Hanoverian Progress

Despite recent distractions and journeys down non-Hinton Hunt related rabbit holes I have been slowly working away at the Hanoverians. I'm actually at the point where I only have the officers and the standard bearer left to paint.

My painting source shows the musicians without reverse colours which makes for a bit of a change.

One of the 'distractions' that is Hinton Hunt related was the recent aquisition of these very nice Hungarian infantry castings. I've been looking to expand my Austrian army for a while but the lack of decent castings has been an issue so hopefully this will give me the shove I need to get on with it.

There are 12 x AN/25 Musketeer, firing and 12 x AN/27 Musketeer, marching.

I was a bit dubious about these as the photos on eBay showed the figures having very shiny new looking bases but having inspected them I'm happy they are the real deal.

Next week, if all goes well, will be the annual Muskets & Marshals game in the Hinton Hut. A full report will be posted here in due course.

ECW Madness (Off Topic #40)

It was all going so well - 89 Hinton Hunt's painted so far this year and only 5 acquired. Then I saw a couple of lots of Minifigs S-range ECW figures come up at a bargain price...

ECW1s Royalist Musketeer Firing - this is such a great figure!

ECW20s Royalist Musketeer Carrying Musket - I have quite a few of these

ECW25s Royalist Pikeman Advancing - I just love the cast-on pikes

ECW5s Royalist Officer with Sword - what's not to like about this figure?

ECW5 Royalist Officer (Sword). This is not S-range but probably from the 'intermediate' range that followed it being slightly bigger and chunkier

ECW28s Royalist Officer Attacking or Advancing - I remember this figure well as I painted 5 or 6 of them back in the early 70s

ECWC3s Cuirassier - this is a OPC that has been converted to a standard bearer with a horse that needs some TLC

This is S-range (as the saddle is attached to the rider) and the horse is marked LCH2. It could be from the Thirty Years War range or could be a remodelled ECWC3 (this is the conclusion that Clive came to on his Lone S Ranger blog).

TYW3s Thirty Years War Officer - I had one of these way back when

TYW4s Thirty Years War Standard Bearer

TYW5s Thirty Years War Drummer

Technically, as these are not Hinton Hunt castings they don't count towards the lead-pile reduction target, but in reality they are a bit of a distraction. However, this is not a major project but rather some light relief from Napoleonics and something to put in the display cabinet - honest!

Stirling Stuff (Off Topic #39)

Last Saturday Mrs S indulged me by agreeing to a trip to Stirling Castle. Despite living in Scotland for over seven years and having made many trips to Stirling in that time, I had never visited the castle before.There was one thing in particular that I wanted to see in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Museum that I first read about in the January 1969 edition of Miniature Warfare. It was a set of small blocks used to train infantry officers that dated from 1797.

Fast forward 55 years and the blocks are still there! What I wasn't expecting is just how bright the colours are - I want these...

For some reason this really stuck in my mind and when I recently went through my old copies of the magazine (to make an index of interesting stuff) I was reminded of it and clocked the fact that they were housed just up the road. Here is the original article by John Tunstill, reproduced without permission but hopefully he won't mind.

Apart from the Regimental Museum (which is one of the best I've seen) the castle itself is well worth a visit. I had no idea before going that it was such a big site. If you want to make a day of it you could combine it with a visit to Bannockburn (nice visitor's centre and you can walk the dog over the battlefield) and the Wallace Monument (if you like Gothic and lots of stairs).

We will be going back but probably in the winter when it's not quite so busy.