I'm starting 2023 as I mean to go on - late.
Let's not beat around the bush, this is just another roundup post - but at least in this instance none of the figures here have been shown off yet, so it's all new never-before seen stuff.
2022 was an excellent year for painting - I managed a total of 255 28mm figures (the bulk of the tally), plus a sizeable chunk of terrain and even a few 6mm figures. That's a personal record, and it's not even close.
I put this down to three main reasons:
- For the last few years I've tried to do a little modelling every day. Sometimes that has meant a single token coat of varnish or five minutes spent scraping mould lines, but more normally it turns into a full hour and those add up fast.
- Since 2020, like most people, I've worked from home at least some of the time. That saves commute time (about 90 minutes a day in my case), and frees up a little time at lunch to do my daily modelling
- 2022 was the year I finally feel that I cracked batch painting. Before this year I rarely painted figures in batches larger than half a dozen, but this year my largest single batch was 40 figures!
All this put together made this the first year I've ever painted more figures than I've bought, in nearing two decades of wargaming.
Let's pick through the pile project by project.
British Indian Army Platoon, 1941-2
These lads represent a platoon of B (Sikh) Company, 5th Battalion, 14th Punjabi Rifles as they fought in the Malaya campaign in 1942 - a formation I picked largely because of an interest in learning a bit more about the British Indian Army, and an excellent diary I found online.
The battalion fought right the way through the Malaya campaign, surrendering along with the rest of the army on the 15th of February 1942. I'm afraid that like their historical counterparts, my lads spent the whole of our club's Malaya Chain of Command campaign on the back foot.
They're mostly Perry plastics, with their metal Sikh heads, except for the supporting weapons, which are metal. The 2pdr AT gun, I was informed, was a Royal Artillery asset, hence the lack of turbans and beards.
One other attraction of these models is that Sikh infantry fought in the same uniforms in North Africa and Sicily; and with a club Sicilian campaign in the offing I added this PIAT team using the converted Perry metal figures to replace the outdated Boys AT rifle. More on that campaign later in this and future posts.
I actually started most of these models at the tail end of 2021, and by the end of January had finished the core platoon at an average pace of no more than 45 minutes per figure, thanks to a zenithal highlight and monotone uniform.
Ancient Syracusans
We've been playing a lot of To The Strongest! at the club, and while I had already painted up the bulk of a Syracusan Greek army in early 2021, it was short of light infantry, and a handful of hoplites short of four full units:
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| The army as it stood in February 2021 |
A bag of 60 plastics from Victrix gave me enough bodies for two units of slingers, two of peltasts, and two of Thureophoroi - very handy medium infantry who can skirmish and hold their own in a fight.
These last I made by combining the plastic Victrix bodies with metal Thureos shields from 1st Corps - which meant I had to freehand the shield designs on several of them as my usual transfers didn't fit.
A few games of TTS! also taught me that I was short of general figures, so I bought a frame of Victrix Greek heavy cavalry and painted them in a suitably wealthy set of colour schemes.
Late Roman Infantry
All that enthusiasm for TTS! also saw several people start building armies for late Antiquity. Helpfully I already have a whole (unpainted) army of Romans that's been patiently waiting its' turn for nearly a decade; this unit of unarmoured heavy infantry is all that I painted before getting distracted, but it all adds up!
These are metal Gripping beast figures, and no, they're not in the group shot. Oops!
Italian Wars Swiss
Continuing the TTS!-using-figures-I-already-owned theme, a friend of mine decided to refight Pavia on the battle's anniversary. These Swiss were my contribution to that; a bit outdated really for 1525 but not glaringly anachronistic.
These are the lovely Perry metal Swiss from their European Armies range, leading a bunch of plastic Mercenaries with their metal Swiss heads (you may sense a theme here).
The highlight of the range is - naturally - this trained bear, which makes a brilliant Hero in TTS!
Napoleonic Wars Royal Navy
Moving on a few hundred years, I painted a Royal Navy landing party for a Sharp Practice game I'll be running in March - don't worry, that too will get a post of its own at the appropriate time.
These are largely Perry metals, with the gun crew coming from Brigade.
The same project also saw me paint this French gentlemen, and a lady in some very bright clothing.
Confederation of the Rhine
One of my (many) long running projects is to complete a reasonable proportion of the Confederation of the Rhine's regiments in 'traditional' 24-figure battalions. This year I finished the first of these battalions - the 1st Battalion, Wurzburg Fusiliers, and painted the first third of the next one - the 3rd Battalion, Saxe-Weimar-Hildeberghausen Chasseurs.
I'd already painted the first 8 Wurzburgers over a period of about two years; the remaining sixteen took more like two weeks! Both units are Perry metals.
I'll finish the rest of the Chasseurs this year, but first these eight figures will be pretending to be something else for the same Sharp Practice scenario that my Royal Navy lads are for.
World War 2 Italians
I have a platoon of Italians in tropical kit for the North African and Sicily campaigns which I painted in 2020; this year I added some more support options for them in the form of a squad of engineers.
The majority of the figures are the new Warlord metals; providing the (in Chain of Command terms) flamethrower and demolition teams.
To these I've added half a dozen Perry figures, to allow me to field a ten-man section without special weapons if required. They were a Secret Santa present in 2020, so it was nice to finish them up.
17th Century Swashbuckling
I got excited in the back half of 2021 about Sidney Roundwood's forthcoming rules With Flashing Blades; fueled also by a fortuitous purchase of most of the Redoubt range of Three Musketeers.
I painted the eponymous Musketeers early in the year, and then got distracted when it became clear the rules wouldn't be ready for some time (they're still in development).
The civilians are a real mixture - Redoubt, Warbases and Foundry are all represented, and I've got more manufacturers in the 'to paint' pile too.
These soldiers are all Warlord plastics.
Pulp
I have a growing collection of Pulp figures, centered around a made-up Adriatic island somewhere between the wars.
These are the island's Carabinieri - they're mostly Warlord early war German infantry, with bereted heads from their British paratroopers.
The rest are another rag tag group; the centre figure in the tan flying suit was even sculpted by myself, over a Hasslefree miniatures dolly.
Odds and Sods
I also worked on smaller groups of figures in between the large batches, as a bit of a palette cleanser. There's very little overarching theme here - just what I found interesting.
These are the only non-28mm figures I painted this year, for a club 1813 project that was pretty well dead on arrival. I bought a couple of Corps' worth of Austrians at a 24-figure battalion scale, and will likely continue to work on them every now and then - it's very satisfying to paint an entire battalion in an evening on occasion.
The cavalry are actually the - British - 10th Hussars.
The Shermans were a tester to see if I like painting ~1/300 armour (yes!). These, and the Napoleonics, are Baccus figures. The markings are for the Irish Guards, because every wargamer wants to do Market Garden at some point and 6mm is clearly the scale to do it in.
GW's Lord of the Rings game was my first 'proper' wargame, and every so often I dip into the pile of figures and paint a few. This year I even played a game with them!
One of next year's projects is to make a start on an army for playing For King & Parliament - these men are the first few models of a regiment of Parliamentarian horse.
Terrain
Finally, I made a good deal of terrain this year to go with the various projects. Most of that lives at the wargaming club though, and as this post is already late and huge I'll save it for another post.
2023
What does 2023 hold? I've got my hands full with two large projects due for events in March and April - both of which I'll cover in detail on here later - and then the rest of the year is more open. Whatever happens I don't expect to match this year's tally of painted figures, but I will get lots of use out of 2022's new toy - a laser cutter! - and I'll record as much as possible here on the blog.