Trench Raiders and a Sniper

These guys don’t fit into any of the regular battalions I’m working on for the Vimy project. I picked them up to use with the other guys when playing skirmish level games.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Trench Raiders from Brigade Games

Sniper from Great War Miniatures.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have finished up the 58^th (Central Ontario) Battalion, CEF, and with it the 9^th Brigade, and with that, the 3^rd Canadian Division! I’ll have separate posts with those later today. 

60th (Victoria Rifles) Battalion, CEF

The “Vics” of Montreal was the junior battalion of the 9^th Brigade in April of 1917. After the battle of Vimy Ridge the survivors were split up and absorbed by other battalions and the 116th (Ontario County Infantry) Battalion took their position in the Brigade.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

60th (Victoria Rifles) Battalion, CEF

The figures in this battalion, as with all the figures in the 9^th Brigade, are from Brigade Games.

Detail of the Vics formation patch. The Grey patch of the Third Division surmounted by a Blue Square (blue for the junior brigade of the division and the square for the junior battalion in the brigade.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

One more battalion (58^th Central Ontario) to finish up the brigade – and the division! 

The Guns of … April?

While working on my next battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary force for the Great War I happened to finish up a pair of guns…

(April because this is all ostensibly for the battle of Vimy Ridge which was in April)

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

These guns are from Renegade Miniatures.

I like renegade miniatures. They’re a tad on the chunky side, but they are solid (and durable!) and easy to paint.

The gun was easy and straightforward to put together.

The Renegade gun kind of dwarfs the other gun I have from Wargames Foundry

I’m not really sure I will make use of these… well… ever… the guns would be located nowhere near the actual area represented on the tabletop. I mostly just picked them up because… well… I got them back when I got the rest of the  Renegade Miniatures stuff – a few years back – back when the pound sterling was still down (relative to the Canadian Dollar) AND they were still doing 5-4-4 deals on the regimental packs! (It looks like they’re still doing 5-4-4 deals, but they’ve done away with the regiment deals…)

I suppose I could set guns out on other tables, but if I wanted to start representing the guns with miniatures I’d need an awful LOT of guns  - and guns ain’t cheap!!! I had it in mind I might just do the guns that were organic to the division and represent each battery with one team… but there were two brigades of Artillery per battalion, each with four batteries. An 18 ponder gun team (with the current exchange and postage rates) costs $16.20CAD from Irregular, $36CAD from Great War Minatures, $32 from Gripping Beast/Woodbine (or $29CAD each – if you buy a battery or two!?), $83.70 from Old Glory (If ordered from Old glory USA - admittedly most of that is shipping!? It looks like if I ordered it from the UK it would only be $25…). Even if I went with the cheapest option (Irregular) for the field batteries (three of the four batteries were field batteries, the other was a howitzer battery), that would be almost $400… just for the field batteries…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

One of the last two battalions (58^th or 116^th) of the 9^th Brigade… Then it’ll be on to the first Division… or some Germans!?  

The Girl's 10th Birthday Party

This past week my daughter turned 10. To celebrate we arranged a little party for this weekend. 

She started off around 1pm running a game of Kobolds Ate My Baby for a few of her friends. The adventure involved the Kobold player characters trying to scrounge up ingredients for King Torg's Birthday Cake (ALL HAIL KING TORG!). One of the ingredients was "Human Babies".

She is a soft-hearted Game Master and only two of the Kobolds died in the process of procuring said ingredients. And they only actually died because one of them was starting to annoy her... so a flaming piano fell out of the sky. The other casualty was due to standing too close to the annoying one when said flaming piano fell from the sky....



Then another friend showed up and there was an epic game of Munchkin Legends (bit of a John Kovalik theme going on here...).

...and then there was cake.



ALL HAIL KING TORG!



Some 10 year old girls might want fairies or princesses... mine asks for Torg: King of the Kobolds... (do I have the awesomest daughter ever or what!?)

(last year it was a Cthulhu cake...)

43rd Battalion, CEF (Cameron Highlanders of Canada)

I’m on to the 9^th Brigade this week to try and finish up the 3^rd Canadian Division.  I finished up the 7^th Brigade last week, and finished the 8^th Brigade two years ago. After the 43rd Battalion (pictured below) I only have two more battalions (58^th and 116^th) to finish up the 9^th Brigade – as I had painted up the 52^nd (Northern Ontario) Battalion last year.

The initial members of the 43^rd Battalion were recruited by the militia 79^th Regiment (Cameron Highlanders of Canada) in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

the 43^rd Battalion, CEF (Cameron Highlanders of Canada)

All the figures from this brigade are from Brigade Games. I don’t’ love these Brigade Games highlanders. I’m not saying I hate them, or “they’re awful” or anything – they have a lot going for them; I like the chunky rifles that might survive a fall from the tabletop… They are very simple and easy to paint… I like the kilt arpron… But there are a few things that drive me just crazy. Their jacket looks more like a WW2 battledress jacket (which highlanders, at that time, wore with their kilts…) than the cutaway jacket the highlanders of the Great War were issued. I suppose I could have corrected this with a LOT f green stuff… but I was just too lazy (or, actually, didn’t think of it unitl now… but then also realized I would have been too lazy had I thought of it before…) they have no respirator, but I can live with that. Also the Lewis gunners… first of all, Brigade games doesn’t even MAKE a highlander with a Lewis gun, so I had to convert this team. Second, I am, in general, no fan of prone figures for wargaming – as they take up more space than other figures (and messes up the nice, neat, even lines of figures in my storage drawers), they can’t be stood up in trenches, or be seen when next to hedges or walls, etc. But what drives me REALLY CrAzY is when a light machine-gun team are the ONLY prone  figures in the entire line!? if there were a few crounching and kneeling figures I could live with a prone figure or two – but when EVERYONE ELSE is standing and advancing and the only prone figures are two odd machine gunners… ugh.. so annoying. Because the figures come in packs with two teams one is advancing and one is prone, I briefly considered buying TWO MORE PACKS just to have all four teams advancing like the rest of their units… but as the packs are $16USD that would have meant spending anther $32USD – just to have two more advancing teams… which would be ridiculous.

Oh, and they didn’t even come with a bipod…

(mutter, grumble…)

I digress…

Detail of the formation patch. Grey rectangle of the Third Canadian Division, surmounted by a blue circle – blue for the 3^rd brigade in the division, circle for the senior battalion in the brigade.

One of these things is not like the other (I mean, other than the prone Lewis gun team…).

Okay not ALL of the figures in this unit are from Brigade Games… Terry passed on some spare Great War Miniatures a couple months back, and as I already had a piper for the 42nd Canadian Infantry Battalion (Royal Highland Regiment of Canada) – which are made up of Great War Miniatures figures, I kept this one aside for the time being. When I got to these guys I thought I’d paint him up as a piper I could send along with them. Of course that messes up my 15-figure-per-battalion (which also messes up my storage as 15 figures takes up exactly one and a hlf rows in my drawers… of course the storage situation has already been ruined by the PRONE LEWIS GUN TEAMS… so…)

(I’m just not going to let that go, am I…?)

I had a few spare highland officers so I painted them up and will stick them in the 9^th Brigade  or 3^rd Division headquarters…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More of the 9^th Brigade… or possibly some guns…?

Once I finish off the 3^rd Division, I’ll probably get to work on the 1^st Division – as I have some of those miniatures – the 1^st Brigade, at least, and part of the 2^nd.  

7th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division, CEF

Having just finished the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, I bring you the entire 7th Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Canadian Division, CEF:



All of the figures used of the 7th Infantry Brigade are from Great War Miniatures.

elements of the 7th Infantry Brigade Include:

The Royal Canadian Regiment

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry

42nd Canadian Infantry Battalion (Royal Highland Regiment of Canada)

49th (Edmonton) Battalion

Attached are:

7th Trench Mortar Battery

1st Company, 3rd Canadian Machinegun Battalion

Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry

Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was raised in 1914 by Montreal businessman and Militia officer Andrew Hamilton Gault. The regiment was named for the current Governor General’s Daughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught. It was apparently the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire. Initial recruits were mostly made up of British ex-servicemen.

The Regiment preceded the rest of the Canadian Expeditionary Force overseas and joined the 80^th British Brigade and were the first Canadian unit to see action in the Great War. A year later in 1915 the regiment joined the newly formed 3^rd Canadian Division as part of the 7^th Canadian Infantry Brigade.

This was the last unit I had to paint to finish up the brigade. Also in the Brigade were Royal Canadian Regiment, 49^th (Edmonton) Battalion, and 42nd Canadian Infantry Battalion (Royal Highland Regiment of Canada). As I already have the 8th Brigade finished, I need only finish up three more regiments in the 9^th Brigade to finish the 3^rd Canadian Division!

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

As with all the units in the 7^th Brigade, these figures representing the PPCLI in my collection are manufactured by Great War Miniatures

Detail of the formation patch.

The formation patch was a grey rectangle for the 3^rd Division, surmounted by a green semi-cirle (green for the senior brigade in the division, semi-circle for the second battalion within the brigade). The PPCLI was one of few battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary force that wore a cloth shoulder title to distinguish their unit – the little red arc above the formation patch which would have the white letters “PPCLI” on it.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I’ll probably post a picture of the entire 7^th Brigade.

Next I’ll get to work on the three remaining battalions of the 9^th Infantry Brigade to finish off the 3^rd Division and maybe some of the guns I have...?

I guess I should work on some Germans at some point!