FORLORN HOPES, PETARDS, AND MORTARS, OH MY!

Closeup of newly completed Forlorn Hope/Storming Parties

In this post, dear readers, we continue to report on progress on rounding out collections and finishing up partial and unfinished figures as I move towards closing down (or drastically reducing) my painting operation.  In this case, I had picked up several sets of very interesting painted "storming parties" (Thirty Years War/ECW) on ebay.  I also picked up some dismounted ECW/TYW cavalry.  Although I had no specific rules or conventions in mind, at one swoop these figs would expand my gaming options to include defense and assaults on works and positions.  I should add a historical note that explains why I also scooped up the dismounted cavalry to add to these.  Given their body armor, pistols, swords, and expertise with hand weapons in close quarters fighting, it was not uncommon to have cavalry dismount and lead assaults, a not often known dual role for cavalry in this era. In this report, you may clix pix for BIG PIX (as usual).  

Despite the rest of my 17th Century figs being individually mounted (on round stands), I decided to mount these on two man stands (1.5" squares).  This gave me enough figures for four units of six (in Pikeman's Lament, these would be "Forlorn Hopes").  A review of my own rules and the others that are in use in our group informed me that this mounting would work as well as the individual figs, and it would also help set these figs apart as special use (ie, storming parties).  That plus I didn't have enough round stands left to do them that way (and the whole point of this exercise is to use what I have on hand and not pick up more stuff, like new stands).  Anyway, I also figured that by basing them on two man stands, I could reconfigure these for  "base 6" game systems (like Pikeman's Lament), and base 12 and 10 systems (like my own Smalle Warre and others). 

Each unit consists of a stand with a sapper (above, left), a figure throwing a grenadoe (above, right), and a figure with a leader (in two of the units) or a musket/other firearm (above, lower).  The other figure on each stand is a guard with either a hand weapon or a firearm. As an aside, I very much like the armored sapper figure (above, left) and the cavalryman firing the pistol over the forearm (above, right).  I believe these are all Foundry figures. I acquired them painted, but did some touching up and did some additional painting in order to differentiate units. 

Each unit has a color scheme (although not very prominent in the pix, on the table they are easier to spot out). Red (upper left), green (upper right), blue (lower left), and dun/brown (lower right). 

This mounting scheme also will let me mix and match the stands to give me a specific figure mix, like a 3 stand grenade armed unit (upper left) or a 3 stand unit of sappers (upper right). 

Without a specific game system in mind, I didn't go with the norm that I use for color coding the bases of my other Thirty Years War/ECW figures. Instead, I used my more flexible metal strip system for these (see my Ed's Basic Basing post for more).  This also had the benefit of using up some of the metal strips I had left over. 

There were enough figures for me to mount 4 of them individually (digging through my spares box to come up with the fourth: the musketeer).  These I mounted on the 1.5" squares and can use to replace a stand if it loses a figure in order "make change" instead of marking a casualty or using a kill ring (illustrated above right: 5 figure unit). 

Digging through my bits and spares, I turned up this appropriately armored fellow who I mounted on a 1" x 1" square to use as the company commander, if needed. He's originally intended as a flag bearer, but I replaced the standard with a halberd to suit the role (this is an Old Glory Fig, which conveniently come with weapons/hand options). 

The set I picked up from ebay also included this petard team, which I also cleaned up and mounted in this project.   I'm itching to figure out a way to use these fellows in a game!

Finally, I also had these bits of ordnance on hand: two mortars and an organ gun.  I can't recall if the mortars came in the same batch as the storming parties or if I got them separately (again, via ebay).  I definitely picked up the organ gun by itself to use as the Stollenwerfer in my 2021 Christmas Post--a happy bit of nonsense that I've now converted to "serious" use. 

I had already acquired enough stuff to set up a table sized positional defense, with 64 linear inches of works and several redoubts. These figures give me the other side of that scenario, the mortars, sappers, and storming parties.

   

Excelsior!

P.S. Although I don't have moderation on for comments, it seems that blogger has recently started tagging some comments as requiring approval (and others not: based on what, I cannot tell). This is new, and as such, I'm not in the habit of checking for messages requiring approval--so if you do leave a comment and don't see it pop up, have patience. I'll be checking periodically to see if there is a comment requiring my attention.