Trelawney’s Regiment ( Williamite)

Well I finally finished these guys, they did take longer than expected, mainly due to waiting for flags etc. I’ve been angling to paint a regiment of this period ever since I saw the Warfare Miniatures website.

I didn’t want to keep this guy too long as I knew he had to get back to his day job of chasing Peter Pan.

The ease of the uniforms and the beautiful standards are a real pull for this period. When the standards arrived I thought they looked rather large, but on checking with Barry Hilton it turns out it’s the size he uses for his units, 40mm square. Well, I tried it and he was right, it looks great. I suppose if you’re only going to have two standards per unit... you might as well  make them bigger so they look good on the table top.

I have to admit I don’t really know a lot about this period in history, I may have made loads of mistakes in the unit. I struggled a little to find good officer reference but in the end found a good painting of the Battle of the Boyne, luckily it had an officer in the foreground.

Warfare miniatures sell the standards in sets of three, which is useful for a beginner, as it gives you a guide as what units to paint. I have the Royal Scots to paint up next with nice big blue standards.

The pikemen base was made from mixing metal Northstar figures with Warlord Games plastics armed with pikes. They kind of work quite well and waters down the expensive metal sculpts.

This is a good way of creating units, using plastics for the bulk of the regiments, but add metal character figures for the extra detail.

Alexa... play Lillibulero...volume seven!
 

Bloody Miniatures ECW

Well what a treat! I saw a YouTube post about this new range of ECW figures and I jumped on them. Turns out they ran out of stock in their first week, I knew this would happen after seeing the figures so I placed an order as fast as I could. They are restocking as fast as possible and there will be another launch of four packs of figures later this year.

Here we can see a line up of rogues. Warlord Games, Essex, Foundry, 1st Corps, Bloody Miniatures x2, Renegade drummer, Redoubt, Bicorne. All the usual suspects...

For those gamers and collectors who have chosen the larger Bicorne, Renegade and Redoubt ranges, these figures are a must. Nick Collier also sculpted the Renegade and Bicorne ranges so these new additions match style and scale perfectly.

Nicely presented too with blood red tissue paper, nice touch.

I bought the complete set of all four packs (16 figures) for £30 .Check them out online to see the packs, dismounted cavalry troopers are among my favourites. They are not the cheapest range out their, I think I worked them out at £1.80 a figure, but I see them as a little ECW treat as there’s not very many. Also they are pretty glorious.

I have always had a soft spot for lobster pots, so I think these dismounted troopers are my favourite. I’m looking forward to seeing what other ranges come out this year. They know all the rank and file troops have been catered for with other companies, so they’re have to cover the specialists and less known units. I’m thinking grenades... 

The range ( so far) contains packs of four sword armed fighters, four pole arms fighters, dismounted troopers and four guys with pistols. The whole range is basically a close quarters fighting body, perfect for getting up close and personal. 

These came at the right time for me as I was starting to put together a storming party/forlorn hope and I think that’s what these figures are intended for. One of the packs is actually called Forlorn hope. I did buy the warlord Games storming party of dismounted troopers, but they are very small, even compared to their plastics. So I think these guys will become the new assault units.

 

Converting ECW cavalry

This is just a quick post as I slaughter my way through a couple of ECW troopers. These are of course the plastic warlord Games plastic cavalry, however, to make them fit in better with my larger figures I’m going to give them a brain transplant.

Cheap plastic cavalry at £18 for twelve and a pack of heads from Redoubt at £1.50, can’t go wrong. That reminds me I will have to order some more. Steve Barber has started to do heads too so that’s worth a look.

Quite easy to do. At first I thought the long moulded hair would be a problem, but a sharp scalpel takes it off no problem. You could add some green stuff hair if you like, but looking at these you don’t really need to. The metal heads are spare Redoubt cavalry ones and I think they have hair already under the helmet.

Of course with new heads you can always tweak the position, I found all these Warlord Games plastics were just staring forward so a little change is a good thing. 

There’s not a lot in it but I think the new head brings them more into scale with the larger Bicorne, Renegade and Bloody miniatures ranges.
 

1690 WIP

I have used Warlord games plastics to produce quite a cheap regiment, however, for the character figures like the command and pikemen, I went to Northstar. The metals match up well with the plastics and add a little more detail to the officers. I added some metal pikemen also from Northstar, but to help keep the cost down and add so different poses I created a couple of pikemen from the plastic kit.

I am desperately trying to keep the number of figures down so I actually stand a chance of finishing units... but I’m finding it hard as I do like big regiments. I have decided seven to a base is a good number and looks  better than six.

Northstar metal pikemen and officers. Brush bristles for pikes again.

These plastic pikemen will add a bit of variety to the pike base at the back of the regiment.

Reference material stored so I know where to get it in the future.