Wooden Wars: 7th Hussars

“It only takes a stroke of a pen to create a prefect, but it takes twenty years to make a Lasalle.”

~Napoleon Bonaparte

 On review for your pleasure, a "unit" of French 7th Hussars and commanding officer. This is one of 6 cavalry units that will be engaged in historic Wooden Wars battles at KublaCon, this coming Memorial Day weekend.  Up to this point, I've never had more that 4 units of cavalry in a game (two units per side)  and I am looking forward to some glorious charges.  In Wooden Wars a unit of cavalry can be anywhere from 4 to 10 models plus a commander. When activated, it can either move two batons or move one baton and fire (toss one rubber ball), and can be very effective in melee. Although light cavalry like this should avoid attacking squares. 

Cavalry commanders- avoid this at all costs! (This is what artillery is for!)

The 7th appeal to me as they were part of Lasalle's "infernal Brigade", and were under the direct command of Edouard de Colbert. That, and quite honestly, because I wanted to try my hand at painting a green uniform.   After the battle, these lads will be sent off to one of my Kickstarter backers to enjoy further campaigns.

True to tradition, the trumpeter  is in opposite colors and rides a "grey".  For the officer, I borrowed the shabraque of one of my ADC models.  

Neverwinter Launches!

"It's a trap!"

- Admiral Ackbar

 

Mimic cake made by my Mrs. !

Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter went live today for the Founder's pack members. For our launch party, my amazing wife made a "mimic" cake. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the cake is full on treasure chest size- and fed over a 100 people! The bottom was a three layer chocolate filled with rum chocolate ganache/mousse, the top a vanilla and lemon zest chiffon sponge cake with fresh strawberry Bavarian creme filling, and the tongue was made of rice crispy treats. (Something to remember when I need new terrain bits). Needless to say, plenty of adventurers joined groups, grabbed +2 forks of skewering, and laid low this delicious beastie!

Fighting a Pit Fiend in the Lair of the Mad Dragon- dungeon Delve

Helm's Hold

Neverwinter is a game I have been working on since building and presenting the original pitch to launch. I swell with pride at how cool the game is- thanks to the hard work and awesome creativity of the entire team.  If you have a chance, check it out! I've attached a few screen shots of zones and dungeons that I designed.

Temple of the Spider.

Guardian Fighter defends against a giant spider attack!

A scenic vista shot of Blackdagger Keep

Cheers

Wooden Wars: New Spring Fashions

 “If you don't know where you're going,any road will take you there.”
- Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

While the laser-inator is still down (sigh) I’m channeling my energies into painting up armies which are rewards for my Kickstarter backers in the “royalty” range.  These particular patrons get to work with me in picking out color schemes for uniforms.  

While consulting with one of the kings, I was commissioned to come up with a Napoleonic army which would appeal to his niece. “She likes colors like pink…” I was told.  

I love a good challenge. (See laser issues in previous blogs.) 

So, staring at my book shelf, I start thinking back - "where did I see that uniform..." - then Osprey and the venerable Mr. Haythornthwaite came to the rescue!  

Behold! a French 1811 uniform. Pretty cool! Reading up, there seems to be a discrepancy in historical data about the whys and wherefores of the White French uniforms,  but the skinny seems to be that the pre-revolutionary army had white coats, and then they went to blue after the revolution. 

Napoleon tried to reintroduce the white coats in 1806, but their return aroused little enthusiasm, and showed a lot of dirt and blood, so they reverted back. Be that as it may, for my Wooden Wars purposes, this fancy ensemble hits the right notes - garishly cute- yet martial.

Berg Cavalry! 

For the cavalry, I have based the uniform on the Berg light cavalry, in particular the dress uniform which was a light buff jacket with rose red lapels and a rose red shako. These fellows I believe were to become the body guard of Murat, which means that they had more uniform changes throughout their careers than most other units. 

 I've kept more to the "pinker" side of rose to go with the infantry, but I may adopt a more red or madder color. I have to admit these guys are going to be quite striking on the battlefield.

The new lasers are in!... Waiddahminnut?!!!

My Laser  replacements arrived from China a couple of days ago, and tonight I had time to slap one in my machine and hopefully fire it up. Then I noticed that the couplings for the power supply are different. 

Explicative!

Should be "fairly" easy to replace, but I really won't have time to do it till the weekend. 

  I guess the Whole Tris-State area is safe from my toy soldier armies for now.

Explicative...

 

Venitian Galleys (and that one from Malta)

"When ships are locked and grappled together, the soldier has no more space left him than two feet of plank on the beak head."...

~ Miguel Cervantez, Don Quixote. 

The Fleet forms line, inspired by Angus Konstam's Osprey on Lepanto

Galleys Galleass and Galliots - oh my!

I have always admired the line of the renaissance galley. I've even sculpted a few ships after their fashion for my "Pirates, Miniature Adventures on the High Seas" game.  So, when one of my South Bay Game Club collegues mentioned he had some galleys that were in need of paint, I pretty much reverse Tom Sawyered him - and offered to paint them up! 

The front two ships are Galleass, and the die is for scale

Oh, I can put rigging and those cool banners and flags and... wait - what scale are those?!

With stars in my eyes, I pulled out all my research books on the battle of Lepanto and relived the moments, as we do.  I wonder if anyone has ever done an audit to see how much money they spend on "research" books for a particular period in comparison to the actual miniatures. When I got the miniatures in hand, I was firstly taken aback at the scale. 1/1200, aka: small. Quite small.

I am not sure what I was thinking. Actually I guess I was thinking the whole time that these babies were gonna be straight off the assembly lines from Rod Langton miniatures, which to me are the Bentley of ship miniatures. They are of course priced as such. 

The ships delivered into my care were from the Navwar range. Overall dependable specimens and when building large fleets, cost effective.  The one downside to these models would be the masts, which are thin and damn near impossible to straighten up all the way.  This dissuaded me from trying to mount any rigging or larger flags.

My Lepanto research material, including a postcard of a beautiful model in Venice.

I had good fun painting these guys, and jumping back into my Lepanto books; they were a noble distraction between painting Wooden Wars units. The whole lot probably took me about 4 hours, or better translated as the free painting time over a week. As the masts are fragile, I decided to present them (lightly glued) on a single piece of painted matte board. 

Now... if anyone has any Rod Langton galleys laying about in the slips that need paint...

A Langton  turkish galley, in all its brass etched glory!