The Enemy on the Horizon

There is a palpable fear along the southern coast of Cavenderia as reports of marauding Corsairs from the Deylicate of Bizerrca have reached the populous. IR-8 Jung is on full alert for possible raids upon the southern coast.

Secretly, Prinz Geoffrey craves an opportunity to test his newly reformed army but needs a justifiable cause to declare war.

If the Dey wishes his demise, one could think of no more certain a doom than to place unholy Bizerrcan feet upon Cavenderian soil.



I would like to thank the folks at EvE for facilitating an enemy for Cavenderia. I look forward to painting up some Turkish enemies and am looking for input from his lordship Herzog Ignaz. I am ordering some 15mm Old glory Austrians and Ottomans right now in order to do a skirmish "raid" scenario.

Which of the likely figures would be sent to raid Cavenderia?

1. Anatolian Delis
2. Anatolian Sekan
3. Bazi Bazouks
4. European Delis
5. European Sekans
6. Janissaries
7. Nizzam
8. Sipahi
9. tartars

These are the ranges offered from OG which would be the best for the raid. Total newbie as it goes with turks.

IR-8 Jung

IR-8 Jung is the second Green-coated regiment in Cavenderia and will be brigaded with IR-4 Fitzgerald during wartime. The regiment was mustered by an "infamous" privateer, utilizing press gangs in the northern coastal region of Cavenderia to supply fresh troops. Previously two (2) companies of IR-8 served as "Marines" in a minor campaign and the thought of converting the entire regiment to Marines for the flotilla has been expressed in the Royal Court. However, the regiment is currently Regular Infantry.

I was thinking I might utilize IR-8 or IR-4 as light infantry or marines. This would however lower the overall fighting force. I may paint up some 15mm old glory figs I have around as IR-8 for a skirmish landing party scenario.

Since I am discussing a possible landing party skirmish scenario, I guess this would be as good a time as any to discuss "Adversarial Protocol". I need an enemy. I have been looking at several imagi-nations that I might enjoy "invading" I thought I might start out by doing some sabre-rattling on the Emporer vs. Elector site, but did not want to offend anyone. Is it ok to "attack" another imagi-nation unprovoked or should I get permission from the author first? Or should I solicite an enemy? Let me know your opinions. I will also be soliciting info on the http://theminiaturespage.com/

On the workbench

Could not get the camera from work so took the minis to the office. To the left is IR-2 von Bear in 10mm old glory miniatures. You can click on the photos to enlarge. I have finished painting them but need to add texture to the base as in the picture of the 10mm Austrians in a earlier post. The flags in the picture are just roughs as David is still working on the official flags.

This is my first brigade for Might and Reason it features IR-2 von Bear and IR-5 Aurora. If you look closely you can see Colonel de Florette fourth from the left valiantly leading his troops. The Colonel is from Pendraken miniatures.

First of the Royal regiments IR-1 Die Dame's FuB. I have started this regiment in 15mm in an earlier post.

Profile shot of IR-5. You can see the Colonel a bit better. The official regimental flags will be similar to these, square with a cross, regiment numbers but with an icon of St. Sebastian in the upper left quadrant. Cavenderia blue cross, facing colors for the flag and metal colors for the border.

As soon as Crusador U.S. told me they would ship the miscast figure sent earlier and I did not have to return the first set I painted this 25mm Crusador Austrian General up as IR-3 Prinz Geoffrey. I was not sure how to paint the part of the cuff at the top with the buttons so I painted it to match the coat. I hope to some day do a whole BAR Battalion as Cavenderians but that is somewhat in the future. Painting up IR-2 and IR-4 in 10mm next. IR-Jung is on the way and David is working on the Leib flag. Hope you enjoy.

Old Glory Huzzah

Old Glory responded today and said "We will certainly replace the miscast figure for you". I am as happy as a little clam and wanted to get the news out that they take care of their customers, all of my concerns previously stated will be satiated when the fig arrives. Huzzah.

IR-6 and IR-7

IR-6 Christie

"Cavenderia" blue coat
Buff waste coat and pants
Navy Blue cuffs, lapels and turnbacks
Red Stock.

The Christie family has distinquished itself as honorable and pious, contributing many a son to the clergy as well as the military. The Chrities were one of the founding families of Cavenderia and as such Young William Christie has inherited IR-6 and has developed the reputation as a fair and honost Colonel. However, Young Christie has never been tested in battle and yearns for his first taste of blood. Only time will tell how he will fair and if honor and glory await.

IR-7 Graf Karl Gustav



"Cavenderia" blue coat and waist coat
Mourning black lapels, stock and turnbacks
Yellow hat trim
White metal


The history of IR-7 was detailed by Abdul666 in the comments section of the first miniatures post and is much more elequant than the following summary.

Inhaber Graf Karl Gustav has died. The regiment loved it's leader so much that the Colonel of the regiment requested to pay for the lapels of the regiment be eternally in mourning for the loss of the beloved leader, hence the black trappings.


I have completed IR-1, IR-2 and IR-5 in 10mm but have not been able to secure the work camera to get a good picture. I have also painted the crusador miniature Austrian General on foot. IR-8 Jung is in the works. I believe I am going to make IR-9 look equivilant to a historical Bavarian Regiment but with a Cavenderian history. I will try to get some pictures up soon. I have not heard from Old Glory yet but that is ok.

Friday night gaming

Tragedy on Friday night. My Crusader Miniatures, Austrian general miniatures arrived today. When I opened the package the general on horse back waving his hat had a completely flat pig nose. This was the mini I was most excited about painting. I wonder if I can send the one miniature back so I can paint the standing figure or if I will need to send them all back in order to get a new pack. I am not that pleased with Old Glory right now. When I ordered the figs I received a message on my answering machine saying that the expiration date I put in for my credit card 09-09 was past expiration, unless they are from the future this is impossible. Once that was straightened out the status on my order did not change from pending, so I was not certain when it shipped and then when the figs arrived one of the figures is misshapen. I will publish a picture of the figure when I get the camera from work next week. I am pretty forgiving and as long as they send me the figure without having to pay a bunch of postage I will be happy. As far as the figures that were correct they are very nice and well proportioned . They do not have many folds in the cloth so they will take a little extra effort to paint but I am excited about painting some larger figs. I usually order through http://www.warweb.com/ and they do a pretty good job. I am itching to paint one of the other miniatures but I am afraid I will need to send them all back to get a new blister. So I will postpone painting the minis until I contact Old Glory to see about their return policy.

On a flag design note I emailed David from Not by Appointment and sent him some preliminary drawings of the Cavenderia Regimental and Leib battalion standards. I look forward to seeing what he can do with them.

This weekend is Char Con in Charleston, West Virginia and I am going this Sunday. The Con is ran by The Kanawha Riflemen a nice bunch of guys and I look forward to seeing their Gettysburg 15mm game. I will try and get some pictures. Last year I meat Dean Rapp who is a gaming terrain distributor, I found out he was into AWI and I sent him a bunch of Jeff Valiant studio 15mm figs I had lying around for some Karma points.

Oh well rambling on tonight. Will keep everyone posted on how Old Glory deals with the mini.

ciao,

Regimental Flags

This is not by any means a final set of flags. I just needed some flags for the paper figs and the 10mm mini regiments I am painting up until I can work on the design some more. I think that I want to incorporate Saint Sebastian into the Cavenderian flag. As Cavenderia was originally populated by fleeing Irish Catholic emigres I thought there would be no better symbol than the martyred saint and patron of soldiers. I am not sure how regiments generated the colors for their flags. I am sure that some units used their facing colors in portions of their flags, but looking at French flags I can discern no reasoning behind the colors. Above is a rough draft of some regimental flags and a couple Leib battalion flags. I will post uniforms for IR-6 and IR-7 along with some notes on the regiments in future blog. Finally, Inhaber Jung has promised another green coated regiment soon.





"Look to the flag, look to Saint Sebastion, pierced and bleeding he would not die and under this guilded icon this regiment shall not succomb to the weapons of our enemies!!!"

Graf Karl Gustav moments before his death.

Here is a link to a short biography of Saint Sebastian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Sebastian

First Mustered Troops and Flag News

To the left is the very first Cavenderia Trooper ever painted. He is a trooper of IR-1 Die Dame FuB. I wanted to test the blue for the coat and it turned out just the shade I was looking for. The miniature is a 18mm Eureka Austrian. I like the look of the Eureka miniatures quite a bit. The miniature was base coated with an enamal black spray paint. I use cheap crafting paints such as apple barrel. I did however use Steve Dallimore's foundry painting system book to try and match up the colors for the blue and red. I will list a detailed list of paints and probably do a step by step in a future blog. Next picture is a photo of some more members of the regiment in progress. I base coated 5 regiments of 10mm Old Glory and Pendraken miniatures this past weekend. As I can paint these more quickly to get to the gaming table, I will post these as they are painted. I am going to start with IR-2 von Bear as the first 10mm. I will likely do a step by step with the 10mm as well, because when I started out there wasn't much information on painting 10mm out there but now there is even a Yahoo group. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I believe if you click the picture you will get a larger version. I am still learing how to upload images so hopefully they will get better. The color on the picture below is a bit saturated I need better lighting.

In flag news David Linienblatt of http://nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com/ said he might make a Cavenderia flag. This is very exciting news as Mr. Linienblatt does exceptional computer graphic work and with the flag template I would be able to print out very nice customized flags. I will discuss design of the flag soon, I do love horizontal stripes.

IR-5 Aurora

The second of the "foreign" troops to enlist in Cavenderia's cause IR-5 Aurora. IR-5 was mustered into service by a here to be named Monte-Cristan Colonel reportedly forced into exile having slain a "better" in an illegal dual over the Lady Aurora. Prinz Geoffrey could not pass up the opportunity to have a regiment formed by this wiley veteran and accepted the Colonel into the service of the Crown.

*Do to the interesting back-story provided by abdul666 in earlier posts, I have decided to rate the command of this unit exceptional as the Colonel was able to obtain some of his Monte-Cristo officers for the new regiment. I will be taking submissions for the name of the exiled officer.

There have been rumours of another Green coated regiment being raised by Inhaber Jung, additional regiments have been requested from Economov, Alt McGill, Jung, McGill, Christie and Redecker. General notes of interest: As soon as I have 10 regiments designed I am planning on printing them out and having my first battle against some paper Saxons.

After our discussions on this blog and http://theminiaturespage.com/ I have started assigning regiments to Brigades. IR-1 Die Dame's FuB/IR-3 Prinz Geoffrey and IR-2 von Bear/IR-5 Aurora as far as grenadier battalions the following will be combined as of now.IR-3 Prinz Geoffrey/IR-4 Fitzgerald and IR-2 von Bear/IR-5 Aurora

I will have access to a good digital camera this weekend so I should be able to get some pictures up of the first painted miniatures this next week.

One final note, even though I am making the army of Cavenderia in 10mm and 15mm I could not resist purchasing an Austrian general 28mm figure from http://www.crusaderminiaturesusa.com/ to paint up as Prinz Geoffrey just in case anyone out there decides to do another 28mm SYW game and needs some extra minis. I may eventually paint up IR-3 in 28mm for a loaner regiment or to take to the Seven Years War Association Convention next year.

The miniature does bear some resemblance to the painting of General Daun that I use as my Prinz Geoffrey Picture. I will of coarse have to mold a nice sash and may paint the Coat "Cavenderia" Blue.

IR-5 A question of Pink?

I have been working on the "foreign" IR-5 Dame Aurora. I am not sure which would be the official pink of Monte-Cristo. Far left is a slight orangish-pink, center a more salmon-orange pink/peach and right a more violet pink. The stock is a deeper pink similar to that on the mermaid standard. I have toyed with the eggshell pants and they still appear white in the graphic program. I have decided to make the regiment foot as this will give the infantry an overall look with the cornflower blue. I believe that foreign or "Internet" submitted regiments will receive the yellow hat lace with the locals having the white hat lace. Let me know which color is most befitting monsieur.

Blogging Etiquette

As I am new to blogging I was not sure if it was polite for me to respond to comments on blog entries or if this was just an area for people to comment on the posts. I hope I have not appeared rude by not responding to individual comments. I really appreciate the feedback the community has given and especially the ideas for additional regiments. I looked at a few of your blogs and have noticed that you sometimes reply so I will be adding comments to the posts from time to time. I really have to get a good digital camera, I borrowed one from work for the last miniatures pics. I really liked the Abdul's idea of a Monte-Cristo officer adventuring in Cavenderia. Should he raise an infantry regiment or cavalry troop? Die Dame Aurora Dragoons? However the regiment or troop progresses I like the idea of the salmon pink with the Cavenderia blue. I will work on the models. The first battalion of IR-1 is nearly complete in lead miniatures and I can not wait to get the photos on-line. I have not decided how to Brigade the different regiments together. In might and reason roughly two regiments is a Brigade for gaming purposes. Historically there did not appear to be a specific way regiments were brigaded together I was thinking IR-1/IR-2, IR-3/IR-4 etc. but that seems rather boring so I may roll the dice for random brigading. Let me know if you have any thoughts. I think I will pose this question on TMP as well.

IR-4 Fitzgerald

IR-4 Fitzgerald, provided by one of my local gaming buddies pays homage to Cavenderia's Irish roots. IR-4 has a dark green coat with kelly green lapels, cuffs and turnbacks with a buff undercoat and pants with yellow buttons. The grenadiers of IR-4 have "traditional" Cavenderia cornflower blue hat sacks to help identify them in the throws of battle.

Saturday Morning Game Purchasing

I was in Cincinnati this weekend, when my brother-in-law suggested we take a trip to a favorite gaming store of his. The store was very nice, loaded with Rio-Grande games and first rate from the service to the cleanliness of the store. While looking through some of the older games I found The Campaigns of Frederick the Great, designed by Rob Markham for 3W in 1993. I had not read any reviews of the game but for under $20 I thought it looked promising. The game has the old Avalon Hill table on the back of the box and said that it was "very high" for solitaire suitability so I can playtest it by myself. I asked the owner of the store if they sold over the net and was told that they do not have a web-store were not set up that well to ship games so I will not be able to purchase from them except when visiting the Queen City. They did not even have a business card on hand. This is too bad as it was a very nice store and they are probably missing out on online sales. However, I am very happy to have found a new game to read and play concerning the Seven Years War. My friend Mike has submitted his uniform for the Cavenderia cause and I will be posting pictures of IR-5 Fitzgerald soon.

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Above: Image from 3W's Campaigns of Frederick the Great by Rob Markham.