tested it last week, it works really well. Foot regiments are 3 bases, of between 10 and 12 figures depending on your taste. Horse are 6 figures. This first picture is the first regiment of the new collection under way. It is based on a London Trained Band regiment as fought at 1st Newbury . My armies will be ficticious however with an Imagi-Nation feel to it. Sir Fleming Nadger, Hugo Meynell MP and Lord Marmaduke Smythe are three characters that will feature in a slow grow campaign. But enough of that for now...

Last year I purchased early war Royalist and Parliamentarian armies intending to get them painted up for the old Regiment of Foote rules. The figures I have fit the new rules very nicely. I have enough for 12 foot, 8 horse, 2 dragoons and 3 guns for the Royalists and 9 foot, 8 horse, 2 dragoons and 3 guns for Parliament. I intend to get enough for 3 more regiments of foot plus some extra cavalry and a couple of more guns each from Alumwell.

I have started with a very disciplined approach to the new armies. They will be painted in my tried and tested base coat and dip method. I have sorted all the figures I have into units and decided on coat colours for the foot for both armies. I then sprayed them up using Army Painter spray paint. All of the horse have received a brown base coat as have the gun crews. The guns themselves have been sprayed black.

 The horse were given brown basecoats because a) it gives me a head start on painting the horses and b) the troopers will be wearing buffcoats in the main. One niggle for me is to paint them as sleeved or sleeveless coats. I'm certain I read years ago that the sleeveless buffcoat was a myth, but recent reading suggests sleeveless coats were worn. It will certainly make the horse regiments look more colourful. I'll most likely paint some with sleeves and others without.

 Below is the foot I have sprayed up this afternoon. Red and blue were predominant colours during the wars. Looking at the below I have realised I have forgotten to do a a purple unit, ala Lord Brookes.. Probably because I dont own any purple spray. I'll amend this with a purchase at Alumwell.

Painting at full tilt, I reckon I could get through 2 units in a session. But with other projects on the go, I dont suppose this project will hit the table before the summer. I'll see how I go. I am really tempted to get a Covenanter army too, but will resist until these are done.

The beauty of doing all the prep work this afternoon for this lot is that any time I want to paint a unit up, they are all ready to go with no messing about.

OK, I'm off to watch another episode of 'By the Sword Divided' on YouTube.

More soon...

Time for reflection and a tidy up.

Last year saw an unprecedented amount of visits to the Stoke club thanks to a work project that enabled me to work more sociable hours. Unfortunately that has finished now and I'm back to shifts that have already impacted on my hobby time, with one fleeting visit to the club this year.

My interests have waxed and waned with me flitting between Warmachine, a little bit of piggie activity and some side ways glances at 6mm projects for War of the Spanish Succession and ACW. I dont think I have picked a brush up since November, but that will be changing, possibly today.

I made an impromptu visit to Piggie HQ as we were down that way visiting Lisa's cousin. Playtesting is under way on the updated version of Regiment of Foote (RoF), the ECW rules. They are changing quite radically to a square based system using SquareBashing as the base. I played two games, against Ralph A and Rob R and enjoyed them immensley. They are fast, furious and feel pretty accurate with horse regiments clashing and likely to be more interested in baggage raiding than anything else.

My ECW armies went the way of the 'bay early last year but I have two new armies to replace them that will be built around RoF. Whats left of this month and March will be ECW month with a flurry of brush activity then playtesting which I can hopefully rope Ade D and Keith K into at some point. I am also going to look at coming up with scenarios similar to those found in Bloody Barons and Civil War Battles. I made a start on some a few years ago for the old rules, so I'll be digging the bits out I did for those at some point.

There is a definate swing back to Piggie activity for me. At long last the late war French are under way from Peter Pig. See them here. I am strongly tempted to get the Passchendale game sorted for Alumwell next year. I'll see how long my interest can be maintained for that little long promised project.

Speaking of Alumwell, that is only two weeks away and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be mainly hovering around the Peter Pig stall probably helping out on the PBI demo game. I'd better refresh my memory of how that works.

Ok, enough for now. I need to do a bit of tidying up on the blog. some new links to be added and a couple deleted to reflect my current interests.

More soon...