Project Collection 2025

I suck at blogging these days. I've been painting a fair amount, just can't seem to post on a regular basis, so here's a photo dump from 2025 so far...

My projects are all over the place! I have more Confederate ACW, more This Quar's War: A Clash of Rhyfles, and four brand new battalion packs of Warfare Miniatures WSS French on my painting table (available as soon as I can paint up units for the shop). I want to add more units to my small Crimean project as well.

I need a clone...

Dronningens Livregiment

Another unit for my growing Danish army... Warfare Miniatures, of course! The mounted officer is from one of the Cuirassier Officer packs (tricorns & front plate only).

Preparing to advance with support of the Danish Grenadier Corps and Dutch artillery!

Officers of the Garden til Fods disagree about where to deploy, but both agree it needs to be AWAY from the camp!

More soon!

Eppinger's Dragoons - Part Two

Finished! I really got on a roll with this unit and painted twelve models (and based all three squadrons) over the weekend. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're excited about a project.

Really pleased with how this unit turned out. I already have three stands worth of foot dragoons and a horse holder base primed and on the painting desk - hoping to have them finished by the end of next weekend, but we'll see... there's something going on next weekend that might interfere with my hobby time. The pics could have been better as they were just snapped with my trusty iPhone sans my fancy photography lighting set up, but I'll try to get some better shots in the future.

Eppinger's Dragoons - Part One

I've been wanting to do this unit ever since I got into the period - somewhere around 2006. I actually purchased the models from Wargames Foundry, but other projects took precedence (we began working on Republic to Empire) and the models sat in a box (they're still there as far as I know).

In 2010, my real love for the period was solidified when Barry and I met at Historicon for the first time and put on the Battle of the Boyne as one of our games. No, Eppinger's Dragoons weren't present at the part of the battle we portrayed, but the game launched my desire to build armies for Beneath the Lily Banners. Our meeting also revealed the first fledgling steps (I got to see the samples of the first run of castings) of a new company - Warfare Miniatures.

My full investment in the period was delayed until Warfare Miniatures was up and running. Since I was starting out fresh, I wanted to use primarily the models we would be promoting. This meant I would be limited in my choices for a while. However, I needed tons of infantry and there were plenty of those in the first wave! I set out on the journey, content to wait for Eppinger's squadrons to become available in the future.

Now, there are only so many sculpts you can commission at once and ranges have a way of growing organically. One thing leads to another and soon you are buried under new models! The gaps in the range are always closing. It's only a matter of time before Warfare Miniatures has models for every practical troop type in the theater. 

Painted and photographed by Barry Hilton in the last century - the inspiration for my unit!

But I've been waiting for these mounted, fur-capped gentlemen forever, despite my whining (Argh! Fur-capped Austrians? Why do we hate the French?). Warfare Miniatures does have a set of splendid Mounted French Dragoons in caps, so the other day I decided to stop being lazy and make my own. I'm not an accomplished sculptor, but have enough confidence in my skill to add a fur texture to the existing bases of the caps. Each became successively easier once I'd gotten the hang of it. All it took was adding a tiny sausage of putty (no, that's too much... nope still too much... even less than that) around the cap, shaping it with my only actual sculpting tool, and then working in the texture with an X-acto blade. In about an hour, I was able to tart up twelve troopers. Huzzah!

Only twelve? Well, yes... I'm mixing in a few models in hats. The officers likely wore hats and I've seen several other representations of this regiment (including Barry's) drop in a few among the rank and file. I think it adds the look of a hard as nails regiment on campaign.

I've used the "regular" Warfare Miniatures horses rather than the ones that come with the dragoon castings. My initial units of dragoons were assembled before we had the ponies. I didn't want my elite troopers looking into the navels of their counterparts on the other side! Here's a few WiP, ready for action!

I have no doubt Warfare Miniatures will announce the release of mounted French Dragoons next week, but I'm really proud of how this regiment is progressing. It's cool to have a unit that's unique in the world! Even Barry doesn't have this unit (yet) in hunky Warfare Miniatures glory!

More soon!

Donnybrook at Sea!

Avast! We are very excited to launch Donnybrook at Sea! 

Donnybrook at Sea has 58 pages packed with naval rules for Donnybrook, unit guides, ship type guides, a full example scenario and extensive period primers for exciting naval combat from 1640 to 1783 (and a bit farther in either direction... many of you use Donnybrook for periods beyond the ones it was designed for).

Donnybrook at Sea has an extensive ship type reference section

The supplement is available in pdf only for now. It is important you have Donnybrook to play with the naval rules because many of the core mechanisms are applied for figure activation and combat.

To help you choose your units there are pages of examples

We are offering Donnybrook at Sea for $13.25 and if you don't already have Donnybrook you can pick up both pdfs at a special price of $22.50.

There is an exciting and challenging scenario set in Brazil between two naval powerhouse nations

You can get it in the shops here:

Donnybrook at Sea (League of Augusburg Shop)

Donnybrook at Sea (Warfare Miniatures USA)

Donnybrook AND Donnybrook at Sea Bundle Deal (League of Augsburg Shop)

Donnybrook AND Donnybrook at Sea Bundle Deal (Warfare Miniatures USA)

Danish Grenadier Corps, 1710

It's been a while since I've painted any Warfare Miniatures. I've been wanting to wander into the tricorn era of the period for some time, but there's always been 'just one more' project in the queue. Well, I finally decided to make a start of it!

While the Russians or Swedes are the obvious choice, the Danish army has always been a favorite of mine. My usual process when starting a new project is to pick a specific battle and then choose a brigade on which to focus my collection. Units beyond the core brigade will be chosen from those that fought nearby. While I usually have no plans to recreate a specific battle on the table top, this method allows me to point to an historical precedence for my little army.

Elements of the Danish army fought all over Europe, so I was spoiled for choices. In the end I picked the Battle of Helsingborg. Against the backdrop of the Great Northern War, King Frederick declared war on Sweden and launched an invasion to retake their lost province of Scania (in Swedish hands since 1658). The Danes raised an invasion force of 15,000 infantry supported by 4,000 cavalrymen and 30 cannon. In early November 1709, they landed in the province (southern Sweden) and were initially met with little resistance. The Swedes were hastily raising an army to replace their devastating losses at the Battle of Poltava the year before and it took three months for them to assemble a force capable of confronting the invaders. There is an extensive series of articles on the Battle of Helsingborg at the League of Augsburg blog, so I won't rehash that here beyond mentioning that is was a loss for my chosen faction.

The armies of both sides are well documented at Tacitus.nu and I supplemented this with more detailed information on the Danes from an article by Torstein Snorranson (translated by Dan Schorr), Danish Uniforms 1699-1712. The Danish army underwent a lot of changes, even in this short span of time. As usual with this period, sources sometimes offer conflicting information. Any mistakes in the historical accuracy of my wee soldiers is purely mine.

My initial goal is for a small army - four or five battalions of Foot, an equal number of Horse and dragoons, and a couple of guns. For my model force, I've chosen units from General Major Sichstedt’s Brigade, the central anchor of the first Danish line:

Livgarden til Fods
Dronningen's
Fynske
Jyske
Grenadier Corps

The megalomaniac in me really wants to do these units in the 'Grand Manner' - 40 figures each - but in the interest of actually getting a force on the table, I'll stick to the conventions of Beneath the Lily Banners for now and plan on units of 18 figures based on three stands. These are much more practical for my usual 4x6' game table anyway, but I'm making careful notes on the paints used so I may one day revisit this fantasy.

It's ironic that my first foray into the tricorn period was a unit... err... not wearing tricorns. The Grenadier Corps was formed in 1701, drawn from the grenadier companies of the established Danish regiments.

Of course, these are 28mm Warfare Miniatures (two packs of DN02, one DN03, and the mounted officer is from WLOA54a) and the flags are my own (also available from Warfare Miniatures). I've always liked the look of having a mounted officer in the center of the unit and decided to go this route with all of my Danish battalions.

This battalion depicts the unit as it may have looked in 1710 on the foggy coast of Sweden. Some sources list these lads as having silver (white) trim on their cuffs and crossbelt, but I've chosen to leave this detail off (I've also seen the crossbelt in buff, white, and yellow). I think freehanding the F4 monogram on all of their caps was enough frippery for one unit.

Right! So that's a start. I think Dronningen's is up next. I may consider fielding the Garden til Fods in their floppy hats and simply swap out the flags on my existing unit for this project (it is a myth that all units suddenly had tricorns after 1699, but I'll explore that more in another post if I decide to go that route).

Happy New Year!

I hope the turn of the calendar finds everyone well! Looking across my various blogs, 2019 was a very poor year for posting, even though I was quite productive. I painted loads of things I didn't bother with photographing.

I wanted to start off the year with some new units for Beneath the Lily Banners!

The first was painted for my collection by THE Barry Hilton and based by me to match the rest of my armies. I'm calling it Hilton's Regiment (though it could be used for many different early regiments with a flag swap).

These were actually painted for me back in 2018, but I realized I hadn't gotten around to photographing them, so I wanted to have the properly displayed. They were blooded for King William's cause in three separate games at the Guns of August 2018... In one game they failed to get into the mix because of where they were deployed, were ignobly ridden down by horse in another, and routed TWO Jacobite battalions in the third...

But wait! That's not all!

When Warfare Miniatures released the Volunteer/Militia codes (V01-06), the first thing I did when I got stock stateside was to pull three battalions for myself. I decided it was finally time to add these to my collection. Here is the first battalion, finished just this evening!

These models were a joy to paint and will be Irish Militia or early 1689-90 Irish Foot and may be used for either side. Not sure I like the color of that standard now that I'm looking at the photograph. As with all of my models, the flag is removable so it's easily changed. If I want to depict a two-flag unit, I can also press one of the pikemen into service as an ensign.

Finally, another project I hope to see come to fruition is the expansion of half a dozen units to five-stands for small-scale actions...

I painted these two stands for the Garden til Fods specifically for this project, but others will likely come as three-stand battalions in similar coat and facings to existing regiments that I can combine with said regiments - killing two birds with one stone. I already have two battalions of Dutch Guard and two battalions of grey coat/red facings foot so I'm currently at three battalions for this project so far. The cool thing is that a regulation BLB squadron is actually TWO scale squadrons, so my expanded forces can use my existing two-stand units for horse and mounted dragoons!

More on this in the future, but first up will be the other two battalions of militia!

Cheers!

The Guns of August 2018, Sunday

Whew! Third game went totally different from the previous two. Though the Jacobites did manage to get all of their plunder across the ford (in eleven turns.. don't tell Dannie), they were slaughtered to a man save several units of horse who retreated in good order from the field.

Mike 'Fat Bastard' MacNeill captained the Williamite assault while the dynamic duo father-son team of Rob and Justin Buck tried to keep the Jacobites in line. None of these gentlemen had ever played BLB, but it half way through they mostly figuring out their own factors and more or less running the game themselves and reminding me of the rules..

This battle had several twists and turns, including the first squadron of Tyrconnel's Horse DEFECTING to the enemy, two-thirds of the remaining brigade riding away after an errant flare was launched to signal retreat, and the Danish Guard trading fire with the Irish Guard and Lord Grand Prior's at point blank range for several turns. Despite harrowing losses, the Danes refused to retreat and died to the last man after have inflicting grievous wounds on the Irish Guard.

This battle lacked the huge cavalry scrums featured in the earlier games, though there were still several well timed charges (and one not so well timed).

Again, I'll write up these games in a bit. It was a good weekend - the players were good sports all around, embracing both good and bad luck as it fell and seemed to enjoy the games. It was a lot of work, but I will definitely plan to host a game at the February show in Williamsburg next year and may have the opportunity to put on another game at the museum later this year as well.

More soon...

The Guns of August 2018, Saturday

Real quick as I am beat.. two great games Saturday..

Left to right, Dannie Fogleman, Joe Brecher, Richard Jaekel, and Dick Goettel.. ALL of the these guys played in one of Barry and my sessions of the Pennyburn at Historicon. Some of them came from quite a ways, just to play BLB. I was stressed because in my haste Saturday morning I left the house without my QRS... THREE of them brought their own copies (thanks, for that, guys).

What a cool venue. While it lacked a huge food court (lunch and dinner were available in the form of sandwiches from Chick fil'A), my table was in the Weapons Hall in the middle of the Virginia War Museum.

Dannie and Dick both wanted another game and we were joined in the afternoon by Rob Eubanks. We played the same scenario, but the veterans switched sides to have a different perspective on the game.

There were lots of nice comments from people, interest in the Warfare range, and I even managed to sell some books. The event also saw the blooding of Hilton's Regiment (seen below with the blue and white flags.. will get proper photos of them in coming weeks as well), painted for my collection by THE Barry Hilton.. more on how that went soon..

I'll have a full account of the battles, as well as action from Sunday and the full scenario in a few days.

Crossing the Shannon - July 15, 1690

In the period between the Battle of the Boyne (July 1st, 1690) and The Battle of Aughrim (July 12th, 1691) a variety of smaller engagements took place in central and the south west Ireland.

This scenario is a fictitious encounter placed against the backdrop of small raids, sieges and low level actions which characterized the year following the Battle of the Boyne. Scenario Background King William’s multinational army is now in the ascendant in Ireland and the Jacobite Army of King James is restricted to the western counties of the island. An advanced guard, five small brigades of the Williamite Army, has come across a small Jacobite force which is attempting to transport plundered light cannons and other baggage across the River Shannon at a narrow ford. A small force of enemy troops is occupying a farm immediately in front of the advancing Williamite column obviously to act as a rearguard. No other enemy troops are visible, but rumors of the vaunted Jacobite cavalry have greeted the advance at every village and there might still be infantry on this side of the Shannon as well...

This game is inspired by the scenario included in the first edition of Beneath the Lily Banners (published 2008) and will be my offering for the Guns of August. It's been modified to suit my collection and several details altered to take into account the likely participants would be new to the rules. I want to be able to fight the game to a conclusion in the time allotted so troops will start a little closer together to get the action underway. I also changed the crossing from a ferry to a ford because this terrain is the beginning of a new direction for my efforts going forward. I wanted a river that would be more flexible for other tables than the 12-18" wide span I would have wanted to make a model ferry seem necessary. I'll get around to building a wider river when I design my tables for the Boyne..

The Guns of August show is at the Virginia War Museum in Newport News, VA on August 24th-26th. I will be running two games on Saturday at 10am and 2pm and another game on Sunday at 10am. There is no pre-registration for the event, so if you'd like to play in one of the games, just come on by - the scenario can be played by two or up to seven, but I'll find a command for you if we end up with more.

I'll have a report on the show and hopefully AAR's next week...

The Guns of August 2018

It's official.. I will be running several sessions of Beneath the Lily Banners/The War of Three Kings at the Guns of August show...

When the PEL becomes available I'll have more details, including how you can sign up to get in on one of these games...

The Walls of Limerick, Part I

Every so often I get the urge to launch some sort of stupid large project. Ever since my partner's series on the Walls of Derry, I've wanted to do something similar. My trip to Derry last year reinforced the desire. Finally, I'm planning to run some games at a small local show if my schedule works out - The Guns of August in Newport News, Virginia. Rather than just set up something from my existing collection, I decided to build a new table and go all out.

Sorting through the mound of books I've collected on the campaign of Ireland, my first inclination was to do something around Derry again. However, then I stumbled on the first siege of Limerick. Gamers often ignore sieges thinking them to be dull., static affairs of battering walls with cannons, but both Derry and Limerick feature several small actions in the form of sallies that make perfect tabletop games.

On August 20, 1690, the besieging Williamite army launched an assault from their siege trenches to capture Yellow Fort, a small, open-backed redoubt outside St John's Gate. It took several attempts, but they were successful. The Jacobites responded in force with a sally by four battalions of foot and three squadrons of horse, countered in turn by more infantry and cavalry from the Williamites, including one of my favorite unit - the Danish Foot Guard.

To bridge the gap between the small forces involved in the initial assault and the battalions that later took the field, I've also decided to reduce the man to model ratio which will give me foot battalions of five to seven stands rather than the standard three. This will allow me to represent the detachments with a significant number of models rather than the 4-5 each would muster at the default scale.

I'll go into more detail about the scenario and forces involved in a later post, but for now I just want to introduce the project.

The walls of Limerick were between 25 and 30 feet high with a narrow walkway on the top. A ditch was excavated outside the stone wall and the spoil used to build a counterscarp, covered way, and glacis. The tiny section of wall I'm building is St John's Gate, seen above on the left end of Irish Town. The old citadel near St John's Gate was pulled down and replaced with a new bastion and an earthen demilune constructed outside. My first step for any project like this is sketches which I then take to the computer to make a scale diagram. This was extremely important for this project because there are very few right angles and it was going to be a pain to make sure everything lines up properly.

I spent a lot of time messing around with scales and angles to decide exactly how to lay this out. There were a few things to take into account...

1. I wanted to avoid a 'square' table. By this I mean 95% of games you usually see... side A is lined up on this table edge and Side B is on the other. The historical design actually helps this as the wall runs away from the gate at an angle. The battalions will actually end up facing down each other diagonally across the board.

2. I wanted the fortress to be permanently attached to the boards, but I wanted to keep things flexible so I can use these for other scenarios. What I decided was to use 2x2' boards. The bastion would be attached to one and the wall to the other, with the gate section remaining loose and 'bridging' the boards. This will allow me to replace that piece with a breach to play another style of game. Not sure if that makes sense, but it will be illustrated as the project progresses.

3. I wanted the counterscarp (and the siege trenches - more on that later) modeled as a permanent part of the boards, but decided to build the demiline as a separate model so I can use it as a redoubt in other games. The Yellow Fort will also be a separate model.

4. I wanted to be able to expand this in the future, possibly boards BEHIND the wall for urban based scenarios.

5. So, yeah - I'm building a new 4x8' table, the walls of Limerick, probably a few city buildings, siege trenches, and oh, and I need to paint around 120 infantry to bring my units up to strength at this scale... by the end of August.

Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy and I'll get into the actual construction in the next post...

Limbers for Field Guns

Right, here's a proper limber this time - none of that dodgy strapping a gun to the back of the poor horse...

Obviously a field gun would be pulled by more than two horses, but in the same spirit that calls 18 men a battalion, I wanted to keep the footprint of the limber to a minimum for my usual 4x6' table. As before, the gun is not attached and was lifted from one of my field gun emplacements...

Of course, as one gentleman pointed out elsewhere, the gun should be made of all one material. I have a dozen guns painted for other periods and none of them are decorated as my 1690 collection. I'm not sure why I choose to pimp these guns, but I'll get around to repainting them one of these days...

I wanted to paint something on the small sign at the rear of the base, but haven't decided what - it's too low for a road sign, so maybe the Irish equivalent of 'Keep Out' or 'Posted' or 'Trespassers will be shot on sight'...

I'm traveling to the western part of Virginia to run a game for some friends this Saturday (Violence in the Valley 2.0) and I'll post the full scenario - The Cock of the North - and a battle report in the next few weeks. It might be a test run for starting my own League of Augsburg weekenders in the USA. I still need to paint more units before I can put on one of these spectacles, but I'm getting there...