The Pikeman's Lament: My 1671 Spanish and Buccaneer companies

Devoid of the usual May festivities I’m devoting this not-as-merry-as-it-could-be month to work on a range of Rampant armies. My overall minimal aim is to level the bases with filler, and get them all undercoated and base-coated while we wait 18 months for a Coronavirus vaccine or herd immunity.

To kick off, here are my 28mm companies for The Pikeman’s Lament based on the Buccaneer attack on Panama of 1671. The Buccaneers are flintlock-armed veterans, the Spanish firelock-armed militia.

The figures are mainly North Star and Blood and Plunder.

The Spanish (1): Back row: Mounted Captain, Gun and crew, Horse. 
Front row: Lanceros, Pike.

The Spanish (2): Three units of matchlock-armed Shot.

The Spanish (3). Front row: Captain on foot with some extras. Indian scouts as Commanded Shot. 
Back row: Armada de Barlovento (Marines).

 

The English: Four units of flintlock-armed Buccaneers with their Welsh leader, Henry Morgan.

My 1798 Irish Rebellion companies for 'Rebels and Patriots'

These are my 28mm 1798 Irish Rebellion companies for Rebels and Patriots. I’ve been buying them from North Star using my monthly Wargames Illustrated discount. All the figures are Trent Miniatures. They have great character and required only minimal cleaning up.

United Irishmen. The units are a mixture of pikemen and gunmen. The skirmishers (bottom left) are Shelmaliers. The command figures (bottom centre) will be put into one of the pike units. The remaining figures (bottom right) are spares for different configurations.

There are no silly cast pikes but no open hands either, so the hands had to be drilled. I started with a pin vice but the metal was quite hard so I dug out my old modelling drill and upgraded the power unit from 9v to 12v.

It’s some time since I’ve used this so I had to decide on technique:

1. Start the hole with a pin vice hand drill which is more controllable than the electric drill. Once the hole is started you can get a purchase with the latter. If going through two hands, start each one with the pin vice.

2. Don’t just drill. It will jam. Keep pulling it out and pushing it back in again. This doesn't seem to happen with the pin vice.

3. Avoid letting the drill slip under a finger nail - it's uncomfortable and may cause delay.

The figures came with sharp wire pikes. I shortened these to 60mm to represent Irish half-pikes.

Irish Militia etc comprising two units of Line Infantry (centre row), Grenadiers (bottom left),  Light Infantry (bottom right), Yeoman Cavalry (at the back) and Artillery. The mounted Captain (next to the gun) replaces an ordinary figure in whichever unit he is put with.

The Crown troops required a lot less work. Many of the Militia (and Rebels) came with separate heads. This provides good variation for the Rebels but less so for the Militia. The Militia heads can be angled a little differently, but only up to a point.

Curse of the bendy pikes in 28mm

Eureka Mycenaen spearmen as they arrived:
how could anyone live with these ridiculous whippy extensions?

I bought some Eureka Mycenaen spearmen from their new UK outlet to supplement the Foundry Aegean Bronze Age (Mycenean/Minoan) army I bought at the 2019 SELWG Show for Dragon Rampant/Lion Rampant. They are basically nice sculpts and a good match for Foundry, but they present a particularly bad case of the curse of the bendy pikes. There is no way I would attempt to keep them as they are. I just don’t understand why the designer, manufacturer and other customers should want them like that.

Replacing them is straightforward: it just requires a waste of time, effort and cut fingers.

Clippers, Scalpel, Pin-vice hand drills, Files

First step is to cut away the unwanted cast spears (or whips?). Scalpels might seem the obvious tool for this job but these days I tend mostly to use Clippers and Files. Clippers are great for cleaning up (and conversions). It's surprising how much or how little you can remove with Clippers without damaging what's left behind. Files give a smoother, more rounded finish.

After removal I drill out the hands using a succession of ever-larger Pin-vice hand drills. I have three drills preloaded with different bits. It saves a lot of time changing bits. I think I'll get some more.

North Star wire spears and superglue gell.

Next step is to replace the pikes with wire spears from North Star and other suppliers. I used to use piano wire for pikes, but these days you can get wire with shaped heads and they are only slightly more lethal. These are glued in place with my favourite superglue of recent times, Gorilla Super Glue Gell.

The Foundry Aegean Bronze Age figures are open handed, while the Foundry Nordic Bronze Age figures (which I also bought at the SELWG Show) have thick spears with a reasonable prospect of survival.

Eureka and Foundry spearmen with fitted North Star spears.

I'm prepared to replace a few spears/pikes here and there but I must remember that my next spear/pike army (if there is one) will either come with robust spears or empty hands or be composed of 2mm blocks.

Border Reiver Project 1: Preparation of castings

Tools for preparing castings: 
Large flat file, scalpels, small files, Games Workshop
snippers, superglue and pin vices (drills).

I decided to report on this project as I go along, partly to put pressure on myself to keep going, and otherwise because my approach might be of interest to others or I might need some feedback on options...

The figures are 28mm Timeline and Foundry metals and there is a total of 13 mounted, 150 foot, 1 gun, 3 cattle, 2 sheep and 2 dogs.

I always make a list of stages. Then I can repeat the process in the same style if I need to do additional figures at a later date. I also mark off progress so I know where I am and to give myself a sense of achievement.

The figures are essentially on one continuous if virtual conveyor belt. I do something to each figure in the army or armies, then repeat. I never paint unit-by-unit.

First step is to prepare the castings.

1. File bottom of bases flat. 
I just run the figures up and down a large domestic flat file. A couple of passes is usually enough.
2. Remove casting tags and any flash.
Very few of the foot figures had any flash or casting lines, but they did have little casting tags which needed to be knocked off or cut. The Timeline horses were more challenging but I think they will look alright once they are painted.
3. Correct leaning figures. 
Some figures seemed to be bent over in relation to the angle of their bases. This was easily corrected by carefully bending them at the ankles.
4. Drill holes for pikes and superglue pikes.
Thankfully the pikemen are all empty handed allowing me to add North Star pikes. Some hands needed drilling with a pin vice. I used to use 2-part epoxy resin for sticking pikes etc, but have been experimenting with superglue. Epoxy resin seems to be quite scarce these days.
5. Assemble gun, cattle, riders and stick riders on horses.
6. Add Green Stuff to 'shorts' and around arm joints on riders.

Greenstuff and rubber-tipped sculpting tools. Some of the Foundry figures are 'Sea Dogs' so I built round the bottom of their open-ended shorts to represent the big baggy (but gathered) trousers worn by the lower orders of landlubber.

I decided the figure on the lower right was OK as it was.

Some of the Timeline riders have separate arms and needed filler to disguise the joints. I then realised that I'd have to rebuild the shoulder detail but I found that it was quite difficult to replicate the fine detail of the original castings. Not my finest hour but they will probably look OK once painted and on the table in a dimly-lit wargames club!

'Rebels and Patriots' for 1798?

The latest and last set of Rampant rules - Rebels and Patriots - is due out in January 2019 and will fill the gap in the Rampant range between The Pikeman’s Lament and The Men Who Would Be Kings. The rules have been written by Michael Leck and Daniel Mersey.

Osprey wanted the rules to be focused on North America for commercial reasons, but they should be perfectly applicable beyond. One possibility amongst many hundreds is the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in which I have had a long-standing interest, especially since watching the TV mini-series The Year of the French which was shown in the 80s. I go back a long way!

At one point I started collecting 15mm figures for this conflict with the intention of using the Maurice rules, but it would have meant doing another mass army and the rules weren't really suited to pitching a predominantly pike army against musketmen.

So I was quite excited by the prospect of a Rampant set for the horse-and-musket period which would once again allow me to satisfy an historical interest with a relatively small game. I had assumed/hoped that R&P would have some type of 'charging infantry' that would accomodate Irish pikemen but from what I can tell the 'Natives' type in R&P is essentially a shooting type.

At first this put me off and I was wondering about creating a custom unit type or maybe using The Pikeman's Lament instead. However, it is possible to increase Aggression and make Natives Poor Shooters. This would represent a small number of firearms mixed in with the pike in addition to the firearms otherwise fielded by skirmishers, so I think I should be OK after all.

Trent Miniatures (currently available from North Star) do a good range of 28mm figures specifically for this conflict, so I've already begun to use my £5-a-month Wargames Illustrated credit to (slowly) accumulate forces.

Croppy Boys: Trent Miniatures 28mm Irish insurgent pikemen.

Elizabethan Small Wars: Part 10: Irregular Wars - Portuguese, Hollanders and Spanish Colonial

Whilst awaiting the release of the Khurasan English and Spanish for the Elizabethan Anglo-Irish Wars, my figure collecting for Irregular Wars has now refocused on the Dutch-Portuguese War (1602–1663) which takes me somewhat beyond 'Elizabethan' in both time and place. The figures are Grumpy's Miniatures Colonial Portuguese. They are depicted in cotton armour and will be doubling as both Portuguese and Hollanders. They will also be recycled as Spanish for lining up against the Mapuche or against my English rebel army in their guise as English Adventurers.

Elizabethan Small Wars: Part 4: Irregular Wars - Mere Irish

I've been collecting 15mm figures for my Irregular Wars 'Mere Irish' Battle. 'Mere' is today a slighting term but originally meant 'pure', i.e. it designated the native Gaelic Irish. Galloglass and Kerns are compulsory in the army list before 1600 and Pike and Shot after 1600, but all types are usable across the divide. In 'set piece' battles there are 5 additional options which take the form of x1, xD2 or xD3 etc companies. So for any option you have to allow for more units than you might actually get to field on the table.

I'm currently planning the following units. Each unit is a company/base. Most of the figures are Khurasan Renaissance Irish, but others will be conscripted where required. I decided in the end to go with the standard 30mm square bases as I felt that larger bases would crowd the battlefield too much and alter the game. I could increase the playing area to compensate for larger bases but I want to keep the game compact and not too demanding on painting time.

2 Pike

2 Shot

3 Galloglass

4 Kerns

4 Horse

3 Bonnachts

3 Kern marksmen

2 Redshanks

1 Priest

I was also going to add some Spanish Targeteers but I think I'll postpone that and do a whole 'Spanish Expeditionary Force' Battle once Khurasan have released their Spanish range. For each extra Battle, you add a foot in width. Given that my club like multiplayer games, it will be good to be able to deploy a couple of Battles per side.

Pike. All Khurasan. The end figure is an ensign from the command pack.