Community effort to jointly paint some 6mm armies for fun and charity!

JUST A NOTE TO SAY THAT ALL SLOTS ARE NOW FILLED FOR THIS PROJECT – THANK YOU ALL WHO HAS VOLUNTEERED FOR THIS. MINIATURES WILL SENT TO YOU SHORTLY AND I WILL GET BACK TO YOU WITH FURTHER DETAILS.

Let us build some small armies together..

This is a long post and in summary it invites you to participate in a community effort to paint one base of 6mm miniatures to support the building of two opposing armies in 6mm – provided free by Baccus 6mm. You will then send back the painted miniatures and they will be based up in a unified manner and a few battles fought with them and then they will be sold-off and the proceeds given to the Combat Stress charity. Whether you painted 6mm or not previously is not important and I will provide some painting tutorials in future blog posts. With this I hope to share some of the Joy of Six I have had over the years (unfortunately you can only participate this time around if you are based on the UK – Sorry!).

A lot of us, assuming most people visiting this blog are wargamers, has had a few hobby outings this year that have been cancelled due to COVID-19. I have been looking forward going to the excellent Lardy Event in Evesham, showing off the Poltava 1709 Battle at Salute and a few others. However my favourite show in the year is when we all go up to Sheffield and share the joy of six at the Joy of Six. This is the annual show focusing on the 6mm scale and was scheduled to take place in on the 5th of July this year. It was recently cancelled for the right reasons, but will be back next year.

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I was going to take my old Fraustadt 1706 board this year, with a few modifications, and play the example scenario in the Twilight of the Sun King rule set. It was the first big 6mm project I completed and still one of my favourites.

See the source image — The Fraustadt 1706 as laid out at Joy of Six in 2012

I have had so much fun with the 6mm scale in doing my various projects over the years and all the other positive aspects I have had as a result in terms of meeting some great people, seemingly inspired some of them as well to get into 6mm, been invited to podcasts to talk about this passion, etc.

Here the podcasts I have had the pleasure of sharing my love of 6mm with:

Meeples and Miniatures Part 1

Meeples and Miniatures Part 2

God’s Own Scale

Battlegames Battlechat

Contrary to popular belief I am still very much doing 6mm projects, and I wanted to do something to share the Joy of Six, so I had an idea. I would like us as a community to paint up two 6mm armies and I need your help. I do not care if you are a hard core 6mm fan or just want to give it a go for fun.

I would like you to either paint one base worth of infantry (24 No. miniatures), cavalry (9 No. miniatures) or a set of 4 Artilley bases (16 No. miniatures and 4 guns). These will be from the Baccus Wars of the Sun King range, that I have used for my Lund 1676 Project – they are some fantastic models. Here are some of the ones I painted (more pictures from an earlier blog here).

Each army will consist of (pictures from the Baccus home page):
• 8 units of foot – 8 persons

This is a unit of Foot – 24 small models to paint per person.

• 6 Horse – 6 persons

This is a unit of Horse – 9 small models to paint per person.

• 6 Dragoons – 6 persons

This is a unit of Dragoons – 9 small models to paint per person.

• 4 artillery bases – 1 person

This is base of Artillery, the persons doing these will be asked to paint enough for 4 bases – that is 16 miniatures and 4 guns.

Times two, that is a total of 42 available slots.

The picture below show these kind of bases in relation to a 28mm (from Crooked Dice) and 15mm (from Peter Pig) model.

A base of Foot, Cavalry and Artillery with a 28mm and 15mm model.

This is the look of each army (this is a Saxon army from the Great Northern War/WSS range).

It works like this:

(i) You will register your interest by contacting me on this blog rollaone.com – use the contact form (there is a link on the top), leave your e-mail address and state that “I want to paint some 6mm” (unfortunately you can only participate this time around if you are based on the UK – Sorry!). I will contact people on a first come first served basis and ask for your address so the miniatures can be sent to you, either 24 infantry, 9 mounted or 16 artillery men with 4 guns (this will be random to make things easier). Please read and understand the “A few notes” below.

Once I have a full list of people and addresses I will share this with Baccus who will be sending out the miniatures. Hopefully this should not take too long.

(ii) You will be sent a pack of 6mm miniatures (at no cost to yourself), paint them based on some general guidelines, you will then send them to me (at your cost) and I will base them up in a uniform way, attach flags to the infantry, and we then have two small armies ready for the table top.

(iii) I and the Little One will play a few battles with these armies and report the outcome on this blog.

(iv) We will then offer up the armies for sale on ebay (or similar) with the full sale price less the auction site costs, going directly to Combat Stress Appeal. Not because I necessarily think, but do hope, it would bring a substantial amount of financial gain, but because it is a good thing and also because this is not done for any personal gain but for the Joy of Six.

A few notes:

It would be great to have you onboard, but please only do this if you intend to take the time to paint up the miniatures and send them back in a reasonable timescale, say maximum 4 weeks from receipt. Even if you do not participate in this you can still get into the fun and follow the progress on the blog and/or twitter.

This is not a painting competition, this is about painting the units and building the army. I know that styles, skill and approaches vary but one of the things I hope this will prove once and for all is that when these 6mm armies are put on the table with uniform bases and we take as step back it does not matter who painted what – it will look like a battle is ready to commence.

I will, in further blog updates, provide generic guidelines for the two armies, they will be imaginary and the idea is that you will be given a coat colour (say red or blue) and a cuff colour (each being different). You can paint the hats, brims, socks, pistol holsters, etc, in any colour you like, perhaps your officers have different coats, etc. This to make some uniformity to the armies but giving you some freedom in making your own choices.

There will also be painting tutorial for each of the elements (horse, dragoon, infantry and artillery) and make it available on this blog in a few weeks time (in line with the miniatures being sent out), this will be a simple straightforward optional approach that you may want to adopt in doing your set.

In addition I have asked Sidney Roundwood and Mark Backhouse to paint the leaders for each army. Mark and Sidney are both well-known profiles in the hobby and I am delighted to have them onboard. Here some links to some of their many contributions to the hobby.

Some of Mark’s excellent work for the magazine Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy

Sidney’s amazing blog

Also a very big thanks to Peter Berry of Baccus who is providing the miniatures for free and will be sending out all the small packages at his cost.Link to Baccus Home Page

I have initially published this here on my blog, but also on the Wargames Website and the Lead adventure forum and on twitter (Per at RollaOne, @roll_a_one). I decided to go for a more generic audience to start with and depending on uptake, I may share this is on more 6mm specific forums later. I am not sure what the interest may be and I am sorry if you wanted to have a go but it was too late. You can still follow the progress on the blog.

All the very best,

/ Per