2 new French Battalions ready for the table!

I finished up two new units for my Battle of Almanza project.  The Maine and Hessy battalions are ready for duty!

Here are a few pictures of the new units:

This flag has been the hardest I've done. I'm not happy with it but I couldn't figure out a better way to paint it.

Battle of Lazzara 1702 using Twilight of the Sun King

This evening our little group got together for our first run through of the rules "Twilight of the Sun King".  I picked the battle of Lazzara out of the scenario book I had purchased for our first battle. The troops are Kevin's Seven Years War figures filling in for French and Austrian.  

First off let me say that after reading the rules several times and then also having Nic Dorrell (rules author) send me a rather detailed sequence of play we still screwed up the first 3 turns.  Things rapidly fell apart and we stopped playing. We had a good discussion walking through a turn and the mechanics became more natural.  After that we reset the table and started over from turn 1.  Things flowed a whole lot better the second time around.

This is the start of the game. The Austrians are on the left and French on the right. Essentially the cavalry on both wings with the infantry and artillery in the center.

These two photos are from our failed first attempt this evening.

After resetting and starting again the cavalry on both flanks took off crashing into each other.  Both centers held back for a turn or two.

Cavalry is brittle in this set with them only really taking 2 morale hits before they removed from play. The French had a string of bad die rolls upon their first contacts with the Austrians.

The morale on the French starts to pile up.

More Austrian cavalry waiting to charge.

The French cavalry fell back a few times.

The French cavalry on their right wing lined up and ready to charge.

The French center starts to move.

The cavalry continues to crash into each other. The Austrians finally lose a melee or two

Gaps in the French cavalry line.

The French and Austrian infantry finally close and a bloody melee takes place.

The center was a death trap. The Austrians piled up the support to keep themselves engaged with the French.  But the French cavalry lost two more units creating a hole for the Austrian cavalry to swing around and face the infantry.

The Austrian left starts to fall apart but not before the French right fails it's Wing Commander morale roll and that sides collapses. After that we called the game.

Despite our initial screw up with the game we all ended up enjoying the rules. On our second time around we played through 7 turns before the French Right collapsed from excessive losses.  There are a few modifiers that I need to get some clarification on but overall we had fun. In fact we are going to run another game on the 25th.

Posted a Video on using oils to paint flesh on figures.

I posted a short video on a technique I found on using oil paints to paint flesh on figures.  Check it out.

Using Oils to paint flesh

Painted a 28mm AWI Figure

So to give myself a little break from painting WSS figures I took out one of the Perry Miniature AWI figures I had and decided to paint it.  Again this was just a way of testing different techniques I've read about on the web. Ultimately I'm trying to find something I like and can be done quickly.  While I like painting, I enjoy playing more.  So this figure was done with certain process in mind. Prime Grey, block in the color and then do a wash.  Outside of priming the figure and having painted the flesh which I had done a week ago, I painted the rest of it all in one day.  Here's what I did:

Prior to this first step I painted the flesh using a technique from this blog post: The War of Spanish Succession Prussian  The gentlemen who owns the blog and his technique does wonderful work. You should take a jaunt over to his blog and take a look.  This blog post is also where I copied down the recipe for the wash I used at the end.  So this step I painted in the pants using Dessert Yellow. 

Then I moved onto the waist coat and the turn backs and painted them white.

Then I chose Dark Prussian Blue for the coat.

Then I painted the cuffs and lapels of the coat red.

Next came the straps which I mixed light grey, off white and a touch of pale sand together.

Then the canteen and musket stock where painted with mahogany brown, the cartridge box was painted black and the knapsack was painted tan. The musket barrel and trigger guard were painted with Foundry Spearpoint.

Then the boots were painted with Chocolate Brown.

Then I applied Aly's Wash to the figure which I linked to above.

I think over all the figure turn out okay.  I will have to practice a little more with the flesh tones but I do like how the figure looks like he has a 5 o'clock shadow.

A better close up view of the finish figure.

If you have any constructive suggestions or comments please leave them below. I am trying to get better at painting larger scale figures.