June's Peninsular War projects

June's projects

Once lockdown became inevitable a few months ago, I started to imagine grand hobby schemes. Surely I could paint several hundred 28mm hoplites? Romans and Germans for Infamy, Infamy? Recreate the battle of Leipzig in 6mm? Play a game every day?

And then the realities of social distancing, working at home [living at work?] and home-schooling children hit hard. Even the painting desk was re-appropriated for work - cue violins. I'm pretty sure lots of people had a worse time of it.

So I downsized my imagination (is that even a thing? downsizing, not imagination) and focused on finishing off projects and focusing on things like scenery. Finishing all these things off has certainly been good for the soul. And the unpainted plastic-lead mountain is ... still an unpainted plastic-lead mountain.

28mm Peninsular War Terrain and Scenery

I really enjoyed painting the British Peninsular force for SP2 last year so I wanted some good terrain for that period. Charlie's wonderful WW2 CoC game a few months back made me realise how little (and big) touches such as barriers, boxes, veg patches and the occasional exploding toilet can make all the difference to a skirmish-level game. 

So I took the plunge and invested in a lot of scatter scenery, roads, etc from various places such as Take Cover Scenics, Warbases and Timecast. These don't take all that long to paint and base but make each game more immersive (I hesitate to say realistic when I consider the daft shenanigans associated with most of the games I play!)

The biggest project was some Charlie Foxtrot mdf/resin pantile buildings. I love these buildings - they're great quality and just the right size to add to the battlefield without completely dominating. The resin roofs make these stand out. Here they are in action with some freshly painted French dragoons on foot. Needless to say, the dragoons succumbed to newly-painted syndrome and did not last long on the tabletop!

I'll move on to creating specific bases for the buildings and adding some pantile walls.

I found the buildings easy to construct and the painting/modelling guide on CF's webpage is easy to follow/adapt. I spent a jolly weekend on these in between various other non-hobby related nonsense that tends to get in the way of fun.

Once the mdf was glued together, I spread thin and cheap polyfiller over the exterior walls and added some patches of fine sand/glue (they appear darker in the pictures.) Walls were painted with cheap Dulux tester pots - Cookie Dough; Soft Stone highlight and occasionally some Moroccan Sands 4 for variety (usually mixed with the other paints.) The white areas such as the windows etc were based with a basic off-white acrylic and highlighted with white Citadel drybrushing paints that I never seem to use on minis. I followed the CF advice and added the classic Agrax Earthshade underneath and around windows, doors and blended it into the "sand" patches on the walls. I also tried to add darker tones to the bottom of buildings too. 

The insides are mainly painted in watered-down umber acrylic. I experimented with Wholemeal Honey for an interior of the small building. I don't think I'd do that again as it burns the eyes just to look at it, but a fairly heavy brown staining seems to have dulled it down enough.

The roofs received a base spray of skeleton bone followed by Sumatran Melody 2 and a highlight of Sumatran Melody 3. Everything received a couple of good licks of matt varnish. The resin pieces got some extra varnish. One thing to watch out for: the roofs have bits of wall on them (obviously) and I forgot to paint these at the same time as the main walls. Getting the right tone again was a real pain!!

I noticed that DereksWeeToys recently suggested watercolour-based pigment pens for this sort of job. Certainly one to try out and the results look darned good.

"Peninsular War" civilians

I also completed a couple of groups of Spanish civilians and a group of priests from Perry Miniatures. They can act as minor characters, doctors, inspirational "holy men/women" or just as scatter terrain. Sure, these are designed for the Carlist/Isobelino civil war which is a little later than the Napoleonic period, and a some are wearing the wrong kind of hats. But I can live with a few inconsistencies. After all, some of my French line seem to be wearing blue overcoats ... 

These minis were easy to paint once the flash was removed and I rather shamelessly copied the examples on the Perry website for most of the colouring. This was my first foray into Citadel contrast paint for flesh (with some highlighting.) Basically, I've found it to be a rather good and simple base coat and shade. I felt that a fleshtone wash and highlight was needed in some places.

I've managed a couple of solo games with these additions (occasionally joined by the "bouncy one".) If I could go back a year or so, I'd buy all these sooner because having decent terrain, scatter and civilians makes all the difference.