23 May 2016

Confederate Brigade (And some other things)

It’s been a bit quiet on the hobby desk of late in Chateaux Dai. Moments to pick up a paint brush have been a bit few and far between in the past… 2 weeks or so since my last post. Until that is, this weekend….

Exciting, eh?

Not much done mind, but enough for a wee post I think. First off, the flags I ordered from Stone Mountain Miniatures arrived for my Confederates. Of course, silly ol’ me neglected to order some classic Army of North Virginia “Diagonal Blue stripes over Orange background” Stainless Banners (Not that every Southern army born them in any case, but they are certainly instantly recognisable)… But they do have some earlier “Stars’n’Bars” efforts for the now (And a Florida State flag.) which will serve for our earlier games in mine and Stewarts’ (Who’s playing the Union boys) campaign next month.



Pedisclaux's Brigade



Better pics of the starting Brigade were promised and here they are – the campaign will follow a fictional duel between two brigades over the years of the war in 9 meetings (Per the Longstreet “Grand Campaign” rules.). The Campaign encourages that we both name our Brigade commanding General and it’s component regiments, which I’ve done below. Each side begins the campaign with 3 infantry regiments of 10 bases, 1 cavalry regiment of 8 bases and a 3-gun battery of artillery. 

Everyone's eager and ready to kick in Northerner face. 
Artillery on the left. LA 3rd and 4th infantry top and bottom at center, with the 12th FL in between. On the right are the 26th Florida Horse with their "Dismounted" version at the rear. 

My splendid boys marching on.

Guns ready to deal out death to the Northern invader!

The dashing and debonair  General Jean-Claude Pedisclaux moving his boys onward from horseback. Although generals play no part in the Longstreet rules, it's fun to at least have a fig on the table to represent them.

Stewart and I will get the first games of our campaign started on June 18th in a day long (thedaybefore)Fathers Day gaming extravaganza! AAR to be posted thereafter. 

I also finished up a couple of Dark ages figs - a Saxon Thegn and a Jomsviking Warrior.

Saxon Bondi to bring my Saxon Thegns up to 3 units of 4 for Saga. Shield's a bit pants, but I just wanted him off my desk.


Jomsviking warrior with a large red shield. His face was a crappy sculpt with almost no nose whatsoever, so I left the red wash on heavy so it looked (At least to me) like his nose was all scar tissue after a nasty wound or something.


Some work got done on my commission too. A 40K metal Ogryn and a sculpt that's pretty fun to paint. I liked this version of the Ogryns as they were less cartoony than their previous releases. Still to do armour/metal plates and ammo-belts. No idea what colour to paint the plates though...?

Lighting makes his skin look well messy, but it's not in real life - promise.
And last, but certainly not least - I finally (After a year of sitting on my shelf) fixed my mate Dave's Heroclix Great Cthulhu mini/statue. This thing's huge! It was handed to me after his son and my own were sneaking into Dave's hobby room (Whilst we played Kingdom Death) and one of the little sods knocked it off it's shelf, breaking off the wing... Dave tried to fix it with some pinning and wire, but the wing was far too heavy and it bent right off in no time. So I offered to sort it out and with a wood screw and some grey stuff (dries harder than Greenstuff) along with a little paint on the putty it looks pretty good and as long as it's not dropped again, should stay on there for years to come!

The Great Cthulhu's very presence will drive a man mad. And take up far too much space on his hobby desk.
And that's it for now. The Ogryn commission is my priority right now, then back to some more Confederates in case my brigade is lucky enough to receive reinforcements between games in the upcoming campaign. But otherwise, my focus will be 28mm Soviets for Bolt Action. 

Ciao.

17 comments:

  1. Wow you have been busy. The Confederate Brigade looks great (Florida eh ?). The guy with the smashed nose could have dried blood down his front, if you wanted to 'up the narrative'. Love those Ogryn sculpts, they always look good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks mate. Yeah Florida - all fictional, but you always hear about Virginia, Georgia and Carolinas, but Florida's stuff seems there, but not a prevalent. Blood... That could work - I'll think on that one.

      Delete
  2. That brigade is looking good. Like the idea on the nose. ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks mate - am seriously considering attempting it now. :)

      Delete
  3. Splendid progress and wow,the Great Cthulhu looks amazing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Appreciate that Michael. Cthulhu is huge and I'm not sure entirely how anyone could conceivably play with it in a game of Heroclix and still have fun. :) Still, it's good to just sit on a shelf as a statue and look all imposing and stuff.

      Delete
  4. That ACW brigade really looks the biz, Dai. And nice work on the Dark Ages/Ogryn minis. I have been contemplating getting one of those Cthulhu models myself, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Although having reread your post I now get the impression apart from the wing fix you won't be actually painting it?

      Delete
    2. Cheers Simon on all accounts!

      Ye gawds no! The paint job is good enough as it is. The idea of trying to paint a model as large as my cat.... no.

      Delete
  5. Your rebel brigade looks fantastic. I wish them success in battle and in avoiding the dreaded camp plague between battles. Nothing sadder than rolling three "1"s on 6 surviving stands of newly made Eager Veterans and watching three stands die of the sniffles.
    I haven't figured out how to do much with cavalry in Longstreet save use them as mounted infantry, which is historical. Just don't send them charging in on foot against regular infantry.
    Grab whatever artillery upgrades you can get, you will need them.
    Cheers
    M

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks loads Mike, for the compliments AND advice! My dice rolling is typically crap, so I expect to lose stands left right and center...

      In my one game so far, the cav made for a quick reaction force and held down a flank for long enough to allow an infantry regiment to foot it over and help shore the gap. I'm guessing that's kind of historical?

      Delete
  6. Great looking brigade, flags always finish a unit off, I like your dark age figures and that's a big wing to repair! Looking forward to your ww2 soviets as I kind of accidently bought a small army for bolt action which I should start at least!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Iain! :)
      That wing was well tricky to repair exactly due to it's size and weight. It looks good enough I think and I'm happy to have the big bugger out of my hobby space!

      Soviets incoming. They also need to get off my painting table!

      Delete
  7. lovely looking Brigade of Confederates you here - marvelous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks loads Phil! Will hope to have up some reinforcements in the next couple of weeks.

      Delete
  8. Just yes. Really nice to see this project grow up over the weeks and to see it all together must be very satisfying. I'm looking forward to seeing how the boys get on in action.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Me too Ed, I hope my dice and tactical acumen are in high gear for our games. I've still 4 regiments of infantry to paint up and a 2nd one of cavalry planned so there'll be lots more posts of these lot in the future. Many thanks my friend.

      Delete