Royal Mail restrictions on small pots of paint

Some readers may have read the article in the latest "Miniature Warfare" pointing out a new, but little-known, restriction by Royal Mail whereby they will destroy consignments of water based paints if they exceed 4 x 140ml pots.

I don't often buy paint by post for my figures, using mainly Citadel paints from the local Games Workshop. But my location will change soon and I will become more dependant on the postal system for my model paints and my artist paints. While the model paints are in small pots of 20ml many of my artist tubes and plastic bottles are various sizes up to 250ml. So I find this a worrying development and wonder where it will go next if we just roll over and accept it.

A petition is available for you to sign if you agree that this is regulation going too far.  You can find out more information here.

royal-mail-lift-the-restrictions-on-shipping-water-based-paints

Thanks
Chris

Acrylic paints in 250ml pots (more on the log buildings in a future post)

Waterloo Project: A mixture of tiny steps - Foot Guards, Horse Guards and "Farmyard detritus"

 I had planned only to show you the spectacular side of this project, like the 140 strong battalions, but there are now five of us beavering away at 28mm Waterloo items of various descriptions for any of our four intended weekend scenarios, and it's good for our morale to publicise the efforts. If you need a reminder here is a link to the previous post

Kevin's spreadsheet says we will need about 600 British Foot Guards figures for Hougoumont, and although not all at the same time, so we can "recycle" some, we will need a h**l of a lot! Our newest contributor, young James Fergusson, has made a good start on his first company - half of the Light Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Foot Guards.  I believe they are Perry plastics and are mounted three to a base so they can easily man the Chateau or garden walls.

I've made a small start on some of the British cavalry which will be backing up the infantry holding the "Elm Tree Crossroads" above La Haye Sainte.  The 2nd Life Guards of the Household Cavalry Brigade were in the closest proximity and took part in routing the nearest French elements in the first attack by D'Erlon's Corps. There were only about 235 of them in two squadrons so I'll be needing about 80 figures to represent them, of which I believe Kevin and Paul  have about 30 or so in their existing British armies.  So here are my first 10 towards the remainder.

I bought them unpainted on Ebay, some had separate right arms and torsos so glued together in slightly exagerated positions. Never mind, they were cheap and an interesting first step with this unit. If anyone can identify what make they are I would be interested to know. There are apparent anomolies in the uniforms but not big ones. For example the horse furniture does not have a sheepskin shabraque but has a rolled overcoat across the front of the saddle. I've painted these as if sheepskin as i hope my next btach will be more accurate. These are OK from "wargames distance".

The officer's twisted body and raised sword makes him good for doing the rousing speech urging his men towards valiant deeds.....not that British cavalry needed much encouragement at Waterloo!

I used the useful, though not always 100% reliable ,uniform guide on this website 100 Days - Mont St Jean

coupled with some very fine photographs of re-enactors of the 1st Life Guards in  "Wellington's Army, Recreated in Colour Photographs" by Neil Leonard- Europa Militaria Special No. 5, Windrow and Greene publishing.

Just to get in the mood, on a recent visit to the capital with the Duchess I persuaded her that two central London military related venues would be an entertaining use of her time. I'm a very lucky man that my wife likes anything to do with horses and stately homes. So, firstly, we went to the Household Cavalry Museum at Horse Guards Parade, Whitehall. This is a small museum, but very nice with snapshots from the Horse Guards' history, and a part where you can view the stables at close quarters. Here is a relic of a Waterloo helmet.

We got the timing right and were able to witness the 11 am changing of the guard, where one group of about a dozen Household cavalry took over, with much ceremony, their 24 hour shift  from the previous group. These are the men who stand unmoving at the sentry boxes on Whitehall in pairs. When not mounted they take turns at other duties around the entrance gate, museum and stables and at that time of day you can see them, through glass, settling the horses into their stalls and unsaddling. If you go I strongly suggest trying to fit in this mid morning ritual. Here's the website household cavalry museum

After lunch in St James Park we walked on up past Buckingham Palace to the corner of Hyde Park  to Apsley House, the former residence of The Duke of Wellington. It has a very large art collection but, as with most similar historic properties, the light is somewhat dim to protect the paintings. What struck me most was the number of fine gifts given to The Duke for his services in ridding the Iberian Peninsula, and Europe, of Bonaparte, and the collection of Spanish old master paintings looted by the French and captured by the British at Vitoria in 1813 . Why have the Spanish never claimed them back?

To be honest the military history itself is very low key and one visits this place more out of reverence for the many years spent there by one of the most famous generals n British history, than to learn anything new. It was good to see two famous Waterloo paintings - those by Felix Philippoteaux French Cuirassiers attack squares  and Sir William Allan From Napoleon's position at La Belle Alliance.  Worth a visit if you like classic art and 18th century architecture but it is now closed for refurbishment till April 2014.

From the sublime to the .....ummm........"Farmyard detritus"

Well, that's the artist's own description for Kevin East's latest painting of 28mm miniatures and he claims they can be used for Waterloo!

"Crazy I know..............but I enjoyed it.

Whilst I was looking after my Mum in Cheltenham and when there were quiet times I managed to paint a few items I had. I didn't want to paint troops which would have required a greater amount of time and more concentrative effort. So the results may or may not be useful. It doesn't matter as I enjoyed painting them as it didn't take long. See attached photos

All wagon contents are removable and interchangeable and the wagon with horses is removable from the base and can be used on its own. I have several model barrels as well. I do need to get a gardener for Hougoumont as I think the girl feeding the chickens can be used as his daughter.

I have a British supply wagon to paint next which can be used as the ammo wagon for one of the Hougoumont scenarios. Maybe La Haye Sainte might find use for it too,  possibly.

By the way none of this is impinging on the very important painting of troops. I am now painting batches of over 50 at a time which seems to be a good experience and not having an effect on the quality of workmanship. More importantly it keeps me on schedule ( I only used to paint a max of 36 at a time). I have 57 French infantry to finish in 14 days worth of effort.

The few civilian farm workers who are cutting crops which are in the photo are Wargames Foundry but the other figures, hay wagon, haystacks, boxes and sacks are by Hovels the miniature building manufacturers. The ladder and plank sided wagons are by Trent Miniatures, each of which comes with four horses. The two wheeled cart is made from 2mm laser cut MDF and comes as a kit by 4ground. It only took 10 minutes to assemble and didn't need painting. As a result it's not as realistic as the metal painted wagons at close quarters but is excellent value at only £3.60 from Warlord Games.  I also have many plastic barrels made by Renedra. So all the models cover many aspects of production including resin, metal, fibreboard and plastic. Quite a concoction. Finally, the base sheet is a grass paper mat from a model railway shop"

Great job Kev.  However we use them I thought them well worth bringing to my visitors' attention. See the right hand sidebar for Guest pages featuring Kevin's expertly painted military models . You'll notice that Kevin is now toning down the eyes considerably for newly painted miniatures, I look forward to seeing more of them.

Waterloo project: the madness continues with my first big battalion

When I've made big battalions before they were roughly 60-figure units for my 18th century Imagi-nation armies and were generally built up in stages. Half of our summer-long Waterloo project involves weekend refights round Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte at a 1:3 figure:man scale. Please see the previous two posts if you are new to this blog. That means battalions of between about 150 to 200 figures. I've volunteered to do four of them for the LHS games and thought it would make sense to start off with the "stars of the show" who held LHS throughout, Major Baring's 2nd Light Battalion of The King's German Legion. Since they were a very understrength unit they would be the smallest part of my madness, working out, in the end, at 138 figures. Essentially they were like the 95th Rifles but with subtle differences. Before I embark on the story of their creation here's a quick look at the lot in line with skirmishers out.

Why 138?  In the first rush of enthusiasm I noted the starting strength of 400, divided it roughly by 3 so about 135, and thought "6 companies of 20 figures each, plus command" that sounds neat. I ordered 60 x 2 figure plastic sprues of British Riflemen from Perry's and then realised how attractive the metal Hanoverian command pack was with 6 different figures, 2 officers, 2 sergeants and 2 buglers. But I would need 2 or 3 for each company to make my 135 and had to order 3 packs...so why not use them all, hence 138, and just to be equal each company has 23 figures. So blame History and Perry's for a non-standard size!

For those not familiar with these figures here's a photo of two identical sprues, front and back.

You can imagine that assembing 120 risked getting a bit tedious but I worked out a system. It seemed to me that by matching two different sets of leg/torso with two different sets of arms/rifles I could make four variations and so one for each of four of my companies. This left one company to throw together as "random" and another entirely of conversions, some of them very extensive, if not particularly anatomically sound :-)

These photos show some of the conversions and some of the metal command figures.

I didn't use Greenstuff or modelling putty as filler but brushed on different thicknesses of my favourite Acrylic Structure Gel till I was happy with the result. It dries fairly quickly and is like liquid plastic. You'll also see that I like to base my figures before painting, as it's quicker and easier I think. My watchword for wargame standard painting is "if you can't get to it to paint you probably don't need to!"

I assembled the whole 138 and then sprayed them with Army Painter "Army Green" primer.  I wasn't botherting with highlights for so many figures and Army Green is a medium shade, so I then diluted some Citadel "Caliban Green" and gave them all a wash with a big brush. When dry that had a nice effect of filling in the creases and making the ensemble appear a pleasing Rifle Green. Incidentally, the manager at Gloucester Games Workshop surprised me by his historical knowledge and recommended this colour for my "Rifles".  

It was now a long slog to do the proper painting with brushes. I'm a child of the Don Featherstone "quick fire" method of figure painting. That is - do the most obvious colours first and go through the whole lot with that colour, then gradually move on to the detail, but still do the whole lot to keep them in sync. I've also read good advice that says if you have a large number the same then break them down into manageable chunks and let each  chunk be a  stage or two behind the previous, to minimise boredom. Well, as I said in my first of these Waterloo postings, this is a new challenge to me and I wasn't going to fall at the first hurdle so I took it as a matter of honour to carry on regardless with all 138 in the same sequence. My concession to numbers was that, instead of each "colour" I painted each "item" throughout.  So 138 black collars, then 276 black cuffs etc. This does cut down on the thinking and changing brush strokes time.  I won't bore you with the stages but here they are finished and before the "marmite" stage.

Love it or hate it Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone is less like Marmite and more like Bovril!

But it certainly brought the plain grey trousers to life, without any other shading or highlighting, and gave the green jackets an extra darken which I think is appropriate. The black leather remains unhighlighted except where the light catches it naturally, but hey, it's 138 model soldiers for wargaming I'm doing here, not a diorama!

Just the bases to landscape and then a good matt spray varnish. Though there were one or two other details that I will show below.  

Here are two more views of the battalion in two rank line. Sharp eyed viewers wil realise I have not yet painted Major Baring himself - I need to find or convert a suitable mounted officer in bicorne hat with a lacy Rifle-type jacket and legwear...plenty of time yet.

The five company line is around 36 inches long, or about 110 metres on our ground scale.

And here they are in square 

Since sister unit 1st Light battalion KGL (less 2 companies) spent a fair bit of time at Waterloo in square it was good practice for me to see what that might look like. Also in our game we will be having at least 5th (line) Battalion KGL and the British 32nd Foot on the ridge above LHS at some stage, and they are both bigger.

Practically speaking at this scale 3 ranks deep of figures has to represent the classic four-deep British square. I've put the command stands in the centre which can pass as a sort of fourth rank if required. This amount of figures covers roughly 10 inches by 12 inches (30 x 36 metres).

Now here are some photos of my 2LB KGL alongside Kevin's model of La Haye Sainte by Hovels. It's fair to say that if he hadn't already had this model we might not be doing this project at all.  Obvioulsy he's just kindly lent it to me for this photo session and we will be putting it on a specially landscaped board for the actual event in 2015.

I'm happy that we've got the scale right. For the photos I've notionally put two companies defending the rear kitchen garden perimeter, a company on the South side where the orchard will be, and three companies within the farm itself. In fact as the buildings have hollow bases one can put a whole company worth of figures in each of the barn, stables and house. For the sake of playability some concessions will have to be made about how many rifles can actually fire out; in real life the lines of fire were quite restricted as few loopholes were made.

Here are some close-ups within the farm

 On the piggery and at the main gate. (I made these individual conversions before I saw the model and hoped they would fit on what I thought was a flat roof ----doooooh!)

 This is the stable block and the passageway through to the West side

In the last posting I waxed lyrical about the superb "95" decals available from Alban Miniatures and I decided, as I had transfer paper for my printer, to make some of my own for 2LB KGL. I have some of the wonderful re-enactor photo books in the "Europa Militaria Special" series.  Nr. 9, on German Napoleonic Armies, has a good feature on The KGL Light and here is a detail of equipment.

The back pack has a nice green horn on its side and I was able to copy that, modify it in the computer and produce some about 2mm square for the centre of  my backpacks.

That isn't just modelling nerdyness as I'm trying to think of distinguishing features on the table top to help players. In my game there might be up to 700 figures in dark green jackets from 4 different battalions. With your specs on you can see the "2" on these backpacks! I also produced some little transfers for the water canteens but these proved to be more of a liability and a waste of time, so I won't be doing them for other units.

Each company, bar the first, is distinguished by a small coloured blob of paint on the base - white, green, red, yellow and light blue and also a sticky label underneath each base to identify which company.

With any luck none of our players will be able to claim they can't track casualties as they can't distinguish companies and battalions apart.

I hope that's been of interest or some use. Next on the painting table a complete change doing my first 10 figures of one of the two squadrons of the 2nd Life Guards.