Basing the Barryat of Lyndonia’s big battalions

Whilst waiting for an overdue shipment of figures to complete my current painting project (hopefully just held up by the international supply chain issues at the moment) I have done something I have been meaning to do for some time now – rebasing the regiments of my 18th century ‘imagi-nation’, the Barryat of Lyndonia.

When I first began painting the various foreign contingents that make up the Barryat’s army, I was inspired by the big battalions in old wargaming books like Charge! Or How To Play Wargames, with large regiments of several companies of fusiliers and grenadiers being led by figures depicting the officers and NCOs.

I achieved the look I wanted by combining six-figure bases for the soldiers with single bases for their officers, standard-bearers, NCOs and drummers.

But whilst this certainly looked good, it made the units very fiddly to set up and move on the table. So I decided to try something different.

I have now introduced a new basing system that I hope retains that same nostalgic look, but that is much easier to handle and manoeuvre. By using 40x60mm bases, I can fit two ranks of privates with the supernumeries marching in front and behind.

For flexibility, I have kept the standards on separate bases. These bases are narrow, but still as deep as the main bases, which means they line up perfectly when incorporated in their parent unit.

The flag-bases also work perfectly fine when the standard bearers are out of the line, albeit the long narrow bases are a rather odd shape.

I cheated a bit with rebasing, as I didn’t remove all the figures from their existing bases, but merely glued the existing six-figure bases on top of the new bases. As both the old and the new bases were quite thin, the combined height was still acceptable to me.

I then built up the terrain to blend the bases in. Although you can still just make out the line of the old bases (as in this French regiment), it isn’t too obvious.

I did un-base the supernumeries from their old single bases though, such as the officers and standard-bearers in this picture. But as there weren’t so many of them, this wasn’t too onerous a task.

Another advantage of rebasing was that it helped solve a problem I had with charging figures, whose muskets stuck well out in front of the old bases, and were in danger of being bent or broken. The new deeper bases will give them some extra protection frm clumsy fingers.

By the way, for the above picture of a re-based Irish regiment in French service I lined them up on a textured plank that I sometimes use for photographing my miniatures. But note that that plank isn’t part of the basing.

As you can see here, the effect of the drummers and sergeants trailing behind the line gives a great effect.

Likewise, having the officers stand out in front adds an extra dimension. This worked particularly well with my Gardes Françaises, with the officer stepping out to politely doff his hat to the enemy.

For the Gardes Françaises, I massed the drums together to form a ‘drum corps’ standing behind the line. But with all my other regiments, which are organised in a totally fictional way of three companies of 18 privates, each company has its own drummer.

One of the reasons for the separate flags is because I wanted to be able to capture the idiosyncratic way that flags are deployed in the movie Barry Lyndon. For example, in the movie the Prussian regiment carries three flags together that actually belonged to three different regiments.

But if I prefer to pose them as a real-life regiment, I can just remove the flag-bases I don’t need.

Anther advantage of the separate flag-bases is if I choose to play a game using smaller regiments, I can just divide the unit into two, and give each half a flag. Simples!

My light troops had also used the same size bases as the line regiment, but with only three figures per base. I again just glued the old bases on top new 40×60 bases, and arranged their officers and musicians behind or in front.

By staggering the figures, they give the irregular look of troops engaged in la petite guerre (the little war), like these Hanoverian Freytag Jaegers taking on French Volontaires de Clermont-Prince.

The larger bases for the light troops still work fine to depict skirmishing, as you can see with this picture of the Volontaires Étrangers de Clermont-Prince taking pot-shots from behind a fence-line.

My original artillery had separately based gunners, as you can see in the picture near the top of this posting. But I have now reverted to the traditional system of mounting the gunners on the same base as their weapon, as with the above Royal Artillery.

I didn’t feel the cavalry needed re-basing, as their existing system works quite well. So I will leave well enough alone.

So that’s my re-basing done and dusted. Now I just need to head down to my letter-box and hopefully find that my overdue parcel has finally overcome the supply chain problems and arrived safely, so I can get on and finish my next unit!

Painting guide: British grenadiers with Contrast paints

After my previous posting showing off my latest project in which I used GW Contrast paints to complete a unit of 18th century British grenadiers by Crann Tara Miniatures, I’ve been asked by several people for tips on how I went about it. So here we go!

Undercoat

After the usual preparation involving cleaning up any flash and washing the figures in water with detergent, I spray them with GW Wraithbone undercoat. This is great fun, as it really brings out the detail.

I understand this undercoat is especially formulated to go with Contrast paints. But how much difference it would make to use another brand, I don’t know.

Equipment and lacing

When I paint with ordinary hobby paints, I usually do the coat and breeches first, then equipment and facings last.

However, with Contrast paints I find it works better the other way around, starting with the equipment and lacing, then filling in the uniform colours later. When the uniform is a darker colour than most of the equipment (eg red or blue), this technique gives a clean edge.

• Lacing: Skeleton Horde (you might prefer Apothecary White for other regiments)
• Belts and haversack: Aggaros Dunes
• Cartridge box and sword: Black Templar
• Sword handle and belt buckle: Basilicanum Grey with a second coat of Aggoras Dunes
• Fur knapsack: Wyldwood
• Waterbottle: Basilicanum Grey

Mitre caps and flesh

This was the part I was most anxious about. There is a lot of detail on those mitre caps, but it is all so minute. But if someone could sculpt it, surely I could paint it!

I start by giving the whole cap a coat of Apothecary White to bring out the white lacing. I then use a very fine brush to paint in the crown emblem with Aggaros Dunes, and squiggles of Blood Angels Red and Leviadon Blue between the raised white detail. This is where Contrast paints come into their own, as they flow quite easily into the gaps. I finish with the lightest of dry-brushing with normal white paint.

The backs of the caps are done exactly the same way – a coat of white over everything first, then filling in the red and blue gaps. Again, this is sort of a reverse from the normal procedure, where I probably would’ve painted the white lace last.

By the way, I use really cheap fine brushes by the truckload which a friend bought me from the online seller Wish. Although cheap and nasty, they actually work better and last longer than I expected. But when the point does get ragged, at just a few cents per brush I can simply throw the brush away and grab another from the box.

Adding the flesh is one of my favourite tasks, as this makes the figures come alive. I use one light coat of Gulliman Flesh, and that’s it. All the shading, eyes, fingers etc appear by themselves!

Weapons and boots

One of the parts I most dislike (and I have no idea why) is painting weapons and shoes. I start with the strap, then the barrel, and finally the woodwork. I add a highlight of normal silver paint to the bayonets to make them look a bit shinier.

• Straps: Aggaros Dunes
• Barrel: Basilicanum Grey
• Bayonet: Basilicanum Grey with a highlight of normal silver
• Woodwork: Gore-Grunta Fur
• Shoes: Black Templar

Uniforms and leggings

Now at last the best bit – the uniforms. This is quite a painstaking stage, but great fun. The Contrast paint flows really nicely into all the little gaps, using a fairly small brush.

The leggings are done with a coat of Apothecary White. This makes all the buttons pop, and gives a line to the bands that I can later follow with black.

Up till now my figures have looked sort of French or Austrian. But now they are definitely British!

• Coats: Blood Angels Red
• Facings and breeches: Leviadon Blue with a highlight of normal medium blue paint
• Leggings: Apothecary White with Black Templar bands

I paint the officers and drummers using exactly the same technique. The only additional task is the sash, painted first in normal violet paint, then covered with a light coat of Blood Angels Red, which turns it into a nicely shaded crimson.

And there we have it – a company of grenadiers all done!

But how do Contrast paints on a light undercoat come out versus using normal hobby paints on a black undercoat. Well, you choose! The three grenadiers on the left are Minden Miniatures painted the normal way, and the three on the right are the Contrast-painted Crann Tara figures.

My latest article in Wargames Illustrated

I’ve been lucky enough to have another article published in ‘Wargames Illustrated’. I submitted a piece for their ‘Quick Fire’ series, and was chuffed to see it appear in Issue 397 (January 2021).

In the short article I describe how when photographing miniatures, there’s a real thrill when every now and then one of the pictures unexpectedly stands out from the rest.

The article is accompanied by some examples of what I call my ‘serendipitous photographs’ – pictures that I think came out particularly well, despite no extra effort on my part.

The limitations of a hard-copy magazine mean the published pictures are quite small. So, for anyone who may be interested, here they are full-size (click on the pics to expand).

I liked the way that the trees in my garden accidently came out looking like a castle on a hill overshadowing this unit of Landsknechts. (Warlord Games)

There’s more info on this unit in my old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/lockdown-landsknechts/

This is probably my favourite photo – a recreation of Philippoteaux’s famous painting of the Battle of Fontenoy. (Crann Tara and Minden Miniatures)

There’s more info on the original painting and my diorama version in this posting on my blog: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/at-last-my-favourite-painting-in-miniature/

British and French third-rate ships-of-the-line battle it out, as a Spanish brig circles warily. This photo was taken with a simple hand-painted sky background, and sitting on the paper sea that comes with the Warlord ‘Black Seas’ starter set. (Warlord Games)

You can find out more about these models in this old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2019/11/08/black-seas-fleets-finished/

A battalion of French light infantry marches forward in the moonlight. (Front Rank)

This is a really old picture. I recall I added in the ‘moon’ using a graphics programme, as the lighting of this photo came out by chance looking just like moonlight (well, I thought so anyway!).

There’s more info on this unit in this old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/tartanish-and-thunderbirdish-napoleonics/

Māori warriors from the colonial New Zealand Wars perform a fierce haka (war-dance) in the face of the enemy. (Empress Miniatures)

There’s more info on this unit here: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/photos-of-finished-colonial-new-zealand-wars-figures-and-terrain/

A pre-war colonial French column of Panhard armoured cars arrives in an oasis village. (Mad Bob Miniatures)

Below is the same picture, but with some special effects to make it into an old-fashioned snapshot. 

You can read more about these models here: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/motorised-foreign-legion-security-patrol-in-1930s-morocco/

On parade! The Barryat of Lyndonia’s artillery contingents

In Part 8 of this series of postings in which I am reviewing the armies of my ‘imagi-nation’, the Barryat of Lyndonia, it’s time to take a look at the artillery contingents.

As described in Part 1, rather than having its own army, this imaginary eighteenth century state contracts its troops from real-life European countries of the time.

The artillery contingents come from Britain and France – which has no doubt led to many a fisticuffs argument in local hostelries when carousing gunners from these two habitual enemies run into each other!

The French gun and limber are made by Fife and Drum Miniatures (also available from UK company Crann Tara Miniatures).

Apart from the horses, they are all painted with GW’s wonderful Contrast paints (which have truly revolutionised my style and speed of painting).

I’ve chosen to paint the guns red, which means they are from the mid-part of the eighteenth century, as the French later converted to blue. I reckon the red looks more dramatic!

Whilst the gun crew are all glued onto the base, I’ve kept the gun itself removable so it can be attached to the limber if I wish to portray the piece on the move.

The number of horses is really just representative, as I think this would be far too much a load for just two horses to haul!

And here’s the British Royal Artillery contingent. This model also comes from Crann Tara Miniatures.

Gunners normally wore quite subdued uniforms (maybe due to how they could get so worn and dirty working the guns). But the British bucked this trend, and festooned their Royal Artillery’s uniforms with lashings of lace and piping.

I thought all this decoration would be quite hard to paint, but the Contrast paints almost did the job by themselves, with just the barest modicum of precision on my part!

I particularly like the British officer with his crimson sash, whom you can see on the left of the above photo.

Note the civilian driver on the right. During his period armies hired civilians to lug their guns about. Once in battle, I bet many drivers would’ve scarpered off, leaving the guns pretty well fixed in place.

Again, the gun can be attached to its limber.

British guns were painted a grey-blue. I must admit I didn’t get the shade quite right on the gun, compared to the limber. Maybe the gun is older and has faded in the sun!

Whilst painting the big guns, I also took the opportunity to re-base the smaller battalion guns that I had painted several years ago.

Battalion guns were the small-calibre cannon that formed integral parts of some individual infantry units.

Here we see the battalion gun of Gale’s Regiment of Foot, supporting the advance of the company of grenadiers.

These figures are by Minden Miniatures.

And here’s the battalion gun of le Régiment des Royal-Cravates.

Battalion guns were often manned by infantrymen from the regiment, rather than actual artillerists, which is why these gunners are in white rather than French Artillerie blue.

Go back to Part 7 of this series: the Truchseß Dragoons.

On parade! The Truchseß Dragoons of the Barryat of Lyndonia

In Part 7 of this series of ‘On parade!’ postings featuring the units of my ‘imagi-nation’ army, we meet these dragoons based on the real-life Prussian Truchseß dragoon regiment.  

My imagi-nation, the Barryat of Lyndonia is based on the movie Barry Lyndon. But there are only a few cavalrymen in the movie, who are basically in Prussian infantry uniforms with attached plumes, and don’t do anything for me.

So I decided to do a completely new unit, not from the movie at all, but picked for an entirely different reason. When I met my wife back in the 80s, pink and light-blue were the ‘in’ colours. She not only wore (very attractively, I might add) pink and light-blue eye-shadow, but we painted our first house together white with pink and light-blue trim. Despite being well out of fashion now, I still have a fondness of that colour combination, so how could I resist painting a real-life regiment that had light-blue uniforms with pink facings – the Prussian Truchseß dragoons?!

I don’t organise my regiments  in any historical way – they are merely for playing fun wargames, not simulating history. When I painted this regiment back in 2012, it initially had 24 figures –  two officers, one drummer and one standard bearer (all based singly) and two squadrons of 10 troopers (based in pairs).  

However, I later added a couple more troopers to each squadron, as I found 10 to be an unsatisfying number for arranging my regiment in symmetrical formations!  

The figures are all 28mm Minden Miniatures (along with Crann Tara Miniatures, the most exquisite 18th century figures around, in my opinion). The standard is merely printed out from a lovely picture on the Kronosaf website.

I was particularly pleased with how this haughty officer came out. As this figure was originally a Minden Hanovarian officer, and not a Prussian at all, he is wearing his sash incorrectly across his shoulder for a Prussian (who wore them around the waist). Even though with an imagi-nation army I’m not bound by accuracy, I decided to paint the sash as a real military decoration ribbon instead – the orange ribbon of the Order of the Black Eagle.

The horses were under-coated with rust-coloured car primer, then rubbed with burnt umber or black oil paint.  This oil paint used to belong to my Dad, who passed away in 1984, so it imbues my figures with a touch of personal memories, and also shows you how long oil paint lasts!  

Oh, and I had some expert help on painting horses from Sammy, who is seen inspecting the results in the above picture!

Go forward to Part 8 of this series: the artillery contingents

Go back to Part 6 of this series: the Lynden Hussars

On parade! The Barryat of Lyndonia’s Lynden Hussars

In Part 6 of this series of ‘On parade!’ postings reviewing all the units in the army of my wargaming ‘imagi-nation’ (imaginary nation), the Barryat of Lyndonia, here come the Lynden Hussars, looking somewhat Toytown-ish in their blue, yellow and red uniforms.

Although my army is imaginary, I like each unit to match a real-life regiment from any of the warring nations of the mid-18th century. So after I bought these wonderful Minden Miniatures French hussars a couple of years ago, I ummed and ahhed which French regiment to paint them as.

So, were they going to be France’s famous Bercheny Hussars? Or perhaps those cut-throat rogues, the Chasseurs de Fischer? I just couldn’t decide … until the decision was made for me when I found out that the French army really had a hussar regiment named the Aspremont-Lynden Hussars. How could the Barryat of Lyndonia possibly not include this unit in its army?!

The standard French light-blue hussar uniform looks striking in my army, especially with the colourful yellow facings and red horse furniture.

I painted the horses using oil paints, which gives a lovely depth of colour and a sheen that makes them look lifelike.

The regiment consists of 24 troopers, two trumpeters, a standard-bearer (yes, I know hussars didn’t carry standards into battle, but this is an imaginary nation, remember!), and an officer. They’re not based for any particular set of wargaming rules.

One problem was that I couldn’t find any information on the colour of the Lynden trumpeters’ uniforms. As French trumpeters often wore the livery of their regiment’s owner, I decided to paint them in yellow and red to mach the heraldic arms of the real-life Aspremont-Lynden family.  

Go forward to Part 7 of this series: the Truchseß Dragoons

Go back to Part 5 of this series: Le Régiment des Gardes Françaises

On Parade! Infanterie-Regiment Kubrick

In this fourth posting in my series on the army of my imagi-nation, the Barryat of Lyndonia, we review the Prussian contingent.

As I have previously mentioned, the Barryat of Lyndonia is inspired by the novel and film ‘Barry Lyndon’. In the story, Barry is eventually enlisted into the Prussian army after being captured as a British army deserter.

The movie doesn’t name the regiment, but in the book it is called the ‘Bulow’ Regiment, which could possibly have been the von Bülow fusilier regiment that fought at Zorndorf.

But I decided to name the third regiment of the Barryat’s army in honour of the movie’s famous director, so the Infanterie-Regiment Kubrick came into being.

As with the other regiments in my army, the movie’s inaccuracies are all faithfully recreated. The soldiers’ coats have the wrong coloured turnbacks, and they wear incorrectly-coloured straps.

OK, so the movie doesn’t have any grenadiers in mitre caps. But, like Gale’s Regiment of Foot, I really wanted some of these smart-looking soldiers, so I’ve conjectured how Kubrick would have portrayed them. Basically, they’re the same as his somewhat inaccurate Prussian musketeers, but wearing mitre caps instead of tricornes.

They also carry mis-matched flags (the orange, black and white flags in the movie are actually from three different real-life Prussian regiments).

The regiment is led by Captain Potzdorf on his distinctive white horse – in the movie Barry saves Potzdorf’s life, which launches his rise in society. 

The figures are gorgeous 1/56th casting by Minden Miniatures, available through Fife and Drum.

By the way, I’ve been asked where in the social hierarchy a “barryat” might lie, for instance vis-à-vis a ‘barony’.

Well, I’m figuring “barryat” is a (mythical) kind of Western European derivative of the old term “banate”, a frontier province led by a military governor called a “ban” (or in my imagi-nation’s case, led by a “barry”).

Banate provinces really did exist, mainly in South Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian lands. For example, the Banat of Temesvár was a Habsburg province that existed between 1718 and 1778.  

Go to the next posting about Le Régiment des Gardes Françaises.

Go back to my previous posting about le Régiment des Royal-Cravates.

On parade! Le Régiment des Royal-Cravates

Welcome to Part 3 of my series looking at the army of my ‘imagi-nation’, the Barrayat of Lyndonia. Today we meet a French unit that has been contracted to join the Barryat’s forces.

This unit represents the regiment that Barry Lyndon faced in the eponymous movie ‘Barry Lyndon’. As I mentioned in my previous posting, Barry’s first taste of battle was ‘only a skirmish against a rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which the English main force wish to pass’.  

Those of you who know your French regiments of the eighteenth century will no doubt be shaking your heads at my photos and saying, ‘But he’s got it all wrong – that’s the flag of the Régiment de Flandre, and they wore blue facings, not red!’ 

Well, in the movie the unnamed French regiment that Barry faces in battle is clothed in uniforms with red facings and carries the flags of two real French regiments, the Grenadiers Royaux and the Régiment de Flandre. But neither of these regiments had red facings in real life!

In the Thackeray novel that the movie was based on, Barry’s first taste of battle is actually said to occur during the Battle of Minden, and the French regiments he faces are named as being those of ‘Lorraine and the Royal Cravate’. But neither of these units matches the flags in the movie.

Adding to the puzzle is that the real Royal Cravates of the time were not an infantry regiment at all, but cavalry! 

So I had to make some sort of decision on this confusion. In the end, I chose to paint them as the fictional Régiment des Royal-Cravates from the book, with the facings and flags from the movie. The result is a nice colourful hodge-podge, but still distinctly French in look and feel. 

And I can confidently state that this unit is authentic. Well, at least from the perspectives of the book and the movie it is authentic, as my whole plan with this army was to recreate the movie’s inaccuracies as accurately as I could!

I also gave the regiment the little battalion gun that is seen in the movie.  Kubrik got the gunners’ white coats right, as battalion guns were manned by men assigned from the regiment, rather than artillerymen in their blue and red French artillery uniforms. 

My gun is actually a small Napoleonic cannon by Minifigs, but with a lick of red paint it vaguely resembles the little Swedish-style cannons used as battalion guns during the period. That’s near enough for me!

Oh, by the way, these figures are all exquisite 1/56 scale sculpts from Minden Miniatures, available from Fife and Drum.

So there we have it. You have now met the British and French contingents of the army of the Barryat of Lyndonia. Next time it’ll be the Prussians.

Go forward to Part 4 of this series to see the Infanterie-Regiment Kubrick.

Go back to Part 2 of this series to see Gale’s Regiment of Foot.

On Parade! Gale’s Regiment of Foot

I mentioned in Part 1 of this series on my imagi-nation, the Barryat of Lyndonia doesn’t have its own army, but employs regiments from all round Europe, particularly those that starred in my all-time favourite war film, Barry Lyndon. 

In the film our protagonist Redmond Barry has his first taste of battle in just ‘a skirmish against a rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which the English main force wish to pass’.  The narrator goes on to say that though this encounter is not recorded in any history book, it was memorable enough for those who took part.

This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film, aided by a spine-tingling soundtrack of the fifes and drums playing The British Grenadiers:

It was therefore only natural that the Barrayat of Lyndonia’s first hire would be Barry’s unit, the fictional Gale’s Regiment of Foot, using the exquisite 1/56th scale figures made by Minden Miniatures (which are available through Fife and Drum).

Headed by Lt-Colonel Charles Gale, the regiment’s officers include the Irish adventurer Captain Grogan, the foppish Lieutenant Jonathon Fakenham and his particular friend Lieutenant Freddie, whose surname is not disclosed in the movie.

Somewhere in the ranks, of course, will be Private Redmond Barry. He joined Gale’s Regiment of Foot after being tricked into a duel back home in Ireland. Captain Grogan has now taken young Barry under his wing.

Lieutenants Jonathon and Freddie will later provide Barry with an intriguing opportunity to improve his status in life. But I’m not going to give anything away – you’ll need to see the movie to find out exactly how this happens!

In the movie, the regiment has no grenadiers, but I added these simply because I liked their colourful and intricate mitres so much – and what better reason could there be than that?

The movie also depicts the drummers wearing tricornes instead of mitre caps, but I kept to the latter, again because I like them so much, and also because that’s the way the Minden Miniatures drummers come anyway.

And here’s another chance to listen to those drummers. This is a company of the Kilwangen Regiment led by the ramrod-straight Captain John Quin, with whom the young Barry is later tricked into the duel that leads him to join the army:

A note on my army organisation

The unit organisation and basing of my army are not designed for any particular set of wargames rules, though they do bear somewhat of a resemblance to the regiments portrayed in Charge! Or how to play wargames.    

One of my criteria for this project was that instead of having lots of small regiments, I wanted a smaller number of really big regiments.

So each regiment of foot has 54 men, along with additional individually based officers, standard bearers, sergeants and drummers, bringing the total number to over 60 figures.

There’s no attempt at historical organisation in these units. Instead, each regiment of foot is split into just three companies. 

As the authors of Charge! Or how to play wargames wrote, ‘since an infantry battalion of three companies can be handled in exactly the same way, and can be put through exactly the same manoeuvres, as one of six or eight, there seems little point in having any more’.

The 18 rank-and-file men in each company are based on three 45mm-wide bases, each containing 6 men arranged in two ranks (thus each man having a frontage of 15mm).

This basing system provides the flexibility that I can split the regiment up if I want for varying rules, for example into three separate 18-man regiments.

I also decided not to pursue historical accuracy when painting my figures. Instead, I tried to depict my soldiers as they appear in the movie, lovingly recreating the historical inaccuracies and all.

So if someone tells me that my British belts are the wrong colour, that my French have the incorrect flag, or that the turn-backs on my Prussians should be red instead of white, I can point out that my figures aren’t supposed to represent real British, French or Prussians, but rather Kubrick’s take on them!

Go to Part 3 of this series to meet le Régiment des Royal-Cravates.

Go to Part 1 of this series on the army of the Barryat of Lyndonia.

The birth of the Barryat of Lyndonia

My first exposure to the hobby of wargaming was as a schoolboy back in the 1960s, when I stumbled across Brigadier Peter Young’s and Lt Colonel James Lawford’s book Charge! Or how to play wargames in my local library.

I still remember poring over the pictures in the book, totally fascinated by the 18^th century era, the lifelike figures and even the stylised miniature trees.

But when I did start eventually playing wargames, it wasn’t in that wonderful 18th century period after all, because due to lack of finance and the poor availability of wargaming figures in New Zealand, my gaming was pretty much restricted to Airfix plastics and the occasional lead Minifigs figures.

The nearest I could get to these eighteenth century armies were the American War of Independence figures put our by Airfix. But they just didn’t quite capture the rococo style and flair of the uniforms of the European wars of the mid-century, that were so much part of the reason I loved the illustration in Young and Lawford’s book.  

It wasn’t till many years later that I discovered a range of relatively cheap 30mm plastic figures in the United Kingdom made by a company called Spencer-Smith. In fact, some of these very same figures featured in the illustrations in the book I so admired.

I don’t recall where I first heard about this range – possibly in an advertisement in Military Modelling magazine. But I soon sent away an order, and eventually received a padded paper envelope full of the brown soft plastic figures.

Some time round that period I made a trip to Europe, and was lucky enough to be able to fit in a visit to the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt. There I saw a huge diorama of the Battle of Leuthen, made up of thousands of flat figures.

Amongst all the white-coated Austrians in the diorama, my eye was caught by the light blue lozenged flags of the Bavarians. This, along with the fact that my uncle was Bavarian, was enough to decide me to paint up my Spencer-Smith figures as a Bavarian Electoral Army.

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I still have them, but after nearly half a century the plastic has become very brittle, so they never see the gaming table anymore.

I wonder if this brittleness might have anything to do with temperature variations, as I painted some of these troops whilst working in Antarctica for a season (making them surely the southern-most wargames army in the world).

My next splurge into the period was after seeing my friend Paul Crouch’s American War of Independence armies. Seeing his wonderfully painted figures drew me back into the hobby after a 20-year pause for family and work commitments. 

I was so entranced with their somewhat exaggerated chunky style, which I felt had more ‘presence’ than the slimmer plastic ranges I had been used to up till then.

So I immediately started building an army myself, this time going for 18th century French for no other reason than that they seemed to have the most colourful range of uniforms.

My 18th century French army grew, and I was very proud of it. But much as I loved my figures, there was always just something about them that didn’t quite capture the memory of Charge! Or how to play wargames.

I eventually realised it was a very simple thing – I couldn’t really see the breeches!  Nothing kinky there … it’s just that I think coloured breeches are what set the uniforms of the mid-18th century apart from the later part of the century.  But with the ‘chunky’ sculpting style of the figures I had been buying, the coloured breeches were hard to see.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the ‘chunky’ style, and my French remain one of my favourite armies. It is just that they didn’t match my childhood memories of this particular book.

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Then a few years ago I finally found my nirvana of 18th century figures – Minden Miniatures.  Here at last was a range of exquisitely sculpted slender figures.  And you could see the breeches!

When I first saw pictures of these figures on a website, the years just rolled back and I felt as though I was once more poring over those illustrations in Charge! 

So I decided to start painting a brand new eighteenth century project – but whatever army was I going to collect? French again? British? Prussian?

Besides Charge! Or how to play wargames there was another reason for my love for the 18th century. It was a 1975 period drama film by Stanley Kubrick, based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray.

When I first saw Barry Lyndon at the cinema, I was enchanted. Inspired by painters such as Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth, the film had a beautiful, painterly look that transported me right into the 18th century.

Barry Lyndon tells the story of a fictional 18^th century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband’s aristocratic position, before it all eventually unravels and he ends up back where he started. During the story he joins the British army, and later the Prussians, and fights the French.

When I first saw the Minden Miniatures figures, they not only reminded me of Charge! Or how to play wargames, but also of the military scenes in Barry Lyndon. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, to recreate one of the regiments from the movie. But, again, for which army?

Then it came to me – why not make up a completely imaginary country (known in wargaming as an ‘imagi-nation’) that hires units from any European country it desires? This way I could reproduce all the regiments from the movie – British, Prussian and French – and combine them into one army!   

And so a new state was born: the Barrayat of Lyndonia. Whilst this might sound a weird name for a country, it’s no worse than the real-life Banat of Temesvár, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire!

Go to Part 2 of this series on the army of the Barryat of Lyndonia, based in part on an article originally published in Wargames Illustrated #385.