Small Obsessions: Making Lemonade...

... that's what a minatures enthusiast/gamer does during a pandemic!

Seems as good a time as any to dust off this mothballed blog. I mean, really. Does anybody blog anymore? Perfect time to start then, I guess.

Its been an 'all over the map' year for my modelling so far. Much of last year was spent planning 28mm Black Powder Napoleonic armies and painting Death Guard 40k models but as this year lurched forward I found myself feeling somewhere between whipsawed at the pace of GW product releases and a bit burnt out ( if only temporarily) by the match play game culture that GW products engender. It seemed a perfect time to revisit the classics and return to working on some long neglected 15mm DBA projects... Then came Covid19 and now its full blown immersion into 15mm historical miniatures again.

The Goal: Matched and themed army sets for my favorite historical periods all based for DBA 3.0 in 15mm. First up: Allies and Enemies of the "Spider King". Louis XI was arguably the central player in a complex web of European politics in the second half of the 15th Century ( hence his nickname). He gives a great center to build a series of related armies that can be used for 'one off' games, historic battle re-fights, as well as 'in-period' campaigns.

I learned long ago that if one wants to get other gamers to play games that stray from the beaten path one has to be prepared to supply all the resources. DBA is very forgiving in this way. Being only 12 stands ( with a small handful of options usually) it doesn't break the bank or take a lifetime to paint. This is my opportunity, then to bring fresh blood to DBA from our gaming community. The cast of players looks as follows:

French Ordonnance Army IV/82a (Louis XI)
Burgundian Ordonnance Army IV/85a ( Charles the Bold/Rash)
Scots Common Army IV/16 (James III)
War of the Roses Yorkist IV/83a ( Edward IV)
War of the Roses Lancastrian IV/83a ( Henry VI/ Margaret of Anjou)
Later Swiss League of Constance IV/79c ( Rene II Duke of Lorraine)

Some of these armies are old friends ( first DBA army I collected was a WotR army back in 1990). Others like Louis XI's Ordonnance army is a first. All these armies are new beginnings with fresh models. The beauty of 15mm DBA from a modeling point of view is that one can take the time and put the little extra flourishes in and still spend a fraction of the time it takes to complete the same army in 28mm for games like WAB or Medieval Warfare. To help me on my way to getting each army 'just so' I've taken to collecting tons of random 15mm models over the past 20 years ( some would say hoarding but tomatoes tom_a_toes...) So a word on that...!

Like so much of the miniatures world 15mm models have experienced something of a renaissance in recent years with more brands and choices than I ever thought possible as a kid starting out. I've tried to acquaint myself with as many ranges as possible but fear I've only scratched the surface. Still... I do have some familiarity with quite a few brands. Liking to get the best variety and most authentic look for each army, brands that mix well together is

always a high consideration here. Brands so far vetted for medieval armies:

Essex, Old Glory, Mirliton, Jacobite, Alternative Armies, Bueada, Minifigs, Magister, Legio Heroica,
( some are OOP most are readily available. Legio Heroica, while being a fine brand, is notably larger than pretty much anything else in the list. This doesn't stop me from using them but mixing them on the same bases with the other brands doesn't really work.)

So that's the rough outline of this project. On to the workbench and progress made so far...

Commons gaming area completed over the winter for gaming in our tiny home. 6'x4' game board folds for storage and can accommodate 2 DBA games comfortably side by side or one Big Battle DBA game,