This is Minuteman: Two-Three

 Since my wargaming hobby has taken a back(far back) seat to my simming hobby, I've gone from reading books about the Napoleonic wars etc. To listening to audio books on aerial warfare. I've digested many many books the last two and a half years, lots of WW2 fighter books, some WW1, some modern, some Vietnam, some extremely impressive flying, and bravery. But by far in just pure skill and technique no books have impressed me more than the audio books I've listened to about Vietnam Huey pilots, the insane control and dramatic stuff they've done. It's just pure extreme skill flying. 

So in the end I couldn't resist anymore and needed the Rubicon Huey. really far above my skill level to make. Took a long time, had to take a break to wait for more black to prime them. And I broke part of the rotor as I took it off the spur, I also lost one of the windows. And with the clear glass, painting the inside. Yeah far far more complex, than the tanks I'm also not very good at doing. 

I'm not that happy with the build, but I am quite happy with the paint job, had to buy a new high end airbrush as my cheap one broke after just 2 tank paintings. 

So here it is. 

Going in for landing

Since my infantry is 101st, so my Huey had to be too.

Laying on my belly, in the garden, blending wargaming terrain with the weeds.

And a video of the Huey, still no Vietnam in DCS, we have several more or less correct aircraft for it, and more will come the F4 is around the corner, with A1 Skyraider coming, so is the A7 and F8, and F100

So I made a cold war gone hot scenario, with a large Huey formation putting infantry in the ground for a large assault. 

It's my honour to present to you, an actual proper unit.

 Well, it's been almost a year, (two weeks away actually) since last I did a proper full size 28mm unit, that was my British SYW grenadiers. Since then I've done some odds and ends, and these small scale skirmish things for Vietnam and WW2, and the Epic scale stuff, but they are so small they don't count.

But here I can now finally present you with a proper-sized 28mm unit. 

Drumroll, please...

A full-sized Spanish pike and shot formation, 39 figures, 15 pikemen and command, 24 arquebusiers, and musketeers. All 39 figures are unique, not a single duplicate. I started these like 18 months ago I think, did the pike center, and 1 base of arquebusiers, but then the arquebusiers fell on the floor and 4 figures fell off, weapons bent, and paint flaked off. I lost complete interest in continuing on them. But I decided to take them out and finish them, those that fell to the ground needed literally 15 minutes of work to fix. Yet it had held me back from finishing them. I then did the remaining 18 shot figures. 
The 1898 figures are lovely, my only complaint is the swords, they are kinda hard to make look good, as they are attached to some stuff from the molding process. and they don't sit very well on the belts when glued on. But the figures themself are excellent, good character without them becoming some grotesque parody of mid-17th-century soldiers. 

I still have enough pikes and command do to another pike base, but no more shot, I'll go take a look at how many avanpost musketeers I have, I might be able to use those, even tho I break half of them before they are finished painting. 

I kept to mostly brown vests/jacks, with mostly white shirts, some times I had a little colour, some of them look like they could be in cloth jacket, so I painted them with more colour, some arms are clearly jackets with cut arms, so there I again added colour with white shirt seen in the slashes. Trousers are anything from brown and beige to more colorful stuff. buff coats on the pikemen and some buff vests on the shot.

I still haven't found any clear concise info on just how a Spanish Tercio looked in the 1630s-1650s Most likely they were not these huge 2500-3000 man behemoths. But just how they deployed I do not know, if they still tried to use 4 sleaves on a pike block or if they more or less looked like the dutch system at this point. Just because it's called a tercio doesn't mean it actually looks like the original ones.
They were still called Tercios when they were 5 deep lines of just musketeers during the Spanish succession.

Anyway, I don't know what will show up on the blog next, maybe some more TYW, maybe some WW2. I really wanna get back to my SYW, but I don't know if I'll find the inspiration for it.

Well its been a long time.

 But I've finally finished something, 1 full 12-man US rifle Squad.

I'll probably field squads of 9, to simulate casualties, the 1ID had been in Normandy almost 2 months by the time of Cobra, which is the thing I'm aiming at. 


Oh and I also finished a Sherman, my first 1:56 scale tank done with Airbrush.

I'm just gonna photo dump the pictures. next up will be my attempt at Panzer lehr using the Wargames Atlantic panzer lehr, it's questionable if they all used their fancy unique uniforms. But since all other german 28mm miniatures are grotesque bear-men unless I do fallschermjegers or SS. I went with these as they match Perry in style. If I ever do find regular Heer infantry that looks somewhat human I'll add them. 

Charge!

 So after almost 3 years, I have added to my HYW project. A unit of mounted knights/men at arms. 
Taken forever to do these. Did half long ago, then spent 3 weeks doing the 2 next and a few days on the 2 last.

8 mounted men at arms.

I spent forever working with decals on the last ones.

They do look like a colourful bunch.

Finally completed a unit.

 So the last "unit" I did was back on the 12th of June, since then I've only done a few odd figures, brigadiers, and Vietnam stuff, not any proper units. 


I started this back in February 2020, when I did the men at arms part of the unit.


Since then I've very slowly added the archer and gendarme part of the Ordinance Lance. 


I was inspired by Stuart at https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/, I feel he is THE guy when it comes to details on this period in miniature. 

But he is doing Smaller scale actions with the rules he uses, I can't go into as much details as I hope to do full-sized battles, So my Company of Lance is a bit more abstracted. I also decided to have my archers as light lancers and not actual archers, it might be a bit wrong for 1510 battles, but seems that sometime between 1510 and 1525 the archers had become lancers. So I went for that. 

This represents a company of Lances, so 100 actual gendarmes, but with the added men at arms and archers, somewhere between 300 and 400 actual combatants.

The Gendarmes are in the center, 4 of them.

Flanked by 4 Men at arms, One of them a standard-bearer, that I did quite a lot of greenstuff work on.

The men at arms are again flanked by the archers, one of which is carrying a standard.

I have 4 other men at arms ready, so I need 4 more archers and 4 more Gendarme to finish another company of lances.  I need like 100+ in the end, and at this rate, I'll be done sometime after the sun expands into a red giant. 

The Gendarmes are Steel fist and so are the archers, while the men at arms are perry plastics that I've Italian wared up.

5 Marines walk into a bar.

 And the bartender says; we don't serve your kind here, and I say, hey, if I want to drink watered-down whisky and play with my miniatures you have no right to stop me. 


So I started playing around with the Huey in DCS, it's an evil machine that wants to murder you any time it has the chance. But it's a fun ship that really requires that you fly it all times.

Here I fly a Huey as we take out a Russian base.

And here I do my first landing on a firgate. 

Ah, but don't worry I'm not here to bore you with just video games videos. 

Since I flew the Huey a lot, I got into the Nam mood, even if the game doesn't really have any Vietnam assets. (you have some Vietnam era aircraft like Huey and MiG21) but you don't have Vietnam-era infantry, ground vehicles. So you can't do a hot LZ landing under fire from NVA etc. 

But a Huey is a Huey, so I pulled out some Nam stuff.

I painted 5 marines

This means my Marine force is 20 strong.

I only have 5 grunts left to paint, and maybe an M60, as well as a 60mm mortar team.

If I manage to paint the last 5 marines, I'm out and I need to order more to finish the platoon. So hopefully I'll feel like doing the last 9 man NVA Squad and its two HQ figures. I also have the figures to do 3 support options, a separate RPG team, a.30cal MMG and a nice big 12.7mm HMG.

Chef de battalion

 I got an order from Mazzer's miniatures of Avanpost french.
I'm working my way through the order, with 1 base left to finish the battalion, I also have an 8pdr gun and crew to do. But I finished the Chef de battalion who will lead a 3 battalion brigade in Spain.

Avanpost are stunning figures.

I tried something different with the horse, unsure how well it worked.

I also did the trousers in a more off-white, keeping the pure white for the jacket, Also used a generally darker tone of blue, some detail might be lost, but it's more realistic. and makes the white and facings pop more. This new style will be more obvious on the infantry. 

NVA has more than doubled.

 So last time I did Nam, I did 7 NVA  soldiers. I was missing the machine gunners. So I stopped. I got them a long while ago. But I was busy with other stuff. But now I've taken them out again. 
I did the machine gunner and loader for the 1st squad and 4 from the next squad. Then I finished the last 5 for the second squad. While also building and doing a Sarissa house and making some bamboo terrain pieces. 

So now I have two full NVA squads. I'm gonna do some marines. and then do the platoon command for the NVA and hopefully by that time I have the last NVA figures in the post to finish the last squad and so the platoon. 

I didn't bother with any photoshop background on these, I learned it's a pain in the ass to try and edit the bamboo.

The Sarissa house got some MIG earth tone wash/effects from my Tank painting stuff. I didn't want to lose the details eched into the MDF.

NVA mostly painted with AK US ww2 infantry set and AK US Vietnam set. with some Andrea colours for flesh etc.

The bamboo is the standard type you find on Ebay, painted and washed. the base is styrofoam on a board, painted, inked, and flocked. 

The roof is a dead teddy bear and the fur has been treated with watered-down glue and various inks and colours, roof is the main part I'm not happy with.

Anglo-Hanoverian Brigade.

 So the first brigade is "done" for my SYW project.
A sort of but not quite correct brigade for Minden.

The brigader Major-General Hon. John Waldgrave lead a brigade of 12th, 23rd and 27th foot, as well as two battalions of the Hanoverian Guard, and 9 6pdr guns. It was a big powerful force, Around 4000 men and 9 guns. 

I have the correct number of battalions, even the correct 3:2 British to Hanoverians. But except for the 6pdr and 12th foot, the units are wrong. My M.J. Hon. John Waldgrave leads the 12th foot, a British grenadier battalion, the 87th foot, and the Hanoverian Oberg and Estorff battalions. And a 6pdr gun.

I do plan on doing the historic brigade, but as I do random regiments, it will take some time. And given brigades and forces changed from battle to battle, this is a perfectly ok, what if brigade for none historic battles. I do plan on doing 3 6pdrs to represent the 9 guns, this battery did a lot of damage to both the French cavalry and infantry. 

From right to left, 6pdr gun, 12th foot, grenadier battalion, 87th foot, 

Second line, right to left, Oberg and Estorff

My next target is finishing my Minden allied cavalry brigade, I got part of the 3rd dragoon guards primed. Like the french cavalry brigade, it will be 36 strong. 

British grenaders.

 So IL2 took up most of my life the last two weeks, first about 12 hours of WW1 flying, and then another 18+ of WW2 flying, Fighting over Holland during Market Garden.

Here I'm taking down a Ju 88, it's like trying to down a Mamukil, I fired all 500 .50cal and 280 20mm. But it did go down at least, I almost got caught napping on the way back.

But the main point of this post is that I'm done with a unit, I did the first 4 months and months ago, And then I started on the remaining 20, but IL2 got in the way, so took a month and a half to finish them. 

The unit consisted of the companies from the 6 regiments at Minden.

12th, 23rd, 37th, 51st, 25th and 20th. 

This brings my Brtish up to 3 battalions and will be brigaded with my two Hanoverian battalions. 
This brings my SYW collection up to 14 battalions. I'm not tantalizingly close to 500, less than 12 away from it. I will probably do the 3rd dragoon guards to complete the 500 goal. 
But it's slow going because of WW2 flight sim and wife will so have 3 weeks of vacation. So I doubt I'll finish the 500th before sometime in late July at the earliest. 

Send in the guards

Guilford court house here we go again. 
Attempt nr. 20 or so at doing this battle, this was in fact my second ever project. Never got far, I've tried to do this battle in 6mm, 10mm, 28mm(several times) and 40mm.
I'm giving it a go!
The last time I did AWI was back in 2014 so 7 years now! I have evolved a lot as a painter since then. Though I still find the tight sitting legwear hard to do well. 
I'm sticking mostly with the OOB from British Grenadier scenario book. With the only planned modifications being halving the 71st from 24 to 12, as the scenario book apparently used the strength for both battalions and not just the one present at the battle. I'm also giving the British 2 6pdrs and 1 3pdr, instead of 2 3pdrs. This is based on the OOB in Long, Obstinate and Bloody book, which is a fantastic piece of history writing. 
I'm sticking to the 1:20 scale in the scenario book and default for the rules. It means the British will only be about 130 figures strong. So slightly bigger than a Napoleonic brigade. Or even smaller in some cases. But hopefully, that will means I actually get things done. I ordered most of what I need for the Brtish, only missing the artillery, legion infantry and cavalry, the 71st and generals. But I have miniatures for both guard battalions, 23rd, 33rd, von Bose, hessian jaegers and British light infantry, as well as the flags for all those plus the 71st. I also ordered enough continental plastic to do the two Maryland regiments, again with some flags. So I really have no obstacles to do a lot on this project except myself. and me seeing "squirrel"

I had bought a box of perry British infantry randomly when I ordered something completely different. Which was nice as I could start on the project while waiting for the main order to arrive. First up was the 1st battalion of guards.

Tiny 12 figure battalion.

I'm glueing together figures for the 33rd now.