The League of Augsburg

Åke Öberg’s Vikingar - the raw material - two conversions and three 're-equipped' models

The finished unit -Åke Öberg’s Vikingar

The unit is Veteran under Donnybrook classification and equipped with heavy weapons, in this case battle axes. They are known in my collection as Sergeant Åke Öberg’s Vikingar. His little command are formidable men from the northern provinces of Sweden. Almost inured to...

Donnybrook has become pretty widely used since its release (despite CH painting himself into the cover!).

Donnybrook is ideally suited to characterisation.  Clarence and I had much fun naming the rather ridiculous characters which pepper the pages of the rule book. A few of our friends appear there in very thin disguise.

The Ghost Army immediately started to lend itself to this characterisation...

A preview of four of the conversions for the Ghost Army

On a recent flight back from New York I hit the creative wall. I intended to use the journey to write something new but found myself simply staring at the screen.. it had been a hard week at the office.
I resorted to trawling through my files of previously written pieces and eventually I came across an almost finished scenario for Donnybrook...

Lots of hares have been running for many years on the topic of Russian Grenadier dress. The perpetuated image has been that of a tall mitre capped chap in a plain uniform very much in the fashion of the paintings of the English Foot Guard grenadiers or contemporary North German States'
grenadiers.




More recent research points to alternatives. The Russians appear to have had at least four regiments of...

Gardes Francaises

It is true, we have somewhat neglected both the European theatre and the French army on the blog. There are a variety of reasons for that but these are mostly a positive focus on other theatres rather than an anti Flanders bias.

Gardes Suisses

Line of of three of the 10 Harquebusiers

This is a departure from our core period but an exciting one nonetheless. We have an initial release of nine sculpts of cavalry for the English Civil War / Thirty Years War period.

Montero and buff clothing

The dress of these 'Harquebusiers' is a mixture of armoured and unarmoured with lobster helmets, soft hats and montero caps. We have charging and resting...

WLOA61 & WLOA63 as a squadron

I have taken too long to paint these lovely French mounted dragoons. These models were a real pleasure to paint and the squadron looks pretty impressive. They are the start of the League of Augsburg game which will feature at Crisis 2017.

WLOA61

We are finally travelling to Flanders both physically and in gaming terms.

WLOA63

These codes are selling well and will be...

These chaps were a little bit behind in the production queue but as can be seen from these pictures were well worth the wait.



I am not whether it was the colour combination or the figures themselves but I really enjoyed painting this batch which are now available to purchase in the online store.



The poses are equally suited to being used for sergeants or perhaps even artillerists if a little variety...

This pack is figure porn. I love the poses, the definition and the ease with which they paint up.






The Sergeant is pointing with purpose. He looks like a Vet. I gave him a very plain uniform in the paint job but that just adds to his no nonsense air.







Russian Drummers' uniforms are relatively plain compared with even the Calvinist Swedes. This chap has the swallow's nest shoulder ends as frippery but...

I was very keen to experiment with some test masters of the new Swedish cavalry command. I tried them on the new horses (of which there are 5 variants) and on two of the existing horses.





They were easy and fun to paint. The poses are dramatic and the look was very pleasing when finished.






I will let the photos do the talking with some commentary around each.






The dramatic officer has a separate arm.





Som...

Delighted to say that we have now officially released four new codes for the ever expanding GNW Russian range.

We have R12 - the long awaited musketeers marching which come with shouldered musket - bayonet fixed or bayonet sheathed.





R13 The pikemen to march alongside these fine musketeers





R14 An outstanding Command pack with very flavoursome characters






And finally  R16 Grenadiers in fur mitre standing






...

The LoA GNW game at Falkirk 2017

I cannot say the our preparation for the Carronade show in Falkirk was faultless. I spent about 90 minutes the night before the show looking out all the various components from the game we had run at Tactica. Terrain - check, buildings - check, troops - check (sure about that?... yep), trees - text to Toggy - check, rules - check, handout - oops I forgot that, never...