On April 23rd I attended a game gathering at the Chehalis Veteran’s Museum. A delightful day. The weather was good, which is saying something in these parts this spring. I love the Museum. Gene Anderson does a super job of hosting. Played one game, helped run another. Just a good day.

However, in between those games I had one of those moments in which I could choose to do something new at a very minor cost. Gene had a box of dozens of 1/1200 Superior WWII ships he was getting rid of on behalf of a neighbor. I really didn’t look inside the boxes much because I thought they’d be a lot more than I’d be able or willing to spend after all my spring purchases and Enfilade just around the corner. As I looked and headed out the door, Jim Denberger asked if I was going to make an offer. I made a bunch of excuses, and said I’d give Gene the five dollars I had in my pocket. All I heard was, “I’ll take it,” followed by David Sullivan’s voice saying behind me, “I’ll give you twenty.” Oh fer gawdsakes. I bought David’s lunch and claimed the ships for myself.

A mere handful of the ships I’ve got stashed in my garage. Clockwise from upper left-USS Alabama, pocket battleships Graf Spee, French battlecruiser Dunkerque, Japanese battlecruiser Kongo, USS West Virginia, a pocketful of U.S destroyers, with Sumner in the foreground

I managed to somehow get them in my carry bag and the crate I brought down for my Vietnam figures, and got ’em home. I’ve offered them to my friends, but not exactly any takers. The previous owner was a collector, and I really don’t want to say bad things about him, but I think he was in over his head. Superior ships are kits, some with parts. He seemed to love battleship, so there are buckets of those. Some are cliche: Yamato and Musashi, Iowa, Tirpitz and Arizona. Some are cool like the French battleship Richelieu and battlecruiser Dunkerque, lots of the old American battleships raised from the mud at Pearl Harbor, plus the ancient Arkansas that shot it out with the Germans at D-Day.

Clearly, unfortunately, he wasn’t a gamer. There was pretty much one of everything. Great if you’re showing off stuff, not great if one is trying to fight battles. You can see where this is going, right? Sadly, he wasn’t much of a painter either. Some, not many, weren’t painted at all. Others were painted wrong. Many more were painted badly. Some of the American ships are solid, the rest will need work. I have work to do.

I’ve been chatting this up with Daveshoe. We’ve been angling for a way to convert this mass of ships into a collection we can do some Pacific war battles with. Unfortunately that means buying more. Hah, I can hear you laughing. I’ve already made an order to Alnavco for some Superior ships. Surprisingly (or maybe not) there are some holes in their stock, but I did receive some nicely updated American and Japanese destroyers that will allow Dave and I to play the Battle of the Komandorski Islands somewhere at some future time.

I’m also taking a look at some 3D printed options. XP Forge which is an Etsy business has an extensive list of 1/1200 ships so I gave that a whirl. They arrived within a few days. The ships are okay with some serious and obvious problems. They generally have decent detail. Not as nice as the Superior ships, and much less nice than Navis/Neptun, but they are cheap. A destroyer was five bucks, and the Omaha class light cruiser was 11 dollars. The problem is with long thin things, such as masts. They are telephone poles. A bit less noticeable on the Omaha’s tripod mast, but with the destroyer’s mast/telephone pole, this is huge problem. It does make the gamer proof which is a bonus. Doing the obvious thing, which is to replace the log masts with brass rod, is easier said than done. The damn thing is cast into the bridge of the model, so removal might lead to collateral damage. It was only a five dollar investment, so it might be worth the risk, but it is at best annoying.

XP Forge Omaha, left, and Benson. Cheap, but quality is an issue.

Tiny Thingamajigs is a Shapeways 3D design store that also offer some 1/1200 scale printed ships. They look a bit more promising. The detail seems finer. The ships are more expensive in the higher grade plastic. They have a lot of ships available in scales smaller than 1/1200 and I’ve sent a note to designer Matthew Atkinson about the possibility of printing more vessels in the larger scale, so it will be interesting to see his response. I’ll probably give him a whirl and order an Atlanta class CL which seems pretty nice.

I have started working of stuff. I painted the Japanese heavy cruiser Aoba. Along the way, I made some repairs-it was missing a seaplane catapult- added a little detail-a crane for the seaplane, and I lengthened the masts and added a radar array. I learned a bunch about paint schemes for the US and Japan in WWII. Plus I invested heavily in paint for the period. Unsurprisingly it cost much more than the ships themselves. I’m using the Life Colour paints for the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. It’s very nice stuff. I have six Japanese destroyers, none of them the new ones, primed and ready to paint. I’m hoping I might finish them before the convention.

My first re-imagined ships from the great pile-Japanese heavy cruiser Aoba. Missing a rear catapult, I constructed one, added a crane and lengthened masts before priming over the electric blue spray paint. Painted Aoba Kure Gray and Linoleum deck brown.

Ah, another rabbit hole to follow . . . I confess I’ve always loved this scale and this period, and it more or less fell into my lap. The expense has been minimal. It’s something Dave and I can do together and I think it has a lot of reward potential . . . if I don’t go off the deep end. Yeah . . . right.

Yesterday I finished six Japanese destroyers. From left they are Wakatake, Mutsuki, Hatsuharu, Fubuki, and two Kagero class. Waiting for acrylic bases from Litko before mounting them.

I walked away from ancients years ago. I didn’t like the competitive matchups the rules fostered. I’m a scenario person, dislike tournaments and there really wasn’t a lot of agreement on a set of ancient rules. I did go whole hog, well really the whole pigpen on the Hundred Years War, but they’ve been idle since before the pandemic.

A couple of months ago I reached out to some old game buddies to see what they were up to. They were playing SAGA: Age of Vikings. I knew of SAGA, that it was supported by Gripping Beast miniatures, but not a lot. more. I drove over to Scott’s house to watch ’em play a game. It looked fun, different. The dice, the battle boards offered nuance and complexity and it gave me an excuse to try something new–which I really need like a hole in the head–but I was in.

Got the rules, a Norse-Gaels set by Gripping Beast as well as a box of their plastic Irish. Norse-Gaels are those Norwegian Vikings who occupied the western isles off the coast of Scotland and many areas of Ireland. They established the Kingdom of Dublin. So the army is a mix of Vikings, Scots and Irish so who can’t like that?

SAGA armies are allowed points. Each unit is worth one point. The quality of the unit determines its size. The good troops, or Heartguards, are usually four figures. They are the hard bitten Viking raiders. They wear chainmail and are bad-ass.

The next unit type is Warriors. They are the bulk of my army and are composed of Irish bonnachts. The bonnachts, like the Hearthguards are either javelin armed or axe-armed and have eight figures. Axe- armed troops are considered heavy weapons, but have reduced armor value because they can’t fight with a shield. Javelin-armed troops are considered missile-armed. Not quite as cool as bow or sling armed, but there are stories of the troops punctured by javelins.

The final type is the peasant type, considered by the Norse Gaels as “slaves,” but I like to think of them as good old Irish kerns.

I’ve played a couple of games with them. They are interesting. A mix of shooters and hackers for sure. I’ve also learned a bit more of their Battle Board from a SAGA Thorsday YouTube video

https://youtu.be/yjxD3mZ1hSg

I’ve had some success, but hope to try out what I’ve learned soon.

Yes, it; time for my end of month round-up. Yes, it’s late. But when you’re retired you lose track of time. Plus, my wife just had knee replacement surgery and is off work, When we’re both off an at home we can’t even remember the day of the week, so if I am a bit late, well, excuuuusssseeee me!

There was a lot going on in March. Lorri and I took an amazing vacation to Temecula, California where we did a lot of relaxing and took in a lot of the wine country of that city, tucked away in northeaster San Diego county. Yes, we drank a lot of wine, bought a lot of wine, tasted a lot of wine. It was a wine thing. We were gone a week, but preparations and recovery seemed to suck up a couple more days.

Five days after getting home, Lorri had her knee surgery. Let’s just cut to the chase, she’s doing great. Her ortho doc said it was one of the ugliest looking knees he’s seen and thinks she’ll get some immediate relief. It’s been ten days since the surgery, and even though there’s pain and struggle at times, a blind man could see she’s doing better.

I share all this stuff to make excuses for my puny paint totals for March. I say that, but I did paint, and I did get stuff done. I also really like what I got done too.

First, I finished all my Gringo 40’s Republican cavalry for Maximilian. The irregular horse can be used for the Mexican War too. They are miniaturas gigantes. Really big. But I love ’em. They will appear with the attacking Republican forces in my Enfilade game “The Matehuala Two-Step” and should literally scare the crap out of the Imperial forces they’ll be facing.

The last week or so of the month (which is all I had left) allowed me to shift gears and begin working on an army for SAGA. I have a couple of Tacoma friends who play SAGA, Age of Vikings, so I thought I needed to get in on the ground floor. I bought a Gripping Beast Norse-Gael army. I’ll do a review later. I’ve managed to get some of these figures done. There simply aren’t that many needed, something on the order of 45 figures for a typical six-point army. I’ve finished the first sixteen, plus a hero and a warlord figure. More are well down the road to completion.

This was also a month of many new purchases, sadly. Let’s settle up and see where we are

1 X 6 28mm Republican dragoons by Gringo 40’s

3 X 6 28mm Republican irregular horse by Gringo 40’s

1 X 4 28mm Norse-Gael hearthguard by Gripping Beast

2 X1 28mm Norse-Gael Warlord and Hero by Gripping Beast

1 X 12 28mm Irish Kerns by Gripping Beast

March total = 42 figures

2022 total = 257

Purchases (ugh)

Gringo 40’s Maximillian figures 30 figures

Foundry Maximilian figures 36 figures

Front Rank Limbers and Oxen 6 figures

Gripping Beast Norse-Gael figures (from Badger Games) 13 figures

Foundry Mexican figures (from Badger Games) 7 figures

Total figures purchased in March = 92

We’re going the wrong direction here

April plans are to wrap up the SAGA figures. I’ve actually already completed 12 for April. I have another 16 to complete. Eight of those will be plastic, but they all need to be completed before April 12th when I’ll get together with friends to play my first game of SAGA.

After that it’s back to cracking the whip for my Enfilade Maximilian game. I still have artillery and limbers I want to finish for both sides. There are also some Republican Rurales cavalry I’d like to get done. I have piles more figures to paint for this project, but those are the must-do’s for my game on May 27th.

Last, but certainly not least, I need to finish remounting all my Maximilian figures. I’ve been able to remount all the Mexicans. That is some seven units of irregular infantry, four units of regular infantry, and three units of cavalry. Only the French are left and I’ll start on those guys this week. It’s a big job. I’ve kept Kenneth Litko very happy.

This week Patrick Wilson, worthy proprietor of the The Virtual Armchair General, made a stunning announcement that he was cutting the price of his Viva Juarez range by 25%. That’s infantry, cavalry, and artillery. He also gave credit to me and my article about the Maximilian ranges available in his announcement on The Miniatures Page. While it’s nice to get some credit in Wilson’s decision, it is a great boon to those interested in this period.

First, though I don’t care for the Houston’s infantry scuplts, there are many who do. The breadth of the range is pretty complete and these figures are relatively compatible to the Foundry range for Maximilian. At $30 per bag of 20 figures including command, or a buck and a half per figure, this makes the TVAG offerings much less expensive than Foundry or Gringo 40’s, especially if you’re starting out and need a bunch of figures. A decent paint job will cure lots of the deficiencies.

However, if you’re really hankering for cavalry, this price cut is a huge deal. First, there’s tons of cavalry in this conflict. You have to have it if you’re serious. Since my last article I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my Foundry Imperial cavalry and find them severely lacking. They will be turned into Republican Rurales, and will be fine in that role. However, unless you’re only interested in the Empress Lancers or the Red Hussars, the Foundry Imperial cavalry just won’t do. And, it’s expensive. Like six bucks plus per figure.

On the other hand the TVAG Houston’s guys are quite acceptable. Size-wise they work fine with the Foundry range. They have lance-armed, sword-armed, or carbine-armed cavalry dressed for the campaign with kepi and havelock. These work for both Republican or Imperial forces. 12 for thirty smackers. That’s two units for Rebels and Patriots at $2.50 per figure. That’s an incredible deal for very serviceable figures.

Finally, the price is also reduced on artillery and equipment packs. These typically include a gun, crew, limber and draft animals. For the Republicans, this means ox-carts and oxen to draw the largely outdated ordinance available to them. Most significantly, it means proper Mexican gunners for those pieces which nobody else, well, check that, only Irregular Miniatures make. A gun, team and crew costs $12-14, which is very, very reasonable. Just by comparison, I recently ordered two ox-drawn limbers by Front Rank miniatures and the cost was 20 pounds plus shipping.

Would I order these figures? Absolutely. The next figure order I make will be to TVAG for a pack of Imperial cavalry with swords and a pack of the Republican artillery.

I think I became interested in the French Adventure in Mexico, or Maximilian’s Empire or the Mexican War of Independence, or Cinco de Mayo or the action at Camerone, after my friend Dave Demick became interested. Dave is interested in all things obscure. At that time, looonnnggg ago there wasn’t much specifically available. You could do Franco Prussian War figures for the French (still a viable option) and the Mexicans could be some collection of American Civil War figures with I dunno what for the Mexican cavalry.

Eventually Frontier Figures came out with a range of Maximilian figures, but it was never complete. Completing a range for this period is a challenge because of all the different nationalities, and units and uniform changes. It’s tough. There is the early part of the war in which there are mostly French units, traditional line infantry with some Chasseurs de Pied, sailors, zouaves, Algerian troops, hussars, Chasseurs D’Afrique and others. Gorgeous Second Empire uniforms, though they mostly toss the most onerous elements of those as they go trudging through the dry, rocky terrain.

The Mexicans, in this early period, have beautiful blue uniforms with a little shako and pom pom, nice stuff. They chuck those for a white campaign uniform with a raised collar, some blue piping and a kepi. Much more practical.

There is a middle period of the war, say after 1864 when Maximilian is headed toward his coronation in Mexico when the French are reinforced with Imperial units. These take many forms. The Belgian Legion and Austrian Legion arrive from Europe. The emperor forms his own units with their own uniforms. Many of these soldiers are conscripts or deserters from the Republican army, or veterans from Conservative militias that fought against Juarez in the early days of the Republic.

During this period, the Republican army is wearing whatever it can get its hands on, but mostly in loose fitting white garments with few markings. Sandals. Combinations of kepi, kepi with havelock and sombreros. The super cool short shakos are probably history.

By 1866 the French have began to ship their troops home which was completed by the end of the year. Maximilian was forced to rely on his unreliable Imperial troops who were subject to desertion and changing sides. Some of the foreign troops, Belgians and Austrians, also joined the Imperial units.

The Republican Army gets new life as the French depart and they re-arm and re-uniform with help from the United States. Repeating rifles and carbines, rifled artillery provide a nasty surprise for Maximilian’s troops. Elements of the Republican army begin to reappear in Union blues.

So, it’s complicated and developing a range of figures for the period is complicated too. So who has stuff, how much is there or is this all just hopeless?

To my knowledge, there are three ranges of Maximilian figures. These are the old Richard Houston range cast by the worthy Patrick Wilson at The Virtual Armchair General. Wargames Foundry has a range and sort of a half a bonus range. Finally Gringo 40’s has a range. Each of these manufacturers have virtue. Each also has a problem or two. I have figures from all of these ranges and I will share photos of each as well as commentary.

Houston’s Figures: Wilson markets these as part of his “Viva Juarez” project. As with other of his ranges, there is not only some figures but wargames guides to the period. I can vouch for the Viva Juarez books as worth having because there is such a paucity of decent information on the military history of this conflict. Not cheap, but good stuff.

The Smyth Holdings: I own 30 of the cavalry figures. Full disclosure: I bought these when this range was produced by The London War Room.

Virtues: This range is extensive and covers Republicans, French and Imperial forces. You could put together a pretty complete collection of all the combatants just buying from TVAG. The cavalry and artillery figures are inexpensive. Cavalry comes 12 to a bag for forty bucks which makes a figure about $3.50 a shot. That’s pretty inexpensive compared to other ranges. These figures are decent too. They’ve been eclipsed in detail by newer ranges but for the price they shouldn’t be overlooked. I don’t have any of the artillery but they come with a gun, crew, limber and draft animals for $16. Seems like a good deal to me without having actually seen them.

Drawbacks: I’m sorry, but the infantry figures are simply past their prime. Photos show they don’t proportion well. A friend bought the Austrian Legion and Egyptian figures and was quite disappointed. They come in a unit bag of 20 with command figures and flag which is nice, but they are forty dollars, so the price per figure is two bucks. That’s pretty steep for figures well past their prime. That’s in the ballpark for the cost of a Foundry figure ($1.99) and Gringo 40’s ($2.13), though that doesn’t include significant shipping.

Wargames Foundry: Wargames Foundry has the most extensive range of figures for the Maximilian conflict. However, it is not without complications. If you go to the Foundry site you’ll see two pages of figures in their range. These figures were sculpted by Aly Morrison, my guess is the early 90’s. This includes French, Republican and Imperial figures. You can get most everything you need here except the Austrian Legion In the Franco Prussian War range there is a huge variety of French figures to choose from including hussars, French infantry in light and campaign kit, Turcos and other figures not in the Maximilian range. These figures were sculpted by Alan and Michael Perry and are a tish bigger than the Morrison figures.

You’d think that’s it, but wait there’s more. In the Old West range, on pages six and seven there are 12 packs of various Mexican regulars, irregulars and command figures. There are also four packs of French Camerone personalities or filibusterers. These are more recent sculpts and are much larger figures. They might have been sculpted by Mark Copplestone, they have that large blocky look that is so much fun to paint, but no sculptor is listed. No cavalry or artillery are available for these guys

Smyth Holdings: Geez, where do I start? I have 150 of the Morrison and 100 Perry figures painted in my collection, including infantry and some (a few) cavalry, and more unpainted. I also have 40ish of the Old West figures. I’ve painted some of the Camerone figures and recently snagged a few of the Mexicans to at least get a look at the size. I also have some of the old Guernsey Foundry figures back when Foundry was trying to get its act together, and those are now in that Old West cluster.

Virtues: There are lots of choices here. The French are well covered. There are also sailors who appeared in the first siege of Puebla. There are a number of great cavalry choices. The Old West figures offer many different choices for regular and irregular Mexican foot. There are some good Imperial forces too, including the Belgian Legion, Imperial infantry and cavalry, the Egyptian battalion, and the Empress Lancers and Red Hussars. The Morrison Mexican figures, while all one pose, are well proportioned and have a variety of headgear. Great stuff. The Perry figures are also nice, more animated with more poses, though you have to buy each of them separately. The Camerone figures from the Old West range are terrific. They are much fun, and if you want to do the action at Hacienda Trinidad. They are large and well detailed and Foundry identifies each of the figures with one of the defenders.

Drawbacks: Lots of figures, but not without issues. The first issue is similar to the Houston’s problems. These are figures from the 90’s that are scaled from that decade. They are closer to true 25’s. In most cases they are really nice true 25’s. If anything they are a great exemplar for why Foundry became such a superior brand during that time period. But they aren’t going to match up very well with the Old West figures or the Gringo 40’s figures, and those figures are very desirable. Another problem is packaging. I ordered a bunch of the Imperialist figures, kind of mix and matching, but they come with just some random guys which I find a little irritating. The same with the Imperial cavalry figures, and because they are pretty spendy at $6.21 per figure (14 quid for three figures,) I don’t want any confusing mismatches. To be fair, Foundry does have some somewhat cheaper deals on one type one pose figures too. Hey, and one more thing, what is with the utterly uninteresting command figures? Why aren’t there ANY standard bearers?

Note: I also have a pile of Perry French Foreign Legion figures I bought to fight Camerone. I’ve used these many times in many different games. These were great figures–biggish 25’s in havelocks, sombreros, kepis. Are they still available? Not so anybody could actually find them. Not in the Maximilian range, or the Franco Prussian War line, or in the Wild West. Sad, because this is a nice collection of guys.

Gringo 40’s

The Gringo 40’s range has some really nice stuff. They have a package of Camerone defenders that seem very nice. They probably have the nicest collection of Republicans I’ve seen. Because you purchase by-the-figure it really allows you to mix and match. There are also Austrian Legion and Belgian Legion figures, plus the Egyptian battalion (because everyone has an Egyptian battalion.)

Smyth Holdings: I have the Mexican Line Cavalry, the Mexican Irregular Cavalry and some Republican infantry, about 60 figures in all.

Virtues: These are nicely cast, clean figures with just the right amount of detail. The cavalry are maybe the nicest cavalry figures I’ve ever painted. Wonderful faces and some great horses. The infantry offerings have some 21 different figures with a variety of uniforms and headgear. I would like to add more figures from Gringo 40’s to my collection.

Drawbacks: Well, a couple of things. First, these figures are huge. They might match up okay with the Old West figures, but remember that range has no cavalry. They are a head and a shoulder taller than my Foundry Chasseurs d’Afrique. It’s not just the size that presents the real problem, it’s that the range is so incomplete. There are no French. There are no Imperial infantry beyond the foreign legions and no Imperial horse. No artillery except the tiny Austrian mountain gun. The figures are really nice but it’s almost impossible to match them up with anything else. And unfortunately the company has their attention directed elsewhere and likely won’t add the necessary bits. Few command figures and no standard bearers. What does everyone have against standard bearers?

Summing up

All three of these ranges have virtues and drawbacks. First, to be clear, this is a very niche-y conflict with not likely to generate tons of sales vying in popularity with other little-known conflicts like the Taiping Rebellion, The Fenian Raids and the Second Ashanti War. It does have some cool units and the hypothetical conflict with American Civil War troops gives your Union troops something to do besides shoot at Rebs. But committing tons of resources to the period requires some faith that folks are going to buy ’em so there you go.

The Houston’s range is pretty complete, but quite dated. The Wargames Foundry range is likewise dated but more complete and the sculpts are somewhat stronger. The later Old West range are quite nice but larger and incomplete. The Gringo 40’s figures are better still, but again very limited. Sadly all the ranges suffer from size incompatibilities. There is no way you could mix figures between Gringo 40’s and the older Foundry ranges in a unit and honestly they look kind of goofy on the same table. I will also add that I’ve moved past that and I take the figures and units as they are.

It’s an interesting, interesting period with some pretty good figures available to paint up in picturesque units. You just have to make some allowances for what’s out there.

Note: While reviewing web entries for this article I stumbled across one more range of the figures for this period. Irregular Miniatures in the UK also has a Maximilian range. Not a lot of entries in their range and they same to rely more on vaguely attired figures than trying to capture the feel of the period. On the plus side they do have standard bearers and Mexican artillerists. That can’t be all bad.

February is a short month, but that didn’t stop me from doing a lot of stuff. Got in some games, painted lots of figures and even placed my first order of the year.

Early in the month I renewed my friendship with some great guys from the old days, Scott and Kurt. They are playing SAGA. That was problematic for me because I’ve pretty much abandoned ancients. My last hurrah was DBA and I still have all my painted DBA armies. I haven’t done anything with them in more than five years and I’d honestly like to bid them farewell. Other ancient rules have come and gone. I’m not a Hail Caesar person. I don’t care for tournaments. But in watching the SAGA rules I was intrigued. I like the interesting dice and the use of the battle boards. There’s a lot of nuance in the game between the die rolls, the use of fatigue, some interesting choices to make.

I purchased a Norse-Gael army and some plastic Dark Age Irish by Gripping Beast to fill them out. The figures have arrived, but I’m waiting on some shield transfers to start work on them. Still need official dice and measuring devices.

Gaming with Scott and Kurt generated a couple of great games. I roped David Sullivan and Michael Koznarsky into getting together at the Game Matrix. We played Rebels and Patriots and David and I dragged out our Mexican War figures for a first trial. It went well. The Americans won, but Scott and Kurt played the rules for the first time. They didn’t utterly dismiss them, so it was a good day.

Last week we played Song of Drums and Tomahawks by Ganesha Games with our 17th Century Indians and David’s handful of Dutch. David, Scott and Kurt were able to slap Michael and I around pretty good after some bad execution on both our parts and some really bad die rolling by me. The most important part, however was renewing those connections and I really enjoyed it. They are great guys.

It was a pretty stupendous painting month.

1 X 6 Mexican cavalry by Gringo 40’s

1 X 8 Camerone defenders by Wargames Foundry

1 X 40 Von Bose Regiment for Regimental Fire and Fury by Old Glory

4 X 12 Imperial Infantry for The Maximilian Advenure by Wargames Foundry

2 X 1/600 ACW vessels by Brown Water Navy

114 figures painted for February

218 figures painted for the year.

50 figures purchased.

March promises to be strange because there is a lot going on. We leave for a welcome vacation to Southern California on the 11th and we are gone for a week. Lorri has knee replacement surgery scheduled for March 24th and I will be helping out with her recovery. I should still have plenty of time to paint, but gaming time might be thin.

Isn’t miniature gaming a wonderful hobby? I’m always amazed at the wonderful things I learn whether it’s from a great read or another gamer. There’s always a trade secret, a new painting technique or a new game store or a new set of rules. And gamers are great at sharing stuff too. I’ve never heard another gamer unwilling to share the way they do stuff, whether it’s mixing paint, or how to do the dip technique, or what material they use to make their bases.

So I’m going to offer something to the group. Glue dots.

You know how figuring out how to paint your figures without holding them in your hand is always a mystery. I know everyone has a magic way that works for them, but I’m going to offer glue dots as a suggestion.

Maybe you stick ’em to paint jars, or pieces of cardboard. I use craft sticks, kind of a throwback to using popsicle sticks for 15mm figures. But how do you stick ’em down? I always used CA glue because if it didn’t glue my mouth shut I’d brush my teeth with it. It’s my go to for everything. Of course prying the figures off the sticks again was a challenge at times.

Maybe you glue ’em down with PVA glue, or white glue for those who don’t track acronyms. Not bad, but it needs to dry overnight and who really wants to wait.

Jim at WarTimes Journal was reading my blog and he suggested glue dots to hold ships in place while I was working on them. I’d never heard of glue dots before, so I had no idea what he was talking about. When I made my weekly trip to Fred Meyer for groceries I dropped back to their ever-shrinking craft department and started looking for them and bingo there they were. Five bucks for 200 dots. Freddies sells the Permanent brand. They are also available on Amazon for a bit less, but they have other brands too.

They come on a big roll. They are dots of sticky stuff about a half inch wide. I put four dots on a craft stick. I just line my dot up where I want it to go on the stick and press it down hard and peel it off the roll. Sometimes the dots don’t cooperate and they make a sticky pile instead of a neat dot, but they still work just fine.

Once I have my dots on my sticks, it’s just a matter of smushing my figures into the glue. These dots aren’t gooey or anything like that. They are firm and you do need to be equally as firm pushing your figures into the glue. You might even consider using the dull side of an X-acto blade, but I don’t usually find that’s necessary. Once that’s done, I usually give ’em ten minutes or so and I’m ready to spray prime my guys.

Will they stay stuck? Yes. Will the figures come off if I drop the stick? Probably. My advice is not to drop the stick. I know this by experience. Can I paint cavalry too? Absolutely, but I use two dots for mounted figures. Can I reuse them for another batch of figures? I tried this once and things didn’t seem to stay stuck quite as well, so based on my experience I’d suggest it’s not a great idea. Could I try this with a different product like Blu-Tac or similar putties? I haven’t tried that but if you do let me know how it goes.

Removing figures from the stick is pretty easy. It’s usually fine to just pull them from the sticky stick. If they seem to be a little too firmly settled in the glue don’t try to rip them off and break their ankles. No, I haven’t done that, but I could see it happening, especially if you’re working with plastic figures. Just use an X-acto blade and give them a little encouragement. It doesn’t take much.

Just something else useful to try. Worked for me and was a definite time saver.

February is mostly gone. Not a lot of gaming, but a little bit. Even so, it’s been a fun month. I’ve reconnected with a couple of old friends down here in Pierce County. Kurt and Scott are friends from the old days of Escape Velocity and Fire and Steel Napoleonics. They are newly retired and they want to play some games. I aim to please.

They introduced me to a game of SAGA and not shockingly I’ve ordered the rules and some Norse Gael figures. It’s my reinvestment of my nibble from our tax return. In return I ran a Mexican War game using Rebels and Patriots and introduced them to David Sullivan and Michael Koznarsky. It’s important they meet the right people.

So I’ve done a little bit of gaming, but not a lot. Tomorrow we’ll meet at Dave Schueler’s house to walk through rules for the Battle of Lissa. But after that it’s going to be light. March is full of journalism conventions, vacations and Lorri’s big knee surgery. So it might be kind of thin until April. Maybe not. We’ll see.

But there is always time for painting. And so February is a great painting month. I’ve painted a little of everything this month. A lot of Maxmilian figures, a really big AWI unit, and even a handful of Games Workshop LOTR orcs. Scott is also interested in The Lord of The Rings figures and it just so happens I have a stash of them. In any case, I’m sitting at 76 painted figures. But I have another 36 Foundry Imperial Mexican figures I think I might be able to finish by the 28th. That would give me 112 figures on the month. Two of the three twelve-figure units are on the table and under way, so it is hardly out of the question. There might even be a little bit of wiggle room for another ten orcs.

This begins to shape up into something special. I’m looking at the magic number of 83.33. That’s the number of figures one would have to average each month to paint 1,000 figures for the year. I’ve always wished I could finish 1,000 in a year, but never had a real shot. Just to be clear, I did 102 in January and if I did get 112 done in February that would be a good head start. Long way to go of course. I’ll lose a week of March to vacation, so that makes things harder. But with me filling in as Lorri’s Nurse Ratchet, I may have some extra focus on painting stuff.

Something I’m considering: March may be The Month of the Horsemen–all cavalry all the time. Might throw a monkey wrench in the 100 figure months.

I hope you’ll indulge me my monthly recounting of what I’ve gotten done. January was a good month for painting, not a great month for games. The cold weather and Omicron really made it tough to get together. Four of us met at Dave Schueler’s house for a naval game as part of Dave’s Annual Naval Game. It was fun, but it was just the four of us instead of a dozen. That was it in the miniature gaming department.

But I did get a lot of painting done. 102 figures to be exact. That’s a lot, but I’ll take it. Here is what I finished in the month of January:

24 X 28mm 1st Corps Mexican American War figures. This was for a Rebels and Patriots group project and finished up my share of the projects

2 X 1/600 Bay Area Yard ships. Maria Regina Pia and Ancona. This finishes up my share of the ships for The Battle of Lissa.

24 X 28mm Perry figures for Regimental Fire and Fury, the American War of Independence. These were the 23rd Regiment, The Royal Welsh Fusiliers. More about this project later.

6 x 28mm 1st Corps figures, Berdan’s Sharpshooters for Rebels and Patriots

6 X 28mm Foundry figures: Camerone and Filibusterers. These figures are the personalities for the action at Camerone. There are 28 figures in all for this range. Yes, I have all of them.

24 X 28mm Foundry Belgian Legion figures. I’ve already chatted these up a bit.

12 X 28mm Gringo 40’s Republican Infantry for the Mexican Adventure. These large figures were much fun to paint.

6 X 28mm Foundry Chasseurs D’Afrique. These nice, mounted figures are part of the Maximilian in Mexico project.

That’s 102 figures altogether, and I didn’t buy any new figures. I expect to keep it that way until early March when I’ll either add more Maximilian figs or perhaps the Perry British Guards figures for AWI.

In addition to the painting, I did some remounting. I don’t love remounting, but I really do like using my figures. I also like Daniel Mersey’s rules, as do my friends, so I’m moving to a mounting system more usable with those rules.

In January I remounted many of my long-ignored ACW figures. I remounted three Union infantry units and two cavalry units. I also remounted four Confederate infantry units. Finally, I also made the move on two Mexican militia units for the Maxmilian projects. Not bad.

Looking ahead to February, here’s what’s on the docket.

First I have a Gringo 40’s Mexican Republican cavalry unit. These are lovely, but huge.

The von Bose Regiment was a Hessian unit at Guilford Courthouse. Old Glory figures. I’m painting ten stands worth (40 figures)

After that it will be the Foundry Imperial Infantry figures for Mexico.

I’ll also remount the last of my Confederates, wrapping up the ACW remount party. I’ll begin reorganizing my AWI for Regimental Fire and Fury. I have a lot and I don’t anticipate wholesale remounting, but they are not very well organized. John Gee likes this period even more than I do, and I just want to be able to say I have this, ‘n this, ‘n this. Let’s play.

One of the ultra-cool aspects of the French Adventure in Mexico, or the Second French Intervention in Mexico, or the reign of Maximillian as Emperor of Mexico, or the Mexican War of Independence 1861-1867 is that there are a bunch of very cool units that take part in the on-again off again conflict. The conflict itself is pretty horrific with lots of guerrilla raids, reprisals for guerrilla raids, and war to the knife, take-no-prisoners nastiness.

This is not a new project for me. I’ve had my Maximillian figures at least since the middle 90’s. I started out with figures from the Wargames Foundry range. Then I added more from Guernsey Foundry when the company was in turmoil. I also included your basic militia types from Old Glory. I’d guess my painted collection at somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 figures. I actually didn’t have an unpainted pile laying around, unlike all my other projects. That is until recently.

One of those units is the Belgian Legion. The Empress Carlota was Charlotte the daughter of King Leopold of Belgium. In support of Maximilian and Carlota Leopold raised a “legion” of troops to fight in Mexico to support the imperial couple. These were volunteers, green as ripening corn, with little training. They were formed mostly into two infantry units. One was called grenadiers, the other voltigeurs, though those were fanciful names. In fact there was no shock infantry training for the former or light infantry ability for the latter. But they did have pretty cool uniforms and they fought for Maximilian almost to the bitter end.

There are some Belgian Legion figures available. Foundry offers a single pack of Belgian Legion. Unfortunately, there are no command figures. They are eight figures and are divided evenly between the uniform the Legion wore when they arrived in Mexico, and a later uniform they wore on campaign.

These figures are not true 28’s. They were sculpted in the early 90’s by Aly Morrison. They are all one pose, so very old school. That doesn’t mean aren’t nice, they are, but not up to today ‘s standard.

The figures with early uniforms have a tall round hat and full kit, with pack, blanket and enough cooking pans for Gordon Ramsey to get by. The Legion wore braided jackets, and the braiding is there to be picked out if the painter is careful. The braiding is on the front and back of the jacket. They wore voluminous pantaloons much as the Second Empire French did, but in a medium blue-gray instead of madder red. These figures should wrap their tall hats in a dark blue scarf, edged red for the grenadiers and green for the voltigeurs, the same color as the jacket braiding

The later uniforms lose the tall hat, which had a bad habit of being knocked off their heads. They replace them with kepi and havelock. These figures are also dressed for the field, and left their kit in camp.

I based my figures on the illustrations of the Legion in Campaigns Magazine 32 January/February 1981 by Fred and Liliane Funcken. I used a craft blue, Mountain Blue by Apple Barrel. I chose this because it is a darker blue gray. I lightened it with white for highlighting. I used Vallejo Grey Blue for the trousers. The red bits for braid and pants for the later units is Vallejo Flat Red. Honestly, if I had to do it again, I’d use Scarlet for the braiding because it is just easier to see. For the later unit, I kind of went overboard with the rainbow of pants colors. I used the Grey Blue, and included some red and white too. Should have just included a few of the Grey Blue and white only, which were adopted as the unit spent more time campaigning.

The Foundry range has a real lack of command figures-no officers, standard bearers or musicians for the Belgian Legion, so I glommed on to one of my French figures and added him to the later unit. That is a real weakness in the range.

Gringo 40’s also has a decent range of Belgian Legion figures. They are all in their later campaign gear with kepi and havelock. Several different poses, plus they have a drummer and the Legion commander Baron Alfred Van Der Smissen. I don’t have any of these, but hope to acquire some later this spring. They will be much larger than the Foundry figures, but they look quite nice with the very distinct jacket braiding.

The Belgians performed reasonably well during the French Adventure. They suffered quite a blow at Tacambaro in April 1865 when a significant portion of them were killed and captured by a larger Republican force. They took their revenge on their tormentors in the action at La Loma three months later. They proved to be reliable troops and remained in Mexico when the French forces were gradually sent home. Many Belgians entered service in the Imperial army and remained loyal until the end.