Friday, December 2, 2022

Scots Highlanders #3

 

Here's the final unit of Scots for me for 2022.


Dark red jackets for this crew; all Old Glory Figures once again. 


Similar process for painting the the Tartan elements as for the earlier units. 


Never fear, though; 2023 should see still more Scots cross the painting table!


I already figures have glued to painting sticks and primed the add a unit each of Dragoons, Lancers, and Cavalry, plus some high command. 


After that, there's plenty of lead on hand for some Scots artillery, plus more of everything else that I've painted to date. Likely 2023 still won't see the last of the Scots!

15 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bonnie lads Peter! You'll need single malt to toast the units.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Joe!
      One thing I haven't acquired a taste for is Scotch - Bob Jones would be very disappointed!

      Delete
  3. You bring together a mish-mash of clans to fight for the cause. Nice work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Evidently clan tartans were a very late phenomenon - really a romantic invented myth of the mid 1800's!

      Delete
    2. Some of these colors are doubtless too bright for the vegetable dyes of the time, not that I am going to fret about it! :-)

      Delete
    3. Peter, we are romantics at heart, otherwise we would see war for what it truly is.

      Delete
    4. No doubt about that; war itself is awful. "I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." William Tecumseh Sherman, and famously
      “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.” Even Napoleon commented upon it, especially after Eylau, Ebelsberg, and Aspern-Essling. I fully subscribe to the views of H.G. Wells on the subject, as stated in the conclusion to Little Wars.

      Delete
    5. True re the "invention" of clan tartan, it's a Victorian creation. Wellington also said something along the lines of "Next to a battle lost the saddest sight is of a battle won"

      Delete
  4. "ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE
    I COULD go on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the one skirmish I have given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on, to a large, thick book. It would be an agreeable task. Since I am the chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has fallen to me a disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I have given you.

    And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind—splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more—and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable "patriots," and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers—tons, cellars-full—and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

    My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am prepared. I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be.

    Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realisation conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do."

    ReplyDelete
  5. You must have sent the Firey Cross far and wide to raise all these clansmen, Peter, with more yet to arrive! Very nice work on the latest batch too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Keith! Glad you like them. I've enjoyed painting them as long as it isn't too many at once!

      Delete
  6. Lovely work Peter. The tartans are especially effective.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Lawrence. I'll probably tackle some more Scots after I finish the Piano Wargames Hessians, which are a WIP.

      Delete