English Civil War Parliamentarian Soldier Bust

This might seem a little random and out of the blue, so I think it might help if I explain the background behind what I'm writing about in this post.

This bust is not my own work, the original pieces were sculpted by my grandfather at least a decade before I was born. He used to sculpt, mold, cast and paint these for his own enjoyment, though he also sold them alongside oil paintings and wood carvings. I've always been very close to my grandparents, and particularly my grandfather, having spent much of my early childhood living with them. Indeed I think its fair to say that its from him that I gained an early interest in military history, sculpting and painting, so I've got quite a strong attachment to his work. Though it has only been relatively recently that these interests, and especially the creative ones, have combined in my hobby and works. I'd even like to think in a way that maybe there's a bit of talent in the genes!

I was recently horrified to discover that my grandfather as part of a clear out of 'rubbish', for reasons I won't go into, was disposing of a number of old molds and other odds and ends. After convincing him how important it was to me that these were preserved, I ended up rooting through the bins and was able to recover a single salvagable mold. After a few days cleaning off all the accumilated mould and gunk of a couple of decades in damp storeage conditions I had this 40cm bust of a ECW Parlimentarian Infantryman.

Sadly the others had deteriorated too much in storage, including a Royalist counterpart to this one, though further digging unearthed an unused plaster cast of the Cavalier and two more of an British Napelonic Infantryman of the 88th Foot - I'll be making molds of these at a later date.

This evening I tried my hand at making a cast from the mold, in order to create a new master using Gedeo Resin Plaster. Essentially this is plaster of paris, but tougher. I decided to use it in case the mold disintegrated with the first pull, so I'd have the best quality copy possible.

However, as it turned out I need'nt of worried. With a great deal of satisfaction, and a little emotion I must confess I've pulled a 'new' master of the bust from a mold older then I am. This is the new 'master', which has I'm sure you'll agree turned out pretty well!

My plan next is to store this one in the best possible conditions in case the mold fails in the future, and do a second cast with standard plaster of paris. This next version I'll fit with a hook and paint up for display.

English Civil War - Edward Montagu's Regiment of Foote (Part 4)

Thats the first block of Pike done, bar the leaders, next up for some Musketeers - though I've few other things to do first! Damnation, still I've stolen a march on those Royalist's!

English Civil War - Edward Montagu's Regiment of Foote (Part 3)

Time to start painting my English Civil War regiment, that of Edward Montagu.

I'm using for reference 'The English Civil War 1642-1651, An Illustrated Military History' by Philip Haythornwaite and first published by Blandford Press in 1983. Reliable sources for uniforms of the period are a bit sketchy and I'm not too concerned in total realism, so I'm using a colour plate from the book which presents Montagu's regiment as wearing a crimson jacket with various browns and leathers for other gear.

The result is this test model, very simply done with base coats including predominantly Blood Red and Khemri Brown with a Devlan Mud wash - I'm not spending alot of time on each model as they'll be in big units, so lots of them.



So thats Roundheads 1 - Cavaliers 0, come on Tim or your gonna lose the war before it's started!

Warlord Games ECW Parliamentarian Foote (Part 2)

And now for the second update in my first look at the Warlord Games English Civil War Parliamentarian Infantry.

I've now completed basic assembly of the first box, there are as you'd expect a few gaps to fill but I've got to say overal I am very impressed by the quality of the box, not to mention the quantity!

In total I've made up 12 Pikemen (three basic poses), 24 Muskteers (three basic poses) and a Command Group of 5, though in practice only four will be used, there are spare bodies still as well and with a bit on time I have no doubt you could raise the count higher using these.



I've already commented on the basic troops in the previous post, so now just a quick look at the Command Sprue.



As well as including further bodies, suitable for noble Officers there are a good number of accessories (though not excessively so), parts for a Drummer, Fifer, Sergeant, a couple of Standard Bearer options (either with a molded standard or one designed for a paper/fabric banner, addional hats, more ornate swords and pistols, it's a well thought out piece and mold lines are minimal, if anything I found it better then the regular sprues. With the spare Pike bodies you have left over it allows you to create a suitable command.



Theres really very little else to say now, next step will be filling gaps in this batch of figures and planning my painting, while getting on with assembling more figures, I plan on building two units from my three boxes initially - then it's onto the Cavalry. If the quality of these is anything like the Infantry they should be a real treat!

Warlord Games ECW Parliamentarian Foote (Part 1)

And here we go, delving into the unknown!

I've now assembled the first sprue of my Parliamentarian Infantry from Warlord Games, the box set contains four sprues of models, one Command Sprue and three of infantry, as well as a further sprue of bases. They are advertised as allowing the modeller to create a 40 man regiment with a retail price of £18.00, which certainly makes them a good deal compaired too a comparable amount of GW plastics.

Each infantry sprue has 8 Muskteer and 5 Pike bodies with two basic pose variations for each (they are single piece Legs, Torso and Heads), the arms are for the most part seperate with three basic poses (Muskets giving fire, shouldered or at ease, Pikes charged, lowered or at ease), hats and helmets are seperate and there are a few other accessories such as feathers and swords. The result is that though you have plentiful troops there is comparatively little scope for variety in a unit.



The components are all nicely sculpted, and have a good amount of detail and go together well - the mold lines are fairly typical, but are with a few exceptions fairly easy to remove, only the feet provide any sort of headache.




The limited poses are acceptable for a regimented unit, my only real gripe is the headgear, there are too few of some examples (though Warlord do sell spares seperately), but more to the point some of them are simply too big and do not sit naturally on the head when you get close, it's a minor thing really, but it does bug me somewhat and detracts IMHO from what is otherwise a kit which is both nice in terms of quality and excellent value.

The question is how many models can you actually get from the kit, and how they look together as a whole, I'll find out soon as I'm about to start construction of the rest of the box, for now though, one sprue down.