The Great lead-pile reduction strategy 2: the Americas

Goodbye, 4th Virginia

Time for another look at, as the old TV commercial (only people who work in TV call them commercials in Britain, everyone else calls them adverts) said, "the fish that John West reject."  Appropriately, we sail across the ocean to the New World and explore the many hundreds of figures we have bought for conflicts in the Americas. This time we will look at them in chronological order.

Skraelings

I was at Salute a few years ago and Gripping Beast were selling a box of  37 "limited edition" Skraelings for Saga.  I am one of those people who is totally unable to resist anything dubbed "limited edition" even though the description is often "a mere puff" (as those familiar with Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1892) will appreciate).  These figures were sculpted by Bill Thornhill of Musketeer Miniatures (now Footsore Miniatures) and are now available from them (so not limited at all, in fact). I have based some and even started them but having spent all day in Canada House I don't have the energy to dig them out to find some to photograph, so here is one I didn't prepare earlier.   Now this is an absolutely ideal example of a set of figures I should sell but, I really, really want to play Saga, even though I think it might be too "gamey" (like a pheasant that's been hung for too long - no, actually, nothing like that at all) for me.  So the Skraelings will remain!


Conquistadors

My sole painted conquistador

When I was at school we had to do a school history project over the summer holidays.  What I selected, from a long list, was one on the Conquistadors; in particular, Cortés and Pizarro.  I really went to town on the illustrations but I still didn't win a prize (as I had hoped) due to my terrible handwriting (I missed all my joined up writing classes when I was at junior school as I was off for a month with pneumonia).  So when Foundry came out with their Mark Copplestone-sculpted Eldorado figures I bought the whole lot.  Of course the Incas and Aztecs never really came out, apart from the odd pack.  When other firms like the Assault Group came out with suitable figures I realised that painting all those Aztecs would be a major pain.  So I painted just one figure and they have sat there in my plastic drawer units never since.  Ideal for eBay.  Except they are also ideal for skirmishes and I am minded to pitch them against the Copplestone castings Brazilian Indians as Portuguese.  Just right for Donnybrook!  So they will remain too!  Oh dear!


The French in Canada

When the Copplestone Glory of the Sun figures came out depicting late seventeenth century troops I bought some automatically, without knowing what exactly to do with them.  Having thought about them for a number of years I realised that I still don't know what to do with them but painted one up as a member of the French Régiment de Carignan-Salières who were sent to Quebec in 1675 to protect the settlers from the Iroquois.  Here would be a good subject for skirmishes in the woods, I thought.  Except in reality most of the Iroquois had died of smallpox so there were no battles.  In addition, getting pre-flintlock armed Indians was a problem  so that project will be no more.  I will sell off the other French I have.


Pirates

The easiest decision here as regards retention.  I have painted enough for pirate games and they have seen action four times (a lot for me!)  In fact, I even did a bit of work on some more this morning.  Mostly Foundry, plus some Black Scorpion for the increasing pirate babes crew.  Lots (well all) of new North Star too.


The French Indian War

Now, I played a game of Muskets and Tomahowks at Eric the Shed's and so I won't be getting rid of the Galloping Major figures I have.  However, I have a lot of the Conquest/Warlord games figures and although I have painted one (above) I think, even though they are superior figures to the GM ones, I will get rid of these as they are too small to match with GM and North Star.  I hate mixing figures of different sizes in my armies!


American War of Independence

I don't think I have that many troops for this left (some part painted militia bought after my visit to Boston - above) but I still have some books.  This is big battle stuff, largely, and the uniforms are a right fiddle.  Anyway, this period has been so comprehensively covered in the blogosphere by Giles Allison that doing anything on it is pointless.


Latin American Wars of Independence

Although I have only finished one figure, I do have a bunch under way on the workbench and Orinoco Miniatures has just released another group of figures, so this will remain.  It means I can do Napoleonic style uniforms without doing Napoleonics!


Mountain Men 

This was another case of buying the whole Foundry release.  I have painted half a dozen and really like the figures but haven't touched them for years.  Still, this would be a good basis for some skirmish games and there are rules in one of the Warhammer Historical Old West supplements, which I have got buried somewhere.  You could also use them for skirmishes with Mexicans on the borders of California.  So these are staying!


Texan War of Independence

Given I have finished a whole unit of Mexicans, and am working on some more, then these are going to stay!  The only issue I have over the Texans is that the initial Boot Hill Miniatures release are a different scale from the Mexicans (annoyingly).  The recent ones are fine and I can use Artizan for the Texan heroes.

American Civil War

Despite some of my first Airfix wargames being ACW I just can't face painting the numbers of figures you need.  Also, I wanted to do First Bull Run but there are several key uniform types you can't get and with the Perry brothers messing about with nonsense like the British invasion of the 1860s it seems unlikely they will ever do them.  So anything ACW will have to go.  Clears a lot of bookshelf space too!

Old West

I have painted precisely one figure for the Old West (this not Sharon Stone figure) but I might have some unpainted ones somewhere too.  This is very much a possible project for the future, especially with all the excellent buildings available these days.

I'm slightly surprised at how many Americas forces I have been collecting and how many I can't bear to part with but getting rid of ACW and AWI will free up some bookshelf space even if it's not going to effect the lead pile that much.  Some of my ACW and AWI figures are painted or part painted so I suspect that may effect their value on eBay as I would never buy painted or part painted figures.  Maybe I will just chuck them out as no-one would buy any of my painted efforts!.

Back painting once more...

More Mexicans!

Things have been tremendously busy in the life of the Legatus and have not been helped by several IT issues meaning that I haven't had any spare time and if I have I haven't had access to a computer for long periods of time.  All is now sorted and so I hope to catch up on various urgent tasks, not least of which is sending out my prize draw winners figures, as it is now a month since the draw.  Apologies to the winners but getting to the post office has been impossible.  Anyway, this weekend I managed an hour or so on my next unit of Mexicans and finished the nine other figures I have been working on, in a somewhat desultory manner, for the last few weeks.

I finished 17 figures in May which was my best month of the year.  The longer evenings are certainly helping on the painting front.  I don't know if more than 17 will be possible in June but maybe a dozen is more realistic.  I didn't mange any in June last year but this June I have already managed five so far.  These pirates have been sitting on the paint table for far too long but now they are done.  I'll probably dig out a few more to keep building on them ready for the new Osprey On the Seven Seas Rules which come out in August.

I haven't done anything for IHMN for a bit but here are two new figures.  Firstly we have the North Star Moriarty (who will actually be Alberich von Tarnhelm in my companies).  More on him in my earlier post here.  I don't know where the monster figure came from, maybe he is a Foundry figure, but given the excellent news of the new IHMN Gothic supplement (online only at present) I knew I needed to get him painted.  

Next up were another three Afghan tribesmen from Artizan Designs.  Although irregular figures always take longer to paint, I am keeping a batch of these on the go and just painting the odd colour when I have time.  I have another six under way at present.  Very easy figures to paint.  

Finally, I did a test figure for the Orinoco Miniatures Latin American Wars of Independence British Legion.  This was also a nice easy subject so I will work on a few more.

£500 to move this two miles?

Lots of expenses this month what with the dreaded extension and things such as moving Charlotte from her halls of residence of the first year into her flat for the second year of university.  To move two suitcases and seven cardboard boxes of stuff Pickfords wanted £420 with VAT on top.  What a joke!  Fortunately we found a local firm that charged the comparatively bargain price of £192.  10 boxes of Perry plastics saved!

The work on the extension is driving me mad, not least because the Old Bat keeps wanting my opinion on carpets, bathroom tiles, lights, curtains and all sorts of other nonsense. I also thought that after pneumatic drilling the garage floor away it would quieten down; but not so far.  It's very hard to research the economic impact of direct flights to Bogota with a constant grating, high pitched whining in the background.  But enough of the Old Bat, the brick sawing is nearly as bad.  Also the builders have added significantly to our weekly shop by consuming huge boxes of tea bags (I always wondered who bought those 240 bag boxes), cans of Coke and biscuits.  I can't say that I have seen Wagon Wheels since the seventies but the builders love them.  And Club biscuits and Jaffa Cakes and Penguins and Hob Nobs and Kit Kats and chocolate caramel digestives.  It all got really out of hand when the Old Bat bought them Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits at £1.80 for nine.  Can't they eat custard creams and bourbons like everyone else?  I'm going to do the next biscuit shop!  Maybe I'll get them fig rolls, that will teach them!

The scariest children's TV show ever made

My mother used to get my sister and I these "figgy biscuits" when we were little, largely, I suspect, on the basis that we hated them so much that we couldn't bear to eat more than one at a time.  I particularly remember being given them as a "treat" while watching Tales from Europe on television after school.  This was a collection of children's TV series from Europe (obviously) which were either dubbed or just had English narration over the top.  I particularly remember one featuring some boys and a motorbike filmed in Istanbul I think.  Every time I go to Istanbul, now, I think of fig rolls.

The really memorable Tales from Europe series, of course, was the utterly terrifying The Singing Ringing Tree.  Forget Dr Who, I never hid behind the sofa for that, but The Singing Ringing Tree gave me nightmares for decades.  Originally an East German film made in 1957, you can buy it on DVD, if you really want to scare your children to death, although the DVD is in its originally filmed colour, which is somehow less scary than the expressionist black and white version the BBC showed in the sixties.  Everyone is used to seeing people of "reduced stature" these days thanks to science fiction films and, indeed, the Paralympics, but in 1964 the scampering dwarf from Das singende, klingende Bäumchen  (it sounds even scarier in German) frightened the life out of me.

Girders!  We'll need biscuits after shifting these!

Anyway, stuff keeps arriving on large lorries at 6.00am in the morning, much to the neighbours' delight.  Do I really want to spend £4,500 on steel girders?  I do not but because of the sort of soil we have here we have had to have a complicated foundation put together with a sort of cage of girders underpinning tons of concrete.  You could build a rocket launching pad on the foundations!

I do have a floor, somewhere

My room is total chaos at present and is not helped by the fact that I have bought a couple of those CD album cases to hold my DVD collection.  I had filled all my shelves and had built up an overflow of three piles of DVD's which were over a three feet high and kept falling over.  So all the boxes are going to the dump and I will put them in the sleeves.  Except I don't have time to get on with it.  I haven't even unwrapped the second case.  I did start on my unwatched TV series and have already filled one 500 disc capacity case and have only reached the letter L.  I've still got the rest of my unwatched TV series, unwatched films, watched films and watched TV series to go.  In the meantime I can't find anything!

I don't need any more figures, of course, but was in Orc's Nest this week and saw the new Victrix Greek Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers so picked them up for no real reason whatsoever.  I constructed a few and had forgotten quite how long these multi-part plastics take to assemble.  I'm thinking about Greeks again because of the recent release by Foundry of the Steve Saleh sculpted Persians which have, after many years, seen the light of day for the first time.  These would be perfect to pitch against Macedonians.  Although I don't have any phalangites painted I do have 66 Greek skirmishers and 24 cavalry painted for the Cynoscephalae force I did for a Society of Ancients game in 2007.

My Foundry Greek heavy cavalry from 2007

I think Persians of this period are among the very worst wargames armies to paint.  The troops usually rate low points in most rules so you need lots of them and they have extremely complex patterned uniforms.  They are like Celts!  Or samurai! Anyway, I found a couple of Spartan officers I had started some time ago, so hopefully they will give me the opportunity to do a post on my Spartan blog this month. 

Now it's time to pay the builders their weekly money again!