The rivers that divide us

The mighty Mississippi

The Twin Cities gets its nickname from the cities Minneapolis and St. Paul. They're divided by the Mississippi River, with Minneapolis on the west bank and St. Paul on the east. After moving here, I discovered that residents often sort themselves based on which side of the river they live on. I remember telling a coworker about an interesting place I'd visited over the weekend.  He sniffed disdainfully and said, "oh, that's on the east side. I never cross the river." It was a common refrain.

I attended a local  gaming event last week and I counted three groups running ancient to medieval miniatures. We had 9 people playing Field of Glory (FoG) in 15mm. A second club had 9 people playing FoG-Renaissance in 10mm. A third group was playing Impetus in 28mm over two tables.  There isn't a lot of crossover between our groups even though we all share a passion for history and miniature gaming. People seem to sort themselves based on ruleset, scale and club. Since I play one set of rule (FoG) in one scale (15mm) with one club on one side of the river (east), I'm guilty of it as well.

I've been thinking about crossing the river, so to speak. I've thought about gaming with the club that does Renaissance in 10mm. Since 10mm is outside the scale that I'm painting and playing, I hesitate to give this a go.  Lately I've been eyeing the Impetus rules.  The way they use fewer figures per base and make each base a diorama is very appealing to me.  I asked one of the Impetus guys if he'd host a demo game over the holidays so I can see what these rules are like. He told me the Impetus group fields 28mm exclusively and at this, I hesitated again.  I have 5 ancient and medieval armies in 15mm.  28mm is more expensive than 15mm and much more time-consuming to paint. After rules, scale is another river that divides us. 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 28mm, fantasy, historical, science fiction, Hail Caesar, Impetus, FoG and DBM...it's frankly amazing we can get two or more people to agree to game anything!

I decided to go ahead and get a game of Impetus in. At a minimum, I get to see a new set of rules in action and I might have the opportunity to mix it up with the Impetus guys from time to time. Its also possible that I might like the rules enough to cross over to 28mm for a change of pace.  So many rivers to cross, so little time.  See you on the bridge!

Serbian Hussars

Serbian Hussars served as light cavalry in Matthias Corvinus' Black Army of Hungary.  They were armed with lances and large wooden shields.  Corvinus is generally credited with reorganizing the Hussars from small irregular units into large trained formations. The number of Hussars available to Corvinus rose in 1459 when Serbia was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire and many Serbians fled to Hungary.  The Hussars took part in the Hungarian wars against the Ottoman Empire and were employed successfully against their counterparts in the Turkish, Bohemian and Polish armies.  These boys will serve as light shock troops in my Hungarian army.  Light horse generally skirmishes and evades but not the Serbian Hussar. Their role is to pursue, engage and break opposing light horse.

I had a couple of breakthroughs here. First, I've been experimenting with basing.  No radical departures here  but I did use more static grass and Stilfor tufts, including flowers. I also took the time to pick out the larger rocks and coat them with dark and light gray.  I'm very pleased with the results! 

Secondly, its no secret that I've struggled with miniature photography.  I took many pictures today and was disappointed with all of them so I went back to the internet and combed through the tutorials.  I learned how to manually adjust white balance by pointing my camera at a white sheet of paper and just like that, the quality of my photographs greatly improved!  These are all by natural lighting.

 

All figures are by Essex and I do love their horses as there is a great deal of variety and energy in them. The only downside is the limited poses for the Hussars but I don't think it detracts too much.

Freehanding 15mm shields

One of my favorite books of the last couple years is Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success."  In it, Gladwell dispels the myth that people are born to greatness.  He demonstrates time after time that greatness is earned with practice-about 10,000 hours worth.  That's 20 hours a week for 10 years. Before you panic, 10,000 hours is what it takes to put you at the very top of your sport, hobby or passion. Think Bill Gates, the Beatles or Lebron James.  If you are willing to settle for merely "good," you can invest much less time.  For those of us time and interest challenged, a minimal investment of practice in your craft will vault you to the hallowed status of "just good enough."

"Just good enough" described my skill in painting horses a year ago.  Back then, I'd put off painting cavalry because I didn't enjoy painting the horses. Maybe it was the musculature, maybe it was the reins and tethers or maybe it was the horse at the stable that bit me.  Whatever it was, I struggled when I got to these figures.  If you're going to paint ancients, there's no way around the fact that you're going to paint horses over and over again. By the time I painted my Turkish army, I'd painted so many of horses that I'd forgotten I didn't like them. I'd reached the point where horses were no longer a mystery to me. I knew I'd  conquered my Equinophobia when the first figures I painted in my Hungarian army were 72 figures of cavalry.  

My current painting phobia is freehanding shields.  When I see a shield, my first reaction is to look for a shield transfer. Or slap a geometric shape down and call it good.  I might do a little drybrushing or a wash but I've never painted an object on a shield.  This is a problem in my Medieval Hungarian army because the Cliperati and Armati battlegroups have 64 shields and the 50+ knights each have a shield ...ugh!  

For this project, I made a rule that even if I wasn't happy with the results, I'd move on. There were 64 shields and I couldn't sweat over each one.   I turned to the Internet for inspiration and found excellent Hungarian heraldry sites here and  here.   I loved the picture below so I decided to give it a try. 

I stripped out the fancy bits and concentrated on the motif of an eagle's head rising out of a crown.  It took a while but I achieved passable results.  I  reminded myself that these shields will be bunched up in units of 32 and then viewed from 3 feet or more. The camera is quite unforgiving this close up but here it goes...

Geese figure prominently in Hungarian heraldry so I gave them a try. As it turns out, painting geese was the easiest of the many items I tried. It starts with the S and then you fatten out the bottom of the letter.  If only every item I painted could be shaped via the letters of the alphabet, my shields would be so much the better!