Cossack Artillery from Westfalia Miniatures

Finished these today. 

Nice figures, sculpted by Paul Hicks. They crew up a sled gun, however that's not much cop for me as the rest of the Russians are in summer uniform. I will find a galloper gun for them, rather than one of the unicorns.

Next to do are the Grenadiers. 

That will give me 4 out of the 8 foot I plan to have. I think this is ticking along nicely. 

Russian Artillery Crew, Grenadiers and Cossacks

It's been a busy month! However I have some goodies which have all arrived within a few days of each other. A sizeable portion of my Russian SYW army is now resident on my pairing desk. A unit of infantry should be completed today and a further unit lies waiting. My Grenadiers arrived - Wargames Foundry bought off eBay and my Cossacks eventually showed up from The Assault Group. Only a month late - Gregorian Calendar perhaps!. Finally a box arrived from the States with 4 unicorns and some Crew - my guns from Fife and Drum. (Thanks Jim!!)

A few different manufacturers there - but a bit of variety didn't hurt anyone did it? 

Let's see.... 

Fife and Drum Russian Artillery 

Lovely sculpting, clean castings and nice simple poses. I like these a lot. 

Compared to the Ingo Artillery -

They're smaller but better sculpted and the poses are similar for these chappies, but not the rest of the  Ingo crew who suffer from odd arm and hand positions - if caught them swinging the sponge and porte fire around like in an action that I'd give them a thick ear! 

I'm tempted just to use the F&D figs as I have some labourers who can lend a hand with the spare tool which come in the pack.

The guns are 12llb Unicorns - lovely solid castings and I like the open box of roundshot. Nice touch.

Next up the Grenadiers. 

I'd describe these as a little well fed and rounded, but plenty fierce character. Height ways they are pretty close to Ingo's Infantry. Sadly I wasn't a fan of the Ingo's Grenadier figures. Some of them are in coats and I wanted the unit in summer uniform and again the poses are a little limited.

Finally the Cossacks.

Nice figures, smallish perhaps but well posed and animated. The horses.....hmm. Not so pleased with these. I might hunt around and see what I can come up with from my spares box.  Overall though they are nice and will make an interesting bunch of baggage botherers for my games.   They'll be mounted on my round skirmish base as individual figures so I can use them 

Some flags for the Observation Corps

Time to do some flags now I have two painted units.

I use 1.5mm OD x 0.8mm ID brass tube for the part of the pole round the flag itself. Although commercial flag are available I usually make my own either by finding the flag details via Google and cutting and pasting the detailed into a template I've made up or by finding a flag from a site, in this case Kronoscaf. A little tweaking of the dimensions is usually required. I like round about 40mm x 40mm.

The brass tube is cut to fit the flag + roughly 0.5mm. This will make the finial at the top of the pole. I use a hacksaw to cut the tube as this ensures the cut end stays open and is not squashed or distorted. This is important when cutting subsequent lengths from the tube.

Taking a pair of pliers I crush one end of the brass tube flat. Then taking a needle file at 45 degrees, rub the flattened end to a point. As its soft brass this is fairly easy to do. 

The flags are cut from the paper and pritt sticked. This tacky paper glue works perfectly and allows me to slide the two halves of the flag into place round the brass tube. The finial pokes out of the top like a spear head.

Sometimes I touch up the edges of the flag with a mix of coloured paint. This hides any white bits and adds a little texture if needed. The glue needs to dry and set, which doesn't take long, then the flag can be crushed up to give it the look of cloth flapping in the breeze. 

Finally the flags can be added to the poles. I use 0.4mm wire for the flag poles. The brass tube slips down over the top and the bottom of the flag comes to rest round about hat height. Should some disaster befall the flag then it can be replaced quite easily, as it can if it turns out to be wrong!!!! 

News from Google - head's up chaps!

This was posted on my admin page by Google - just wanted to share it here as a heads up for anyone who follows....

"In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer"

So if you follow the blog and use anything else other than a Google account, you might have some problems! Handy eh!

Painting Russians - Red Undercoat and Strong tone

The figures I bought from Ingo's Figuren are very cleanly sculpted and cast. The Russian Observatin Corps uniform of red waistcoat and breeches is very simple too. So I thought I'd try using the "Army Painter" style method to paint them. 

I picked up some red spray paint from an online shop called Fat Buddha in Glasgow. The spray is for graffiti style painting so is fast curing with a wide spray top. Perfect for undercoating I thought, especially since it was almost a 3rd of the price of regular modelling spray.

It came out ok and cured very quickly....but a rather orange red I thought.....!

However, I thought, if worst case came, I could use a darker red topcoat brushed on. No panic though once fired they were fine.

Vallejo red went on once the spray was dry. Black for gaiters, hat and pouches, hair and stock. Mahogany brown for the musket, golden brown for the belts, white lace, bronze for the front of the pouches, buttons and top of the musket barrel. Then flesh over the red undercoat. 

Everything worked fine, and less than 30mins later the fig was ready to wash. 

I tried GW Earthshade, Army Painter Strong Tone and GW Devlan Mud, the latter now quite old and possibly a little thick, on a piece of paper to try to see the effect their use would have. The Army Painter Strong Tone is almost midway in colour between the two GW shades and about the same consistency as them too, so I decided to use it. It is a little darker then the Earthshade and thought the figs needed to be a little darker to match my earlier unit. 

I'm very pleased with the result and will finish the rest of the unit like this and the rest of the infantry like it too. 

In the above pic are two traditionally painted figs, the red sprayed fig, one with a brushed red undercoat and two unpainted undercoated figs.