Jacobites

 I recently acquired quite a large late 17th early 18th Century 20mm army, consisting of six battalions of line, two of horse and some grenadiers.  My plan is to pitch these troops against my Jacobites.  However, a quick review of my Jacobite army in this scale was sadly lacking, so I decided to remidy matters.

After some thinking I purchased several boxes of Strelets 1/72 plastic figures and set about painting them. I didn't want to spend an age on the figures, so I tried something that I have not done before, using techniques employed when painting 6mm figures.  I first sprayed the figures in black primer, then, as I was going for en masse units I added blobs of colour to bring out the weapons, clothing and skin.  I found that I was able to paint 60+ figures in two days.

The results are not pretty, but with a crowd of Highlanders gathered together on bases and viewed on the table they look OK.  Here is the result:

I have bought another box of figures and a load of musket armed 20mm metal figures from Newline to go with these.

Norman's North American Wars

 Once again Norman has sent me some pictures of his delightful 54mm soldiers.  This time it is a fort set in North America, with some pesky local natives lurking in the woods.

Some locals are spotted in the forest:

The fort alerts the troops:

And they deploy out of the fort:

Followed by a brisk engagement:

Back in time for tea and medals!

Red Alert - The other side

 Over the weekend I managed to finish painting and basing the second faction.  To stand out from the blue fleet, I have gone again for a gunmetal base coat, but this time added red and grey highlights.

Here is the second fleet:

Here you can see the six battleships at the front, the command ship with its escort fighters, six cruisers, 12 destroyers and three clusters of fighters.

I also painted three more blue faction battleships.  This completes all of the capital ships and most of the support vessels.  There are a few more odds and ends to do, but I now have enough for the opening scenarios of the game.

Red Alert - Setting Up

 Inspired by a post on David Crook's Wargaming Odyssey blog, I decided to dig out my unopened Red Alert board game.  It was one of those ideas from a few years back that never came to pass.  I have another set that has been painted, but not by me, so I thought it would be fun to paint some spaceships and set up a basic game.

The models that come with the game are quite nicely made and come in a basic green or red plastic for the warring factions.

I experimented with various colours and in the end I decided to give all the ships a coat of shiny gunmetal and then add colours for each faction.

This is the result of my initial effort.  My green ships are now blue and sand colour:

I have started work on the other faction and set the game board up for the first scenario in the rule book.