Alan Martin RIP

Alan studying a losing position in a game of Blucher

My oldest friend and fellow wargamer Alan Martin died this morning after a long, and largely successful, fight against cancer. Alan and I first met at Primary School when we were about 5 years old, met again in Secondary School, started wargaming, and stayed friends ever since. By the time I got back into the hobby Alan was more into the painting of the figures and creating stunning terrain than actually playing games, but we coaxed him back onto the wargames table over the last year or so, and he also loved board-games and even D&D. Alan contributed items on creating wargaming terrain to blogs like Wargames News and Terrain and pictures of his figures graced several commercial rule sets. His greatest joy in his last year though was his Grandson, Harry, not yet a year old. I was glad to be able to say my goodbyes to him in person on Monday, and he'll be sorely missed by family, friends and fellow wargamers.

Alan DM'ing Dungeons & Dragons in Hougoumont

Alan and Nick walking the battlefield at Waterloo last summer

Casualty Markers and Wash Tests

While waiting for my 1/300th North Africa divisions to arrive I thought I'd paint up some casualty markers using old Airfix figures (you know, those ones that came in every box and were next to no use!) With our SLS rules 9and others)  we mark damage with smoke puffs, which also gives a good sense of where the battle is happening, but once a unit has only 1 damage left it is "spent" and retreats and can't advance until rallied - so you a) have units out of the action surrounded by smoke-puffs and b) have lots of smoke puffs tied up doing nothing really! So in 6mm I have casualty markers that equate to "spent" for units and I thought it would be useful to do the same in 20mm, esp with the Waterloo 60 planning (that's going to need a lot of smoke puffs!)

I'd also promised myself some time at the start of the year to review my painting style. I still don't think I'm up to doing 3-shade approaches. I might try the off highlight, but its the use of better washes where my biggest and quickest improvements can probably be made. I used to use Nuln Oil ink diluted, but GW now sells it as a wash, which I don't think I'd noticed so was still diluting it! On 6mm it still looked OK, but in 20mm it was giving too much of a dullness to everything and not filling cracks. So I decided with these casualties to finish in 4 different ways:

• No wash at all, just to show the impact that the washes do have
• My existing 50:50 Nuln Oil wash
• Neat Nuln Oil wash
• Army Painter Strong Quickshade applied by brush ( OK I know that Alan and my brother both mix their own from furnisher polish but I haven't the time/confidence in consistency!)

All had a Vallejo Matt varnish, brush applied (after several disasters with spray).

Here are some of the results - I think I have the captions right!

50:50 Nuln Oil Wash and Water

Neat Nuln Oil Wash

Quickshade

Unwashed

50:50 Nuln Oil Wash

Quickshade

So actually neat Nuln Oil and Quick Shade both giver pretty good results, and Nuln Oil dries  a lot faster, doesn't smell, and Quickshade still needs the matt varnish.

So I think my plan is (since I have a £20 tin of Quickshade!):

• Use QS on the WW2 1/300th armour and figures I'm about to do as it will look good as dirt as well as shading
• Since my next "batch" is 20mm ECW or WOTR so more forgiving than Napoleonics do a unit in each of neat Nuln Oil Wash and QS and compare the results.

Then I can take stock and make a final decision. Whilst that QS tin looks expensive will be interesting to see how fast I get through neat Nuln Oil at GW prices!

Still won't ever win any painting competitions though!

Winter 20mm French Painting

December and January were dedicated to doing nine French Napoleonic units as part of my commitment to the Waterloo @ 60 plan - I get to do all the French. All Newline figures. Strikes me the quality of design is a bit variables - the standing Cuirassiers are beautiful, but the Guard HA appear to have Guard FA coat-tails, and the centre companies of the Light Infantry don't have swords. I'm also not loving the mix of poses in the unit packs - one of the reasons for going to metal was to get away from the random collection of poses in plastics. I think I might in future buy the figures in pose packs so that I get exactly what I want.

Here are the units.

Cuirassiers

First time I've done a trumpeter in Imperial Livery - like it more than I thought I'd do.

Guard Horse Artillery

A rather dark shot, but coat tails clearly visible. Officer was converted from a Hussar Elite Company (I put a mounted figure on all my HA bases so you can see which they are)

Light Infantry

I did two of the 4 battalions as the 14e Legere as at one time they had coloured cloth (light blue for centre companies, red for carabiners, yellow for voltigeurs) wrapped around their shakos. In fact this might only have been when they had white "Imperial" uniforms but I thought it would be fun to do anyway! The other two battalions are standard light infantry. Of course realised afterwards that most regiments had 3 battalions fielded at Waterloo, so will need to start painting in 3s not 2s!

And a final shot of the whole group.