Sir John Hanmer's Regiment

Just put the finishing touches on another Grand Alliance unit, Sir John Hanmer's regiment of foot...

A few notes...

• Officers may have adopted orange sashes by 1690 in honor of King William III, though this may not have been universal. I have chosen crimson sashes because I want to make my red and grey coated regiments as flexible as possible. With a quick flag change, I can use this regiment for Hanmer's, Cunningham/Stewart's, or Churchill's for the English, Dronningen's for the Danes, or any English/Irish units that we have no info on. Some of the substitutions wouldn't be perfect, but with the correct flag waving proudly overhead, most people wouldn't notice that the trousers might not be the right color!
• I likewise painted a generic grenade symbol on the hats of the grenadiers for the same reason.
• This unit is destined to have the first pike stand in my army, but I finished these on a deadline for inclusion in an upcoming article in Wargames Illustrated and I simply didn't have time to paint the extra four models! I will update the photo on the 1690 page when I get a chance to finish the pikes.

This will likely be my only English unit for the moment - at the Boyne they were brigaded in the front line with the Huguenot and Dutch battalions (which I will be painting later this summer). My current plan for my personal collection has a target of twelve foot battalions for my Williamites:

Dutch (2 battalions of Blue Guard, Brandenburg, and Nassau-etc)
Danish (the Foot Guard, Funen, Jutland, and Zealand)
Huguenot (De la Meloniere, Caillemotte, and Cambon)
English (Hanmer)

I also plan to add a unit of combined Dutch Grenadiers and some single model skirmisher grenadiers to take advantage of the Forlorn Hope rules we have coming up in a future book... :)

A Tale of One Gamer - Part Three

Again on 40k Friday it's time to post an update on my ToOG project. This month I painted the equivalent of a Battleforce Box set of Tyranids, built from sprues I had tucked away in the cupboard, which comes out to roughly 500-points. The first two pics are one unit - I just couldn't cram them all into the photo without rearranging my desktop photography set up!

Next month it's back to my Red Scorpions Space Marines. I have a Scout Squad on the table to fill my second Troops slot and a box set of Vanguard Veterans up next. Depending on how that goes I may add a Command Squad or another character if I have time. I'd like to make it to 1000-points if I can...

There is Only War

The new issue of White Dwarf magazine is all about the 6th edition of Warhammer 40k. There are many more blogs and websites that lavish pages of detailed accounts of the updates to the rules and quick Google search will quickly find dozens of them. The main thing I wanted to highlight from the new edition is the inclusion of allies as a core army building mechanic.

The allies addition is new system that allows player to have a detachment made of another army in the list. Allies works like WFB 8th Edition with different 'levels' of allies - Brothers in Arms, Allies of Convenience, and Desperate Allies. The detachment requires 1 HQ and 1 Troop (compulsory) which opens up an additional 1 Troop, 1 Elite, 1 Fast Attack, and 1 Heavy Support. Allies do not benefit from each others special rules, hitch rides in each others vehicles, etc. Brothers in Arms and Desperate Allies carry their own special rules as well. The force charts also have a new entry for 0-1 Fortification which allows you to buy a terrain feature as part of your list.

I have absolutely no doubt this will open up all kinds of headaches and munchkinry for competitive play, but as some one who collects multiple armies and enjoys games almost exclusively at home, I welcome the chance to field my Space Marines and Imperial Guard together as a 'legal' force, reminiscent of the old school Rogue Trader army list. With the arrival of 6th edition, I went from having four 1500 to 3000 point armies to two 4-5000 point forces depending on how the details work out. I'm not counting my new Red Scorpions and Tyranid armies in this list, though I understand Tyranids aren't allowed to have any allies - probably difficult when you tend to eat everything that moves! Again, I don't know how that works out in competition as it seems like a distinct disadvantage for the 'Nids, but I could care less about perfect balance for games at home.

EDIT (June 27, 2012): Confirmed Allies List for my Imperials:

SPACE MARINES ('Vanilla' chapters like my Crimson Fists and Red Scorpions)

• Brothers in Arms: Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Imperial Guard, Space Wolves, and Tau (I don't get the last one)
• Allies of Convenience: Eldar, Grey Knights, and Sisters of Battle
• Desperate Allies: Dark Eldar, Necrons, and Orks (I guess everyone's on the same side when the Tyranids come to eat you!)

IMPERIAL GUARD

• Brothers in Arms: Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, and Space Wolves
• Allies of Convenience: Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, Grey Knights, Orcs, and Tau
• Desperate Allies: Dark Eldar and Necrons

Now, I won't be fielding my Death Korps of Krieg with Chaos Space Marines, but I think it's very interesting that you can model a traitor Imperial Guard force with Daemons or Chaos Marines in tow. I don't think that Space Marines should have Tau as Battle Brothers either (the 'name' Space Marines chapters like Black Templars, Blood Angels, etc. only count them as Allies of Convenience). I'm not a min/maxer enough to search through and find out which famous Space Marine chapter(s) to add detachments from for my regular Space Marines, but I can definitely see building small detachments of Eldar to supplement my Imperials!

Historical gamers fear not - I have two more Grand Alliance units on the table and more on the way! I have not been turned to the dark side completely, but with 6th edition due out very soon I have payed a lot more attention to GW than usual.

40k Friday

Games Workshop produced a game a few years back called Inquisitor which was a detailed skirmish game designed for 54mm models. I bought into this in a big way and have three or four warbands plus an assorted cast of security troops, mutants, and other NPC's.

Distances in the game are given in yards so it's easy to convert into 28mm as well.Since the default 54mm game calls for a 4x4' board, you can play 28mm games on a 2x2' table with the additional benefit of being able to pull models and terrain from your 40k collection!

For an additional note on 40k Friday, the 6th edition game preview (and pre-orders?) launches tomorrow at a Games Workshop store near you!

40k Friday

Waaaaagh! The orks of the 40k universe are one of my all time favorite things about the setting. It's just fun to watch your opponent during the set-up phase as he realizes he is outnumbered three to one...

I think have nearly 3000 points of orks including a lot of models I've never photographed. I think the mob pictured above was 1250-points. I am going to have to get around to trying to get a picture of the whole horde. That captured tank is now cute beside some of the other vehicles I've added...

Raising the Standard

The initial release of 33 flag sheets (that's 90+ regiments, folks, as some units have more than one set of flags) for the Nine Years War are now available in the LoA Shop! Again, I've used the best data available to me - some units are pure fantasy as we don't know what flags they may have carried and based on educated guesses. These flags could be used for ANY unknown unit, not just the ones I've named them!

More coming soon!

40k Friday

Soldiers of the Emperor charge forward with support from a squadron of Scylla Light Tanks. 

I saw these conversions years ago on the GW website, but sadly the article is no longer available and I can't even give credit to the author (Edit: Marc Raley! See the comments below...). They were made by cutting down the body of a Chimera kit to make the basic chassis and I used plasti-card to fill in any remaining gaps in the hull. It was a fairly involved conversion project and the results are probably some of the coolest models in my collection!

These tanks were presented as 'counts-as' alternatives to the Sentinel walkers for armoured companies and fit my Death Korps of Krieg theme perfectly. In friendly games I use the tracked vehicle rules rather than the walker rules, but otherwise they are still Sentinels and fill a Fast Attack slot.

Next week I'll post another conversion to make a standard Imperial Guard model fit into the Death Korps theme...

Flags by Quindia Studios

I am happy to announce that flags for the period covered by Beneath the Lily Banners and Warfare Miniatures will soon be available for sale in the League of Augsburg shop!

Regular readers have seen these on my growing 1690 collection, but we will be offering many more than I've shown so far. The initial release of nearly seventy regiments covers most of the foot units engaged at the Battles of the Boyne and Aughrim and will expand to cover the horse and other battles and theaters as I add to the range. The second release will begin to cover the French and their allies for the Steenkirke and Neerwinden conflicts in 1693. Eventually we plan to offer a comprehensive range to cover all of the major theaters and conflicts for the period.

Flags will be sold in sets of three units (with two flags per unit for a total of six flags per set). You can order them in glorious League of Augsburg Scale (50mm high), Quindia Studios Scale (40mm high - pictured above), Realistic Scale (30mm high or roughly six feet for 28mm models), or Small Scale (20mm high for 10-15mm units).

Every effort has been made to create accurate standards on the best available information. In some cases speculation based on experience, convention, and input from people who know a lot more than I do about the period was necessary. Finally, I will offer some purely fictional flags to help you fill in collections when units involved have no documented information.

It may be a week or two yet, but the artwork is done. Though orders will go through the UK, US and Canadian customers will benefit from a US production facility (i.e. me) which will keeping shipping down to the price of an envelope and a stamp! Barry (or more likely Gwen) will handle distribution to the UK and Europe and we'll work out the rest as they come. We are finalizing the lists and prices and as soon as the store page is ready, I'll post the update here...