The church at Legnickie Pole...my first 10mm building

The church, which is now conveniently the museum of the battle of Liegnitz, was built as the Church of Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary  at the end of the thirteenth century but looks older. This is a photo from the site -unfortunately only in Polish- and can be found here. According to the spiel (using Google translate) the church was burnt down twice during the Thirty Years War but was rebuilt both times. Link to the Museum website is    http://www.museo.pl/content/view/1118/377/

My model, which has been altered slightly for one reason or another is based on this. Luckily, and for a change, there are pictures on the net that cover three of the four faces with only the tower aspect left out.

Using the ubiquitous cereal packet card I marked out the various walls. You may notice the porch walls aren't on there just yet. 

When I was in Wilko's the other day I grabbed a 'sample' of a piece of wallpaper that was a reasonably good representation of stonework, bit regular but not too bad. Using PVA I glued all the pieces onto the paper making sure that the lines of 'stones' would be horizontal to the ground.  Once it was dried I cut out the windows using a new craft blade.

The tower was glued together first to use as a square base and stuck to an oversize piece of card  that will be eventually cut down to be the base then the other three parts were glued to it. Once it had all dried I realised that the smaller of the the two had been put on the wrong way round and the door should have been on the other side but then I did say it was based on the real thing. (That's my excuse anyway.) You can also see the buttresses that I added to break up the regularity. The 'brickwork' wallpaper can be seen to good effect.

The whole building has been given a coat of chocolate brown undercoat and after various dry brushes and washes to show different colours of stonework this is what it looks like. The base has been trimmed, textured with sand and painted. In both of the larger buildings I have glued ordinary stones to add some weight to the model. 

Here is my method for making tiled roofs. Long strips of cereal box card are scored more than half the width with the back of a craft knife blade. Starting from the bottom, strips are glued down with the next layer overlapping the previous. The edges of both sides have been exceeded but it doesn't matter because it can be trimmed when the glue has dried.

Da,da! The almost-finished model. Everything is done apart from adding some areas of flock on the base and possibly some ivy climbing up one or a couple of walls.Fascia boards of card have been glued along the ends of the roofs to cover the lines of tiles.

PS The white bits in the lower picture have since been painted.

Some catching up to do (blogwise that is)

 Since my last post I have gone to town a bit but up until now haven't documented any of it. I have painted another unit of levy infantry from the town of  Jędrzejów -see also the archers below- and four units of light infantry, three archers and a crossbow, all of which are briefly documented below.

As the units are all basically the same I have only taken photos of the different standards for each of them and left off the other bases. All the standards are conjectural by the way.

On the left is the only unit of crossbows in the army while on the right is the standard for a unit of archers. Both are from the town of  Jędrzejów on the border between the states of Lesser Poland and Kraków and puts it 21 miles (33km) to the west of Chmielnik so if it fought anywhere it was more likely to be at Chmielnik.

The second photo is of the other two units of archers. The unit on the left is from the Lubomirski estates from south-eastern Poland while the right hand unit is from the estates of the Jastrzębiec clan.

From the beginning of January I started to keep a record on my painting progress, so another Ecxel table was produced. In that month I painted 64 cavalry and 17 infantry; in February I got better and painted 33 cavalry and 76 infantry.

Now it’s mid March and the painting has slowed down a little –only 6 cavalry and 59 infantry to date- but that’s because in my hour a day I am making a few bits of terrain. I have started with a model based on the church at Legnicke Pole which apparently pre-dates the Invasion. More on that in the next post.

Another quick update

I have sorted out an Excel program which does all the number crunching of my Mongol Project for me. Here is the latest as of February 28^th. So now all I have to do is keep it up to date and then copy it across each time. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Nationality	Manufacturer	Troop Type	Units - Inf	Units -Cav	Figs -Inf	Figs -Cav
Mongol	Irregular	EHC Keshik		1		21
	Irregular	MC/HC		3		63
	Irregular	LC		7		84
	Pendraken	HC		1		21
	Pendraken	LC		1		12
		Total		13		201
Chinese	Irregular	HC		1		21
	Irregular	LC		3		36
	Irregular	HI	3		130
	Irregular	M/LI (X Bow)	3		84
	Irregular	M/LI (Bow)	3		60
	Irregular	Rocket	1		8
		Total	10	4	282	57
Khwarazmia	Irregular	HC		3		63
	Irregular	LC		3		36
	Irregular	MI	1		30
		Total	1	6	30	99
Poland	Pendraken	HC		3		60
	Pendraken	MI levy	2		60
	Pendraken	LI X Bow
	Pendraken	Inf Peasants
	Pendraken	LI Bow	2		30
		Total	4	3	90	60
		Grand Totals	15	26	402	417

Cavalier Show in Tonbridge

Last Sunday, 23^rd, I went to the Cavalier Show in Tonbridge, the annual show of the Tunbridge Wells club. This is a show I haven’t been to since the very early 1980’s and if I remember correctly it was in a school back then. This time it was at a venue known as the Angel Centre, only five minutes walk from the bus stop. Yes, I can catch a direct bus from Maidstone to Tonbridge. Had a really good time, some nice games on show including a 28mm plastic Marlburian ‘Tabletop Teaser’ by my old club –going waaay back when to the 70’s and early 80’s- the South East Essex Military Society, SEEMS, using a sheet of the increasingly popular faux teddy-bear fur laid over some contour-creating foam shapes underneath. The figures were from Wargames Factory, nicely painted and they used a very novel gun smoke idea. The basis was cotton wool but they had teased it out into an open bell shape so as to look like a smoke ring at the end. In the centre of the ring was a representation of a cannon ball. Very effective. More information on the club can be found here at https://www.google.co.uk/#q=south+east+essex+military+society

Another game that I noticed was a 10mm version of Kohima from the North London Wargames Group using the very nice range of Pendraken figures.

http://www.pendraken.co.uk/World-War-II-c19/Japanese-sc200/  

I happened to mention that they seemed to have missed off the most iconic area of the battlefield, that of the Tennis Court, and was politely informed that as the battle was almost in scale, the front was seven thousand yards long and the Tennis Court would be on the next table! That will teach me to act like an anorak! The gentleman I spoke to –Hertsblue on the Pendraken Forum as I found out a little later- who also told me that the game was part of an ongoing campaign series they are running at shows and that the next game would indeed feature the Tennis Court. Good stuff.

I also had a chat with Mr. Badger from Pilum Painting –a WD3 Forum member whose stall was displaying some nicely painted figures, all at what I thought to be reasonable prices for the finish.  More information here http://www.pilumpainting.co.uk/

I also met up with another mate from way back when in Southend, we had a great chat for several hours and are arranging a game at my gaff in a few weeks hence.

Brilliant.

Now some random shots of some of the other games on display.

From Deal Wargames, a good  WW II Far East beach landing.

The Tonbridge club put on a Napoleonic naval version of the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent using the lovely Langton ships. Don't see many naval games at shows, nice one. www.westkentwargamers.dyndns.org/‎

Obviously there were other games but for some of them my camera got a bad attack of the shakes or the lighting wasn't good enough...bad workman and tools blaming, sorry. A small American/ British War of 1812 scenario with what looked like a few 28mm battalions a side run by Richard Partridge, another  old colleague of mine from back in the day . More information on the nice little chaps from a company I'd never heard of can be found here: 

http://www.knuckleduster.com/shop/ .

   

A 15mm Great Northern War fought on snow terrain by Crawley Wargames Club, www.crawleywargamesclub.org.uk/‎ an Ancient Spanish game in 15mm with some brightly painted figures and a nice town by the Essex Warriors www.essexwarriors.org/‎ and a large early WWII 15mm with French facing off against Germans. 

Back on Track

I must admit a bit of artistic licence here. As I mentioned in the Templar post (Latest Polish above), the unit was to be made up of one Templar base and two guest knight bases. The problem was that I have been unable to find the names of any guest knights so I had a look at this site

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ZurichRoll/

and chose some at random that I thought would look good together. Therefore we have representatives of the Sax family (yellow and red vertical halves), Lupfen (blue over white horizontal halves), Castell (red and white opposite quarters) and Ellenbach (yellow and green opposite quarters). Knowing my luck none of them were anywhere near Poland at the time but I like them. 

Once again there are figures from different ranges here. As well as some of the later medieval, the chaps with the kite shields are from the Norman range with the shield bosses filed off. I even went mad and converted a couple by exchanging shields.

As well as the usual base shots, I have taken a picture so that you can see what the whole unit looks like together. Personally, I think these are amongst the best 10mm I have ever painted and I am well chuffed with them.

Next up, the rest of the Lubomirski levy and then the first unit of LI archers.

Sorry, but it's another brief diversion.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m supposed to be painting Polish but I couldn’t really resist this one. The new Pendraken Chinggis Khan, Great Naccara and qara sulde. (Qara sulde translates as black standard and was used in times of war whereas qara cagän translates as white standard and was used in times of peace.) 

The figures themselves are a joy to paint although I think the camel’s legs are a bit long for a Bactrian camel. The raised part of the base is made from two small pieces of garden type slate glued together, the edges were surrounded with small stones to create a slight curve and it was all smoothed out with some filler. Again, I have painted little dots on the clump foliage to break up the base and add a different colour to the mix.

The piece has been entered into the Pendraken painting competition.

Just thought I'd let you know, the other two bases for the Templar unit are just about to have the dry brushing on the bases done and that will be that  unit finished.

Amazing! It worked.

I usually stick figures down on strips of wood to paint them and for ages I have been using a glue gun to stick them down. This was all very well on 15's or 25's where the weight of the figure is an overriding factor, but the little 10mm chaps aren't that heavy, the bases are comparatively small  and on top of that, I was getting through a fair number of glue sticks in the process.
  A couple of days ago I was wandering around the DIY section of our local Poundland when I had one of my Light Drizzle moments, (in other words possibly a good idea but not exactly a life changing Brain Storm, hence Light Drizzle). I purchased the item in question, tried it at home and it works a treat. What is it? Double sided sellotape. One side gets stuck to the strip, peel off the backing and Robert is most definitely your Mother's Brother. Works like a charm; 10mm infantry are happily stuck for the duration of the painting.. So for the outlay of £1 you get three reels of the stuff and I am using it in roughly 6 inch lengths. I don't know how long each reel is but I'm guessing that it's at least 3 feet, possibly 4.

Still on a wargaming front, I'm off to Cavalier 2014 in Tonbridge Wells next weekend. It's reasonably local now -only half hour by bus- and a show I haven't been to for at least 28 years, in fact about the same time that George Gush published his Renaissance Armies book! Looking forward to it and I'll put in a report in a future post, probably with some pictures.

The First Infantry Unit

This unit is from the Lubomirski estates which were all in the Kraków area of south eastern Poland. The family had residences/holdings/lands in approximately sixteen places so I have made this an amalgam of some of them –with sixteen villages there might even be enough for another unit later on.

I have used a mix of Pendraken ranges here, the armoured figures are obviously from the medieval range but I have included some of the Saxon range for some variation and to give the impression of a reasonably well equipped unit, but with some not so.

The clan charge on the shield is the same as that used by the Drużyna clan and also the town of Szreniawa near Poznań.

Latest Polish

This isn’t a complete unit...yet. Trawling through the internet I found that there were 500 troops from the Order of the Knights Templar present at Liegnitz, broken down into 3 Templar Knights, 83 other mounted troops and the rest were infantry from the Templar villages in the area. I have translated this into one base of Templars and the other two of guest knights and their sergeants. I may well do the infantry as another foot unit. Now I know that this isn’t historically accurate but I like it.

So, the first base is complete and the figures for the other two are mostly finished. But flippin’ eck, they don’t half take a time to paint! When you think of medieval knights the first thing that springs to mind is armour, in copious amounts. Not true, especially for the mounted types on caparisoned horses. Painting quartered shields, tabards and caparisons takes time...a lot of time, even more so in 10mm.

But anyway, here it is, the Templar Knights base which I’ve also entered into the Pendraken Painting competition. As soon as the others are done I’ll post them as well.

By the way, my mate of Jace Photography took the pictures because my little point and click is not clever enough on close in focus even with the 'macro' enabled.