Keep Your Powder Dry

So, gentle reader I hear you sigh and wonder how a trip to Les Invalides can be shoe horned into a British Civil War gaming blog... There are many reasons why you should visit Les Invalides when visiting Paris, but possibly the best reason to justify a visit is the fact that the ticket office queue is usually pretty none existent and therefore becomes the best place to buy your Paris Museum Pass  from (which means you can join the shorter queues at all the other museums). Think of Les Invalides and you will immediately imagine a temple to l'Emperor. Well it is, his body is entombed under the very impressive golden dome after all. Whilst all that is jolly good to see, my blog will focus upon the Renaissance exhibits. There are morions a plenty and some beautiful suits of armour, many rivalling the lion armour in the Royal Armouries collection (they have their own suit of lion armour too). Fine selection of wheelock muskets (didn't immediately see any matchlocks but...

First of my new dragoon regiments... My previous dragoon regiments are all on foot with horseholders, and kit bashed semi-mounted command. I like my existing dragoon command, and the overall look of my existing dragoon regiments (it's all that Streeter's fault), so I wanted to create something similar utilising the new figures. Once again the body of fighting men (twelve) are on foot, with six horseholders each with three horse, and a command stand consisting of mounted officer, cornet and drummer. That way I have managed to use figure from four of the five new packs. Part way through painting the figures I did start to question my wisdom of unit makeup - 18 horses, 18 foot figures, a casualty figure, and 3 mounted command figures. Lots and lots of horses and horseholders Waller's dragoons were raised in 1643 and fought extensively throughout the First Civil War: Battle of Lansdown, Roundway Down, Siege of Basing House, Alton Church, Cheriton,...

I know I said that my baggage train was complete, but in the words of Sean Connery's Bond reimagining "never say never". I was searching for a yellow and a red for some new dragoon regiment coat colours. Not being totally convinced I decided to paint some test figures. In my big box of spares I have lots of dragoon horseholders, so they seemed ideal candidates. Cutting a long story short they came out as I wanted them to, but what to do with them? Strangely, I hadn't actually thought about putting them to one side and using them in the new units. Vapnartak was on the horizon, and Museum Miniatures would be there.  Each baggage train consisted of eight carts: nine carts would be unbalanced, ten would be better.  Another quick rummage through the spares found two more horseholders, four marching musketeers, and two dogs. New additions to the King's baggage ...and Parliament's baggage I'm sure you can imagine the rest - two new engineer...

Always on the lookout for suitable buildings to populate the battlefield. I noticed that Magister Militum had a number of potential buildings in their range when I purchased my star fort . As MM were attending Vapnartak I thought I could pick up a couple of test buildings, and save on postage. As they don't normally take their building range to shows I pre-ordered them. Both buildings were pretty clean casts, minimal clean up required, only a couple of small bubbles visible. First up BD108 Wealden House. Nope, I didn't know what Wealden meant, I presumed it was a style of framing. A quick Google showed that I was on the right tracks: " The  Wealden hall house  is a type of vernacular medieval  timber-framed   hall house  traditional in the south east of England. Typically built for a  yeoman , it is most common in  Kent  (hence "Wealden" for the once densely forested  Weald ) and the east of Sussex  but has also been built else...