"By the sea we will gather for the fight"

This coming Saturday is the next Table Top Games Day in Kentville and Paul is busy refurbishing a host of old Minifig ECW figures.

I've pledged a scenario and a set of quick play, easy to pickup, rules but I figured I should wake up my own contingent of Minifig Scots.

Serving since the mid 1970's under a Macfarlane battle flag with officers in my first ever attempt at painting a Macfarlane tartan.
(I'd never seen the real thing at the time) 

The pikemen, archers and a few of the cavalry date from my college days, some of the very few, new, chunky style, Minifigs I ever bought. When the style changed, I changed to Garrison! The musketeers and lancers conversions from my revival of this forces in 2010/11. (check the ECW label for more). The Highland contingent  has been swollen by a contingent from the collection of the late John C Robertson sent along by Tim (see Megablitz blog)

The whole contingent, such as it is.
They're only outnumbered 10:1, shouldn't be a problem.

The one page rules can be found here (click) but be warned, Saturday's game will be their first play test.

For those who are wondering about the post title (I know, I know, not strictly relevant but...):

Intermission 2

Five weeks on light duties! I thought I would get a ton of painting and sculpting done but no, hardly managed to lift a brush. However, I'm slowly getting back to it, a colour here, a bit of coat there.

My new Scots don't look likely to win any awards but they should serve well enough when done.

The stubby guy on the left with platform shoes is one of my old Minifigs, next to him is a Hat 28mm for size and then 2 of the partially sculpted Scots who seem to be suffering a degree of scale creep already. . 

At this stage, it'll be Labour Day before I get to mold making but it is progress.

Originally, I was planning to do 2 pike, 2 shot plus officer, ensign and drummer and spare heads then spin cast them but I am far behind schedule and it now looks like mid-late fall before I get my casting equipment set up so I have decided to go with 2 generic figures to be drop cast. Officers etc will then be converted from these.  Luckily, I have seen several old prints of Scots musketeers without apostles so mine will also make do without so that the 2 figures may be finished as either pike or shot..

Recycle, Re-use, Re-arm

I sympathize with Charles Stuart at the moment, Civil War looms and the war chest is empty and no hope of new funds in the near future. Luckily, apart from raising new regiments from scratch, I also have some  old veterans who have remained loyal and will answer the call.

 These take the form of some Minifigs bough back in the mid-70's when the change over from S-Range to Staid & Stout ranges was happening and they were among the last Minifigs I ever bought, but they fought well for me, not as ECW Scots but first as Valdurian pikemen and archers and then as late Medieval Scots, tucked away amongst Heritage, Garrison and various other figures. After carefully extracting these, the total remaining came to 1 mounted General (probably Rupert though I would have expected me to have ordered Montrose), 4 Scots cavalry including 2 hairy barbarians with bare arms and huge poleaxes, 20 Pikemen in neat kilts and helmets, 10 archers in formal dress and 1 brawny swordsmen.  I'm sure there used to be more of the latter as well as at least 1 with 2 handed claidhmore  but there we are and after all its been about 35 years and at most there are 2 or 3 missing. I suspect the cavalry and swordsmen were samples not followed up on. I also found 2 unpainted officers, a piper and a drummer that I acquired much later, from somewhere or other. 

Anyway, how to turn these into useful units? (without ordering more - the sensible solution)  First the cavalry, 4 men is not an imposing unit. If I wasn't going to buy more, I needed to fall back on the old ways and convert something, after searching the various unpainted, broken and/or orphaned boxes, I found just the ticket. A handful of left over PB Range Pictish cavalry. Ok, so not the first thing that popped into your mind, but there they are, same style of horse and body so they will fit in once dressed, and dressed in simple long sleeved, knee length tunic, it would be a snap to add boots, bonnets, gauntlets and plaid, as well as replacing broken spears. As an added bonus, its been ages since I set out to do a major conversion and I hugely enjoyed the process. I should probably have stripped the paint off first, but as it is I was able to leave the original painted faces. Now to do 4 more.

 The Picts had been a favoured unit of mine. They were raised one summer with one goal in mind, hunt down and destroy Simon's Elite, barbarian light cavalry unit known as the Goths. These fierce warriors who carried a huge dead (presumably) fly entombed in epoxy putty as a standard, never rolled less than +2 as I recall and had never been defeated. (These were in our pre-historic (literally) WRG 3rd edition days). I painted the Picts in as scruffy a fashion as I could manage, drilled them in wedge formation and sent them into battle where I was rewarded by seeing the Goths roll down and break. Sweet revenge!  So you can see it would give me pleasure to find a new place for some of those veterans, long without a proper home, to serve again.  (The rest are being refurbished as miscellaneous barbarian mercenaries for my Lydian army and will appear in due course in the4 Gathering of Hosts blog.)   

Next I turned my attention to my pike and bow unit. I don't think the kilted pike quite matched even the then current picture of Coventer Scots pike but I see that more of Montrose's highanders are now thought to have fought as pike and shot units rather than wild eyed swordsmen so close enough for me.  Pike and bow still doesn't sound right and after contemplating where to find suitable shot, I finally decided to re-arm some of the pikemen to make up a 1:1 pike/shot unit. The arquebus I made for my 40mm landsknechts was a little skinny and with a bit of trimming, makes a decent 25mm musket but I also tried turning a pike into a musket with putty. I like the borrowed musket best. A 24 man pike/shot regiment is a little small but acceptable in the circumstances. adding the officers and drummer to the shot wings, I only need to convert 8 pikemen to shot.

If I scrounge one other highlander, then I will also have a 12 man Highland bow unit. 

Old toy soldiers never die.