The Blue Puttees

 

I recently started to play WWI skirmish games, and like most wargamers I like to bring my own troops to the table. Luckily the game Scouts Out requires few figures so it was going to be pretty easy to accomplish. Wargames Atlantic has put out a very nice plastic set so I went ahead and purchased the British Army box. 

After some thought, I decided to bring them on the table as the Blue Puttees, about whom I will say more after the photos. 

I followed the Sonic Sledgehammer Studio Painting Scheme, which was useful for not only painting but also assembly. I am quite pleased how they came out.

The Blue Puttees

The Royal Newfoundland Regiment trace their origins to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Foot formed in 1795 during the War of the First Coalition from several militias that had existed in the colony from about 1704.During the War of the 2nd Coalition there was a name change to Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Foot, they were deployed to the Citadel in Quebec City in 1808. At the outbreak of the War of 1812 they were deployed in multiple detachments to the Great Lakes where they were engaged in many important battles. The unit was disbanded in 1816. 

At the start of the Great War, a new regiment was formed in the Dominion of Newfoundland, an independent country at the time. By 1915 over 1000 men had joined the battalion. A lack of khaki cloth at the time resulted in the first battalion going overseas with puttees of blue cloth, thus the name. 

They first fought in the Gallipoli campaign before being sent to the Western Front in 1916 where they fought in the Battle of the Somme. On July 1st of that year the whole battalion was sent over the top to cross No Mans Land. Seven hundred and eighty men and officers crested the hill and within 15 minutes the battalion was essentially decimated with a 90% loss of men, only 68 making roll call the next day. 

Men of Newfoundland responded to the call of their King and by October of that year they were back at full strength. For their service to King and Country the Regiment was given the honorific Royal, the only regiment given this honour in WWI. 

The Newfoundland Regiment continued to serve King and Country in WWII as an Artillery Regiment and when Newfoundland ceased to become an independent country in 1949 and joined Canada the Royal Newfoundland Regiment became a reserve unit in the Canadian Army. Elements of both battalions have since served overseas most recently in Afghanistan and are now serving in the Canadian Artic as part of the Artic Response Company Group.

Americans in Winter Uniforms

This will be it, I hope for 28mm WWII figures. These are again resin printed from the RKX kickstarter. I believe these came out of the soup a little sharper than the Volksgrenadiers. I needed a support unit for my upcoming Hürtgenwald scenario, while at the same time supplementing the figures of our Historical Wargaming Club's collection. 

1945 US Infantry squad with SMG armed leader with 2 team each with one BAR gunner.

A Volkgrenadier sniper and MMG team

Observation Posts to be used as objectives.

It has been interesting to paint 28mm figures for WWII, quite a different task from painting 20mm. I found these a bit more of a challenge but I believe this may be due to the nature of the resin prints that I produced. I just started painting some 28mm WWI Brits from Wargames Atlantic and these are much easier to paint and I suspect I will get a much better result. This is due to the much sharper detail on the hard plastic figures. I might get one of my friends to print some of the RKX figures, who is much more skilled than I with resin printing.

 

Some Painting

 

A bit of a dramatic painting!

Anyway, over the last 6 weeks, I managed to grind out some figures. Here are some photos.

Mounted Crossbowmen from Bremen for Saga. Figures are from the Perry Light Cavalry Box.

Some French Carabinier Skirmishers for GdA from ABFigures.

Some Moorish Crossbowmen for Saga from V&V Miniatures (1st of 12)

I have some Russian houses to paint next for CoC.

The Gifted- A Carnevale Faction

 

My friend Graham recently (well a couple of months ago) finished painting a new Carnevale faction for me. This figures were well beyond my painting ability and as you can see Graham has done a brilliant job. This is my 4th faction and although I play the game seldomly, they are all beautiful figures. 

Most of the characters if not all are based on the Commedia dell'arte, an Italian form of theatre. 

The Mask Maker

Brighella

Harlequin

Il Dottore

Pantaleone

Il Capitano

Justice and Fate

Columbina

English Long Bowmen

 

Over the last 6 weeks, I have been painting figures for SAGA Age of Chivalry. It has really caught on at our historical wargaming club in Montreal. At our monthly SAGA nights we usually having 10-12 players.

After some research, I decided to go with Perry Plastics for my figures. This ended up being a good choice as they are a good price, easy to assemble and a lot of fun to paint. I am also starting to appreciate that they are quite light weight in comparison to metal figures. I have designed and printed round 25mm bases and oval 25x50mm bases for my SAGA armies. These are all magnetised with a 1x10mm magnets, the fact that they are plastic helps with this and they certainly seem to be easily transported with metal boxes.

I know a lot of players finding the exact armour and accruements for the time period, and I do appreciate the medieval age was a period of rapid change of armour and weapons. I elected to do my best to be accurate but especially in respect to head wear I might be a little off for specific countries.

I decided to build armies for the English, Swiss and Yorkists first as they are quite different in organisation. Of course a lot of these figures can be used for other countries but I felt it important to put a couple of forces the table as quickly as possible. I think I have painted 12 units so far but I will start with my English Long Bowmen.

The Long Bow was integral to the English army during this period. They are also relatively unique in SAGA organisation to the English. They can also be hired as mercenaries by some other specific factions. I did do quite a bit of research on how to paint them and generally what I found it could be quite varied but I decided to go with basic colours of the time but adding several figures in the livery of the Yorkist faction of Edward IV. I also decided to do one specific faction in the livery of Sir Richard Ratcliffe. 

Three units of Long Bow Armed Warriors

In the Red and Blue livery of the Yorkist faction.

The Black and White livery of Richard Ratcliffe

Non specific but uniform clothing but with a touch of red and blue to keep them English. I will use this unit as my mercenary bowmen for other countries.

The figures are from the English Agincourt box in the first 2 groups and the last unit is from the War of the Roses box. I have to say that the War of the Roses figures are quite nice and I prefer their styling.

Kato Kiyomasa

 

1562-1611

My primary hero for my Midgard warband will be Kato Kiyomasa. If interested click on the link which will bring you to his Wikipedia entry. 

I googled his name looking for painted images of him and for an unclear reasons in at least 2 of the images he has an orange cloak. Even though a little bright, I decided to go with this colour. The rest of the colours picked are conjectural.

He is carrying a Katakana Yari.

The standard mon for Kiyomasa was an open circle, I have seen them in both blue and black. The parallel bars as seen above is a mon used by unit in Kiyomasa's army. I got bored of the open circle.

Uma-Jirushi of Kiyomasa

I will generate his specific stats when I have a better sense of the ruleset. He certainly had some interesting attributes from what history tells us.

Vietnam

I am slowly building up my Vietnam forces. From looking at the rulesets I am considering going forward with, I need to start to fill in some gaps. Chain of Command Vietnam requires a platoon aside as well as supports. I still not have received Nam68 "Tour of Duty" from Battlegroup so a little unclear in respect to figure requirement. I have a sense you need more VC/PAVN than USMC but I will have to see.

Most of my forces are from Rubicon, with some resin prints from the Gunslinger Kickstarter. I am not really enamoured of the Gunslinger figures, they are a little too heroic for me. The PAVN figures are not as  bad as  the US figures. If needed, I may buy another box of Rubicon USMC. I did need some specialised PAVN figures as well as some civilians so I recently purchased some Empress metal figures. They are nice, but maybe a little smaller than the Rubicon. 

The M48 from Rubicon was a little pricey so I bought a STL (Cults 3D) for $6.95 and the model printed well. I did have a lot of problems with the supported version which printed well in 5 parts except for the fact that no holes were placed which turned into a nightmare with the unfixed resin. I drilled holes in the model but it kept on weeping resin like a large carbuncle......lesson learned! I might print another turret because I still  having some problems with it.

DHsK HMG

M48 Patton 

Next up, I will do some civilians and I also have a PAVN Mortar team from Empress. I was hoping to put on my first Vietnam game at our club's games day at the end of January but unfortunately I will not have enough figures for a CoC Vietnam ruleset. I still do not have the POD Nam 68 game from Battlegroup, and I will not have time to familiarise myself with a new set of rules. 

Norwegian Platoon and 2025 Gaming Plans

My last partially completed figures, that I wanted to complete by the end of 2024, were my Norwegian platoon for WWII Chain of Command ruleset. These figures are almost all 3D Printed in resin. You can read about their manufacturer, organisation as well as painting scheme in 2 previous posts. I had painted almost 2 squads but I had all the Leaders, Supports and two more squads to paint to complete the platoon. I finished these on December 31st but by then the New Year festivities were starting to catch up with me, thus the delay in putting them on the blog.

Complete Platoon, the newly painted figures have yet to have snow on their bases.

Colt M29 MMG Team

Medic, Forward Observer, Sniper, 2 Senior Leaders and King Haakon!

Well it has been a pretty successful painting month, I have been isolated in the United Sates for the last month with another 2 weeks to go before I can get back to my native country. I am working on various playing aids/terrain pieces now, including for CoC, WaC, Midgard as well GdA.

2025 Aspirations

I usually do not do this, as really I play too many different rulesets now, have too many armies and warbands and have too much terrain. I have been really starting to thin things out so I basically have been subtracting rather than adding but there are some forces I would like to paint and rulesets I would like to add.

Vietnam

Still have not decided on a ruleset here, I already have several but I am looking at 2 that are still in development or I have yet to receive. A Vietnam version of CoC is being developed by John Savage, the author of What a Cowboy. He really does first class work, I am not sure if this version will be ultimately official but it looks like a lot of fun. I am waiting to receive Battle Group's latest ruleset Nam 1968. It sounds interesting and I have a sense that it is aimed at squad actions rather than platoon sized games. I am more attracted to the smaller actions but I will have to see. I still have to paint maybe 15-20 figures for a Platoon sized force for Vietnam but it is a nice project.

Midgard

This is an exciting new game which covers both historical and fantasy battles from the Classical Period to the late Middle Ages. I have a lot of figures that I can use for this including the Dark Ages in Europe as well as the Crusades. My LoTR figures which will be good for fantasy. I am also putting together a Sengoku era force for the game. Semi-official force list are presently being developed for Warring States gaming with the ruleset. This will be a long term project, as I have quite few figures to paint but I am attracted by the uniformology and well as the tactics of the period. I have printed off quite a few movement trays which the ruleset requires and am just terraining them now. 

SAGA Age of Chivalry

We should be receiving the rulebook within the month. I still have not decided on a warband or painted any figures but I see many of the players in our club already have several armies, so I am hoping to borrow some in the short term for gaming.

Gaming

I am going to try restart some games with rulesets I have not played for a while, almost exclusively from the TFL stable of games. These include Picketts Charge, Kiss me Hardy as well as Algernon Pulls it Off. 

I will of course continue CoC, GdA, WaC , M&T, Congo and SAGA as well as the Alternate History games I play including Pulp Alley, Draculas America and Carnevale. 

That should keep me busy for 2025!