[General Slade]

Fair enough.  I’m interested to see how it is done badly and wrongly (and I’ll still be impressed that you are doing it at all).  I had one attempt at sculpting a figure when I was a kid.  I melted down some old figures to make a block of metal and then I hacked away at that for a while.  It wasn’t a great success.

[General Slade]

I’m definitely interested in seeing how it is done.

[General Slade]

And cats!  I forgot the felines.  I know in 15mm they would be pretty minute (but maybe they could be made slightly larger than life?)  I find them useful for familiars, animal companions and set-dressing in Egyptian-style temples.

[General Slade]

Hi Breton,

Have you checked the Kronoskaf Seven Years War website? You will find some information on the history of the regiment there: http://www.kronoskaf.com/syw/index.php?title=42nd_Foot

I’m not certain when British battalions were organised into 1 grenadier and 9 battalion companies but the Royal Clothing Warrant of 1751 lists details of the grenadier caps for the ‘Highland Regiment’ (which I assume is the 42nd): http://www.fifedrum.org/crfd/1751.htm so it seems they had a grenadier company by 1751 if not before.

[General Slade]

Angel Barracks wrote:

I was going to start a new topic but figured I may as well bolt it onto here… So I have a small selection of 15mm fantasy religious figures coming out soon. I also want to do monsters, what sort of things would work for Conan style games? Initial thoughts are: Giant Apes Tigers Giant Boar Snakes on a plain Giant Scorpion Suggestions welcomed, ideally with links or piccies.

This is a great idea.   Whilst there are a few 15mm beasts on the market a lot of them have been done in a rather ‘cartoony’ style. Can I make a plea for the figures not to be too stylised?

I’d like to see:

Dogs of various types (wild, hunting, war)

Wolves

Birds of prey, carrion crows (I think bird attacks are fun in RPGs but it is hard to find decent figures)

Pterosaurs

Flying snakes

Monkeys and apes (some using improvised/found weapons)

Sabre tooth  tigers

And despite the picture above, what I would really like to see are some female figures with clothes on.  I love the Copplestone barbarians but it would be great to have some female adventurer types from the other Hyborian nations.

(All pictures by Frank Frazetta)

 

[General Slade]

Thanks Bandit,

It’s a confusing topic because the sources I have generally say each battalion was issued with two identical flags (though as you say, sometimes the flags carried by first and second battalions were different) but other sources suggest that each battalion carried only one flag in the field.

I think I will follow your suggestion and give each battalion just one flag (unless I hear different before I have finished basing my Wurttembergers)

Best wishes

Stephen

[General Slade]

Very nice work.  And the reasoning behind your uniform choices makes a good deal of sense. I love the Mollo and McGregor book too.  I sometimes daydream about painting up all the uniforms that are represented there (haven’t got very far yet!).

[General Slade]

I paint extremely slowly and not as well as I would like.

[General Slade]

Radar wrote:

Strange that considering the love for 2nd gen Minifigs they aren’t in production. (The horses were available for a short time, but the link on their site is now a cyclical dead end). So the slight deviation from the OP, I’d like to resurrect Heritage Napoleonettes. The moulds were in Texas, but there must have been a set in the UK as Hinchliffe and Skytrex sold them.

As far as I am aware the molds for 2nd gen Minifigs Napoleonics were destroyed (though I think Tom Dye of GFI who had the licence to make the range in the US may still have some).  I emailed Dave Ryan at Caliver about the 2nd gen horses a while ago and it turned out that they had been misidentified (they weren’t 2nd gen after all) but because of a complication with the Minifigs website they are unable to remove them completely.

 

[General Slade]

Nice write up. I must admit I had never heard of this battle (or the war for that matter) so it made for an interesting read.  Good-looking game as well, though I am not sure about the smilies.  Makes it look like a rave rather than a battle.

[General Slade]

Very nicely done.  I agree with Victoria the battlefield looks great.

[General Slade]

I’m an obsessive collector of Minifigs 2nd gen 15mm figures so I would want to create a range that was stylistically identical to them but filled in the gaps in the various ranges. I’d start out with Napoleonic British infantry sergeants with half-pikes, Lithuanian Tartars and sword-armed guys for the second rank of all the lancer regiments.   Then I’d probably move on to expanding the AWI range.

It is the kind of thing I can spend hours pointlessly daydreaming about.

[General Slade]

Thanks for the review.  It sounds like a really interesting book and the rules definitely sound worth looking at.

I started painting up some AWI forces a while ago but got sidetracked and they are languishing in a box somewhere.  I might get hold of this book to get me motivated to start painting again.

[General Slade]

I like Carthaginians.  Do them early and you get chariots, do them late and you get elephants.

[General Slade]

It would be Arnhem for me as well. Though to be honest I think it is a project for another lifetime.  So far all I have got is a couple of dozen Minifigs 12mm British paras and a handful of Germans, none of which are painted (and I have had them for about five years).

[General Slade]

Hi Mark, nice-looking game and nice report.  How does the game compare to General de Brigade?  Is it very different?  Simpler or more complex?

[General Slade]

My guess is that it is meant to look like a leather tunic.  I use Ral Partha paints and if I was trying to create that effect I would use Leather Brown highlighted with Golden Brown. Not that it would work because I don’t paint anywhere near that well.

http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/miniature-paints-c-54/

[General Slade]

Would it be possible to have a ‘Latest Posts’ as well as a ‘Latest Topics’ option in the drop-down menu?

 

[General Slade]

I just discovered the two-click solution you have implemented and it works great.

Ignore all the stuff I said about tags.  It’s irrelevant now that I can go straight to the latest posts page.

[General Slade]

I’d rather not have anymore boards but a bit of renaming might not go amiss.  The ACW board is pretty quiet so maybe it could just become the 19th Century board?  I like Rod’s suggestion for  the WWI board to be renamed WWI/Interwar.  Maybe we could also do WWII/SCW?

I tend to browse TWW by looking at the front page rather than going to the individual forums so the more topics on the front page the better as far as I am concerned.

Just out of interest, does anyone use the Tags feature?  It takes up a lot of space on the front page but I have never once felt the need to click on it. I’d happily lose that and have more topics displayed.

Anyway, just some suggestions.  Feel free to ignore them because the site is great as it is.

[General Slade]

Mass fantasy battles aren’t really my thing but I really like the design and the artwork.  I particularly like the 2d scenery.  The woods look great and I think you may have solved the problem of how to represent a wood on the table and still have space for troops.  If at some point in the future you make the scenery available separately I think you might find a market for it.

[General Slade]

Mike wrote:

Right on! You are now the PR officer 

Does this mean I get invited to the staff Christmas party?

 

[General Slade]

Kaptain Kobold wrote:

Not doing it as a video.

Amen to that brother.

To get me reading you do have to start with some pretty pictures.  For me to carry on reading you also have to provide a good map or plan of the table so I can see where things are.  After that it is about the narrative but I also do like to learn something about the game mechanics even if it is at the very basic level of “I had to roll a six to pass my morale test”.

Finally, if you just say ‘Here’s a link to an AAR on my blog’ I’m not going to bother clicking on it.  I want to see some pictures and text here on TWW.  In fact I’d rather read the whole thing here on TWW.

[General Slade]

Victoria Dickson wrote:

I used to enjoy playing Escape from Colditz when I was younger, and I never hesitated to use the ‘Shoot to Kill’ card to stop an escapee.

Happy days.  I remember playing one game where one of my chaps managed to escape and my friend who was playing the Germans was so cross that he used the ‘Shoot to Kill’ card on one of his own guards.

It caused great hilarity at the time so I guess even summary executions can be fun.

[General Slade]

That’s great to hear.  The thing I love about Robert E. Howard is that the images he conjures up are so vivid.  He really knows how to set a scene in a couple of sentences. And the other great thing is that he always starts in the middle of the action.  You never have to wait for the story to get going.

[General Slade]

Thaddeus Blanchette wrote:

I think your most difficult challenge will be painting dark color skin. 

I’m also doing a Hyborian-influenced campaign and have been painting up some 15mm Minifig Zulus as a civilisation based on the Waddintons/Letraset rub-down transfers I loved as a kid: http://www.action-transfers.com/html/panorama/jungle.shtml

I use Vallejo Hull Red for my basic skin tone.  It sounds like an odd choice (it is basically a very dark rust colour) but it works very well on 15mm figures.

I love R.E. Howard’s work.  I think he is a great writer who has never received the recognition he deserves (Tolkien is seen as great literature and Howard is still derided as pulp – doesn’t make any sense to me).  However, as others have pointed out he was also a product of his times and some of his stories can make for uncomfortable reading these days.

I think the disquiet about the depiction of black characters in Conan-influenced heroic fantasy is not so much that they are the ‘baddies (after all good characters are few and far between in the world of Conan) but the fact that they are only ever depicted as primitive savages living in mud huts.  If you are worried about it then why not  balance things by including a more ‘advanced’ black civilisation in your world  – maybe based on the medieval empire of Mali: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire – then no one can have cause for complaint.

[General Slade]

Ral Partha sell singles from their Demonworld packs at 75p per figure, which seems about right.  http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/fantasy-15mm-c-195/

Mind you I would be prepared to pay £1 per figure for one-off figures if the sculpting was as good as the Copplestone barbarians, which are the best 15mm fantasy figures I have seen.

 

[General Slade]

A few ideas for your spell list that I think would fit with a Conanesque world:

Cause conflagration – The ability to make an existing fire explode into a a much bigger blaze.

Sand storm – The ability to make the desert sand blow into the eyes of your enemies causing temporary blindness.

Heat object – The ability to make a small object such as a sword hilt or piece of armour incredibly hot so that its owner must drop it or tear it off.

Deflect missiles – I think this was a D&D spell.  Either it just acts as an invisible shield or it sends missiles back at whoever fired them.

Gripping vines – A spell for jungle settings that makes plants grow rapidly and wrap tendrils around their victims preventing them from moving.

I also think you can use lots of illusion spells and standard things like sleep spells.  Anything involving telekinesis would also fit the setting so you could have sorcerers who can create dancing swords or cause statues to topple. More powerful sorcerers could also make inanimate objects like statues comes to life.

 

[General Slade]

There is not a great deal of low-level magic in Conan, but I seem to remember an occasion on which a sorcerer turned an enemy’s sword or staff into a snake (I don’t know whether this was an illusion or whether the weapon actually became a snake), and I have a feeling there is a story in which someone’s belt is turned into a constrictor snake, which then crushes him but I might be mis-remembering this.

I think there is some use of hypnotism/mesmerism and I am sure there are crystal balls and flying carpets.  You also get undead in one of the stories set in the north, where corpses rise up on a battlefield to fight again.  In RPGs animated corpses tend to be very low-level foes but in this story the point is that they are truly horrifying and having to fight your fallen comrades can strike fear in the heart of the bravest man.

 

[General Slade]

I think Red Sonja has got a desert setting – at least for part of the movie.  I enjoyed it a lot more than you are supposed to.  But then I am a sucker for anything Conan-related.

I loved the Jake Gyllenhaal / Gemma Arterton Prince of Persia, which is a proper swashbuckler.  I thought Gyllenhaal would feel horribly miscast but I thought he was really good in it.

If you are looking for visual inspiration you could also check out Game of Thrones where the land to the East is desert/steppe and Marco Polo, which is on Netflix and which is actually quite watchable despite having a distinctly lacklustre lead.  It is worth checking out just for the credit sequence, which is rather lovely.

 

[General Slade]

Thanks Steelonsand,

I hadn’t realised that Mark Adkin had done a book on the Charge.  I’ll have to look out for it.  I’ve already got his Waterloo book and I knew he’d done Trafalgar and Gettysburg.

The reason I asked about the lances was because in the French army during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars the doctrine was for only the first rank to be armed with lances and the second rank just had sabres.  This wasn’t a case of them discarding the lances – the lances were never issued.  I think this is also true of the lancers of some other nations (I think when some Russian hussar regiments were armed with lances in 1812/13 they were also only given to the first rank).  However, I think that in some armies both ranks were lance-armed so I was wondering which option the British military went for.

 

[General Slade]

Thanks as ever for the updates.   When I first got into Napoleonics I used to think that Russian uniforms of the era were rather dull (I was under the impression they all wore dark green coats with red collars and cuffs).  Now I find them fascinating, even if on times trying to get a handle on all the variations does make my head spin.

[General Slade]

That’s an interesting find.  I’ve been intending to buy some flags for my Pavlovsks from GMB so it will be interesting to see what colour they are.  If it turns out they are orange I will still use them because GMB flags are little works of art in their own right (and for some reason knowing that I am going to give them the wrong colour flags wouldn’t bother me; discovering that I had  given them the wrong colour flags would bug me like hell).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[General Slade]

In my head I have always said CUP-OH-LA. I don’t think I have ever said it out loud.  At least not in polite company,

[General Slade]

morgs wrote:

I feel it may be a bit frustrating for the more knowledgeable members to be rehashing the basics (e.g how to paint Austrian white or “what figure is this”) as opposed to discussing the finer details of the truly learned (e.g such as types of bricoles or how long it takes to train a drummer). So i lurk and hope that areas of interest are asked by others from which i can glean information. However, I would like TWW to be a great wargaming resource without the added distractions seen in some other fora – thus the impetus to start asking a few questions. So apologies in advance for any annoying questions that have been asked/answered before. (any advice on how to paint Austrian white well??) Morgan

I really like it when people ask questions – even ones which seem very basic – because that is what gets the conversation started.  I wouldn’t call myself an expert on Napoleonics but I have got a lot of books on the subject and I like having an excuse to go and look stuff up.  I think one of the reasons that TWW isn’t as lively as it might be is that too few questions are asked.

When it comes to painting Austrian white, I find the following technique works very well for 15mm figures.  I undercoat black and then dry brush lightly with white.  I then do all the figure apart from the uniform coat and breeches which I leave to last.  I use a bright, brilliant white on the belts to make them stand out and then finally I block in the coat and breeches using Vallejo Ivory.  When doing this I try to paint up to the edge of the equipment belts but don’t actually touch them.  This leaves a very fine line of the black undercoat showing which helps to make the belts stand out from the uniform coat (it is a bit like the old-fashioned ‘black lining’ technique but the effect is a bit more subtle).  I then finish with varnishing the figure which I finds help to draw everything together.

[General Slade]

I use the figure on the right as a 15mm demon:

He comes from from Reaper Familiar Pack II https://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/Familiars%20owl/latest/02399#detail/02399_w_1

He looks good alongside the Copplestone Barbarians you are using.

Their Lesser Elementals Pack also contains some useful stuff that can be used alongside 15mm figures:

https://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/water%20elemental/latest/02538

I’m not sure who sells them in the UK these days.  I think I got mine from the Orc’s Nest in London.

Magister Militum are also well worth checking out.  http://www.magistermilitum.com/era/fantasy.html#order=name&limit=36&p=3&dir=ASC&cat%5B%5D=59625&cat%5B%5D=61918

In particular their skeletons are excellent but I’m afraid I can’t work out how to post pictures from their site.

 

 

[General Slade]

Thanks Greystreak,

That is a really useful link. Let’s hope Seroga finds his way to TWW one day.  He certainly seems to know his stuff.

Edit:  Unless I am being really dense and Jonathan and Seroga are one and the same person?

[General Slade]

Hi Jonathan,

It’s nice to know that my enthusiasm for pretty pictures has proved to be a motivating factor.  I hope progress on your manuscript continues at a pace.  It would be great to see it published one day.

Incidentally, I looked at your facings page today for the first time in a while and I had forgotten quite how much information it includes.  It really is an excellent resource and I would like to thank you again for putting all the work in and then making your research available to everyone.

[General Slade]

They are definitely Minifigs.  At a guess I would say that the top figures are  Duchy of Warsaw Horse Artillery Drivers DWNC10 http://www.miniaturefigurines.co.uk/Catalogue.aspx?ScaleID=3&CategoryID=18&SubCategoryID=113

The bottom figures are FNC15 French Line Artillery Drivers: http://www.miniaturefigurines.co.uk/Catalogue.aspx?ScaleID=3&CategoryID=18&SubCategoryID=108

 

[General Slade]

I mainly do Napoleonics and I have ended up with a lot of units with pink facings.  I’ve got Wurttemberg line infantry, Prussian musketeers, Austrian grenadiers, French dragoons and Russian cuirassiers all with pink facings. I don’t know why it is but if pink is an option for the facing colour then it is always the one I will choose.

[Author]

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