Fiddly diddly naval nonsense

Yep, things are progressing on the teeny tiny front, so I thought I’d post a few photos of where I’ve got to. 

Before I get into the ECW stuff I thought I’d show the miniature medieval cog wars ships I’ve started on. This has been a slow burn project in the pipe line for over a year but seeing as how I’m currently determined to destroy my eyesight I thought I’d better get a few painted before I need an electron microscope. At the rate I’m going I’ll be using grains of rice as units next. Lol.

Anywhoo…

The cogs are of different types as you can see and some are still unfinished. The large cog (or possibly round ship?) is from Outpost games, the dinky red fore and aft castle vessel (medium cog) is from Ral Partha and the poor quality casting of a northern or Baltic cog is from Navwar. All are 1:1200 scale but if you need a size comparison the pointing chap in the background is 18mm high. There are a number of galleys on the way from Outpost which the French used a lot for raiding in the channel. I suspect I’ll be using Mr Manley’s Lords of the Sea rules with them, or possibly Galleys and Galleons.

I’m about half way through the ECW unit production now, having set myself the slightly ambitious project of creating enough units to cover massive battles like Marston Moor. 

Twilight of The Divine Right specifies different sized regiments (amongst other things) and since I want to show a units size directly it’s meant there can be no one size fits all compromises. Hey ho, still enjoying doing them. I’d have liked to have shown some scenery but there’s been a total cock up on the game mat front and as a consequence I’ve not started any as yet. Anyway here’s a few piccies to whet your whistle.

First up are two baggage camps plus a few wagons from the baggage train, sorry, trayne:

Next up is 50% of the foote units I require - the rest are WIP but nearing completion.  There are three groups here. On the right are what TOTDR defines as regular sized regiments, left foreground are small regiments and behind them… large sized regiments.

Dragoon’s were completed early on. Here we have regular and small dragoon regiments in both mounted and dismounted state. Yes I did paint the horse handlers at the back!

Horse - these are small and regular sized regiments, with stands for the two opposing army commanders and subordinate generals.

Lastly we have the gun line and their marrowbone dog treat / fig roll gabions. I’ve banked some earth up around their positions to hide the square edge of the casting since last time. I don’t think it would’ve taken a gun crew and the attendant drivers, wagon chaps etc long to have thrown up a bit of an earthen wall, and they’d look okay in siege games too I think.

Still to come are a shed load of horse (20 units) 6 musket only units of various sizes, then there’s commanded shotte and a few regimental guns as well.

The picture quality is as usual pretty poor and the lighting abysmal…both fairly important things to get right when your trying to show 2mm figures, so apologies. Take my word for it, they look okay. 

Actually when you get up really close you can pick out things like sashes and weapons on the castings which is a shame because even if you painted them in you’d lose all that detail and spoil the overall effect when seen from a distance.

Anyway…best get on painting I suppose. They’re not going to finish themselves!

TTFN