A Little Squeeze on the Side

Aside from painting some new figures and armies, I've been diddling about with some much older ones. My SYW Prussian army was painted around 14 or so years ago and the basing used hand cut cardboard squares with that old wood coloured flock. In short, I've been meaning to give them a touch up for some time. 

Here are half of my infantry (almost) complete. I say almost due to the fact I damaged one flag during un-basing and have not glued the unit name tags on the backs either. 

I'm very pleased with the result - just what I was going for. I was after a good standard for play rather than a 'internet professional' level of job (I'm not capable of that anyway.) Added to this, after two Prussian armies, I find getting Prussian blue 'right' quite difficult. Getting a good highlight is the hard part in my opinion. Something that looks good to the eye is simply too bright for the coats the soldiers wore. There is often a disconnect between what is seen as a good painting standard today and what things looked like in history. Any surviving coats were very dark. 

When I put them together it looks like such a small group - guess that will happen when my last LARGE painting project was two Napoleonic armies with a combined total of 1056 infantry, around 80 gunners (+cannon) and over 120 cavalry. 

Don't they look good in their ranks ... ready to march into the guns for Prussian glory!

Another side project was a single figure for my good friend, Mick. Fired by nostalgic zeal, Mick purchased Heroquest and we've had a few games. He decided the paint all the mini's and since I played the wizard - who I call 'Ronson' - he asked me to paint it up. The paint job was quite difficult as the miniature details were in very low relief. After base coating and some washes I thought I had muffed it - but perseverance paid off and I'm once again happy with the result. 

These other images are of a board I set up for a recent game of 'O' Group I played. This terrain has not seen the light of day for over 6-7 years - at the time I stopped playing FOW. 

As for 'O' Group ... what can I say. It is a typical Dan Brown set of rules ... painfully slow with dice rolls upon dice rolls deciding every factor of the game rather than player decision making. 

I find the 'Brown style' (evident in General de Brigade, Pickett's Charge and 'O' Group - all of which I've played) to be a good representative of an outdated method of writing rules.