As many of you know I started this blog as a means to follow and motivate me in my project building forces of the Little Britons figures from Spence Smith. The plan laid out in the first few posts was to paint eight units of Infantry (12 figures each), 4 units of Cavalry (6 figures each) and 4 units of Artillery (3 figures each).  The first game was played in March 2015   using One Hour Wargames. After a few more games of that and one of With MacDuff to the Frontier by Ross Mac Howard was bitten by the Shiny Toy Soldier bug and began painting and working on a set of rules known as A Gentleman's War despite all the distractions, a little over a third of the posts here refer to this project, I finished my goal of forces for the project. Three years in the making. Inspired by Grand Duchy of Stollen I decided to do a review of my troops.

US 10tth Cavalry, RCMP, Hungarians, Bavarians and Generals.

The Artillery, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Austria and, Serbia.

Belgium, Egypt, Greece.

US Marines, Hawaiian Guard, US Infantry, NYS Volunteers.

Spain, Argentina, Canada.

Last Thursday saw another game of A Gentleman's War. This time Howard brought a full contingent of French as well as some British. We had three players for this game so split the Blue force between two of us. Blue was tasked with assaulting Red who was defending a building complex.

Blue had seven Infantry units, two Skirmishers, two Cavalry and four guns.

Red had four Infantry, two Skirmishers, two Cavalry, three guns and a Gatling gun.

A run of red cards allowed Red to consolidate his position while Blue took some long range shot with their guns. Turn two saw a more balanced run of cards giving Blue the chance to move some troops up and contact Red



The battle went back and forth for awhile and Blue started a flank assault first on the right with the Cavalry Brigade and then on the left with some Infantry.


Then Red decided to charge with his Cavalry. The ensuing melee tore a hole in Blue's center.


This and the fact that it was past our bedtime ended the game.

Another great game with good people. We played on a four foot square table and with the number of troops we had it was a little tight. Another foot or two on the flanks and one more in depth would have been better I think. As for the number of units things worked well. It seems seven to ten units will give about a two hour game. Twelve to sixteen units would take just under three hours.

Over the weekend I finished a few more troops for A Gentlemans War.

We had another game with the LBs. I started to take pictures but became caught up in the action and forgot to continue. Howard's fleshing out the rules and giving a little more detail but as the new title is Gentlemens War it's expected that any disagreements will be decided through polite discussion and a roll of the dice. A rule that allows you to act again with a unit if you draw an Ace came in handy for both of us. Here's the few photo's I took.

Well I've just finish my first unit a cavalry.


It was a little cold for spraying but I just had to get these done. In the photos I picked up the inconsistancy of the paint on the side of the base I'll need to fix that when the weather warms up. Also this guy was finished

I was able to start basing the 15mm figures and hope to have them finished by tomorrow.

Next up are these two units. It's too cold to spray prime so they'll get a coat of gesso.

I jusr recieves my latest order of figures from Spencer Smith. About Two weeks from time of order to recieving from England to NY, USA.

Cavalry galloping, Lemmon Sqeezer, Lance Upright                        To be painted as R.C.M.P.

Not much happening on the LB front. The first unit of red coats has been painted and based now I'm waiting on warmer weather to seal coat them. The 10th U.S. Cavalry are coming along  with most of the first coat done. Pictures next week.

The distraction has been Pulse of Battle Ancient rules from Piquet. I'm not sure what prompted me to order these as Ancients aren't one of my major periods but I got in on the pre-order and the price was reasonable. Well I'm pretty happy that I did. They're a well laid out set of rules, an Army builder and short history lesson for several periods and two card decks. I've been a fan of Piquet for years and this looks like a great addition to the family.

Of course even though I had some Roman and Numidian armies for DBA there wasn't enough command figures and I felt I needed some more units to make a balanced gaming force. So it was off to the Viking Forge to see what was available. I wanted the figures to match my existing armies. Viking Forge sell the figures individually at $.40 a piece. I ordered about 50 figures giving me 5 command figures per side and an additional 10 units. I have to say knowing that these figures have been around for ages I didn't have high expectations for quality of the molds however they were cleanly cast with out flash and few mold lines. In fact the lines are so negligible that I may just wash and prime. I'm very happy with my purchase. Communication with them was good and shipping was quick.

I'm not unhappy with this distraction so far as every part has been top quality and I cut my original Viking Forge order down from 110 figures to a more manageable 46.

Next week should see the next order off to Spencer Smith.

As I thought of how to build my army or which armies to model I looked at the models available from Spencer Smith. The obvious choice would have been British troops but there weren't any historical opponents. Next was Franco/Prussian War but I had that in 15mm. I then thought of a American Canadian conflict set in the 1890's. A little research showed that there was quite an array of uniform types available to both sides with the colorful City militias on the american side and dress uniforms of the Canadians. I ordered the first troops based on this.

However, while on vacation I saw a box of Britans figures in a museum in Uruguay  and thought why not build units based on countries I'd been to. I felt this would add to the interest of the units and be a souvenir of sorts. Back to researching to see how plausible this would be.  Well is seems most countries based uniforms on the British, French or Prussian model so figures were available and color guides could be found.

So there we have it. Units based on places I've been. Now it's off to planing a trip to Scotland because I want a unit in kilts:-)

Every few years I would thinks that I should build an Army in one of the larger scales. I'd surf the web and find blogs about the larger scale figures or manufacturers catalogs but nothing quite caught my fancy. I checked out Armies in Plastic and  Sash and Saber. The main problem was that I already had figures for most of the periods that they did. Now I'm being silly but I didn't want to have the same army in two scales. Then after attending a convention and seeing the 40 mm War of 1812 figures from Sash and Saber I decided that this was the period for me. I didn't have any figures from that period and we were approaching the 200th anniversary of the war, perfect.

Well I bought six bags of figures, cleaned a few and started painting. I then realized that I was looking for a more toy soldier look and that these sculpts were just too nice to not paint in the shading/highlighting that they deserved.  I sold off the lot and started looking again.

This next search brought me to the Home of Spencer Smith makers of the Shiny Toy Soldiers range. This range looked like the answer and I thought I could build a Mexican American War army with this line. Ordering from England took a few extra steps than I could find the motivation for so figures were never ordered. Then out came the Little Britons range. These hit home, the right size, uniforms, style and, variety.
The order for some samples went out. I painted them up and was ready for more. The first unit is ready

I'm starting this blog to go along with my new project. I'll be building two armies using miniatures from Spencer Smiths Little Britons range. The blog will show the progress in painting the figures,  reports on the games played and my thoughts on the whole process. Comments are welcome. Hope you enjoy.