More Northern Association troops

I'm now getting very close to completing all the troops I need for the Northern Association at Marston Moor. Just 2 more horse regiments to finish, though I will add some artillery for club games. First up is the 4th and last infantry regiment. This time I went with blue coats, which seemed to cover the brown undercoat quite well. With these done it will be a nice break from painting pikes until the Covenanters are released.

 The next 3 units are all horse regiments. As I did these in bulk they do look quite uniform in their buff coats, but I'm happy with them and they are Parlaimentarians. The figures are a good mix of Warlord, Alternative Armies and Peter Pig. The flags are purely conjecteral.

As the nights darken I think progress will slow as I will get less painting time except at the weekends. However a good start has been made. The Northern Association should be finished tomorrow, so that is the 2 armies completed that I committed too. I'm also nearly half way through Rupert's cavalry.

Newcastle's Royalists

Fairfax's Northern Association

Rupert's cavalry and Royalist commanders

Completed so far:

Newcastle's Royalists - 7 foot regiments, 8 horse regiments, 5 brigadiers and some commanded shotte.

Northern Association - 4 foot regiments, 7 horse regiments, 3 brigadiers, 1 Dragoon regiment and commanded shotte

Rupert's Royalists - 4 horse regiments

After I finish these next 3 horse regiments (2 Parlaimentarian and 1 Royalist), looking through the available figures I have left, I can now put together the additional 5 regiments of horse for Rupert along with a regiment of dragoons and some commanded shotte. I can also put together 1 regiment of lancers for the Covenanters. I've also about 6 guns that I can paint up rather generic to use for either side.

The Northern Association Horse

As the Marston Moor project continues, I've been concentrating on the Northern Association under the Command of Fairfax for Parlaiment. I've added another 3 regiments of horse. The figures are a mix of Warlord plastics, Alternative armies' new range and Peter Pig. Helps to add some variety and I feel helps cover for some of the limitations of the Warlord plastics. The flags are from Wargames design.

I also painted up the last of my mounted brigadiers, I can then concentrate on the new commanders I picked up from Warlord games. 3 of these are for the Northern Associationa and the other is to be added to Newcastle's army.

L to R: Alt. Armies, Alt. Armies, Peter Pig and Warlord

I did a little stocktake of the army so far. I have 3 of the 4 infantry regiments done and 4 of the 9 horse regiments. Also completed are the commanded shotte and dragoons.  I also need to add Fairfax and 1 more brigadier. Thankfully my primer arrived today , so 3 more horse regiments have been undercoated. 

By my reckoning I'm just over 50% done and then I can add it to the completed tally with Newcastle's army. After this I need the last 6 regiments of horse for Rupert, some dragoons and command shotte. Thankfully Mitch and Neil will be working on Rupert's foot. Mitch is also nearing completion on the Eastern Association so this just leaves the Covenanters. The good news is Warlord is to release them shortly, there is a free sprue with the November Wargames illustrated, so that will be a start.

Northern Association foote

Finally managed to get the basing done on a third regiment of foote for the Northern Association. I once again went with a brown undercoat to help with the pikes and muskets. I then picked out some tunics in green, which I think came out ok. The flag is pure conjecture.  The 4th and last regiment is now undercoated and joined to the painting queue.

I also took the 2 sets of commanders out of their box to get a better look at them. The detail is far superior to their plastic kits. I'll definitely be painting up a few of these for the Marston Moor project.

Parlaimentarian Commanders

Royalist Commanders

I now just need to complete the basing on 3 more horse regiments while I wait for a new undercoat spray. It typically ran out halfway through a batch of figures.

1st Parlaimentarian horse

After re-calculating the required numbers of cavalry for Marston Moor, I set to work on adding some more Parlaimentarians. As Mitch and myself were planning a game and he was short of cavalry, it made sense to start on the Northern Association horse. So the first regiment is done. The figures are a mix of Warlord, Peter Pig and one of the new Alternative Armies figures. They all mix in well together.

One area in which I lacked figures for this collection is for the mounted brigadiers and various leaders of the armies. I do have the figures from Peter Pig, Alternative armies and the plastic Warlord figures. None of which stand out above the others so I ordered the resin packs from Warlord games. 

These are handy as they provide Rupert, Cromwell and Fairfax. The others will get painted up as other prominent commanders for the game. First thoughts are they are very nice but I'll get a better look at them over the coming days as they had just arrived in the post.

I've also completed another infantry regiment for Parlaiment, bringing me up to 3 of the 4 I need. Hopefully get their bases done tomorrow.

Commanded Shotte and more hedges

Following yesterdays post, I managed to get the bases completed on a unit of commanded shotte for my slowly growing parliamentarians. The figures are a mix of the plastic Warlord figures and Steelfist. They mix in well in the same unit.

I also managed to complete another 4 sections of hedges. These are some old pieces that have been re-purposed for this project. These are designated as type 4 and have clump foliage as the basis of their construction. I even managed to locate a full bag of clump foliage so I can make more if I wish.

Now it will be back to painting some more cavalry.

More Royalist horse

Despite a bit of a delay as I was away camping at the weekend. I finally completed another 2 regiments of Royalist horse. This brings me up to 12 completed regiments. The figures for these are all the plastics from Warlord games. I did also complete another brigadier, this time from Peter Pig.

There was a bit of discussion around the Marston Moor project and the amount of cavalry we need as well as the size of table to accommodate this. Currently each regiment in game terms is 2 bases approximately representing 200 horse. We need 66 regiments or 132 bases which is quite an undertaking. One solution is to increase the base to represent 200 horse. This brings the number of regiments down to 38 (rounding some of the actual regimental strength up), That is still 76 bases, but much more achievable. It also looks better against the infantry units which represent between 600 and 1000 men.

What this does mean is that Newcastle's Northern Royalist army is complete and I can use the 4 addtional regiments I painted as part of Ruperts' force (useful as no-one had yet agreed to paint Ruperts' horse). A double bonus is that I can also make a start on Fairfax's Northern Association horse which also get me nearer to a game.

On another note I did eventually get around to basing the second unit of Parlaimentarion foot. I've also got some commanded shotte done that just needs basing.

Hopefully get some more figures done for the weekend

More progress and new figures

Lucky for me one of the club members pointed out that Alternative armies had just released 40 new ECW codes in their 15mm range. They also had 20% off so I decided to pick up some of the new cavalry to see if they matched the other ranges I have. I ordered enough for 2 regiments and a couple of brigadiers to lead them. The figures just took a week to arrive. The horses are exactly the same as the original range, the only issue is there is only a single pose and a separate one for the brigadiers.

The bundle

L to R horses - trooper and officer

The riders come in 3 different poses which is handy for a little variety and will mix in well with the Warlord and Peter Pig cavalry I have left to paint. The Brigadiers are designated as Royalist and Parlaimentarian, though easily mixed between both sides.

The troopers

Brigadiers

I'll need to do a count but think I should have enough cavalry now for another 10 or 11 regiments. Just another 10 to purchase when these are painted up.

On the painting front I experimented with a brown undercoat on a regiment of infantry, just finished them today. They still need basing. I'm not totally convinced yet. Great for saving time on the pikes and muskets, but may not cover well for coat colours. Luckily I went for a Tawny orange for this regiment so it looks fine. I'll try another regiment but go for a different coat colour, possibly a blue.

The officers still need their sashes done. Hopefully get these based up over the coming days and then crack on with some cavalry. I've got 3 regiments ready for a bit of paint. We have a game planned for a couple of weeks time to give the rules a run out.