Completed British Division in Review - Plus a Manly Surprise

 At long last I have completed refurbishing and remounting an entire British division.  This is just one of what is essentially four divisions in the original Tennant collection, so there is still much work yet to be done.  Below is a sobering excel sheet showing the refurbished figures in the red box, and a daunting number of regiments yet to be given the shiny treatment.  A few bits and pieces from other divisions are done as well, such as some artillery, cavalry and skirmishers, but just a smattering at present.  At least most are already expertly painted by Mr. Tennant; only the three KGL regiments will have to be painted from scratch.

The last of the division's line infantry to be finished  is the 18th Portuguese Regiment commanded by Lt. Col. Sebastião Pinto de Araújo Correia.

Just enough room inside the regimental square for the two commanders.

Attack columns in echelon.

So happy these hand painted flags survived the journey across the Atlantic!

I did add the finial and crevat just to complete the beautifully painted standard.

The Portuguese battalions were in great shape and came together very quickly.  I only hope the French battalions are in as good a condition, as they will be next up.

For those of you with a strong stomach, you can try watching my attempt at a fly by over the division.  It is kind of like Sergei Bondarchuk meets Dollywood, as the camera appears to have been mounted on the world's most rickety wooden roller coaster.  I did at least learn how to make and embed a video into the blog, so I guess there is that at least...

 

Our son the electrical engineer was in town recently and brought along his soldering iron to install an LED lighting kit into my display cabinet.  The lighting upgrade was just in time.  The British Division will need to be housed here once again while I begin construction on the battlefield terrain for Vimiero.  I do need to get a couple of extra shelves though!

 And for a completely different manly surprise, I finally finished painting Conan the Barbarian!  The figure was a gift from my daughter which has taken me far too long to get painted.  I love to balance the Napoleonic painting with little side adventures like this just to keep things fresh and fun.

Staring down some skellies.  If they weren't undead, they would know better than to attack Conan!

At first his skin was painted over in a matt finish, but in consultation with my daughter, we decided he needed to glisten with sweat.

I wanted him to have a slight forward lean as if balancing on the balls of his toes, but from this angle he is a bit like the leaning tower of Piza!

Remind me to brush off my figures really well before varnishing.  Despite my best efforts I still ended up with some static grass stuck to his butt!

This is that forward aggressive lean I was going for.  I'm looking forward to getting him into a dungeon full of monsters and evil critters!

Thanks as always for visiting and hope you have enjoyed my journey into the world of miniatures.  Comments are greatly appreciated so if you made it this far, by all means drop me a line using the comment box.  Next up will be a few projects that have been on my desk for far too long; a 28mm camp for my Napoleonic DBN armies, and a few elements for a Russian contingent at the battle of Grunwald in the 15th century.

Featherstone, Tennant and Higgs - Another Discovery and a Very Special WIP

As our nation's representatives in Congress prepare to vote a second time to impeach, I thought I would take some comfort in my hobby that has brought so much joy to me, and hopefully share a little joy with my readers.  Last month I received a package from Dick Tennant, which was the culmination of his lifetime of devotion to the hobby.  Amongst the items I received were these little gems.  Dick had reached out to me over a year ago asking if I wanted them and I had arranged for them to go to the home of a dear friend, Terry Webb.  As I found out more about the figures, I felt they were just to integral to the collection to break them apart from the whole, so with Terry's kind permission they have remained with me.

These miniatures were painted and designed by Dick Higgs, Design Director for Minifigs, and used on the cover of Donald Featherstone's book, Military Modeling.  The figures themselves were cast by Neville Dickenson, but never produced commercially by Minifigs, so as far as I know are unique.

I will have to ask Mr. Tennant how he came into possession of them, but it speaks to his early involvement with the founders of our hobby.

There have been some very slight adjustments to the figures since their debut on the cover of Military Modelling; the right hand on the rightmost hussar has been straightened to a more natural pose and the painting of his eyes corrected.  Some red striping has been added to the sword tassel on the leftmost hussar.  I will have to ask Mr. Tennant if those were some of his additions.

 

 After posting a story about the Tennant Collection I received a comment from Mark, over at the Man of TIN blog ( https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/richard-tennant-and-donald-featherstones-incomplete-wargaming/ ), regarding some additional connection showing the collaborative nature of the relationship between Tennant and Featherstone.  Below is an image from Featherstone's Complete Wargaming,with some of Dick Tennant's collection.  Mark's copy of the book is signed by Donald Featherstone and Inscribed to Dick Tennant!

 

Dick had indicated to me that photographs of his own collection had gotten all jumbled up with Featherstone's own and others, Hence the incorrect captioning of the original edition with corrections penciled in, and also some incorrect attribution in the Airfix guide by Bruce Quarrie on which Featherstone also contributed.

The picture above was reproduced from this original

Photography has come a long way since then!  This is the cousin to the 13th Light Dragoon pictured.  The 9th will get the same refresh to their paint and a good cleaning before too long, but there are so many units to bring back up into top notch condition!

And Now for Something Completely Different!

Below is a special Christmas present from my daughter to accompany last years gift of an anthology of the works of Robert E. Howard and his Conan stories.

A beautiful 40mm resin casting she found on Etsy, which will accompany my 40mm figures for a Dungeons and Dragoons type game called The Fantasy Trip.

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Clearly modeled on the movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger!

A shot of his back showing his mighty thews!

As a parting shot I will link to the video just released by Schwarzenegger trying to digest and move past the events at the capital last week, featuring the Conan sword as a metaphor for American democracy - a sword must be tempered repeatedly to make it strong and resilient, and our democracy has certainly undergone a lot of that over the last four years.  I have faith we will emerge the stronger for it.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck

Conan of Cimmeria and his Hyborian Allies and Foes

One of the ways I try to keep my painting interest going is to mix up the kind of projects I work on.  So while the last several posts have been about Napoleonics, while I was working on those I almost always had another creative diversion in process as well.  Here are a few new elements for my Hyborian armies from the age of Conan.  Paul Potter is really the guilty party here as he had some lovely Hyborian armies for sale at Nashcon and so provided the bulk of the troops.

Many can be seen here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/648832952224598/for_sale_search/?forsalesearchtype=all&query=potter&referral_surface=direct_link&availability=available

Thanks to my daughter I have an anthology of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories that is my bedtime reading these days.  It's a good thing as I am relatively new to the stories, my only exposure to Conan being the movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In any event I now have Kushites, Shemites and Stygian armies ready for the game Hordes of the Things, by Phil and Sue Barker. 

Below is a map of the Hyborian world just to orient any strangers to the world of Conan.

All of the armies needed a few additional elements to really make them playable so I have added a few extras. 

 A Shemite priestess with her Magician acolyte

 A Kushite Shaman and his guard

 The 15mm figures of the shaman, Kushite hero and the Priestess with Magician are all from the miniature line by Crom's Anvil in the UK.

https://cromsanvil.co.uk/characters.html

 

 Kushite Hero

Conan with Valeria

This element was actually mostly Paul's work, but I added a few more bodies to the pile.

Howard must have had a thing for green jade, because he is always writing about green towers of stone rising from the jungle, invariably populated by some horrid monster or wicked sorcerer.  This particular tower was provided by Terry Webb as some swag for attending the Good, Bad, and Ugly Hordes of the Things (HotT) tournament last year.

And lastly, a stronghold for the wicked magician's of Stygia, modeled on the ancient Egyptian culture.  Have to love Amazon as I found this lovely little statue for just a few bucks.

Now that these elements are complete it is time to get these armies out of their cigar boxes and on to a battle ground!

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog.  Don't forget to follow my blog or drop me a comment if you have enjoyed this work.  Y'all stay safe out there!