The Golden Hind

I'm currently enjoying building models and painting them regardless of any future gaming usefulness. Yesterday saw me dig out two rather battered old examples of the Airfix Golden Hind kit. This is the old kit that dates back to the mid-1950s, not the newer 1/72nd scale kit they produced in recent years. I reckon this model is about 1/350th scale so it could in theory work alongside my Great Northern War 6mm armies.

The two models, which had been built probably in the late 1970s, were both somewhat damaged but I managed to get one half-decent model out of them.

I did consider having a go at rigging the model but in the end I decided against as I don't have any suitable thread and I'd rather just get the model done to a useable wargaming standard.

I haven't added any flags at this stage as I thought it would be good to keep it as generic as possible until I have a scenario that needs a ship. 

Pictish cavalry

A recent addition to the Pict force is this unit of horse.

They are Gripping Beast's generic Dark Age Cavalry modified by the addition of various parts from their Dark Age Picts set.

The modifications are straightforward - just swapping out heads and shields mostly. For a bit of variety, the chap in the purplish tunic has a beard added from Green Stuff and I replaced his spatha with a shorter sword from the Pict set and added the appropriate scabbard from the same source.

These models complete the set I need for a planned Lion Rampant 2 play through of the old "Ambush!" scenario from an ancient copy of Military Modelling magazine (or was it Battle for Wargamers). When I've done that I might have a go at re running it with Infamy Infamy.

Getting my head around X Corps

Having recently found Edward Foord's Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812 on Project Gutenberg, I thought I'd have a go at updating my homemade timeline of the Riga/Livonia campaign and really getting a handle on what happens when and, more importantly, where.

I've laid out the map of Latvia I bought when we visited the country in 2006. 

Naturally life is not simple. The map is double sided and the actions of Grawert's Prussian Division in the Mitau-Riga sector are on the opposite side from Granjean's 10th Division around Dünaburg.

Add to that the fact that everywhere has two names (Mitau/Jelgava, Gross Ekau/Iecava, Dünaburg/Daugavpils), most Russian commanders have at least two English transliterations of their names, and all events happened on two different dates depending which calendar was used by the people recording them.... I think I may need to go and lie down soon.

More architecture for Riga

I've finished a few more bits of 1812 Riga including the partly burned-out house I showed previously.

As usual (for me, nowadays) this is foamcore and balsa wood on an expanded PVC board base. The base is scribed as flagstones using an old ball-point pen. The stable block is roofed with Merit pantile sheet while the main house is laser-cut tiles mixed with home-made equivalents after I ran out of the commercial ones.

Also from foamcore and PVC board is this cluster of pig pens. I'll probably addd some gates to the individual pens made out of thin wood from the wooden boxes that camembert cheese comes in. 

Finally, as one side of the Riga board seems increasingly to be representing an area of former animal market, I've created a couple of mostly depleted haystacks.

As I said in the previous post, these are made from wooden rod, a couple of map pins and sculpted Milliput.

I think Riga is pretty much finished now. Anything else I add is purely for decoration and won't play a significant role in game play.