I had Friday off and had a look at my paint tray that was full of 28mm miniatures for the Mutant 1984 project as well as a lot of 6mm for the next batch for the Scanian War.  I decided to try to get done as many as possible of the 28mm stuff.

Following on from my joyous time of painting the Pyri Commonwealth soldiers (Nordholmia Regiment) a few weeks ago (see here, it also includes a summary of what this Mutant 1984 nonsense is all about) I got thinking about building some bigger skirmish forces than originally intended.

I decided to get a plastic box of some Skirmishing infantry from Perry (I bought mine at a very favourable cost from ebay).  I am basically in the Business of creating two Sharp Practice forces for some Border Skirmishes, yes some of the Old Tech Weapons would require some additional thought and perhaps a Chain of Command adaptation would be better, but that is a later issue.  The most common form of firearm in this period is a musket or a single shot rifle.

In addition I added some animal heads from Sally 4th and some weapons from Anvil Industries (as well as making some of them with extra limbs) to give that subtle Mutant 1984 feel.  These together form part of a Wilderness force of the Jemtland Army – a very small country North of the Pyri Commonwealth.

As for the actual uniforms I have no information, so I decided to go with a Green coat (with red details), red trousers and red caps for the line infantry.

For the Flags we know that the Jemtland flag is a white Moose on a blue background.  I decided that the Military flag was only showing a Moose head and that the specific flag for the Wilderness force is based on the old Skogsmulle organisation (this was the children organisation of the Swedish Outdoor association that I have some fond memories of from my childhood, and just for fun, see more here).

Adding them…

…and we also got some rangers

….and some Machine Gun crew (I bought the Gatling ifself from Ebay, unknown manufacturer).

…putting it all together

Finally I had the pleasure of being given the last issue of Wargames Illustrated by the Little One (a fantastic read I may add) that came with a sprue of Early Imperial Roman.  Again having had the Mutant 1984 treatment!  These are part of the Monster hunters (Monsterjägare) of the Pyri Commonwealth army – a very specialised unit. The Monstrosities that occasionally emerges from the forbidden zones needs to be taken care of.

That was 47 no. 28mm miniatures in a day (well, I did do the basing on Saturday the following day) – not any pieces for the museum but effectful enough on the table from the right distance! Now I have a few more things to do to flesh out the opposition.

Colour Sergeant Bourne and Others

In addition the Little One and I went to find the Grave of Colour Sergeant Bourne on Friday. It was something we had planned to do for some time (Since we first played with our 6mm British and Zulus).

The title of this posting [see link here to the old post] – “A prayer’s as good as a bayonet on a day like this” is said by Colour Sergeant Bourne in the movie Zulu (link here). Colour Sergeant (Frank Edward) Bourne was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (CDM) after the Battle at Rourke’s Drift and was, at the time, the youngest soldier in the British Army who had achieved the rank of Colour Sergeant.  He ended his career as a Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded an OBE. As I read up about him I found out that he was buried not far from where I live.  I think I will take the Little One and have a look for it after Rugby next Sunday.  Although he was only 5’6″ tall he was certainly, in every sense of the word, a big man. 

You can read more about Bourne here. 

Here are two pictures from our visit to his grave at the Beckenham Cemetery and Crematorium.

In addition the Little One found a few more graves that told some interesting stories following some research on the Net, like this one.

 

Sergeant-Major Evans got a V.C. at Somme in 1916 volunteered to take back an important message after 5 runners had been killed in attempting to do so .. 700 yds of severe rifle and machine-gun fire …. dodging from shell-hole to shell-hole . Read more about it here.

Respect!

/ Hope it was of some interest!

 

 

Followers of this blog may be aware I have a undying love for my first RPG I played when I was 12, it was a Swedish RPG called Mutant.  In Mutant the world has risen from the ashes and new Societies has developed.  The game is set in Scandinavia, but not as we know it today. 

Basically following a deadly and incurable epidemic caused by samples from a mission to Mars the human civilization collapses.  The survivors build enclaves and start experimentation on humans and animals, in effect creating mutants, to see how they will survive outside the enclaves.  However conflicts arises between the enclaves and it leads to a nuclear war sealing the fate of the world.

Fast forward a few hundred years and the from the ashes new civilizations start to emerge with mutated humans and animals, some “pure” humans and even some mutants with mental powers. There are remnants of the old worlds scattered all around, and some androids/robots from the old days are still around. In addition there are certain areas where the effect of radiation has left some strange effects on the flora and fauna and these areas are called “Forbidden Zones”.

The game is set in Scandinavia, but not as we know it today, and the general level of new technology is equivalent to that of the 19th Century, give or take.  There are steam engines, muskets and some emerging rifle like weapons, heliogram for communication, etc.  Some of the old technology has survived but is rare.

There is a summary of what I have been up to with this project here (if you scroll down a bit).

During the Robot Attack in Nordholmia, discussed in Part 2 (see link here), there will be a detachment of Soldier as part of the defending force – some regulars of the Nordholmia Infantry Regiment. This regiment can trace its origins back to the early days of the Empire and was originally set up as a town militia.

I wanted to do use some miniatures from the relatively new Perry Miniatures range of Swedish Napoleonic soldiers, as I really like the sculpts.  Perry does some fantastic miniatures (here is a link to the Swedish Napoleonic range). I got myself a standing Command Pack and two of the Firing line packs.

They arrived promptly and to “Mutantinize” them I did a few headswaps with some Animal heads from Sally’s 4th, link here.

Next was the decision on colour scheme, from the original set of rules and expansions we know that the Pyri Commonwealth flag is basically a Yellow Eagle with a Blue background. So I went with Blue Uniforms with some yellow details as this would fit the flag and also a nod towards the Swedish 18th century uniform of the Great Northern War (and also to that 91:an cartoon character!).

As for the standards I wanted to have a large national flag of the Pyri Commonwealth and a smaller for the Regimental one.  From the ”sources” we know the flag for the Commonwealth, there are two versions.

(I) One from the Mutant 2 expansion – the world Map.

(II) Another one from the Efter Ragnarök module – on the map of Hindenburg.

Giving us these two options:

I went with the more stylised version.

For the regimental flag I used the symbol of the County of Dalarna, but replaced the Crown with the Eagle.

I have to admit it being some time ago I did any flags for anything else than 6mm – they tend to be on normal paper you add some glue and bend it a little bit – nothing very elaborate.  I felt this was not appropriate for this project and I wanted to avoid the stiff and printed look you can sometimes get with flags in 28mm scale.  I have seen a few of Sidney Roundwood’s amazing hand painted flags (link to some here) and set out to find a quick solution to do something similar – I found this video from Wargames, Soldier and Strategy and an intriguing type of paper was mentioned (it should run if you click on it).

Being a little bit of a materials enthusiast I got this kind of intriguing paper from Amazon (Japanese Calligraphy Paper, 100 sheets) and it worked a treat for me.

I painted the flags with undiluted Vallejo acrylics (clean you brush as you work but wipe it on some paper before you get more paint – this paper is very thin and absorbant. Work carefully!).

This is how they came out.

After this is was just a matter of “installing” them on the poles (using some random forest as a background on the Laptop Screen).

Next I think we need some skirmishers to complement these guys. I am currently working on some heavy Pyri Commonwealth assault cavalry.

In related news….

NoMAD – A Post-apocalyptic anthropomorphic miniature range in 28mm from Sweden.

In writing this there is less than 3 days remaining on this kick starter that is currently funded and fits into my Mutant 1984 project – check it out here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1240892696/nomad

I am a backer but not associated to the team in any way – I hope the kickstarter goes well.

Its based on a small 1:56 scale (28mm) range with a post-apocalyptic touch. 

In the far future our domesticated animals have developed into sentient beings just as humans did so long ago.  

These anthropomorphic citizens has evolved or perhaps were created by a since long gone dying old world that was ruled by humans alone. This is only remembered by the new civilization through legends, stories and myths.

As we have seen before in ancient civilizations a ruling class often need a lesser class to stand upon to “rise” above the masses.  

For the Mutants of the working class the struggle is real, and many take refuge to the wild. The dream to explore ancient ruins and the possibility for a life in luxury and ease after just one successful expedition draws man and mutants alike.  

/ Hope that was of some interest, I personally love this s**t.