Jacobite Rebellion 1746 - 10mm Pendraken - British 10th Dragoons and Royal Artillery

This post sees the addition of cavalry and artillery to my British Army of 1746.  All of the models are Pendraken 10mm.

The cavalry are painted as the 10th Dragoons (Cobhams), who were posted on both flanks at Culloden.

 As I'm trying to create the armies in as closes as to 1:10 scale of the actual forces in the Rebellion (without having unsightly figure gaps or massive wastage of figures).  The historical splitting of the Regiment meant that I had to do two things, which I don't normally tend to do.

• Think in terms of Troops and Squadrons rather than Regiments for the cavalry, and with Cobham's 10th Dragoons in particular.
• Use enough cavalry to give the feeling of power./numbers that their appearance must have made at Culloden for the Jacobites to send so much of their forceto  face them on their right flank  (I tend to scale back cavalry compared to infantry and in 28mm this can make sense, 10mm gives more options and space for more cavalry)

I was undecided about the basing  even as I was creating it.  Normally I use a base and proceed to fill it with troops.  Unlike 28mm, I have been trying to reduce Regiments to one stand to save moving multiples of bases per turn.  As described above, the need split the 10th  to cover both flanks meant that I didn't have this option.  So I decided to put two Troops on one base (one Squadron).  This meant a small gap between troops.  It looks unusual, but will hopefully grow on me!  The practicality will become more apparant in the game.  I don't have a need for individual cavalry Troops to run about on their own.

The flags came cast on so required some research and painting.  The excellent resource at  www.kronoskaf.com has helped in so many ways with my British Army. 

The larger number of figures used, 30 figures for Cobhams 10th Dragoons, meant that I could use both the Kings and Regimental colours and it wouldn't look 'flag heavy'.

In addition to the cavalry I now have all of the Royal Artillery I require.  Below are 3 pounders with crews.   I'm still unsure what to do about the artillery in the game.  If I was to issue the guns out to scale then I would need just one piece for the whole army.  This looks a bit wrong, especially as guns tended to be placed between infantry Regiments. 

To cover all options, I decided to paint all of the contents of the two packets of guns and crews.  This gives me options for later. So I now have 6 x 3 Pdr guns.

The Royal Artillery also had Coehorn mortars on the battlefield.  These were not reported to have been effective.  The soft boggy ground at Culloden probably minimised the effect of the mortar rounds.  Even so I decided to include them for completeness, even if it might take some pretty good dice throws to get any hits in the game!

I took the opportunity to take photos of the figures with both my Samsung Galaxy camera on the smartphone as well as with my 14 year old Olympus digital camera.   Interestingly both seemed to perform as well as the other so that didn't really help in my experiment. 

I'm doing my very best to stick with this particular Jacobite Rebellion British Army project.  I have so many other interests trying to pull me in different directions.  Last week I purchased one of the Too Fat Lardies Christmas Specials just to get their Boer War rules and some scenarios.  This has proved to be really interesting and given me a lot of ideas.  The rules really are quite a revelation with their mechanics and I am really keen to try them (which means building an army first!).  Still it's all khaki...how long could it take..!

Jacobite Rebellion 1745 - British Infantry-1st Bde - 10mm Pendraken Miniatures

First posts of a new project (yes, another one!).  I actually started this project one last year but made very slow progress until this virus lockdown.  Pendraken Miniatures are still operating and I thought it would make sense to build on the couple of regiments that I nearly completed last year.

I finally finished these units today.  One unit was awaiting it's Kings and Regimental Colours.  Pendraken sell the 10mm flag sheets too, though I have painted on the regimental details as the flags are supplied with basic colours only, allowing finer detail to be added (and indeed, I have repainted completely as I required).

2nd Battalion, 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot 

These three regiments consist of the 1st British Brigade at the Battle of Culloden.  The 1st Brigade consisted of the 2nd Battalion 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot, 14th (Price's) Regiment of Foot and 34th Cholmondley's Regiment of Foot

I am getting to really like 10mm as a scale.  The figures allow the detail to really burst through, and allow some intricate painting if one wishes, though there is always that trade off between what is worth being painted if it cannot be seen from a couple of feet away.

I have tried to paint on only the detail that defines the character of the troops.  So lacework has been confined to be around cuffs and tops of tricorn hats, any more is just not worth the time expense.

The exception to this are the grenadiers who needed that little extra detail as their mitre caps deserve, and also officers and drummers, who have had a further application of lace and detail as necessary.

I have mostly used the Foundry 'triad' painting method and really only using the 'A' darker shade and the 'C' lighter shade.  This enabled a greater contrast and made the highlights stand out more from the depth of the lowlights.

 34th (Cholmondley's) Regiment of Foot

I try to complete a unit in two days (mostly evenings) and work through a typed procedure which I can pick up again at any time if my interest should wane.

Lining in and touching up has been kept minimal intentionally.  I tend to line in around the cuffs and sword/bayonet strap.  As I used a black undercoat which I have tried not to go over too much, this means that I don't have to over-fuss to finish off.

14th (Price's) Regiment of Foot 

It was a hard choice between making two ranks or three ranks for these units.  It all came down to ground scale and the visual impression I wanted to create. 

Basically I hope to portray the battles of the Jacobite Rebellion at a scale of around 1:10.  So this would have a good number of troops on the table and have a relatively short base length to fit the whole battlefield on comfortably.  Culloden will undoubtedly be the main field of battle for these troops (though they may yet see fields as far as Europe in the Seven Years War yet!).

The British line tended to be three ranks deep at this time and I was keen to show that too.

...and here we are with the regiment next to a 50 pence piece, showing the small size of the 10mm figures and the minimal ground size that they occupy.  This should allow some pretty mighty battles to be fought!

Wars of the Roses - Gallowglass - 28mm

Another complete change of period...again!  I don't seem to be able to stick with painting one period for very long.  Too much khaki or field grey leaves me wanting to get the bright colours out and vice versa.

I think the longest I was able to focus on one period for was two years, and that was for my Wars of the Roses collection. This two year period enabled me to go from a collection of zero to having two very playable armies, so it has its advantages if I can summon the focus.  That was a few years ago now and since then I just flit like a butterfly, painting whatever gets my interest.

Well, I'm back to the Wars of the Roses again.  For a good 10 years now I have really wanted to play the Battle of Stoke Field of 1487.  This battle fought near Newark, in Nottinghamshire. I always think of the battle when I have to drive past the battlefield for work, every few months (and I stop to visit Wargames Foundry who reside on the edge of the battlefield too).   It was notable for several things, one being the last serious throw of the dice of the Yorkist cause (if the Perkin Warbeck rebellion is not included). 

A large component of the Yorkist army was a contingent of Irish troops.  These were the well armoured Gallowglass mercenaries and the lighter kerns.

The troops here are from two sets of Gallowglass.  One group by Old Glory and the other by Perry Miniatures.  The command stand here is from the Perry's.  I have kept one piper ready to put on the brigade command stand, lead by Sir Thomas Fitzgerald (yet to be painted).

I used a generic Celtic flag from Little Big Men Studios.  I hope that it has enough character of the original to be passable. I have tried to find a recorded example of an original banner, but alas, this research came to nought.

The figures above and below are all from the Perry's range.  I painted the Old Glory figures last year, but then I discovered that the Perry's had brought out Gallowglass figures (and I do have a liking for their figures).

There is a slight height difference between the Old Glory figures and Perry Miniatures troops.  As the units would probably be fighting closely together, I added a slither of card beneath the bases of the Old Glory figures to bring them up in height.  I then built this up with base texturing until it became invisible. 

This method seemed to work as it completely fooled me.  The first picture at the top of this blog post was supposed to be just of my Perry's figures.  In error, I added a stand of Old Glory troops  to the line and only realised afterwards!

The photos above and below here are all of the Perry Miniatures troops.  As always, they are a joy to paint.  There is quite a lot of static grass on the figures though, which only became apparent when I enlarged the photos. I wish I gave them a quick blow of air before getting the camera out!  Maybe Stoke Field had the grass mowers out on the day of the battle!

The figures below are from the Old Glory range.  I think that the Wars of the Roses range are one of the best that Old Glory produced.  These figure have a lot of character and look quite fearsome.

I hope you are all staying in and keeping safe.  Making the best of a horrible situation, the extra painting time is certainly useful, though I am missing getting out to shoot at the local ranges. One can sit around indoors both working and painting just a little too long!