Year End - 2019

2019 saw my first full year of keeping this blog.  Posts are somewhat infrequent and scattered, but I've been able to stick with it.

On the reenacting front, I was able to attend 8 events in kit this year, and one as a spectator.  A couple of the gatherings were private get-togethers, and several were official Warner's Regiment events.  It's difficult to pick a favorite this year, though presenting a talk to the public while having a chicken standing on my head at Hubbardton does sort of stand out.

For sewing projects, I was able to complete an outfit for G to wear, though she keeps growing, so we'll need to do it again this year.  Another yearly ritual seems to be breeches.  This past year it was a pair for a friend.  This coming year I'll need to replace mine again.

On the gaming side of things, we have a few games of Wings of War, plus several board games, but no major games yet.  I did get a lot of painting done (for me), completing about 61 28mm figures, which is an increase from last year.  I also built a few small pieces of terrain.  This coming year I have a couple of focused projects to concentrate on.  The first is the Battle of Valcour Island, using paper-craft miniatures and rules from War Artisan, and the second is a go at a 6mm scale Battle of Hubbardton, at 1:1 figure scale (roughly 1,500 troops per side).  I've found a few guys who may be interested in playing some historical scenarios, so I'm going to put some effort into getting those games going.

Historical research this year was light.  Other than my usual general reading on various events and period crafts, I did get to visit the Vermont State Archives to look through Ira Allen's survey book.  That was a pretty cool moment.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the School of Instruction in Pennsylvania, hosted by the Department of the Geographer to the Army.  I'd really like to attend that one day, so I'm going to look into it again this year.

Overall, 2019 was a pretty good year, hobby-wise.  I'm looking forward to continuing in 2020.

Midwinter's Eve

Happy Midwinter's Eve!

A couple of weekends ago, Gabriella and I attended the Midwinter's Eve celebration at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum.  This was sort of an informal formal affair for us.  As an informal affair, a couple of us were sporting our winter beards, which would not have been in fashion at the time.  As a formal affair, members of Warner's Regiment appeared in uniform.

Before the public event the museum was holding, the Regiment gathered in the tavern room of the museum's Visitor's Center for the first of our "Winter Quarters" gatherings.  During Winter Quarters, we work on repairing our gear, making new things, and rolling and filling the seemingly never-ending supply of cartridges we'll use in battle next season.  I enjoy these gatherings, as it's a way to stay connected to our friends in the unit during our off-season.

As darkness fell, it was time to switch gears.  The museum's Winter's Eve even was open to the public, supplying snacks, drinks, music, dancing, and lantern-lit tours of the the Ethan Allen house.  We all switched into kit and were transported from the twenty-first century to the eighteen century.

Eighteenth Century Eyes.

 Walking from the Visitor's Center out to the house by lamp-light was amazing.  It was too dark for photos, but it was easy to be transported back in time.  Rain from previous days had made the ground damp, and warmer weather had settled in, creating a light misty fog over the property.  Walking out to the house, you could just make out faint candlelight in the windows, welcoming weary travelers home.

Welcome home.

Inside the house, volunteers from the museum were portraying Ethan and Fanny Allen and family.  They had the fires going, candles lit, and snacks for guests on the table.  While there was dancing in the Tavern, many of us chose to gather in the warmth of the Allen kitchen, enjoying gingerbread cookies and each other's company.  At one point, looking around at all the men in uniform, I imaged that this must have been much what it was like when residents of the New Hampshire Grants gathered in Dorset some 240ish years ago to vote on their leaders and their future.

Volunteers, guests, and the Regiment gather in Fanny Allen's kitchen.

Good food, conversation, and company by the warmth of the hearth.

At the end of the evening we left our friends.  Feeling content with our final even of the year, we're both looking forward to 2020.

Warmth of the kitchen.

From video of the event, from the Museum's YouTube channel:

LPL - Final Entries

With the year winding up, I'm going to include my final Lead Painters League entries in a single post.  Rounds 8, 9 and 10 saw me at the bottom of the pack, which was unsurprising.  Overall, I finished in last place, but I'm actually pretty happy with that.  Score-wise, I kept up with the competition, staying within 10 points of my closest competitor.  More importantly, I was able to get a lot more painted than I usually do, and proved to myself that I can make the time to paint if I put some effort into it.

Entry 8 - Rural Residents

My eighth entry to the contest was another set of Perry miniatures.  Most were civilian, but I believe one of the men on the right came from an infantry pack.  Overall I was pretty happy with how these turned out.  The field worker figure was my first time painting dark skin, and I wasn't sure how it would read, but it turned out okay.  Also for this round, I built a bit of background scenery, which I'll cover in a later post.

Entry 9 - Sharpshooter's Revenge

For the ninth round of the League, I assembled some figures from a few different packs of Perry Miniatures.  The man lying face down on the ground is from their plastic British Infantry set.  The man on horseback came from a pack of generals of some sort.  The two infantry men on the left started out as figures from an artillery set.  I carved off their artillery accessories, removed their right arms, and added muskets and arms from a British Infantry plastic sprue.  The crouching figure is not from Perry.  He was found in a box of random stuff I found in a drawer, and may have come from Wargames Foundry originally.

With this group, I'm happy with the poses and the overall scene, but I wasn't happy with the painting.  I rushed a bit, and the metal figures had been painted before, so some stripping and repainting was required.  I'm tempted to strip the paint from these again and make another attempt.

Entry 10 - 2nd New Hampshire Command

My final entry to the competition was a command stand that I painted up in the uniform of the 2nd New Hampshire Continentals.  I don't recall where these particular sculpts are from, but I believe they were intended to be militia originally.  After a short bit of research, I decided that I like the sky-blue faced red regimental coats and buff colored flag of the 2nd, so I went with that.

Finally, here are a few shots of the entire collection of miniatures that I painted for this year's Lead Painter's League.  Fifty figures was the requirement for the overall competition, and I managed to paint up 56.  I'm very happy with my overall output, and I like that I've painted up enough AWI sculpts that I can start to seriously look into hosting some small skirmish level games.

Lead Painters League 2019 - Overhead

Lead Painters League - Assembled Forces

British Wounded

Wounded Brits resting in a broken cart.

This little set of British wounded figures from Colonel Bill's landed me my second Lead Painters League win.  The figures are a bit squat and chunky compared to the Perry Miniatures that I own, but the poses are wonderful.  For Round 7 of the LPL, I decided to paint these up with a couple of different facings so that they could take the part of generic wounded British during games.  The cart is a Reaper Bones miniature, with a repurposed LEGO wheel substituted in for the solid medieval-type wheel that the cart came with.  I'm not crazy about the plastic used on the Reaper minis, but friends have mentioned that they really like them.  I may give another go at them at some point if I ever decide to work on any fantasy-themed projects instead of historicals.

Plague Doctors

Plague Doctors

Originally ordered for Round 1 of the Lead Painter's League, where they would have fit the "Gothic Horror" theme of the round, I ended up using this set of Plague Doctors as my Round 6 entry.  Though I ordered them several weeks before the competition started, they didn't arrive until several weeks *after* the competition started.  So many weeks, in fact, that I had decided that I had mistakenly not ordered them.  As such, it was a bit of a surprise when they arrived in the mail.

These were painted quickly, as I had my days mixed up and almost missed completing an entry by the Round 6 deadline.  The figures are from Warmonger Miniatures.  I did make one small customization, cutting down the hat of one of the figures so that it would match the flat caps of the others.

For a quick paint, they didn't turn out too bad.  The one thing that kept running through my head as I painted, though, was "This was life before vaccines..."

Camp Life

Life in Camp

Round 5 of the Lead Painter's League brought me my first win of the competition.  The figures are from Perry Miniatures, and have tons of character.  This is a set that I've wanted to paint for a long time.  Years, in fact.  It's just a scene that seems so familiar.  When I showed the finished work to my daughter, I discovered why.

"That looks like our reenacting group," she said, "That's me braiding your hair, Gerry telling a story, Dave with his drink, and Chrissey cooking over the fire."

Completely unintended, but she's right.  I think I like this scene so much because it feels like home.

Also Life in Camp...

British Command - 24th Regiment of Foot

24th Regiment of Foot - Infantry Command

For Round 4 of the Lead Painter's League, I finally returned to the British line infantry that I started last year.  For this set, I tried my hand at blacklining to bring out details.  It looks slightly better than the five infantrymen that I painted up last year.  For this batch, I was very happy with how the drummer turned out.

24th of Foot Music

Flags for the unit were found online, scaled in GIMP, then printed on regular paper.  My collection for the 24th now has 10 men completed, and another 28 to go.

Soviet Snipers

Soviet Female World War II Snipers

For Round 3 of the Lead Painters League, I purchased two sets of female Soviets from Bad Squiddo Games.  During World War II, the Soviets had a number of women on active duty within their army, including some of the deadliest snipers of the conflict.  Bad Squiddo is known for their realistic sculpts of women, and these five figures are a perfect example.

Though I lost the round, I'm very happy with how these turned out.  They are a bit monochromatic, but that fits with their setting and their purpose.  In fact, these snipers were so well camouflaged that I actually lost them on my desk at one point.  I finally found them mixed into the rubble that I call a work area.

I hadn't planned on creating a Soviet army for Bolt Action.  If I do, however, these will make a good start, with two sniper teams and a forward observer.

HMS Inflexible

1:300 Scale - HMS Inflexible, Lake Champlain - 1776

I enjoyed building the Enterprise so much that I decided to take another ship in the same scale.  War Artisan's Workshop sells a whole fleet of ships that took part in the Battle of Valcour Island.  Each printable ship kit is currently available for $5.00.  I took the plunge and decided to tackle the largest of the British vessels that took part in the battle, the HMS Inflexible.

Inflexible with a U.S. Quarter for scale.

The Inflexible was a 180 ton, 80' long three-masted ship armed with eighteen 12 pound guns.  What amazes me is that she was not built on Lake Champlain, where she fought.  Instead, she was built in Quebec City, then moved in pieces to St. Johns, where she was reassembled and launched.

The Continental Sloop-of-War Enterprise tries to outrun the British.

The photo above gives some idea what the Continental Navy on Lake Champlain faced during the fight for control of Lake Champlain n 1776.  The Enterprise was one of the American's larger ships (a few were a couple of feet longer).

Completed Hull next to the finished Enterprise.

Constructing the hull of the ship was pretty straight forward.  The pieces were printed, folded, glued, and in my case, painted due to low ink on my printer.  I decided to use toothpick bits for cannon this time around, which looked a little large, but from a distance give the impression of a well-armed vessel.

Building one of the masts.

Building the masts and sails was also fairly simple.  The instructions that come with the kit list the sizes of the pieces you need, and each it cut from readily available material.  In this case, I used floral wire, toothpicks, and a bamboo skewer.  Rigging is black thread that's been run through some PVA glue and allowed to dry.

Bow Spirit, Main Mast, and Mizzen Mast in place.

Rigging the Inflexible was the most difficult part of this build.  First, there's a lot of lines!  Next, my thread wasn't really cooperating.  Third, my glue wasn't drying fast enough to keep things in place.  Overall, it took me about a week to complete the rigging, and I'm still not happy with it.  It's loose in places, but really, from a distance, it doesn't look too bad.

So, another build complete.  I'm really enjoying these tiny ships.  I think I'm going to purchase another one soon.

HMS Inflexible, port side.

Colonial Townsfolk

Perry Miniatures Civilians

The second round of the Lead Painter's League has ended.  My entry, a group of civilians from Perry Miniatures was paired up against some fantasy type figures.  My opponent won the round, dropping me from 19th to 21st place overall, but I'm still really happy with these figures.

 

I'm especially happy with how the well-dressed lady turned out.  I struggled a bit with what color to make her petticoat, but the shading on her overall gown came out well.  I need to practice shading some more, but this one felt nice to paint. 

The Benjamin Franklin looking gentleman I'm also happy with, though there are some improvements I would have made had I had more time to work.  I dabbed his face a bit at the end, and the slight blue highlight on his hat turned out lighter than I would of liked.  His base also needs some touch up, as some of the basing materiel came off as I was photographing.

The lady with the basket I tried to make a little more dirty and run down.  The biggest struggle was painting the baby on her back.  I don't know if it was the sculpt, or my painting, but he still sort of looks more gremlin-like and baby-like.

The fellow carrying the barrel suffers from the same basing and highlighting problem as the Franklin fig, but I was happy how his breeches turned out.  I tried highlighting with a darker color as opposed to using a wash on this one.

Finally there's the broom woman.  I'm not happy with her face, but her jacket, especially the back, turned out well.

On to Round 3 this week!

Australian Jungle Infantry

Australian Jungle Infantry in New Guinea

Voting has ended for the first round of the Lead Painters' League, so I can finally reveal my first steps into painting miniatures for World War II.  These ten figures represent a section of of the Australian Jungle Division, organized in 1943 to fight in the southwest Pacific.

The figures are from Warlord Games Bolt Action range and, honestly, I chose them because I really liked their hats.  Never having worked with Warlord Games figures before, I was really impressed at how well they were sculpted and molded.  These really were a lot of fun to paint.

Being my first time taking part in the Lead Painters' League, I find myself seriously outclassed by more experienced painters, however, after one round, I'm currently ranked 19th out of 24 contestants.  Given that I had to give up 10 points for not meeting the first round's theme (the gothic figures that I ordered never arrived), I'm pretty happy with my standing.  Had I been able to meet the theme, I'd be somewhere near the low middle, which I feel is a respectable placement for someone painting to a tabletop level.

Continental Ship Enterprise

Enterprise - 1:300 scale paper model.

Over the last couple of days, I made an attempt at trying something different for me.  Generally, I'm not much of a naval modeler, and I don't think I've ever made a paper model before.  Now I can successfully say that I've completed a naval paper model.

Port side, with Quarter for scale.

In May of 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold and his men, during the opening months of the American Revolution, captured the Canadian port of St. Johns, and with it, the Sloop-of-War George.   The George was renamed Enterprise, and used by the Continental army to secure Lake Champlain.


On the 11th of October, 1776, the Enterprise, along with Arnold's small fleet of recently built ships and gunboats, took part in the Battle of Valcour Island.  The battle ended as a defeat for the Americans, with several vessels sunk, scuttled, or captured.  Enterprise, however, escaped, and made her way back to Crown Point, and later Ticonderoga.

In July of the next summer, with the British seizing Fort Ticonderoga and moving against the Continental Army, Enterprise was used to help evacuate the residents of the fort south to Skenesborough (now Whitehall, NY), while the main body of the army retreated across the Lake into what is now Vermont.  The evacuation fleet, unfortunately for the Americans, was overtaken by the British, and Enterprise was run aground on the 7th of July, 1777, to prevent her capture.

Posing with a Vermont commemorative coin.

The model that I built comes as a free printable download from War Artisan's Workshop.  This ship is part of the site's Great Lakes 1:300 Scale collection.  Having never built something of this scale before, and not knowing much about naval building and ships in general, I actually found this to be a pretty enjoyable build.  There are certainly some fiddly bits (tweezers would have come in handy), but taking is slow and careful resulted in a very nice model that looks cool on my desk, and seemslike it is actually robust enough to be used for wargaming.

Now, do I purchase the other models and refight Valcour Island?

Lead Painter's League 13

 

Announced a few weeks ago, the Lead Adventure Forum is once again hosting the Lead Painter's League.  This is the 13th time the challenge/competition has been held, so it seems like as a good a time as any for me to take part.


The competition is basically a way to motivate folks to get their miniatures painted.  The contest consists of 10 rounds of painting.  For each round, participants paint one "team" of at least 5 miniatures.  Points are awarded for certain criteria being met, and teams are judged against each other by members of the forum.  At the end, the painter with the highest number of points is declared the "winner."  Really, though, everyone who participates gets some of their unpainted stock off their desks, so it's a win for everyone.

The first round this year includes a "gothic" challenge.  Anyone who paints a team which fits into the gothic genre receives extra points.  Not having anything like that on hand, I ordered some figures a few weeks ago, when I first found out about the competition, but so far only one of them has arrived in the mail.  With the deadline for entry coming up this week, it looks like I'll need to find a backup plan.

On the positive side, I've finished two teams at this point (to be posted later, so as to not post them before the competition), so I'm off to a good start.  I have four or five more teams worked out, one in primer, so I think I'll be able to keep up, even though I'm a fairly slow (read: unmotivated) painter.

Populating Fort #4

18th Century me with a couple of my daughters.

As I mentioned in my last post, on August 24th and 25th, Warner's Regiment was invited to take on the role of citizens living within the Fort at #4 in Charlestown, New Hampshire.  As a military unit, most of our events are focused on battles, but this event was focused on the people.

The fort itself is an neat structure, or rather, gathering of structures.  There are several houses and shops, arranged in a square around an open green.  The entirety is then encircled by a palisade of logs.  The fort also has a couple of out-buildings, including a working blacksmith shop.

This time around, G and I focused our energy on baking bread for the Regiment's annual dinner, which was going to be taking place at the fort Saturday night.  I researched a few period recipes, we tried a couple at home, and settled on the one that we liked the best.  The night before, we mixed up several batches of dough, leaving them to rise so they'd be ready for baking the next day.

The morning of the event, my child-care plans changed, so we ended up running late, and bringing three more children than planned with us.  It was pretty awesome hanging out with my daughters in period attire, in a period setting, surrounded by friends with their kids and families.

I didn't catch  photos of what everyone in the unit was up to, but in addition to a few of us manning the bake oven, we had a leather worker, a gunsmith, a tinsmith, a couple of spinners, as well as the usual museum staff.  Some of the kids made butter, which was an great addition to the fresh baked bread, and it was overall a nice relaxing day.

Sgt. Golden started the fire since we were running late.

Adding some dough to the oven.

A couple of loaves, fresh from the oven.

Posing with my wares in the Fort's tavern.

There's a baby playing in the middle of that awesome circle of protection.

My youngest, enjoying the fort.

Miss Gabriella, probably *not* laughing at a dad joke.

Me and my wild child.