Looking forward - To the 16th and 19th Century!

First up, I'm having a problem. Something has changed in blogger, or in safari or in some settings somewhere and now I can't post on many peoples blogs. It might be at my end or it might be at theirs or it might be both but I am stumped, having fichered and fiddled with my settings I can't get it fixed. So apologies to anyone whom I've popped round to read and not left a comment to, (Aly, Chris, Graham and others). 

I said in my last post I would have a bit more head space and clearly I do. I have two projects on the go at the moment, the first is building up forces for the Marian Civil War and Gordon-Forbes Feud in North East Scotland in the latter half of the 16thC. On this I have three things to report. 

The first is the purchase, as a bit of light background reading and to support an excellent bookshop, of Rizzio, by Denise Mina . This short novella deals with the murder of Mary Queen of Scot's secretary David Rizzio. It is fast, brutal and atmospheric and reads like a screenplay for a cop thriller....as it should coming from an accomplished crime writer. I read it in a night.

The second is the following of the Renaissance armies posts on Matakishi's Tea House and his use of Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames for battles with landsknechts, conquistadors, elizabethans and lately border reivers. Currently my figures are based singly and used on movement trays for this period, but I was impressed with Matakishi's posts as he built each of his armies up and his use of roster sheets to track casualties for what are a very simple but very effective set of rules. Following his example I have decided to rebase my16thC figures using his model.

On that topic I bought some of the rather nice Peculiar Companions resin figures, specifically the Demi Lancers. These arrived earlier this week and are very well sculpted, cleanly printed and very well proportioned. Although they are marketed as a replacement for GW Empire types they lack the fantasy styles, skulls and other embellishments so are perfect for 16thC figures. Other figures in the range are useful as landsknecht halberdiers, reiters and fully armoured men at arms. Their landsknecht foot with arquebus are nice too, but the guns seem a bit large. Mine were printed and supplied by Sundered Studios

The second project is a fictional 19th century campaign based on a Russian invasion of Scotland in the early 1830's.  I have tried a simple conversion of using Warlord Crimean War plastic bodies and Warlord 1809 Russian Shako covered heads to represent the Russian infantry and it seems to be a close match to the pre helmet, but post napoleonic Russian uniform illustrated in the various Viskovatov prints. Graham H is working on British, specially some 72nd Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders, converting Perry Carlist war figs to highland bonnets. 

The cap pouch should be shaved off, and as the model is not wearing his pack the vertical straps are not present, but the shako is the correct height.

72nd Highlanders

As background to the Russian army I bought a copy of John Sheldon Curtiss's book The Russian Army Under Nicholas I - 1825-1855 which covers the Polish, Persian and Turkish wars as well as the Hungarian uprising and the Crimean war. Not a cheap buy at £50 but it's interesting nonetheless.

Last but not least the sharp eyed will notice I have added a new page to the blog. As my original posts for the Sugar Islands and Against Spain books were many months ago I thought this was a better way of keeping them to the fore.