Home Cast 40mm Renaissance Revival and Other Random Events

 A lot has been going on since I last blogged, both in life and in hobby activities.

My younger son has returned to this part of the world, so, with both sons relatively nearby, we are looking forward to some family wargmaing time.  However, moving just before the holidays has meant that everyone has a lot of activity already scheduled.  We did manage to get a good game in on the margins of the Thanksgiving feasting last week:

We played the Battle of Montebello scenario from Neil Thomas’s Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe. There’s a full report on elder son Norman’s blog.

I managed to get my limited French Revolution collection on the table for a solo game recently.  

This was in service of a playtest of some new horse and musket large skirmish rules currently in development, so I won’t comment on that part of it, but it was good to see these figures on the table.  While Norman ran a game with them at an HMGS convention in the mid-teens, I personally haven’t had them on the table since 2009.  Until November, they had been my second longest unplayed project, topped only by my neglected little 6mm Spanish Civil War collection, which was last on the table in 2005.  I plan to bring out the French and Indian War figures (last played in 2016 when Ross came down for Fall In) for the next playtest, but with the holidays, that might be a few weeks yet.

A few weeks ago I visited Days of Knights, my friendly local game store, and was surprised to find that the latest release in Osprey’s series of role playing games was a “clockpunk” Italian Renaissance game, set in a 1510 that included advanced Leonardo da Vinci technology.

Now, as it happens, I have a 40mm 16th century toy soldier project already in hand, and I am currently the possessor of some Leonardo-type machines built by my friend Chris Palmer back in the late 1990s. I dug them out to take a look, and found them all to still be in good shape:

We used these for a year or so and then got distracted (as is so often the case).  Chris dug out some print pictures of them in action back around 1998.  Here’s a sample:

So I have spent much of my reading time these last few weeks gathering inspiration to jump back into the period, with a historical book on the early Italian Wars, and a historical novel (Prince of Foxes) on Cesare Borgia.  In podcasts, I’ve been listening to quite a bit of the Yarkshire Gamer’s Reet Big Wargames Podcast lately, and Ken Reilly, the eponymous Gamer, has been displaying his Italian Wars project lately, for additional inspiration.  So, we’ll see what becomes of that.  I am always glad when the Muses grant some inspiration relating to something already in my collection at a playable level.

I have been trying out the “slapchop” painting technique on some old Hinchliffe Byzantines.  That deserves a separate report later…

Sorry about the picture quality there…

I tried out Nordic Weasel Games fantasy solo skirmish campaign system, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, a topic which also deserves its own post.  Just for fun, I am playing it using my collection of 1/72 fantasy/medieval figures.

And, last for today, I sent Ross Macfarlane the one good copy of a semi-flat lady riding sidesaddle recently.  This is from a mold by the Adolf Hoehmann company, which apparently operated up into the 1990s and produced a series of molds, both copied from Schneiders and originals.  Information on them was found in the book on German molds I obtained in the summer.

Here’s the catalog page, as provided in the electronic add-ons to the book.  The lady is part of a series of molds making a convey and escorts, and is really intended to be 16th century, although her dress looks generic enough to me to pass for other time periods.  It is unfortunate that these molds are very scarce; the lady was the only one from this series in an estate being broken up on eBay this year.

So, that’s the news from here; lots happening, for a pleasant change!

 

Works in progress

With Barrage preparations having been taking most of my attention this past week, I didn’t get around to posting some recent work pictures.  I am halfway through a stand of 8 later Roman auxilia for the Dux Bellorum project.  The lead group is seen here along with a random Foundry Norman finished up one day when I forgot to bring more Romans to where I was painting.  I’ve still got a dozen or two Foundry Dark Ages figures which have been on sticks for handling, and primed, since about 1998...

Dux Bellorum later Romans

 The weather was good back on Sunday the 22nd of September, so I set up my casting gear outside and ran up a couple of dozen additional infantrymen (and parts) for the French Revolution project.  That should give me enough pieces to potentially fill out my planned order of battle over the winter.

Results of the most recent casting session

Playing with Molds

In addition to the package of molds from Berliner Zinnfiguren, I also received a new casting pot in the mail this week.  I have a 10-lb bottom-pour Lee pot, but it has been troublesome in some respects the entire time I've owned it.  Between times when the valve won't close and metal keeps draining out while I fiddle desperately with it, and times that the rate of fill of the molds is so slow that they don't cast completely, I have been wanting to try something different.

So, after a couple of days of bad schedules, I finally got a chance to fire things up today.

Lower tech casting pot

The Zinnbrigade marching figures cast easily, although it looks like a vent or two might be needed for some of the more active poses.  The only other mold I tried was of an infantryman running and an infantry bugler, and neither figure cast in two tries, so I set it aside for another day and/or some vent cutting.

Zinnbrigade Marching Prussians

I borrowed two vintage Schneider molds from Chris Palmer recently, and had little success with them in the previous casting session.  They make a sheep a goat, a cow, a fence, a farmer, and a milkmaid, and by using the new pot to pour more quickly, I was actually able to get all of them to cast, although the sheep was the fussiest, with only one decent example.  I could have a herd of goats, though... Cue Julie Andrews...  These will likely end up as part of the Not Quite Seven Years War collection.

Late in the session, I finally got around to trying some Meisterzinn multi-part molds, but it wasn't the day for that, or I was already getting tired.  I suspect that these will still be easier with a faster pour rate, but it remains to be seen.  I wanted a few extra horses, so that I can start work on some general figures.

Old farm molds plus a few Meisterzinn pieces

So, in the previous casting session I was playing around with a vintage mold and had another go at it today.  But I have also acquired another Rapaport Brothers/Schneider mold making sailors.  I got two of them to cast, but they are pretty big compared to the Zinnbrigade figures (see below), and I probably won't end up using them for that.  I cast the fox and hounds from a Prince August mold, so the hypothetical general mentioned above can be accompanied by a dog.  I also cast a handful of knights from a new (though of vintage design) metal mold from Castings.  I'm considering notions for a 54mm fantasy project, and this may help get it out of my system...

This one's complicated

Vintage sailor vs. a Zinnbrigade Prussian

Last time around, I made a few of the running Meisterzinn musketeers to be head-swapped with bicornes for the French Revolution (see below).  Ross had suggested that the Prince August Rossbach Prussian grenadiers would probably work as well, and I figured that I had two molds for them, so it was worth a try.

Prince August Rossbach grenadiers and Meisterzinn musketeer for head swaps

If everything is successfully converted, that's another unit and a half worth of troops.

Meisterzinn single-piece musketeer with a bicorne head swapped

I also received a Scad mold for an 1870 Frenchman, but it unfortunately seems to be deterioriating.  Once metal was poured, the mold seemed to be oozing something, and that was bubbling the surface of the casting.  Apart from that, the Scad mold came with vents pre-installed, and doesn't look difficult to cast cleanly.  I don't know if this will clear up after a few casts, or whether this one is dead.

Scad French; sadly, looks like a mold decay issue

Casting Session

Being in need of more Meisterzinn parts for the French Revolution, I set up the melting pot today.  It was a frustrating day, reminding me of the vagaries of home casting.

I set out to make enough of the cavalry bodies in the lower left corner to match the horses I made last time, and we’ll call that a success. However, I made 10 in 11 pours, and then the remaining three took about eight tries. The advancing musketeer multi-part body wouldn’t cast at all, although I made two dozen last time. 

I thought I might be able to do a head swap on the single piece musketeers with leveled bayonets, but getting 7 took me 20+ tries, so that will not be much help on production speed. 

I was playing around with three vintage molds. The farm animals wouldn’t cast, but I got a few civilians. The new vintage mold I got this week, making some possible FPW figures, is typical. The least useful cavity (crouching guy) cast best, and the most useful, a figure advancing with leveled bayonet, wouldn’t cast at all. I guess I’ll have a unit stabbing down with the bayonet... 

Today’s Casting Results

Expanding the French Revolution Project, Part 4

Having finished the British infantry, the next task is to try to do something with some British cavalry. The excerpt below shows a sergeant of a British light dragoon regiment in 1793, and is from Funcken's The Lace Wars, Vol. 2.

For A Gentleman's War, I will want a unit of 6, and the recent casting sessions have produced the necessary pieces:

I started in on one this morning, and have concluded that I want to file down even a little more of the lapels and lace originally cast in.  I also hope to suggest the helmet crest a little more closely by filling in the gap above the brim with epoxy putty.

Here's where the first one is so far:

Expanding the French Revolution Project, Part 3

As I started into the work week, I had the basic colors down on all twelve figures, but had done the final detail work on just one.  I reached yesterday evening with all 9 troopers done, and the three command figures remaining.

Nine troopers completed this week

I finished up the officer and the fifer without too much trouble this morning, and that just left me with the flag.  I haven't done a historical British flag in quite a while, and I hoped it was going to be similar to the flags I'd done for the French and Indian War.  This turned out to be true, so I had the choice of doing the King's Color (a Union Jack with a wreath and the number) or the Regimental Color, a flag of the facing color with a Union Jack in the canton and a wreath and number, and chose the latter, to keep my straight lines down to short ones.  A quick internet search turned up a site with a picture, fortuitously, of the flag patterns of the 37th Regiment.  Of course, it turns out that there was a picture because it was special, but that specialness wasn't too hard to paint.  The 37th is one of the Minden regiments, and the wreath on their flag afterward includes roses intertwined with thistle flowers.

The flag, after a little recreational vexillogy

 By lunchtime, I had everything based and sprayed with a varnish coat, and there we have it: The first reinforcements to this project since 2006, if my painting records are correct.  I'm not sure if that sets a new personal record for longest time between things painted for a project, but if it does, at least it makes it look like painting a dozen units or so by next May is merely ambitious, not impossible.

And done!

Expanding the French Revolution Project, Part 2

As described in Part 1 and in Ross's blog, we have decided to work on the French Revolution, with the intention of putting the combined results on the table at Huzzah next year (15-17 May 2020) in Portland, Maine.  The target rules are A Gentleman's War (AGW), which gives us a basic structure of 12 man infantry units, 6 man cavalry units, and cannons manned by about four crewmen to work toward.  For a two-player game, the rules recommend using 6-9 units for a "small" army.  Based on our combined decades of convention gamemastering, we would anticipate that players will have "enough" to do if they are each commanding 3-5 units in a multiplayer game, especially if we are generous with the cameo roles and use the distinctions rules.  Six players seems a solid goal for Huzzah, and that translates into 18-30 units, of which we currently have five.  It would seems that we have our work cut out for us...

My own initial goal is to get to two cavalry units (have 2 of 4), four infantry units (have 3 of 8), and a gun for each side (have 0 of 2), so that I can put a game on the table at home for inspiration.  That would be 14 of the 18-30 we would want for Huzzah.

Having done these calculations, the weather last Monday, on Memorial Day, was beautiful.  My son Norman and I played out the AGW game previously reported, and he headed home.  I took my casting gear outside and prepared to add some reinforcements.  Apart from a test session with these molds a couple of weeks ago, it's been quite a few years since the Meisterzinn multi-part molds in my collection have been in serious use.

Setting up outdoors

Years of experience with casting has taught me that there are variables over which I have no control, so that on days when certain molds are working well, I make extras, because there is no guarantee that things will work again the next time. 

Results of casting session 

I spent three or four hours casting, cycling through three or four molds at a time, enough to allow the casting to solidify before opening the mold, but not so many that the molds got "cold" (it's all relative when you're pouring metal at 600+ degrees Fahrenheit).  The walking/trotting horse from mold 1322 was having a good day.  I was getting a better than 90% success rate on pours, so I made about 20 of them.  The galloping horse from mold 1325 almost never works.  I tried six or seven times and didn't get close to a complete casting.  This is why every horse already done for this project is a 1322, and it looks likely that every new horse will be too.  I wasn't sure what cavalry I would be making, and a have a handful of the hussar bodies already around, so I only cast three hussars and seven cuirassiers.  They also generally cast easily, so getting more later should not be a problem.

Mold 1324 makes an advancing infantryman and a standard bearer.  Past experience is that both of these figures cast fairly reliably.  Unfortunately, one doesn't need that many standard bearers, and the hands are in a position opposite that of a right-handed shooter holding up his musket.  I have occasionally filled out a unit by sticking one in anyway, but more often I have used this casting as a figure loading.  If you put a section of fine wire in the right hand as a ramrod and a musket with the butt on the ground in the left, he's passable.  However, I didn't plan on doing that so I only poured that mold cavity a couple of times.  The advancing figure (as I'll show below) was working well, and I was able to make 21 of them, with a solid 90+% success rate.  

The other molds were more troublesome.  I lost track of how many times I tried the firing poses mold (1329), but I got 6 usable figures (three of each), none with bayonets cast, after at least a dozen attempts, so a success rate of of under 25%.  I ended up with 4 good examples of the marching infantryman from mold 1321 after at least eight tries, and they were mostly from the first few tries, so I set it aside for another day.  I tried 1326, the civilians, and got a couple of women, but the man wouldn't cast.  The bandsman, 1332, as usual, would not cast at all, although I got more cocked hat heads, as used for the British below. 1328, an officer with cast in lapel detail (so of a later style than the officer in 1321) was working, so I made 3 of those.  

Overall, I ended up with horses for three new cavalry units, or a little more if the existing 8-man units are expanded to 2 6-man units, two uniform pose advancing infantry units, and enough assorted castings to staff a third unit, which brings up an artistic/aesthetic question, to be discussed below.

On Friday, a day I had off from work, I sat down and started to assemble pieces.  I have a cache of fifers from years past, and the fifer mold (1323) at least used to cast fairly reliably.  So I decided that the first unit up would extend the available bodies a bit by consisting of 12 men, including an officer, a flag, and a fifer.  A drummer would be better, of course, but Meisterzinn does not have a drummer with a normal military drum--even the bandsman, if one could get it to cast, comes with a choice of a snare drum or a bass drum.

Here is a 1792 infantryman from Vol. 1 of the Funcken Lace Wars book. After discussions with Ross, I concluded that the best match for the transitional cocked hat from the available Meisterzinn heads was one that is included only in the bandsman mold.

With as many figures as we are proposing to add, it is going to be necessary to keep the piece-by-piece conversions down to a minimum, so the goal is to be "recognizably close" to the historical figures.  So, sometime in the 1780s the British went from gaiters reaching above the knee to gaiters below the knee.  I am not attempting the file the castings to reflect this.

First British under construction

By Friday evening I had the whole unit assembled.  I glued them to craft sticks (aka tongue depressors) for ease of handling.

A unit ready to prime

I got up yesterday morning and primed them with a black spray primer.  I considered using white, given the British colors, but I appear to be out of white primer at the moment, and I didn't want to go out in search of more at 0600.  I would expect that I would have started by running a black ink into crevice and shadow areas, but that experiment will need to wait until later. 

After spraying the primer from six directions and giving it time to dry, I started in on painting.  I am more or less attempting to match the style I used on the existing figures.  After putting one a coat or two of the basic colors, I took one infantryman and finished him up.

Sample infantryman

Sample infantryman, back

I used the distinction colors and a simplified version of the button lace pattern from the 37th infantry regiment, one of the ones deployed for the Flanders campaign.  

The state of the rest of the unit when I quit for the day

Today my plan is to see if I can finish the rest of the unit (minus the actual flag, most likely), but if the weather is good, I might see about more casting.  The next unit up is probably going to be some approximation of British light dragoons, for which I believe I have the parts already cast.  At that point, the Coalition will be ahead in strength, so I would hope to alternate between Coalition units and French units.

If the casting success rates remain constant (not usually a good assumption), I am eventually going to have to deal with the aesthetic question of how uniformly posed I want the units to be.  An all-advancing unit, as shown above with the British, is likely to be fairly easy.  A firing line unit of an officer, a flag, five kneeling shooters and five standing shooters with complete bayonets is going to be nearly impossible.  The existing units, as shown in Part 1, were intended for an individual figure based skirmish game, so I wanted them to be as mixed as possible, in case it was necessary to easily identify individuals.  Going forward, I would like the French to present a more irregular appearance, and they historically used more skirmishers, so there may be French units which are half shooting/half advancing.  If the firing figures continue to be rare, though, I may reserve them for special units, jaegers or other light infantry, and it will probably be necessary to fill things out with standard bearers posed as loaders. 

By the end of the outdoor casting season in September/October, I would like to have all of the pieces and parts wanted for the Huzzah game.  

Expanding the French Revolution Project, Part 1

The origins of my French Revolution project are now lost in obscurity.  I originally bought a set of the 40mm Nuernberger Meisterzinn molds for the purpose of adding some expansion units to Chris Palmer's French and Indian War project.  I started thinking about what else I could do with them, and realized that the different heads included covered a number of French Revolution types, and somehow the idea that a Scarlet Pimpernel-based scenario would give me another use for the molds as well as provide an excuse to put a marching band on the table in a game pushed this over the edge, from thinking to doing.  That also tied the time down to 1793-4.

My main resources for painting were the Funcken Uniforms of the French Revolution book, and the Haythornthwaite book on the same topic.

In the initial scenario development (and I have the notes around here somewhere...) the idea was that each player would have one unit, each of which would have its own separate victory conditions.  We also had a suggested set of variant victory conditions, so that we could run the game multiple times and playing previously would not be a spoiler, because the hidden information could be different each time.  What stayed the same is that the Austrians were more-or-less working together to take a military objective (a bridge), and the French national guardsmen (or Les Bleus) were tasked with defense of the objective, and a special order to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel.  One of the other five French factions (regulars, cavalry, mounted police, band, and civilians) would not be what they seemed, but would be the Pimpernel, his assistants and some French nobles attempting to escape.

Each mounted faction was built with eight figures, and each foot faction was built with twelve.  We ended up with a few extra civilians as well.  As always, Ross Macfarlane decided to pitch in and help with the painting (and more, as will be shown).  

Ultimately, we played this a few times in 2007-8, and it got shelved with a mental note that the rules I was using needed some work, and that not all of the factions were fun to play.  It was close, but not quite there.

When I got A Gentleman's War (AGW) last month, I realized that it might be just what I was looking for to get the French Revolution back on the table, although as a small battle game rather than a skirmish.  The presence of an extended section on "cameo roles" gives something to do with civilians, bandsmen, and the Pimpernel.  I discussed the idea with Ross, who was very enthusiastic, and recommended a couple of sources on the 1793/4 campaigns in Flanders.  

Part 2 will be more about where this might be going, but here's a quick review of what there is:

First up are the Paris mounted police.  I have a feeling that finding a battlefield role for these guys may be difficult, but perhaps we can just slide them in as a French cavalry unit without drawing any particular attention to them.  I'll mention here that the mold collection has two horses, but I have only been able to regularly cast the horse that comes with cuirassier body successfully.  All of the mounted  police were built using the "hussar" body, with the cast-on lapel lace filed off.

Paris mounted police, from Funcken

Close-up of one mounted policeman

The Austrian cuirassier uses the same bicorne head as many of the French.  As "toy soldiers" I compromised and painted the backplate cast on the figure, although the Austrians historically only wore breastplates.  My general goal has been to save metal file work for when it is really needed.

Austrian Cuirassier, from Haythornthwaite

The French chasseur a cheval uses one of the two standard helmet heads included in the various molds, and the hussar body without modification.

French Chasseur a Cheval, from Funcken

The marching band turned out to be more difficult than expected.  The marching band mold has a figure with his arms extended, which would require various levels of re-posing to hold the instruments included.  He turns out to be incredibly difficult to cast, and I could barely get enough to do the drum section.  Fortunately there is a fifer mold, which casts very reliably, so the band was filled out with fifers, plus a standard bearer and a regular officer "armed" with the conductor's baton from the band mold.

French Marching Band

The French National Guards were the most fun to paint.  I did some light conversions with file work and putty to give most of them non-uniform trousers, and then painted them with patches, faded coats, and so forth. I used a mix of bicornes, some with plumes lost, both sideways and fore-and-aft, plus one bare head pulled in from the civilian mold.  As I expand, I am probably going to do a second equally ragged unit, painting a couple of figures at a time between regular units as a treat for making progress.

French Garde National

The old French regular infantry wear something close enough to one of the helmets included in the mold set that I just used them as is.

Old French regular army

The Austrians were a pain.  The Austrian casket hat from the 1793 period is not included in the molds, so I attempted to file something down from Seven Years War grenadier mitres.  As my tolerance for filing diminished, I finished them up with a couple of bare heads.

Austrian infantry

Early on, the civilians stalled me.  Chris Palmer tried a couple of civilian conversions for me, the fellow in the green coat with a spike club, from a Meisterzinn SYW officer, and the guy with the pitchfork, from a Meisterzinn 16th century halberdier.  Ross, in a burst of enthusiasm, decided to sculpt a couple of civilians and make molds, so the rest of the men are from one of those two masters with varying amounts of conversion. The women are straight out of the Meisterzinn civilian mold, with both possible heads included.  

Civilians, some rather militant

I did one of the male civilians from the Meisterzinn mold up as a Representative on Mission, as a wild card for the Scarlet Pimpernel scenario.  He comes with the roll of paper clutched in his left hand, here undoubtedly representing a blank death warrant.

A Representative on Mission

That, then, is where the expansion starts, with five reasonable combat units (National Guards, regulars, and light cavalry for the French, infantry and cuirassiers for the Austrians) for AGW, a number of cameo roles, and some left-over cavalry to expand into six man units.