The latest addition is this 2d battalion of the Nyland regiment. In other words, the flags I recently painted have been mounted and Im surging ahead with the remodelling of the Finnish army into 24 man units. The figures are partly old ones rebased, and partly newly painted. Hopefully more to come soon.
It might be worth mentioning that the red on the flag has been painted from a Vallejo Hull Red base, with successive highlights of a mix of Hull Red and Coat d’arms Blood Red. I think this is a particularly good way to do red. The Hull Red base color covers very well, which is rare with red shades, and the end result is a nice deep red color which I use very often. As you can see, the same color was used for the Åbo regt. flag which is in the background.
The basing is done in a way similar to my Prussians, although with bases of six instead of eight. Unfortunately, in historical terms, these uniforms are out of date for the 1813 campaign. However, one does not always have to be so strict. Sometimes it is nice just to have fully painted units to put on the table, and historical correctness mustnt always be the priority….
I am doing my best to get back into painting my 1808 figures again. This time I am doing some Russian jägers, the 24th regiment to be precise. I will need to paint quite a few more Russian figures, around 150 or so, before I have everything I need for the 1808 summer campaign. That will take some time, but at least I have painted substantially more than half of the planned total already. It is quite insane really, doing one of the smallest possible campaigns of the Napoleonic period, and still I need ca 400-500 figures per side…
As I am painting a lot of figures for the Finnish war, with the aim of recreating some of the battles of the summer of 1808, there are a few specific terrain items that I need. Recently, I did some typically Scandinavian fences (gärdesgårdar). I will need even more, as such fences were built around even the smallest patch of land in Finland in 1808 – there was some law or ordinance which made this practice favorable for the peasants (dont ask me how exactly!).
Two other typical terrain features were bogs (mossar, or myrar in Swedish) and förhuggningar. The first of these is a natural feature of the Finnish landscape, while the second was a common form of simple, improvised defensive work.
Bogs are characteristic of northern and central Finland. Unsurprisingly, the first man to scientifically categorize different types of bog was a Finn (Carelian parson Jacob Stenius, also known as “Bog-Jacob”). He even put his expertise in bog-science to work for the government and contributed to the improvement of border defenses in eastern Finland in the middle of the 18th century. This may sound like something out of Monty Python, but it is quite true!
A bog, with PVA glue still not completely dry. French dragoons for scale purposes only!
Needless to say, bogs were important in the war of 1808. Wetlands were part of the battlefields of several of the most important and well-known battles, such as Oravais, Jutas, Rouna-Salmi and Karstula. The battles of Parjakanneva and Kokonsaari are named after the bogs on which these battles were fought. The battle of Kokonsaari in particular is worth mentioning. Here the Russians are reported to have waded through the wet ground with mud up to their knees. Despite this, the Russians defeated von Fieandt’s small detachment after a bloody battle (casualties were proportionally among the highest in the war).
The bogs were not particularly difficult to make. However, I did need very large bases for them, as these will often need to fill up a large part of the gaming board. I made the bases from masonite type board. It is very useful, but can be difficult to cut. After some testing with different tools, a metal saw turned out to be a reasonably effective method because of its fine teeth. I sanded down the edges, painted the pieces with textured paint (hobby paint+sand+water), but left large spots empty for the pools of water. I then highlighted the ground with brown and then buff (Vallejo Dark Sand), and the pools blue. I painted the edges a brown green and flocked the whole thing with various Woodland Scenics materials and grass tufts.
My original idea was to add Vallejos Still water product over the pools (and perhaps parts of the grass too), but I must have misplaced the bottles – I just couldnt find them, although I am sure I bought some a while back. So that will have to wait. I was reasonably happy with the result anyway, although maybe the pools are a little too blue for a swamp.
Many of the above mentioned battles also featured the second type of terrain piece, so-called “förhuggningar”, which is something similar to what is known in English as an abatis. These simple fortifications are mentioned many times in the sources, but they were probably variations on a theme. They seem to have served different functions. Sometimes, trees were felled in order to clear the line of sight for artillery; in other instances, felled trees were used to fortify defensive positions. Sometimes, perhaps, these two functions could be combined. The use of wood has of course been a feature of war since the earliest times. Finland is, and was, covered in forests to such an extent that this must have been a very expedient means of preparing defensive works. This was certainly the case in 1808.
These were made in a similar way to the bogs. The tree stumps are resin pieces I bought somewhere some years ago – the rocks are just, well, stones. I will add some natural twigs to look like felled trees over the bases. I also have some smaller resin log piles and log-and-earth fortifications made by Baueda. Together they will make up some nice förhuggningar for my Finnish campaign – or why not eastern front ww2 games.
While I was at it, I also flocked my recently painted houses and did some other small pieces, such as the rock-and-bush sections, and some more bases for my trees.
Im starting to come back to painting, but find myself doing multiple projects at the same time: 1813 Prussians, 1808 Swedes/Finns and Russians, a little bit of WW2 plus various terrain pieces. I havent really been able to finish a complete unit, but at least I did half a battalion’s worth of Prussian fusiliers. These are in charging poses, which was a bit of a challenge when basing them 8 figures to a 60×40 base. But it worked, and I am pleased that I stuck to this solution in the end. Next up, Ill try to do the second fusilier battalion with skirmishing figures. That is not quite looking as good! Such a type of figure doesnt seem to fit on these bases at all unfortunately… Ill have to think of something.
I have been busy continuing with my work on the resin buildings I acquired from Grand Manner shortly before they closed down. This time it is some kind of cottage. A beautiful model, but I do wonder if the designer hasnt forgotten a chimney? Even so, the model was a pleasure to paint, with no cleaning up to be done apart from a quick wash with washing up liquid before priming. There was some air bubbles on the detacheable interior, but I havent started that yet. I reckon that having the exterior on as many as possible of the buildings painted to a decent standard was a higher priority.
The first of the Grand Manner buildings Ive managed to finish is the humble (although quite large) Prussian barn. As I think you can see from the images above, the model is perfectly detailed, with excellent looking wooded frame and straw roof. I should also say that this model required next to no preparation at all, as there were no air bubbles or flash on it.
I fiddled a bit more than usual trying to find the best way to paint all that detail relatively efficiently. In the end this turned out to be a standard base coat-shading wash-highlight, with the highlighting being partly drybrushing. If you want to pick out the framing and give the buildings something of the paint job they deserve, this will have to take some hours to do, no matter how fast you are. One thing I did do to speed things up was use a spray varnish. I used Winsor & Newtons all purpose matt varnish, which worked perfectly. The only difference to the brush on variant was that this product results in a slightly less matt finish. But there was nothing of the dreaded frosting (which I have had with other brands!).
At one point, I started doing a second highlight on the wood, but I abandoned this halfway through the left hand side wall. This would just have taken too long, and would not necessarily have looked that much better. In the end, I am happy with the result, and hope to do the rest soon enough. Another building (the cottage) is already base coated.
It had to happen sooner or later. Until now I have based my 1808 Swedes (and Russians) on 20mm round bases mounted in slotted movement trays. Every single figure even has a magnet connecting it to the movement tray.
The problem is that even the smallest movement trays are too big. There is no way around it. I thought it was OK for a long time, but I now realize that it really doesnt look very good, particularly for figures in a marching pose. Close order infantry marched much closer together. Also, the magnetizing system doesnt work very well. The figures dont stick to the bases quite well enough. This can be pretty irritating when gaming. At first, I thought Id protect the figures by storing the one by one in foam trays, just like I do with ww2 figures. That didnt work either – imagine having to mount 500 figures into their movement trays before each game (and were often hard enough pressed for time as it is). So that only happened twice before I gave up the whole thing. And to be honest, it has turned out that I hardly ever remove the figures from the movement trays for any other purposes either.
So, I decided to rebase the whole lot. Im doing them on 45x40mm bases, mdf by Warbases. Rebasing all my 1808 figures is almost 500 figures, and these are just the first 24 (23 actually!) of them. The good thing is that I can now add the correct company distinctions to the Swedish and Finnish infantry.
The downside is that I have to paint a few additional figures just to fill up the ranks, expanding what are now mostly 16- or 20-man units into 24 man units. In total, I dont need to paint much more than perhaps 100 figures or so. But itll take a while to go through the whole lot… It is also quite tempting to do larger units – but thatll have to wait! 4 bases of 6 (24 man units) is quite practical and pretty much the standard for Napoleonic wargames. But if I ever manage to paint enough figures, I can always expand from 4 bases to 6 per unit (36 man units), at least for some units.
Another thing I will add when I enlarge my units is a second flag for all battalions. I already have 2 flags per unit for the Russians, so this also had to be done at some point. The Swedish army used the exact same system of two flags per battalion as the Russians (i. e. first battalion one white (king’s) flag and one colored flag, second battalion two colored flags). The flags I paint by hand turn out really nice, but they do require some work. With this first unit (Åbo regiment, second battalion), the flag I had was the very first one I did a few years ago. I was a little worried that I wouldnt be able to match the old one, in terms of the exact color shades and the highlighting. But it worked quite well, I think.
As I wrote in my last post, I havent been doing much painting lately for various reasons. In the last week though, I have been able to get back into it to some extent. I base-coated around 70 figures, all of them Prussians: a third musketeer battalion and a fusilier battalion, plus some skirmishers and two mounted colonels. I also managed to finish four fusiliers. With these Prussians, I paint to a slightly lower standard, and I can often do 4 or even 8 figures a day after preparation and a spray basecoat. When I am actually painting that is!
It’ll be a while until I can continue painting, but its a start. Together with the Prussians, I also plan to paint up four amazing-looking napoleonic buildings from Grand Manner, which I grabbed in their final sale. They are four half-timbered Prussian buildings (barn, cottage, night watchman’s cabin and the Wachau (Leipzig) meeting house) and not least a windmill (modelled after the windmill at Ligny, if I am not mistaken). Even though they were sold at a relative discount, they were still expensive. I had had them on my wish list for a long time, and now that the final sale came along, I couldnt resist them. These are the equivalent of the Rolls-Royces of wargames’ terrain pieces, with amazing detail both externally and internally. In fact, they are so detailed, it’ll be a major project painting them up. On the other hand, just one or two of these will make centrepieces for Napoleonic period games, and I suppose they work quite well for WW2 as well.
Pictures (from the GM website) of the buildings. I really hope I will be able to do them justice, they really deserve it!
That also means Grand Manner is closing down, as you may have seen (deadline for last orders is 19th of July!). However, there are only some items left in stock, and none of the ones I bought are available. Hopefully, this will only be temporary and the company taken over by someone else.
Havent posted anything in a while now – our apartement is being renovated and we have been living with relatives for more than a month. No painting! But as I hadnt posted this pic yet I thought I might as well do it. Its the first of two 32-man battalions made from my old Warlord Games figures, painted more than 5 years ago I think. These were just lying around gathering dust anyway, and now they can be used with my Prussians. Based in this way they will take up much less space. As I didnt have an even number of matching figures, I had to paint 8 new ones, which is also good, because now almost all of the old sprues I had lying around are used up! Another battalion is on the way, it lacks only 4 figures.
I have even more WG Russians, and a few Perrys too, painted in the same style. However, those will need to be complemented with large numbers of new figures to make up 32-man units (they have different shakos…). There is also some cavalry which need only a few models more to make up useful units, and they are likely to be much easier to rebase as well. At the moment I will prioritize the unpainted stuff I have before buying more of these.
I havent done much in the way of painting lately, mainly due to work and work travel. I did try my hand at some of the older Warlord Games Landwehr, as a friend had some of these lying around. Theres a variation of stuff in various states of disrepair, but much of it can be put to use.
First, I will use some of these marching types, mostly in plastic, but some in metal as well. They will complement the newer style WG Landwehr I already have. I must admit that the newer ones are much improved. But with Landwehr, there is a logic to have them not look very uniform, and I think they will mix quite well. When painted, there seems to be less difference than I first thought.
Pancratist 