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As you probably know (because I probably worte about it a lot in this thread many months ago), I painted the full range of Warprinter's Thirty Years War / English Civil War Kickstarter figures. Which is a huge range. Got them all printed in 10mm, because I'm a 10mm Thirty Years War boiiiii you you may know. So they hired me to paint them all up for promotion and take pictures of the whole range for the KS.

So when that KS ran in February, I wrote about the figures:

https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2024/02/review-warprinter-thirty-years-war-10mm.html



Pretty amazing figures.



Speaking of which, I also painted a bunch of ECW figures in 28mm (big 28s too. More like 29.5s!) by Empress miniatures. Horses by ebob miniatures. Both of which are beautiful. Ebob got this very clever thing running where they made very pretty horse figures and license them to figure manufacturers, because it's easier than making yer own pretty horses and they just add the riders.

So I painted a big old unit of Ironsides and the Lord Protectos himself. Olly Croms. Old Crommers.





Things I was asked to do with those figures: The gentleman I painted these for asked if I could make the bases to there's some trampled grass on the bases. Whjich in the first place means I have to apply much taller grass than I usually do. And then make it look tramped down. Which I kinda achieved, it's not very easy to see in the pictures, but I was rather happy with it, and a thing I shall use more often from now on.



The flag on Cromwell's base is home-made and hand-painted.






Also: A nice, medium-sized gun, with surprisingly heavily armoured crew.









...and some pictures with stuff around them!










Yup. So much for the ECW figures.


NOW, let's move on to a whole lotta 15mm Croats, right?





15mm figures! By Wargamer.pl, for their By Fire and Sword range. First time I worked with their resin/"plastic" horses.


And THEN I even got to get my own 10mm collection out! We're hoppin' and scrootin' all over the place here. Going from 10mm TYW to 28mm ECW, 15mm Delute and now back to 10mm TYW! It's alright, it's all 17th century, right?

Right. So Cpt.Shandy came over for a fun-time afternoon. And how do you have a fun-time? Right, you play Twilight of Divine Right.



So without much preparation we played the battle of Lützen. Lützen is the big-time-popular battle of the conflict, even though it wasn't a very big battle. But dramatic, and it features the final clash between Generalissimus Wallenstein and Swedish king Gustav II. Adolf. It also has Pappenheim showing up, leading his black-armoured riders and all of that.

A bit like Waterloo for Napoleonics. The one everybody knows. There were more decisive battles than Lützen, there were bigger ones, but this one had the drama and the Big Characters and all of that. You could also compare it to Siegfried fighting the Dragon in the Nibelungen Saga. It's the action-y, broadly understandable clash, but if you look at the story, what emanates from that is the really important stuff.

Anyway. We played that battle, based on the scenaro as in that one scenario book for Twilight of Divine Right. Which basically required me to get out my whole collection of figures. Those ToDR-scenarios are HEAVY on units. So if you ever run into them, feel free to "bathtub" them a little. I did not, but maybe I should have. Anyway, here's pictures:



Swedish foot advancing in the centre, doing quite some damage due to being super-drilled Swedish Brigades (that stuff will be gone after 1634 at the latest), but don't manage to break the Imperial lines.






Meanwhile, cavalry clash on either flank. Back and forth on the Swedish right...


...while ultra-aggressive Imperial horse break through at the Swedish left and make their left cavalry wing fold early on.



Shot of Imperial "Croat" light cavalry:


Since my Swedes weren't able to break the Imperial lines in the centre and with their left flank guard gone they slowly got crumbled up. Then Pappenheim's cavarly arrived at the right flank to seal the deal.

Cool game. Cool rules. What I like about them the most is how swift they are, whilst having all these little things in them which you recognize if you read about the period a little. And first and foremost - these rules make you wanna have two, or even better three lines rather than just pooling all the "combat power" in the front, as so many other wargames rules do. So historical battle plans do make sense.

When I put the figures away the day after I realized I had 4 more musketeer bases than I had put down in my spreadsheet (yeah, since 2022 I got a spreadsheet, detailling all my 10mm TYW figures, because I'm a sad, lonely man. Worst of all, it wasn't even fully correct!). Which put my closer to my goal of having 72 bases of musketeers. So I could depict up to 37 units of pikemen and musketeers (1 base deep), 18 units (2 bases deep) or 12 units (3 bases deep). So I can depict earlier, deeper formations or just bigger units.


So I threw together 8 more bases of musketeers from leftover figures and painted them.





Added feathers made from green stuff to these Pendraken, Lancer and Old Glory figures. Some slightly rough casts on the OG ones especially, but okay. Main thing I got more than enough musketeers now. I also added a flag bearer, so I can depict a unit made up only of musketeers.

Which puts me in a weird position, because for the first time in pretty much exactly 12 years I can claim that my TYW collection is ....finished? I got a very useful proportion of musketeers and pikemen now. I got a good number of cavalry (could do with more, because those Twilight of Divine Right scenarios tend to be HEAVY on cavalry units). I still need a Wallenstein figure. And I got no dedicated French yet. But overall - that might be it for a while with this pet project of mine. Until I get my hands on either of these upcoming books by Helion&Co about the French army of the Thirty Years War and the one on the Transylvanian army of the time. Which I fully expect to have solid info on the Hungarians of the time as well. And if everthign else fails - there's always Poland! And the Ottomans! And the bloody Mantuans! And all of that.

Seeing all those TYW minis on the field at once is so impressive. Stuff like that make historical wargaming really tempting.

Even more really nice work, Siggy, though I think the BA Eliminators are still a highlight.

Another exalt Sigur.

Cheers,

CB

@Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll: Thanks very much! Historical wargaming rocks.

@Dysartes: Cheers! Yeah, a fair few hours went into these.

@Captain Brown: That's a new one! Thanks very much once more, Captain!