Christmas Greetings

Firstly - I hope Santa and his helpers bring you all the toys on your wish list, and that during the coming year you have the time to paint and play with them.

Secondly - sorry for the lack of posts on the blog over recent months, my wargaming interests have been elsewhere, and also PA seem to have gone quiet with regards to future releases in the SYW range. My intention is to keep this blog dedicated to the 40mm toys, however just to fill a bit of space I will give bit of an update on what I have been doing instead..............

28mm Thirty Years War

I've spent much of the last 6 months painting and playing with my new 28mm Thirty Years War armies. When I retired (a couple of years ago), I received a pile of lead as a leaving gift, which I have  finally got around to painting. 

The figures are mostly from the Old Glory's excellent renaissance ranges, well worth considering if you are planning that building armies in that period, Many of the figures are from their ECW range as dress was pretty similar both in Britain and in Central Europe, the only real issue is that a lot of the ECW cavalry castings have triple bar lobster helmets, these were not common on the continent, so I have replaced them with continental types, using separately purchased  heads from Redoubt Miniatures. Note that the Old Glory figures are towards the smaller end of the 28mm offerings, they probably fit with Foundry and First Corps.

For rules we have been using the Liber Militum 'Tercios' rules, which give a fun game - again worth considering if you want to play that period.

3D Printing

The other distraction is that I now have a resin printer to add to the filament printer I've had for some time. My main reason for originally going for a 3D printers is, that many of my figure collections are of older rangers, which are often smaller than more modern offerings which simply do not fit in with them.

For example, I have a large collection of 20mm WW2 tanks and AFVs, some of which I have had for over 40 years. At the time I started the collection the only vehicles readily available were from Airfix and Matchbox, which are 1/76 scale, these I later supplemented with Fujimi/Nitto again 1/76. There are now lots more vehicles available from the likes of PSC, Armourfast, Zvezda etc, however these are mostly 1/72, and I simply cannot live with the size difference. 1/76 vehicles are available in resin, but often at a very high price.

With the ability print my own vehicles I can now print pretty much any vehicle I like, and scale it to 1/76 to fit in with my old collection. The filament printer produced some nice models, but simply cannot handle shallow sloping surfaces which come out very distinctly stepped. The resin printer does a much better job of it, I initially put off buying a resin printer due to the need to wash prints in alcohol, however there are now some better water washable resins on the market so I have taken the plunge.

Prince August have now gone over to digital sculpting, the first digital figures in the SYW range being with the French. Their business model is selling moulds, however I do wonder if they could release the files to some of the parts which are difficult to cast??????????

Anyway, enough rambling - have a good Christmas and best wishes for the New Year,

Prince August Catalogue & Progress

Prince August have recently released their updated catalogue, with the 40mm SYW range being featured on the front cover.. The pdf can be downloaded from their website, but be warned it is a hefty 318MB.

For those of you collecting the SYW range there are a couple of useful pages showing the full range of figures in the moulds - I think after all these years PA are getting there - still a few gaps but full armies can now be collected - with a little help from the Karoliner and Rossbach ranges.

It can be seen that there is now a pretty extensive range, however in my opinion it contains a few scaling issues, which I deal with as follows:

• I feel the Austrian cuirassiers are way too large, so I don't use them, instead I use converted Karoliner figures.
• The dragoon heads are small, so again I avoid using them - they are easily replaced by 'officer' heads from the infantry, the Russian officer being one of the best (that is what is on catalogue front cover).
• The French figures are just a bit on the large size (particularly the heads) - I think they look better when used with Russian heads which have similar hair and tricorne.
• Similarly the artillery crews are a bit large, so again I use the appropriate infantry heads where possible.

All of the 'offending' figures were sculpted digitally, the French and gunners are probably just me being picky so not an issue and easily solved with a head swap, However the cuirassiers and some of the dragoon heads are unique, so could perhaps PA could be persuaded to reprint if enough people commented?

There are a few gaps in the range, which hopefully PA will address, the most obvious ones being:

• British infantry - the highlander are sculpted (see above), and hopefully the 'hatmen' will follow in the not too distant future?
• Prussian cuirassier (I have used converted Rossbach figures).
• Gunners in coats (it was my idea to have the in shirtsleeves)
• Russian cavalry (belts outside coat) - not sure if there would be market for these, Karoliners with head swaps do the job fine????