Painting Progress and Preparation for Battle

At the beginning of last week I set a goal of completing the Spanish infantry on the painting desk before the end of the week.  Steady progress was made but the final flocking of bases was not done until this afternoon and I still have to dig out some flags for the command bases before I can call things complete.  Above are the 120 figures fixed to the bases before these were flocked.  Each section of 40 figures is painted to match up with three batches of 28 figures painted several months ago for the refight of Ameixial.  Together this will give three full strength early period Tercios, which will add heft to the Imperial armies.

When painting earlier batches of 10mm figures I have used a black undercoat.  This time around I tried using a white undercoat, then washing over with sepia ink.  This worked well.  It was easier to see the detail and to get neat edging effects and I will adopt this approach for future batches.

At an early stage of painting, with the undercoat and sepia ink wash visible on most figures.  All the figures in this batch are from Pendraken

Alongside the painting has come preparation for refighting the 1633 Battle of Oldendorf at the next meeting of the HK Society of Wargamers on 14th December.  This is an interesting battle as both the Imperial and the Protestant armies went onto the offence over some difficult terrain.  We will be using the 'Twilight of Divine Right' rules and the scenario for the battle that comes from one of the supplements to those rules.  Both sides have lots of cavalry.  The Protestant centre has few infantry units, but three of these are large Swedish Brigades.  The Imperial army also has a strong cavalry component and fields a mixture of Regiment sized infantry with larger Tercios.  Quite a lot of the cavalry come with detachments of commanded shot and it may be that I have to press some of the newly painted Spanish into service as these.

Old print of the battle of Oldendorf.  It seems to show four Swedish style Brigades arrayed in the foreground and to the right, but only three are given in the scenario.

Much of the battlefield is hilly terrain, interspersed with streams and with a large area of woodland.  Tomorrow I need to set up the terrain to make sure I have enough of everything and then work out how to transport it together with the figures to the club venue.