– The 3rd Battalion of Detachments. Note the guy with the smuggled pig, the limping soldier, the dapper officer taking a pinch of snuff, the ragged flags, the bald sergeant and the yellow-coated drummer boy.
OK, anyone who knows their Napoleonic history will immediately be scoffing at me, saying there was never was a British 3rd Battalion of Detachments. And they’d be right – there wasn’t!
– The 3rd Battalion of Detachments emerges from a sunlit forest.
But this is a completely fictional unit, the brainchild of Warlord Games. They’ve produced a set of ragged British veterans, and an accompanying set of just as ragged French. And they’ve written made-up backstories for both units.
– Another close-up of some of these characterful figurines.
As the Warlord Games blurb states: These are battle-hardened, dishevelled men, haggard from their long campaign on the Spanish Peninsular. Such men have long abandoned the practice of maintaining their uniforms, with discipline but a distant memory. Ragged and patchy, some have had to seek alternative clothing, making do with whatever they can borrow, scavenge or even wilfully pilfer – which was technically punishable by death.
– Lots of variation in the kit they’re carrying on their backs, and the range of headgear.
I enjoyed painting these chaps. Every one is an individual character, with different kit, clothing and demeanour. They certainly exemplify Wellington’s famous description of ‘scum of the Earth’.
– The battalion’s portly colonel shelters from the sun as he sits astride his weary steed, accompanied by his exuberant pet dog.
I’ve also got the French set – they’re next in my painting queue.
This is a group of 3D-printed Napoleonic camp followers I have just finished painting and basing.
They depict some of the often forgotten wives and other women who followed the armies on campaign, working as cooks, laundresses, sutlers etc, not to mention other occupations.
The figures and cart are all Wargames Atlantic 28mm 3D-prints. I painted them entirely with GW Contrast paints.
I have just finished painting and basing this delightful little vignette by Eureka Miniatures.
The scene is a French Chasseur a Cheval fraternising with a local peasant girl as he waters three of his troops horses at the village pump.
The Eureka set includes the chasseur tapping his pipe on the bottom of his boot, three fully saddled horses, the water pump, a laundress washing clothes in a tub, her elderly chaperone.
Even the chickens and a couple of miniscule chicks came with the Eureka set!
I had intended to paint my chasseur as a much earlier hussar to accompany my 18th century Lynden Hussar regiment. However, I accidentally ordered the chap with a tarleton helmet, instead of the option with a mirliton hat.
The helmet was worn by the Chasseurs a Cheval during the French Revolutionary period. So this makes my guy too late for my 18th century army, but too early for my Napoleonics. Ah well, c’est la vie!
I used a 90mm wooden base, with terrain made out of a mixture of different types of sand and some patches of flock.
This little scene will look great on my Napoleonic tabletop, even though our chasseur’s hat is more than a few years out of date!
Now that I have prints for sale from some of my paintings, I thought it was high time I split my blog into two. This one will remain my wargaming blog, but I have now set up a new separate “Roly’s Art” blog for my artwork.
So for those wargamers who were getting annoyed that my latest postings here had nothing to do with the hobby, you can now rest assured there won’t be so many art postings!
I was chuffed recently when Art Collective chose to reproduce four of my paintings as fine art prints for sale from their site. As regular visitors here will know, since retiring a year or so ago, I have taken up painting in addition to my existing hobby of wargaming.
These prints are available in New Zealand (with free shipping!) from $39 to $230, depending on size and whether or not you want them framed.
Art Collective’s site includes a bio of each of their artists, of whom I am now honoured to be amongst the august company!
In my bio photo I am holding my original painting for the print shown at the top of this posting. It depicts His Majesty’s Bark ‘Endeavour’, Captain James Cook’s ship on his first circumnavigation of the world from 1768 to 1771.
This print shows a restored Class Ka steam locomotive climbing the grade from Paekākāriki to Pukerua Bay, hauling an excursion train of restored carriages in their former New Zealand Railways brick-red livery.
Finally, this is the tugboat ‘Natone’ moored at the Wellington docks in the very early 1900s. She was actually skippered by my wife’s great-grandfather, Captain Joseph Corich.
I did a lot of research to find photos of ‘Natone’, and then spoke to several steam-tug enthusiasts to get the colours right. The buildings in the background are still there today, though of course ‘Natone’ has long since gone to that great shipyard in the sky.
At this stage I think they are only sold within New Zealand (which is where I would expect the main demand to come from anyway). But if there is sufficient interest, I may look into if there is a suitable international drop-seller as well.
A major hole for those of us who like to wargame the colonial New Zealand Wars of the 19th century is that figure manufacturers tend to concentrate on Māori warriors in traditional costume. These are fine for the earlier wars of the 1840s. But for the later period in the 1860s and 70s, warriors often wore a mixture of traditional and western dress.
Wargames Atlantic have recently redressed this imbalance in their recent set of STL files for Māori warriors, as amongst the traditionally dressed figures they have also included several in mixed western dress, with waistcoats and shirts, blanket kilts, and even the occasional government kepi.
I bought a set of the STL files. Not owning a 3D-printer myself, I asked a friend if he could print some of these figures for me in 28mm scale (thanks, Bryan!).
I chose the version without bases (you can also print them with bases). I then simply glued them to some wooden discs that I had lying around.
I felt that the figure on the left in the above picture would be a bit too fragile, as he is in a very dynamic pose with only one foot on the ground. So I added a model railway plastic fern to which I could glue his other foot, capturing him in the midst of launching an ambush.
I did a quick paint job (the only kind of paint job I do these days … I don’t seem to be able to paint as finely as I used to!) . The paint brought out loads of amazing detail that I had not noticed when I first received the figures in their natural state.
I painted the kilts in a range of colours to depict the blanket shawls that both Māori warriors and government troops favoured in the rugged New Zealand bush. Some of the kilts had tassels – I am not sure what Wargames Atlantic were trying to represent with these, so I just painted them as blanket fringes.
If you look carefully, the second guy from the left has one sleeved arm and one bare arm. I think this is a printing mistake on our part! I just painted the arm the same colour as the sleeve, so from a distance it doesn’t stand out.
Māori warriors often liked to wear civilian waistcoats, as they had handy pockets for carrying ammunition.
Probably far more of my warriors are armed with pistols than would have been the case in real life. However, you can print whichever combination of weapons you want, so this isn’t an issue if you would prefer your guys to be more correctly armed.
I only noticed when I photographed my figures after painting them, that one figure even has sculpted tattoos. The pattern may look a bit too pronounced in this close-up photo, but I can assure you that in real life you hardly notice it. I might have to repaint his face to make the most of these sculpted tattoos!
So there we have it, a war-party of Māori warriors perfectly attired for the 1860s and 70s. Now we just have to convince Wargames Atlantic to produce their adversaries – Armed Constabulary in similar blanket dress (though with boots)!
I have just finished painting this lovely set of Eureka Miniatures‘ 28mm Māori warriors. They are primarily designed for the inter-tribal conflicts, before Europe started to make an impact with the introduction of the musket that asymmetrically changed the face of traditional tribal warfare.
However, these figures should also be able to be used for the earlier parts of the colonial New Zealand Wars of the 1840s, so they’ll bulk up my existing war-parties of figures by Empress Miniatures.
Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350AD.
Conflict between tribes was common, fought with the traditional weapons as depicted on these figures. If you want to know more about the Māori methods of warfare in pre-European days, you could check out an article I wrote in January 2022 for issue Wi409 of Wargames Illustrated.
The Eureka figures are beautifully sculpted. It is evident that they have paid great attention to the way Māori toa (warriors) move, as the posing includes some distinctive stances that are quite unlike those of other warriors around the world.
For example, fifth from left in the above picture (also visible in the picture at the end of this posting) you can see a warrior brandishing his patu (adze), his feet splayed in what appear to be odd directions, replicating the sort of dancing trot with quick restricted strides that Māori warriors used – and still use today in traditional ceremonies.
Note also that some of these figures are poking their tongues out. The gesture of a warrior flicking his tongue in and out like a lizard is a traditional challenge.
One of the warriors is a musician blowing a pūtātara, a type of trumpet with a carved wooden mouthpiece and a bell made from New Zealand’s small native conch shells or triton shells. We used to have a pūtātara at my work, and boy it was hard to get a sound out of it!
The set includes an ariki (chieftain), shown on the right in the above picture. He is wearing an elaborate cloak denoting his rank.
The other warriors are dressed in pirāpaki or pākē kūrure, which were garments of strands made from the leaves of harakeke (flax) with the fibre exposed in some sections to create lines or geometric patterns.
The right rear figure is the other musician included in the set. He is whirling a purerehua (bull-roarer) above his head, which produces a mournful moaning sound.
You can also see how I have based my figures individually, but can put them into sabots to group them. The ferns, by the way, are model railway scenery produced by Noch. They come in a garish green plastic colour, but a coat of paint soon fixed that!
Some of the figures are wearing a rain cloak called a pākē or hieke, essential for the often cold and wet conditions of the New Zealand winter. It was made from raw flax partly scraped and set in close rows on a plaited fibre base.
Another nice thing about the Eureka figures is that they have a range of body types. So you get everyone from tall and muscular to shorter and thicker-set.
The faces, too, are wonderful. When painting these figures, I could almost recognise some of my Māori friends. I am sure I have worked with that bearded fellow on the right!
I didn’t attempt to paint detailed facial moko (tattoos), but merely hinted at them with a green wash on some faces.
These two warriors kneeling in front of a meeting house (a 3D-print from Printable Scenery) are armed with the taiaha, a close-quarters staff weapon used for short, sharp strikes or stabbing thrusts with efficient footwork on the part of the wielder.
The taiaha consists of the rau (striking blade), which is a shaft of oval cross-section; and the upoko (head) with a large arero (tongue) extending out from the mouth in the Māori gesture of defiance, which could also be used to jab the opponent. These taiaha have a tauri (collar) of red feathers.
The taiaha requires skill, speed, and agility, which is why it was only wielded by high-ranking warriors. The specialty of the taiaha was defence. A master wielder could last an entire battle untouched, at the same time killing or disabling many of his attackers.
One of the figures is a little larger than the others, and along with his taiaha he is also carrying a fishing net. I have depicted him as Māui, a demi-god and a trickster in Māori mythology, famous for his exploits, cleverness, superhuman strength and shapeshifting ability.
One story about Māui describes how the sun used to move across the sky far faster than it does today, zipping back and forth so quickly that the day had barely begun before it was over. Māui would watch his family at work and, no matter how hard they tried, it was impossible for them to finish their chores before the sun was gone.
Māui decided he needed to slow down the sun. So he persuaded his brothers to come with him and gather great mountains of flax, weaving it together into long ropes. They then tied these into a great net – big enough to catch the sun.
With the help of his brothers, Māui caught the sun in the net and beat it with his grandmother’s magic jawbone. The sun was so bruised and bloodied by this battering that from that time on it could only limp slowly across the sky, slowing its passage and ensuring each day is now long enough.
I’m sure a net strong enough to catch the sun would be a powerful weapon in a wargame!
I used GW Contrast paints for all of these figures. As I get older, I find I am getting lazier and sloppier in my painting. Certainly these figures don’t bear the close-up inspection that some of my earlier work could happily withstand. But from any distance they still suffice as ‘wargames standard’.
Today I took part in a couple of large games for a period I am not that familiar with, and with a novel ruleset I have never tried before.
We were refighting the Battle of Benburb, which took place in County Tyrone, Ireland, on 5 June 1646, when Owen Roe O’Neill, the leader of the Ulster Army of the Irish Confederates, won a major victory over a Scottish Covenanter and Anglo-Irish army under Robert Monro.
The fighting took place during the Irish theatre of the War of the Three Kingdoms (otherwise known as the British Civil Wars), with both sides pledging allegiance to Charles I while advancing distinctively Catholic and Protestants agendas in Ireland.
After selling him some (unrelated) figures online, I was invited by Mark (third from left) to join in a large Sunday game he was going to host a few weeks later for a bunch of his gaming mates.
The event took place today in Mark’s lovely spacious wargames room. I didn’t measure the table, but it was certainly one of the larger ones I have played on.
What makes these rules so novel (to me, anyway) is that they don’t use dice or measurements. Instead of dice they use normal playing cards, and for measuring movement they use a gridded terrain.
Whilst I suspected that the gridded terrain would simplify movement, melees etc, I initially thought it would be off-putting for the aesthetic effect.
But Mark cleverly uses a system of discreet black dots drawn on the terrain to mark out the corners of each square, so the grid is almost invisible unless you are looking for it. To prove my point, you can hardly see the dots in these photos.
The original battle ended in a decisive victory for the Irish Confederates and ended Scottish hopes of conquering Ireland and imposing their own religious settlement there.
We were going to see if this would happen again. And with the speed of these rules, we were actually able to replay the battle twice in one day!
In the first replay, I was one of the Scottish players. Mark supplied all the figures for both armies, and they were all exquisite.
I love the trews on this very Billy Connolly-ish wee chappie!
The use of playing cards added some real excitement to our game … though they also added quite bit of table clutter. However, you do have to pick up all the cards after each move, which leaves a good time to admire the view and take photos!
Actually, the reason I took the above photo with all the cards still in place is that my wing of the army went down in an inglorious heap because of a particularly bad run of cards. If you bear in mind that better results occur the closer you get to 10, and bad things are more likely to happen as you go down the other way, you’ll see I wasn’t having much luck in this melee!
After a delicious home-made curry lunch outside on the sundeck (thanks, Mark!), it was time for our second replay. We all swapped sides, so this time I was Irish.
One thing I love about this period is the wonderful panoply of colourful flags.
OK, so how did our two games turn out? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the original battle ended in a decisive victory for the Irish Confederates. The same result happened in both our games, with the second being an almost bloodless victory for the Irish!
As for the rules, I couldn’t believe that we could run two such large games in one day, each coming to a decisive conclusion. The rules ran very smoothly, even with about half of us never having used them before. The cards provided some very interesting mechanisms, and the grid disposed of many of the complications that normal measuring often throws up.
And the period? Well funnily enough, over the last few days I had already been slightly tempted by Warlord Games’ new Epic 13.5mm figures for pike and shotte. If I do end up succumbing to this temptation, then the ‘For King and Parliament’ ruleset might be just the ticket!
As I continue balancing my two hobbies of historical wargaming and painting pictures, it’s the turn of the latter for this posting.
I’ve just completed my most ambitious painting so far – a view of Queen’s Wharf (Wellington, New Zealand) some time during the mid-1890s.
I was inspired by some old photographs of Wellington Harbour that I found online. I loved the hustle and bustle they conveyed, reflecting a period when shipping and rail were the lifeblood of the city.
I also thought this subject might challenge me to overcome my fear of painting people, and in particular horses!
Before starting on the painting proper, I put together a mock-up on my computer. The grid helped me to transfer the basic composition onto my canvas, which I had marked out in a similar pattern of squares. Though you’ll see I didn’t always rigorously follow the mock-up when I actually started painting.
I added the model train into the mock-up as I wished to depict the former Te Aro Extension in operation. This was a branch line that used to run along Jervois Quay, but which has long since been dismantled.
I used acrylics (including Games Workshop Contrast paints for the details) applied on a stretched 700x550mm canvas. The above slideshow demonstrates the process I went through to build up the painting, layer by layer.
And here’s the finished product! I’m really happy with how it has turned out.
In the next few photos I will also pick out for you some of the many little details and vignettes, in what could almost be regarded as a 2D diorama!
There’s lots to see in this picture, if you look very closely (click on the image to enlarge):
a couple of hydraulic cranes
the harbour control tower
several steamships and a sailing ship
horse-drawn cabs lining up for passengers
three heavy goods drays (including one with a schoolboy hitching a ride!)
a couple of pairs of boys fishing
goods being transported on hand-carts
a news-agent kiosk surrounded by customers
men studying the shipping arrivals and departures board
there’s even a little dog – but he is pretty hard to spot!
Moving over to the right of the painting, we see:
a white steamship with a clipper bow
a small steamer tied up at the far left
another steamer about to cast off, the captain on the bridge
several different types of wagons (note the horses – as mentioned above, I have always been afraid of painting these!)
a snazzy couple out for a stroll
the newly-constructed Wellington Harbour Board building (now a museum).
Here we see:
an old-fashioned railway crossing
a pair of old geezers
a cab-rank with cabbies touting for business
a dapper gent with his cane
a ‘sporty’ little one-horse gig
and even some horse droppings and a dung-heap!
The final quadrant of my painting includes:
a well-dressed lady crossing the road (though if you look at my reference photo above, she seems to have aged in my painting!)
my piece-de-resistance – the train (for those interested in such details, this is a R-class ‘Fairlie’ locomotive pulling a clerestory-style passenger carriage).
I am half-thinking of getting this image made into prints, and approaching the Wellington Museum (which now occupies the building on the right of my painting) to see if they’re interested in selling them through their gift-shop.
In case any of my New Zealand-based followers are interested, I have decided to sell two lots of my 40mm figures on TradeMe (our version of eBay).
They came from Triguard Miniatures, and were painted and individually based by me. They are both 18th century sets: British grenadiers and French gardes, as per the photos on this posting.
New Zealanders can access the TradeMe auctions here:
DRESSING THE LINES 