Marlborough

I brought Winston Churchill's biography of his most famous ancestor with me to France in an effort to finally get through it.

I've managed to get most of the way through; I'm about two thirds of the way through the second volume. I'm now at the depressing part of the story when after the end of Marlborough's campaigns the British political establishment turn on him and destroy him.

Churchill does a good job of describing Marlborough's campaigns and the detailed description of the political background helps put the military campaigns into context. But I do find the thorough coverage of the politics hard going; definitely very difficult terrain, causing 1/4 movement!

Needless to say, after reading these books, I've been looking for some 1/72 Marlborough figures! Unfortunately there aren't any figures for the War of the Spanish Succession. The contemporary Great Northern War is well covered but I'm not sure how close the figures are. I guess I should buy some boxes so I can have a close look at them.

Our Next Door Neighbour

There's not much happening on the painting front at the moment, so I thought I'd post a photo of this visitor, appearing on our terrace about 10 feet from the back door.


This is a Western Whip Snake, which is common down here in the south of France. We don't often see snakes because they tend to see us before we see them but this one seems to be living under the concrete terrace and appeared while the wife was sitting on the terrace reading a book. The Nearest and Dearest is cool in a crisis and managed to take this photo - not quite as frightening as when she insisted on getting out of the car in Florida to take close up photos of alligators!

The move back to Blighty has been taking up all my time over the last few days it's hard to paint when your hands are still shaking from lugging boxes and furniture about. The removal company took away all out valuable stuff yesterday and we now have a couple of quiet weeks of peace, so I'm hoping to get back to a bit more painting! I still have the ECW stuff to finish up, more Hittites and some Arabs and Mongols as a backup, so I have plenty to keep me busy here.

Sea Peoples

This is the first of two units of Sea Peoples from the Caesar The Sea Peoples set.

The set comes with 42 figures but I have a few spares from the Philistine set so I'm mixing them in to get 48 figures. I was originally going to put different head dresses in to different units but there are only two or three poses for each head dress so I decided to mix them all together for a more irregular look. More excellent, easy to paint, figures from Caesar!

ECW Pikemen

My third foot regiment is underway with half the pikemen complete.

I'm still liking these Zvezda figures; they're easy to paint and are in excellent poses. The front rank figures don't rank up well as second rank figure because of their swords, so I'll be painting up more of the second rank figures once I buy some more boxes.

More ECW Dragoons

Six more dragoons are ready for action, these figures also being from the Mars Swedish Cavalry reissue.

Once these figures are cleaned up, I really like them. A good selection of active poses, with swords drawn, charging in to battle. I think these troops will be a fine sight on the battle field! Next up will be the cuirassiers.

Yet More ECW Musketeers

I've just finished twelve more musketeers, this time in a marching pose.

And here's the complete second regiment. Now I have to decide the colours for my third regiment.

The uniforms of the first two regiments are taken from the Parliamentarian army at the time of Edgehill, which has the almost unique advantage of being documented! Both sides used a large variety of uniform colours, so these troops will do for either side, except for the New Model Army, which had red jackets. I guess red jackets would be the obvious choice for a third regiment.

I'm really pleased with these Zvezda figures and will be buying some more when I get back to the UK. I was planing on getting two more boxes but maybe I'll go for four and double up what I have already. Four more boxes would give me enough infantry for two small armies for introductory games or one big army for a large battle.

More ECW Musketeers

Here is the first section of musketeers for my second regiment.

These musketeers are equiped with heavier muskets and are using forks to support the extra weight. These heavier weapons were falling out of favour during this period, the lighter muskets that didn't require a fork being prefered for their ease of use.

You can clearly see that these are matchlock muskets, the match being nicely modelled with one end attached to the firing mechanism and the rest being looped round the left hand, which also holds the fork.

This is another excellent figure from the Zvezda Austrian Musketeers and Pikemen set. There are only three of these figures in each set, so if I want more, I'll have to splash out on another couple of sets.