Green Regiment of Foot

My new regiment of foot, recently completed and ready to stand for the King. These are Warlord plastics (because they’re cheap, and so am I!). I worked out that I could build regiments suitably sized for the 1644 rules set using part of a boxed set. What I did was to buy an extra sprue of foot, and build a regiment using two sprues of foot and odd bits and pieces.

The command sprues contain two well-dressed herberts intended as commanders and ensigns. I used one of these per regiment as the commander. The foot sprues have an extra pikeman body one each, for which there are no arms. Warlord suggest using them as sergeants, but with a bit of work, I turned two of them into ensigns, using the spare arms from the command sprue, and one into a fifer. The last body will be converted into a sergeant using spare arms from the firelock storming party box set.

Command, from the front

 and the rear

These other figures, the extra commander, ensign, drummer and sergeant will go with a second regiment I’m building.

The only problem with this approach is that the regiments formed have skewed pike / shot ratio. They could do with a few additional musketeers, to put them nearer a 2:1 shot to pike proportion. I’ve got some plans for this, but in the mean time hopfully they’ll pass muster.

 Here's the command, escorted by shot and pike.

Pike, deployed as a block. The pikes are made from stainless steel wire, which can be nasty if you put your hand down on them, but the plastic ones from the box set are far too flimsy for my taste.

Some of the shot, some firing the others moving into position.

The whole regiment, pikes in the centre and shot on the wings.

Again, this time with the shot to the front.

I'm looking forward to seeing if they can fight...

The Furie of the Ordonance!

Here are the finished guns! Two small “battalion” guns and a larger piece.

I left two of the gun carriages as bare wood, the larger one with an unpainted iron barrel

 and one of the smaller guns in bronze.

 The other small gun was painted in red with a black-painted barrel. A follower pointed out that red carriages were more commonly associated with Parliamentary forces, which given my army is meant to be Royalist might be a problem!

A bit of thinking found me a way out. Red paint would  have been fairly generic – red lead was commonly available, and popular as it’s a great preservative (unless you eat it…). Also, cannons were rare and highly desirable, and no general in his right senses would turn down a captured gun simply because he didn’t like the colour!

The figures are from 1^st Corps, from their Thirty Years War range. These are one pack of the firing crew and one pack of loading crew, although mixed between the guns. There was no flash, limted joint lines to clean up and they painted a treat.

 These are lovely, characterful figures. There are a couple of well-dressed master gunners, and a selection of matroses and labourers who seem to range from the serious and capable to some who look like they need to be told to come in out of the rain. The powder loader on the left at the back here is a perfect example of the latter.  I loved the variety, and would recommend them without reservation.

 The accessories (budge barrels, buckets) are Amati model boat fittings, from Cornwall Model Boats. A bit of green stuff and some flytying thread made these useful little pieces into exactly what I wanted. The cannonballs on the large gun are angler’s split shot. These actually scale out as fourteen pound cannonballs, based on the magic of arithmetic. This fits perfectly with Reiver's description of the gun as a 12-24lb.

Here are all three guns as a single battery, ready to batter a slogging infantry regiment, or make mincemeat of a dashing cavalry force with canister.