Airfix HMS Prince WIP

Wow, an actual hobby post you say? With pictures?

Let me start by saying I'm not a sucker for vintage plastic model kits. I know some people like to torment themselves specialize in such things, but I'm not one of them.

However, Baroque warship kits in general have always been very appealing to me. I like their looks - and history - better than the later periods. So once I learned of this Airfix produce, I was constantly on the lookout for it.

If you are familiar with the Airfix HMS Prince kit (said variously to be 1/138, 1/150 and 1/180 scale), you might know that the secondary market price for it is, as can be deducted from the name, princely. So I was rather surprised one day when I found it on a local Facebook buy&sell group for about the tenth of the price it goes on ebay. Needless to say, I struck like a hawk and grabbed it. 

Painting Tally, November 2025

I was able to spend more time on the hobby in November. I was on sick leave for three days but I could get up and paint stuff.

The monthly goals were the following:

- play a game of Pikeman's Lament - succeeded

- work on The Pile - well advanced

- Christmas purchase - also done

Here's the list of all the things I did:

Painting Tally, October 2025 - Passing the Bar Edition

Readers might have noticed that I was not as active on the blog lately as usual. Well that is because I was preparing for my first bar exam out of three, so painting figures took small priority.

Good news is that I completed the examination so now I'm hopefully going to have more spare time, at least until I start preparing for the second one in earnest, which I plan to take at the end of January.

Anyways, I still managed to squeeze in some painting and modelling time, the results of which are:

28mm

Painted (requires varnish and basing)

8x Warlord Landsknecht pike

Assembled

26x Perry Mercenaries (2 command, 19 pike, 5 shot)

I do not count this towards my painting goals, but I'm well into the process of rebasing my Italian Wars collection (as mentioned on my miscellaneous blog). 

1/2000

Painted (requires varnish and basing)

4x Iron Duke class battleship

This brings the month's Painting Unit output to 188, the poorest number of the year.

Purchases

I bought a bunch of grey paints for my ship models (along with a rust and linoleum brown colour).

Further, I purchased two boxes' worth of Perry Mercenaries, which will become my Italian Wars Swiss pike, and Italian/French missile troops.

I know the pikemen's garment would be a bit early for the period, but I can do a lot of head swaps with remaining Warlord Landsknecht heads to make them look better, and I can bolster them later with some Artizan, TAG and Foundry figures.

I contemplated the new Warlord Games metal Swiss but they are not very convincing in my eyes.

Painting Tally, September 2025

Despite the lack of posts, this month has also been rather productive, mainly because I could get a major chunk of my 6mm figures done again.

28mm

Completed

    8x Warlord Winged Hussars (featured in the previous post)

6mm

Completed - the light troops for my Austrian/Flossian SYW project

    4x terrain pieces (a town, a village, a swamp and a forest

    60x SYW regular cavalry

    34x SYW light cavalry

    64x SYW light infantry

    4x SYW artillery and crews

Painted (requires basing) - this is the regular Russian/Medvetland contingent

    4x SYW command

    34x SYW regular cavalry

    192x SYW infantry

1/1200

Completed

    4x Ark Royal metal ships, wrapping up the project for a while now

1/2000

Assembled

    4x Iron Duke class dreadnoughts

This brings the month's Painting Unit value to 1524, a respectable quantity.

As to purchases, I ordered a Napoleonic lot from Commission Figurines (about a thousand figures), bases to go along with them, a pair of primers and a Tamiya 1/700 scale IJN Hibiki destroyer.

Going back to the naval project, I have to replenish my grays and probably buy new Kolinsky brushes (have been using the previous ones for two years now and their age shows), but this slipped over to October.

Then the >>you know who<< arrived...

I managed to complete the full Warlord Games winged hussar box, eight metal figures in total. Most of the time was spent waiting for the paint and then the first layer of varnish to dry - I always do a double matt varnish on metal figures.

I think they are quite splendid, maybe a bit more for the 1683 and onwards campaigns, but I'll just use them for the earlier 17th century anyway. I'm not sure I could do the same with the TAG or Foundry hussars wearing chainmail (that is use them for the later periods).

The rank and file comrades are in two groups, one in yellow/buff and one in red garbs. I used the pennons sparingly, because the long lances should be broken to pieces on the target, so what's the point throwing those expensive cloths away?

Painting Tally, August 2025

I try to post at least once a week on the blog, but sometimes life overrides that, just as in this case as I'm preparing for my bar exam.

Still I could take a few days off and get done with painting.

My rather limited goals for August were:

- play a game related to International Naval Wargaming Day - succeeded, although a few days late

- paint 28mm 17th c. Eastern European figures - success

- paint 6mm figures - success

The secret of success lies in setting reasonable benchmarks I guess.

On to the actual numbers:

28mm

Completed

8x Cossack rabble infantry (Frostgrave conversions)

2x Cossack gunners and a small gun (same as above)

9x homecast Cossack spears and a sergeant

Painted

8x Winged Hussars (metal figures so they shall take another two weeks to varnish and base, but the painting work was the most tedious part)

1x wolf dog for the winged hussar commander

Primed

9x Cossack infantry

12x Polish cavalry (Warlord conversions)

6mm

Completed

192x SYW / Flossian infantry

This brings my Painting Unit value for this month to 1008, a respectable number given the circumstances. Painting 6mm figures is easy and fun and this sort of saved me from getting boggled down with the 28mm project.

Purchases:

Now this list is a lot longer.

I bought a larger batch of figures from Warlord Games, the winged hussars, a 12-figure cavalry regiment and a 18-figure firelock storming party set. The plastics are in the process of being converted for my Polish army.

Then I got a bunch of tools, including a glue gun, a cordless rotary tool, silicone sculpting brushes and burnishers (which I mainly needed to sculpt chainmail). I also replenished my stock of green stuff.

Further I bought a few more organizers, a large cabinet with drawers and a tall plastic container for my Italian Wars figs. I also bought a small Ikea wooden drawer cabinet but it hadn't arrived yet.

TYW Imperialist Infantry - Warlord plastics complet'd

Great news everyone! A long time ago I got a bunch of Warlord plastic Pike &Shotte infantry sprues on one of their regular sprue sales. Well I'm proud to announce that I painted all of them. That's three sprues so 39 infantry, plus I added one from an earlier batch.

The Battle of Kostas Channel

This was my way of celebrating International Naval Wargaming Day 2025 - a little late as I played the game on Sunday. Rules used were my own 'Block Galleys' set, available from the Rules page of the blog.

A small Holy Leauge squadron approaches the narrows between Postavtomatikos and Saronikos Isles on the Aegean Sea. They are past a great battle and low on ammunition. Their main goal is to allow the large lanterna to reach the safety of the opposite table corner.

At this moment everything seems calm around the islands...

Eloise, Octavia and Three Doggos

 

Here are two female figures produced by the Polish company Wargamer: Eloise the Musketeer and Octavia the Cuirassier from their Hot &Dangerous line, to be used as character pieces in my 17th century games. Further, there are three Green Stuff World resin dogs.

As usual I spent a lot more time painting them than regular rank and file types. Eloise on the left received a succession of oil washes for example, so between the basecoat, varnish, wash and highlights there were about three weeks' worth of waiting time.

I only had to make minor modifications on the figures, such as chopping off the useless soft metal sword blades, and some filling work here and there. The casting of the metal is good quality and the parts fit well. Even though I shortened Eloise's boots a good length, she is still on the very tall side of the nominal 28mm scale, while Octavia is more proportionate, as you can see on the picture below.

Here they are with an Empress, Warlord and Bloody figure for scale comparison. The standing figures are pinned to a 25mm MDF base - they came with their own cast metal bases but I didn't like them very much. The dogs are nominally 1/56 scale but just may also be a little bit on the big side.

The boxer and beige dachshund are painted after family dogs. At Eloise's feet is the French bulldog Cardinal Richelieu, who is sadly not very well behaved and has to be yelled at constantly - for the amusement of the other Musketeers.

(As a disclaimer, I know that these types of dogs may not have existed in such form during the 17th century, but we can all agree to overlook that.)