Austrian Cavalry and the Wealden House

 I always seem to end up painting Austrians, an attraction the Mem (who didn’t enjoy her short stay in Innsbruck) cannot fathom. Does that make me another misunderstood Austrian painter?

Anyway, one cuirassier and one dragoon regiment done. Austria seemed to have a greater proportion of cuirassier to dragoons in the WSS, so another one is on the cards but I need a break from assembling Warlord plastics for a bit and these were the last of my prepped figures, so I crawled into the loft and dug out my box of unmade Innovate ‘Masterplan’ kits. I find terrain modelling very relaxing (which helps while I’m taking some enforced rest from work) and I’ve been eying up the Wealden House for a while. The original is in the Weald and Downland open air museum and features a garde robe (a khazi, Darren) which is faithfully reproduced in the model. However, Innovate has not included a miniature of Jeremy Lobb, who was rather cruelly shut in it on a St Annes school trip in 1976 (nothing to do with me). The only other strong memory I have from that visit was Jonathan Cox and his sausage sandwiches, which he would not shut up about. But I digress…

I was unaware that Innovate did a few ‘specials’ to go with their generic range, assuming this one was designed specifically for the museum. I’ve not seen another on sale since I got this, so I have probably upset the kit collector gang again, but models were made to be made. I’m still kicking myself I missed out on Thomas Hardy’s Cottage when it was on evilBay a few years back. Never mind. I’ve another Tudor house and some of the other kits will suit the WSS well enough for my purposes.

The Wealden House is one of the more challenging kits and needed more attention than my usual modelling MO tends to allow, but the end result was worth it. I always repaint these kits (cheap craft acrylics are best) as they have some rough edges that need smoothing, but they are good enough ‘in the raw’ and make sturdy buildings for wargaming. You can still get them, mostly on eBay, but they are becoming increasingly rare. I know I’ve said that before, but sadly it is true.

And that completes the French

 I will get round to photographing the whole lot eventually, but the regiment Battenbourg completes the French Collection (see what I did there). My first unit of Spaniards, Reales Guardias Españolas , are done bar the flag. Most of my units are currently sans flag, but this will be corrected when I save up enough cash to order from Maverick Models. The building behind is another Masterplan model, now rather rare.

Matt, Gloss or Somewhere Inbetween?

 Wasn’t Matt Gloss the drummer in Bros? Anyway…

A few years back I had an exchange with Andy Copestake (Old Glory UK) which was sparked by his wonderful ‘Shinyloo’ project. It was about how some figures suited the shiny better than others and we both agreed this was the case. I actually think this can be simplified by ‘new figures and post-1900’ for Matt and ‘Old Skool’ for Gloss. Having said that, scale plays a part too!

The simplest way to approach this is to trial on a couple of figures and decide what works best for you, as your opinion on your toys overrides everybody else’s. For my WSS stuff it was a no-brainer and Matt was the way to go. I now use AK as it gives the flattest Mattest I know. It’s designed for airbrushes, but paints on well and you don’t need much.

And that completes my Cloggies!

So, here is my quick guide on when to shine and when to flatten. And the inbetweenies.

Gloss: All pre-1900 Minifigs, Hinchliffe, Hinton Hunt (and similar), Airfix Type 1, Connoisseur, Warrior.

Matt: Everything post-1900, ships, aeroplanes, all ranges dating from the 1980s onwards not by Peter Gilder, all plastics.

Satin: All pre-1900 figures under 15mm. Trust me, it works.

Twelve and one flag it is, then!

 Finally settled on twelve figures for foot, but keeping five for horse as it looks better than four. I’ve got to get some flags and more 40x40 bases as I now have a major rebasing operation on my hands! I figured I could go against my standard basing configuration as I only need to represent column and line (and I won’t be playing with them anyway!). The other benefit of twelve figures is that I can get a unit from every sprue, so there is no wastage and it’s easy to work out what I need if I go mental again. I haven’t accounted for the Spanish, yet.

Otherwise, this is setting my juices flowing…

Prepping For Easter

 No, not stashing tins of soup and loo rolls, but doing all the boring stuff, like priming and bases, before I can start slapping on the colour.

Black! Black! The colour of the night! Mummy locked me in a cupboard and fed me pins!

All this started with a box of WSS Alliance infantry I bought on a whim. I made them up, primed them black then they sat in the loft for a year before I thought “I’m more likely to flog these if they are painted”.  So, I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, a year later… I have scores of the bloody things! This will probably be the last phase (it’s my third Marlborough’s Wars starter set) if I can just stop faffing about and umming and arring over 12 or 16 figure infantry units and one or two flags per unit.

Alarmingly, I have more infantry sprues waiting for assembly but I’ve run out of painting sticks!

What Have The Funcken Romans Done For Us?

 From Arms & Uniforms Volume 1: Ancient Egypt to the 18th Century by L & F Funcken (a book I had out on near-permanent loan from Virgina Water Library in the early to mid 70s):

The funny braccae are a bit of a giveaway. 

And all the best people have these…

Let me take you back to… May 1983

 Traditionally (well, since the early 70s), my family always holidayed in the Tregony Holiday Park in Cornwall during the late May Whitsun week. This is because my dad’s factory used to close for that week (along with the August bank holiday) before they allowed the workers to have a choice, but we carried on anyway because errr…. Tradition? Anyhoo, I was nearing the point of desperately not wanting to holiday with my parents but still wasn’t trusted to stay home alone for a week in case I set fire to the house or just ate chocolate. To be fair, that probably would have happened but it did mean I ended up a tad teenagerish and spent most of the week bored. It didn’t help that May 1983 was wet and dull and Spandau Ballet were rampant in the charts.

But all was not lost because I had brought my own entertainment! I’d found a fishing tackle box for a quid in a discount store (for the life of me I can’t remember where) and had stocked it with my Pony Wars card figures, scenery and other useful wargaming stuff. I was also armed with the Newbury Colonial Rules and the April edition of Military Modelling with Stuart Asquith’s article on Cowpens. Well, what do you think I was going to do? Revise for my retakes? Go to St Mawes again?

So I commandeered the coffee table, sorted my carefully curated card bits and bobs into the two armies and went at it. Very slowly… It soon dawned on me that Newbury rules didn’t exactly give me the Loose Files and American Scramble I’d read about (didn’t stop me buying Cambrai to Sinai, though did it? 🤡) and worse, there was no way I would consider it for colonial actions. I played to the bitter end, the Tax Dodgers were given a pounding and then my mum suggested going to St Mawes.

This was something of a low point in the year, but it did teach me something: avoid complex rules. And St Mawes.

But, I still have the tackle box which now contains all my modelling kit. It’s covered in Milliput fingerprints where I created hundreds of 10mm and 25mm figures and gets a sort out every two or three years, when I chuck out something that I find I need the following week.

Where all the magic happens.

So what next? Can I get Recon to work? Will the weather improve? Will I ever practice my French vocab? Can I remember the chemical equation for photosynthesis without surreptitiously scratching it on a pencil?  Will Clare Grogan ever answer any of those letters I send her on a daily basis?

 Find out in the next instalment…

PS The Tregony Holiday Park was actually very nice and would go there again if it hadn’t been sold and turned into a housing estate. Oddly, if you go to the location now you can still make out the park layout.

PPS Always hated St Mawes. Once you’ve seen the castle, that’s it. Nothing else to do if you are a child and worse if you are a teenager because your parents are with you! Last time I visited was on Honeymoon and it’s just a rich twat’s paradise now. We sat across from one of the swanky hotels, slurping cornets and wondering how money seems to go to the most stupid on earth. However, we had a laugh watching some idiot woman, dressed like an ‘I Dream of  Jeannie’ cosplay, manoeuvre a shaded pram containing two ratty dogs up the hotel steps.