Pocket Panzers

Well it's nearly Halloween, so seems fitting that I return from the dead with a new post, this time about the completion of the last major unit for my French and Indian War force. These figures were painted in late August, right before we finished playing out our FIW campaign and I took an abrupt and unplanned hiatus from wargaming and mini painting. My main wargaming partner in the area has left the country for two years on a Peace Corps assignment, and work has limited the time and energy I've had. Nevertheless, I do intend to make more posts here this fall, including battle reports from the FIW campaign. But, back to the miniatures. In Sharp Practice terms, this is three groups of regular French line infantry. I've got them painted as the Regiment Languedoc that served in North America, but I believe they could also stand in as campagnie franches de la marine troops in line formation. To that end, I've modeled flags for both units, since I shouldn't need two stan...

After putting together two cabins and some fences for wargames set in colonial North America, it seemed only right to paint up some settlers, in this case colonists who have armed themselves to defend their livelihood from marauding French and natives. These models are Brigade Games' frontier family , and like the other Brigade models I have, they're quite nice. Definitely on the slimmer side, but detailed. My biggest gripe with Brigade figures is that the weapons are thin and bendy and the faces are all oddly similar. The set includes two figures who fit the bill for a father and mother. I personally think the man is clearly modelled off of Mel Gibson's character in the Patriot. Then two sons, both springing to action to defend the farm. If the dad is Gibson, I suppose that makes green trousers there Heath Ledger. Finally, there is a younger son and daughter carrying muskets and powder. I think the set has some nice variety, fitting a specific niche between unarmed settler...

Well, games set in the French and Indian War mean specialized terrain for the period, at least if your brain works like mine. After all, you can't have tomahawk-toting Huron fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad , right? Of god forbid, some sort of gothic 40K monstrosity. What I'm trying to say is that this is the first of several period-appropriate buildings I plan on scratch-building for our games in the period. It's built in much the same way as the log building I scratch built for my eastern front terrain, which can be seen most prominently here, where I also showed off my split-rail fencing for the FIW project. However, I tried to take the lessons I learned from making that cabin and apply them here to get a better result. Those lessons were, primarily: 1. the dowel rods I used as logs looked far far too uniform; 2. I notched them by hand with a craft knife, which took forever and murdered my hands; 3. the insulation or chinking between the logs looked unconvincing, and...

In addition to a group of marauding Huron warriors , I recently finished off these stalwart defenders of New France, the milice canadienne. I don't have much in the way of a history lesson on these guys. Based on the reading I've done and the uniforms I see, they seem like a mix of quickly raised militia and experienced woodsmen. They seem better than their British colonial counterparts, especially the later minutemen. At least, in the Sharp Practice ruleset we have been using. With the exception of the leader in the back, these figures are by Brigade Games . They're great sculpts, with a lot of detail and character. They don't paint up quite as fast as some of the Warlord figures, but they're still excellent. They're a little slender compared to Warlord sculpts, but no big issue. My only real complaint is that the musket barrels, though realistically proportioned, are incredibly thin, and give me the impression that they're be very easy to damage. They'...

  Well, it's been an incredibly busy two weeks or so of work, but I managed to finish the last big group of native warriors this last weekend. I can't promise I won't buy more, but I only have a handful of native figures unpainted now. Most of these guys are the other part of Warlord's Woodland Indian War Party  box set, really nice characterful figures that are a delight to paint up. I did roughly the other half in the first batch . The exceptions are the leaders, who we'll take a closer look at in a second. These sculpts all have a lot of character and detail, and I was surprised how much they varied from the last group I painted from this box. I like the guy in the captured British regimental coat. They have a lot of small touches like jewelry, sashes, knives, things like that. I love the detail of the locks on their muskets especially. As you can see, I've painted some of them in full and fearsome war paint, while I've left others a little more low key. ...

  The next step in my French and Indian War project, unsurprisingly, is some French . These gentlemen reek of garlic cutting… wait, my mistake, that was meant to be Gallic cunning . Either way, they're the first group of light infantry skirmishers for Sharp Practice, representing a portion of a Compagnie de la Marine. Now, I don't speak French, and am probably not the best equipped to explain the history of these troops, but they're essentially crown-raised colonial troops under the umbrella of the French navy (hence marine). I don't think referring to them as marines is technically accurate, they aren't typically ship-borne, but I suspect I will in the interests of brevity. These men would have, to the best of my knowledge, been trained to fight in the traditional European style and issued fine uniforms, but frequently ditched or modified both the clothing and tactics to better fit the North American style of warfare. Until French regulars arrived in 1756, these me...