Itinerant Wargamer

Chassuer pics and update

2010-12-28T10:50:00.000Z

At the beginning of the month I made the trip up to the WHC for Gerry's birthday game, as I said before, a bit sad, as everything is going to close there and move to Basingstoke for next year. The event itself was however as much fun as it always is, thanks to all the players and of course Gerry for putting it on and Anne for putting up with 10 hungry gamers all week.

We played 3 games, an Eylau scenario which saw me playing Davout with a flank attack being faced off by Gerry who led me a merry dance fending off my infantry with repeated cavalry charges and lots of his pesky light infantry units ....I wasn't a huge fan of his new light infantry rules before and I'm less of one now!...to be honest, I don't mind the rules themselves but its the quantity of the units he is employing that I feel is colouring the game. The odd btn here and there would be fine, but with some formations having 3 or 4 of these each they can dominate. I don't think the staggered bases add much to the visuals either.

That said, we had a great time, so who cares?

Game 2, Friedland, saw me battering away at Herbert, quite a relaxed game. He wasn't coming forwards into my massed Russian gunline and I wasn't going to far forwards into the minefield defence he'd set up around a village. He had to wait until my flank was threatened and the position unhinged by (wait for it) copius quantities of Light btns romping through a wood on my right. Then I had to fall back slowly but he didn't have the strength to press his attack. The French weight was elsewhere on the other side of the river.

The final game was an 1813 "what if" - Spremberg, a normal game without the light btn rules etc, to be honest I enjoyed this the most despite the fact that we cocked up our deployment and had too much cavalry in the wrong place (in front of a redoubt, - although we didn't know it was there). Nonetheless we had a fine game.

A biggish project prior to Christmas was going down to the new WHC at Basingstoke to see Mark Freeth's new set-up..well, at the moment its a big, airy, empty unit! Not strictly true after me visit as I dropped of a very full van load of timber in order to help mark build the all important tables. I've volunteered my rudimentary carpentry skills to help him and we are going to start building in the new year. Should be pretty straightforwards but blimey, do you need a lot of wood!

He finally has his website up and running so I said I'd pass it on here to any of you avid readers who hadn't seen it

http://www.wargameshc.co.uk/

All sorts of stuff in there, lots of pics (some taken by me!) and info on the fairly packed programme he has prepared for 2011.

So, if any of you fancy a big game weekend he deserves your support, I shall certainly be able to get over there more often in future. I timed the drive, door to door is less than an hour from West London! Big difference to the five hours each way to Scarborough.

Last, but not least a quick word about the photos, I realised I have no pics of Napoleon on this site....Now I thought that was a bit remiss considering the majority of stuff here is "Napoleonic". So a pic of him and his staff and naturally the accompanying regt of Chassuers to go with him. Mostly Connoissuer figures with a few Surens I think- all painted by Doug Mason and now all about to move from Yorkshire down South.

Anyway, Happy New Year to you all.

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Austrian Dragoons by Doug Mason, and a bit of news

2010-11-26T13:04:00.001Z

I can't help but notice its been 7 weeks since I last posted here, I wish I could say that a lots happened wargames-wise in that time, but I'm afraid thats not the case. I've had little time for games or painting. My output has been insignificant; I've STILL got 4 lancers to finish for that regt, although all the horses are done and the rest are based and finished. On a positive note I am coming up to my annual quiet period in terms of work which is normally a productive painting period, so lets hope so.

One thing I did manage was to get Mike Ingham to part with these dragoon figures painted by Doug Mason. I did nothing to them other than touch up the bases, they are the Elite figures. This gives me 2 regts of Dragoons now, plus the 2 hussar regts, and 1 lancer. I have one regt of 36 Chevaux legere (why give Austrian cavalry a French name?) still to paint- this will give 6 regts and a total of 240 cavalry.

There are stiil the Cuiraissiers to consider,but they can wait.

In 2 weeks time I will be heading up to Scarborough for Gerry's birthday bash which he has kindly invited me to. While I'm obviously looking forwards to this, it's also a bit sad as it will be the last time I will get to play 25mm napoleonics up there. Its not been any great secret that ill-health is forcing Mike to shut down the holdiday centre. Gerry is now well underway embarking on his own enormous - and I mean enormous!-10mm project (He already has erected a brand new, purpose-built "bunker" with about the same amount of table space as the current centre!). He is looking to replicate what they had in 25mm in 10mm in a couple of years- should be fascinating, and is going to be upping the figure scale so what was a 36 man btn now has a mental 108 figures. The man is nuts.

Although some figures have been sold, the rest of the collection (which is still massive), including all the buildings and terrain is moving down to the Basingstoke area under the stewardship of Mark Freeth. I spoke to him this morning and he has new premises sorted, and is hoping to put his first game on in February! He said he should have a website up next week. He is going to be doing Napoleonics, plus ACW and Malburian, and has already rebased all the WWII stuff (!) for Flames of War. He has some new ideas and will hopefully breathe a bit of new life into the WHC. I wish him all the best, and am looking forwards to playing there (and its only an hour up the road!).

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WIP: Lancers

2010-09-26T13:23:00.002+01:00

September has been a fairly hopeless month in terms of gaming, painting, and blogging I'm afraid. So, just in case you thought I'd jacked it all in I'll put up some pics of the Austrian lancers I don't seem to be able to finish.

Elite figures and horses with a few mounts from elsewhere (Connoisseur, Alban, Firing Line).

Bases obviously not done yet, still awaiting painting, brushing and grass bits. So far I've just done 32 out of what will be a massive 48 man regt - 8 squadrons of 6 figures. I picked the the third regt as I liked the red Czapka, plus the trumpeters apparently wore white ( though I've had trouble confirming this). Plenty of conversions and head twists, plus a few replacement heads from Firing Line. Lance pennons by GMB. There will be a standard bearer, although I'm not sure if Austrian light cavalry actually carried them in action. All the lances were soldered, and the officers sabres replaced. I also played about with some of the horses, teasing out manes and tails with the soldering iron to give them more movement. In the end, however, I decided life was too short. I might do this again for officers and the odd special, but otherwise.No.

I hope to get these finished this week, I guess I've had a bit of mid-project blues with the old Austrians. It will pass.

I have also decided to give these chaps their own staff officer - seeing as they are such a big unit. I found a lovely Bicorne Uhlan officer, and I've tweaked him a bit- changed his sword arm, added a steel sabre and soldered a "flying" scabard onto him, again to impart a little movement. I'll post him when he is done.

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Duff-up in John's shed: The Austrian's first outing

2010-08-11T01:28:00.001+01:00

Things start to go wrong on the Austrian right- the line is in the process of being shot to bits

I slipped up to Cambridge to John's shed for the day in order to get the Austrians actually on a table for the first time. There wasn't a massive amount of thought put into the game, it was just a bit of an excuse for a duff-up. John is easing his way back into Napoleonics after a lengthy lay-off so we wanted just a quick, low intensity game that wasn't going to tax the brain an awful lot.

Close up of the attack columns on the left. Everything fine at present (sausage roll in support)

It was a pretty straightforwards set-up, a village complex on the (Austrian) right, some skirmish buildings and walls on the left, a few woods in the centre. No big artillery platforms anywhere, French defending. We didn't have a huge amount of time so the French deployed quite far forwards,which didn't help the Austrian cause much. In retrospect we probably could have been a bit cleverer with the terrain,

Panorama of the early stages

The only decent area for cavalry was in the centre which unbalanced things somewhat. I concentrated the Austrian's new shiny hussar brigade there and the French had a regt each of Chassuers, dragoons and cuirraisier plus a horse btty. Each flank had an infantry division to take the respective village areas. The one on the right had a dragoon regt attached.

We used a variable morale system for the infantry, all btns were treated as 1st class line until they took their first morale test,where-upon they rolled to discover their true class: Austrians: 1 to 3- 2nd class line. 4 to 10 1st class line.

French: 1 to 4 -2nd class line 5 to 7 1st class line, 8 to 10, veteran.

French young guard: 1 to 5, veteran. 6 to 10 Elite.

All cavalry was line and all artillery was 1st class.

The Austrians fielded 1 infantry division of 2 Grenzer, 5 line btns with a 6lb btty and 18 skirmishers, these took the left flank. In the centre was a hussar brigade with 14 squadrons of hussars each of 6 figures.

On the right was an infantry division of 6 line btns with a dragroon rgt of 6 x 6 man squadrons plus a 6lb btty and 12 skirmishers. All btns were 48 man strong.

5 battalions: should be enough to take a village, surely?

Connoissuer French attempt to outflank the Austrian left

The French had a 2 infantry divisions each of 6 x 36 supported by a 6lb btty, 24 chassuers and 18 skirmishers. One of each occupied each flank.

In addition they had a young guard division of 4 x32's plus a heavy cavalry outfit with 1 x 32 of dragoons and 32 cuirraisier with a 3 gun horse btty.

All in all, I think the French were too tough for the poor old milkshakes.

The Austrian right develops

The Austrians trundled forwards, because of the speed of our set-up it meant the Austrians couldn't really get any artillery preparation, however they manfully pitched into the attack against each village. They actually did ok, they got forwards,got the guns into position and started to work towards their objectives.

In the centre the massed hussars nullified the french cavalry, a typical ding-dong Grand Manner cavalry scrap continued through the whole game. A lot of folk can't cope with the cavalry system in ITGM but the more I read of historical accounts the more they turn out like ITGM battles. Units go forwards, battle it out, retire, new ones go in, the original ones rally, go back. Its all about having local reserves. Both sides (typicaly) won the combats they should have lost, and lost the ones they "were certain" to win. The rest of the cavalry was squeezed on the extreme Austrian right, and this went a bit more to the script, with the Austrian dragoons making short work of a chassuer regt, which forced a couple of French btns into square and took them out of the fight for the village.

A recent new acquisition: Classic Connoissuer infantry painted by Doug Mason, skulking in square.

On the left a grenzer btn waddled in line through a wood on the the extreme flank, it never got anywhere for the whole game but it did tie down 2 French btns (a bit) so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Meanwhile the asault against the skirmisher buildings and the walled compound went in. John concentrated a lot of fire on one unit (always a mistake in my book) but the size of the Austrian units allowed it to be shrugged off. I had some success at first and things were looking rosy.

6lb battery supporting the Austrian right

The French artillery btty retreated when charged and the lead 2 Austrian units crunched into a lone French btn manning the wall. In fact I had a bit too much success. The French btn routed after the first round of combat, with relatively light casualties. I would have much preferred for it to have stuck around for at least a second round of combat as I had 2 more btns to re-inforce with and the French had one. This would have allowed me to ruin 2 French units, as it was it meant the French just pulled back a bit, I couldn't exploit, and the 2 units I had in the front line were badly shot up. They took more and more fire from the flanks and that was about it for my attack on the left village.

Hussars and Grenzer demonstrate in the centre

The right hand flank told a similar story, despite the dragoon's success I couldn't get sufficient force to bear on the village, I was reasonably successful at clearing the walls but couldn't find room to deploy those big Austrian firing lines. When I finally did, it being Austrian, it took so long to deploy that it was shot down before it could do much damage. Again, the Austrians after initial successes just couldn't finish off those Frenchies.

High point for the left. The Austrians couldn't get over that wall.

Things were coming to close, dinnertime was approaching, and the Austrians had run out of steam. We called it a day.

So in the end it was a suitably inauspicious start for the Austrian army, but then, as we all know, all troops get beat the first time out!

(Good Lord!! I've just noticed...60,000 hits!!- does that mean I can have drink?)

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Hussar problem solved

2010-08-05T17:27:00.003+01:00

I mentioned that while I was up at the Wargames Holiday Centre I was hoping to make a few purchases. Well,I did indeed, and here are a few pics of some of them. Mike has been selling off quite a few units this year in order to "slim down" the collection (for example, having nearly 180 x 36 man French btns seemed a bit OTT), and I hoped to buy a few units I'd always really liked. High on the list were these 2 regts of Austrian Hussars, 1 of 36 men and another of 48 (Wish they were both 48's).

One of the problems I've always had with the Austrian army is the hussar uniform. Now I know they invented the things, but I've always thought the Austrian hussar uniform looked more at home in Billy Smart's Circus than on a battlefield. All that purulent bright green, stupid red trousers, and yellow plumes...Give them some long, floppy shoes rather than hussar boots and they would have looked better.
Subsequently I've never had any great desire to paint any. So from years ago when I first saw these rather more subdued paint jobs they always appealed. They are all wearing overalls and the green is (a more realistic) darker shade. Despite this they are still suitably gaudy enough for hussars, with their red shabraques with yellow piping and either bright or dark blue dolmans.

They are (naturally) the Elite miniatures castings, painted and converted by Doug Mason. All the sabres are pins soldered into the hand and are very tough. Even after many years of service up in Scarborough I only had to replace 3 swords out of 84. Doug has done plenty of bends and twists to these figures. There are only 4 basic figures here, officer, trumpeter and 2 trooper figures, and he really has imparted an incredible sense of movement to the models which really look the part of hussars at full tilt

I just did a minimal amount of work on the bases to blend them with my standard basing. Just an oilwash and highlight then some grass clumps added. I also gave them a quick new coat of gloss. I had contemplated giving them a matt coat, but they look infinitely better in their original gloss glory. I'm developing a bit of a theory about gloss V matt: Gloss varnish isn't terribly fashionable these days which is actually a bit wierd. There is no debate about it bringing out the colour and establishing a visual contrast between the figure and its base, this is simply optical fact. Nonetheless, a lot of folk "prefer" matt these days. Anyway, my theory is, that gloss varnish makes well painted figures look even better and badly painted figures look even worse, while matt varnish just dulls everything down to a more median uniformity (no pun inteneded). So for Mr Average painter (like me, and most of you) we think our stuff looks better when we matt varnish it, because gloss just shows up all the cock-ups, while matt is more....forgiving.
Anyway, thats my theory.

These figures were painted by someone who really knew what he was doing, and it shows up even better in the flesh than through the lens of my rather inadequate camera.

These weren't the only figures I bought from Mike, there are more (I just kept peeling off the tenners until he said stop) but the rest will have to wait for another time.

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Long WHC weekend (part II)

2010-07-31T20:49:00.003+01:00

The Allied right early in the game. Looks reasonably secure at this point.

So to continue the narrative of last weekend, we carried on with the made-up (before you all go Google-crazy) battle of Goerlitz. This is what I call a "Mike reinforcing" battle. (at least, I assume it is one of Ingham's). Mike does like to design scenarios where one or often both sides receive their reinforcements gradually throughout the battle, usually on a simple die-roll (turn number + 3 average die), and coming on to the table at pre-designated entry points. This means (horror of horrors!) that wargamers actually have to come up with a plan in advance, and then pretty much stick to it. It's one of the strengths of the vastness of the holiday centres' table. Its no use deciding to bring on a formation in one area of the battle and then attempt to march it (even with tactical moves) from one end of the table to the other. It will rarely get there.

Decide where it's going, decide what it's job is, decide what happens after that (amazing how many wargamers are utterly incapable of this).

Anyway, down below are the respective OB's - many apologies but I don't have a map.

Allied OB

French OB

The French therefore had a mountain of cavalry (15 regts!) and hardly any infantry (a paltry 16 btns) on the table to begin with. The allies could muster a 2 to 1 advantage in infantry and almost parity in numbers of cavalry figures(though not in regts/sqdns). The French did have the advantage of a reasonable defensive line. A large sector of their front was covered by hedges and woods which would prevent the Allies from pushing forwards quickly, and they controlled 3 key villages. The central one was on a hill and dominated proceedings, particularly the road net in the sector where the Russian Guard infantry would eventually appear. So this had to be cleared in good time to allow some of the key re-inforcements to move up.

It was garrisoned by the Polish infantry division, just 8 btns, a hussar regt and a battery. The infantry were a bit good though, for although they moved and fired as line (+3), they tested morale as if they were all elite (+5). Tough little critters.

I was up against this with 14 ropey old Russian btns, a light cavalry regt and a big old Russian 6 pdr battery.

In the event it was a really tough fight. 4 Russian btns went right with half the skirmishers to clear a wood with just a single Polish btn in it, the outcome of this was rarely in doubt but it slowed me down a little which I'm sure was the general idea.

Around the village the Russian battery engaged the French in counter-battery fire and the French quickly realised they were on a loser and retired out of sight of the Russian battery which then switched it's fire to the village and the units around it in support. It did sterling work! and inflicted hefty losses on the Poles. Not that they seemed to care. Even with the infantry testing as Elite, Nick blithly rolled high roll after high roll for their morale tests. After about 8 or 9 turns I got the Russian attack against the village set up. It should have been a walkover, and in some ways it was. I had 8 btns going in against just 4 Polish, and I won all 3 melee phases, the Poles were well and truly stuffed. Naturaly they just passed morale meaning I bounced ...

My first attack against the Polish held village, after a massive morale roll, the Poles held, but the losses they had taken in the process meant they couldn't stand for long.

This was the begining of the end for the Polish division, as the 4 units which has defende the village were thoroughly exhausted, being almost at 50% strength. I had 2 units badly damaged, and 3 more with minor losses. A few more turns saw the rest of the Polish division eliminated as they made a series of brave but piece-meal attacks.

Elsewhere the Prussians were arriving and were embroiled in fighting over the hedgerows, on the extreme left the other Russian corps was pushing forwards supported by the Russian cavalry corps which was destroying any French cavalry in it's path.

Prussian columns move up in the Allied centre, the wood in the top of the picture finally having been cleared of pesky Poles

Then the French started arriving in numbers. However, they all turned up on the flanks! division after division. I had pushed my cossacks forwards in a smart-ass move to sit on the roads I just KNEW the French reinforcements would arrive on in order to strengthen their (now destroyed)

centre. They never appeared, just more and more on the western and eastern edges. They were inexorably pushing back on the eastern flank, despite the Prussian's best efforts, having beaten off the French to their front. The Russians on the western flank told a similar story, with the French guard now lined up against them.

The "Polish" village in the top left, Prussians advancing in the centre, relieving the Austrian advanced guard in the foreground. French infantry move up to (temporarily) occupy the hedgerows

In the centre the Russian guard infantry had streamed into the gap left by the Poles, and lined up alongside Pahlen's victorious cavalry. There was a brisk, one-sided fight as the Russians mopped up 4 btns who were still in their sector. They settled down (supported by 3 batteries) to await the French Guard.

The Russian reserve cavalry appeared on the left but never really got going while it's front was covered in routers from Eugen's corps. That was the situation at turn 26 (not bad going) when the game ended. As for the result?

I'm not sure..drawish erring on the side of the French, but at a massive cost.

. Although the French were in a slightly better position they had incurred enormous casualties, both in infantry and cavalry. All in all a fine game and a great week-end.

There is one more thing I need to tell you about the weekend, avid readers here will recall I was intending to purchase a few figures from Mike..this I did, but that will have wait for a few days, when I will have pictures aplenty.

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Long WHC weekend (part1)

2010-07-28T19:08:00.000+01:00

The view back over the French centre and right flank. Dom looks thoughtful, Gerry, errr...doesn't.

Last thursday saw me making the familar trip up to Scarborough to the WHC, this was to be a long weekend with 2 games on offer. The plan was to get there for about 2.00pm for a Corunna(ish) scenario which was to play until Friday afternoon, then once a few more people had arrived, change over for a fictitious 1813 bash which could accomodate more players. As it was, the Peninsular game still had 10 players, so the players each had relatively small commands and the game played quite quickly and smoothly.

I played on the French left and was tasked with taking one of 2 villages which dominated the road network which the British needed in order to get to the waiting arms of the RN.

This probably proved easier than it should have done, my opponent had racked up 8 or 9 battalions behind the village, including some fairly choice kit, a couple of guards batallions and 2 big Scots units. As it was he would have been better off spreading out a bit more. What transpired was that both myself and Eric on my right flanked the village rather than assault it directly. Due to the lack of troops on the flanks we were able to easily penetrate the defences which on my flank consisted mainly of a solitary highland btn. A punchy unit, and if it had had a couple of mates quite capable of putting up a stiff fight. On its own however, it was easily brushed aside. The end result was that the British behind the village were caught in a crossfire from myself and Eric, with units being continually pinned by retreating units in front of them.

Rule number 1 in ITGM:

Space Management!

Part of my division attempts to outflank "my" village, which is out of shot to the right of the picture

In the end, it was a fairly comfortable and total French Victory (contrary to Noel's verdict here: http://garagegamer.blogspot.com/ ) Although his perspective might be coloured because he was on the extreme flank of the British with the Light Division, which he handled with considerable expertise. Unfortunately I think his troops would have been the only part of the British army to get away. The rest were cut off.

"My" village in the background, successfully outflanked. The British driven out, and are now being pushed back to the left of the picture.

None-the less, it was great start to the weekend (I don't recall talking to my dice AT ALL...I think I am being horribly misrepresented!), and got everyone in the mood for the main event which was a larger 1813 game; Goerlitz. We started the game on friday afternoon and got a few turns in without getting into serious contact before packing up for the day. After a couple of extra arrivals (and a night in the casino), and we were ready to go on saturday morning....to be continued

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Some recent additions

2010-07-20T22:56:00.000+01:00

IR 30 Prinz de Ligne

July draws to a close amid a frenzy of wargame activity. Despite being the busiest month of the year I've kept the painting up, finishing the above unit. I MIGHT, just might, get a second batallion done as well, which would be fantastic - I've just got the last 13 figures to finish so it's quite likely. Ordinarily, I'd say no problem seeing as there are still 11 days to go in this month, but this coming extended weekend will see me nipping off up to Scarboro' for a couple of Napoleonic games- looking forwards to it immensely. I think we are doing Corunna (never done that before) plus some made up 1813 bash. I can't wait.

Front Rank artillery adjutant and some random Rupert

Apart from the prospect of 4 days gaming with some like-minded folk, I'm hoping to make a couple of purchases, as Mike is selling a few units and I've asked him to reserve a couple of favourites of mine. I'm afraid I'm going to be a total tease and not say what they are, so you'll just have to tune in next week and I'll post a few pics.

The Sash and Sabre samples were a crippling disapointment, little stumpy-sub-Foundry things...no use to me at all.

Some Front Rank Grenzers shield the Elite column

A far more interesting set of samples came from Alban miniatures, I got some of their Austrian hussars and horses. First, the horses, which are very nice. The hussars only look good on the light horses, although the heavies are lovely sculpts as well and will come in handy elsewhere. The hussars are really lovely figures with true, un-exagerated detail. A bit like Stadden's best effort. No buttons like wheel-nuts or gurning faces. They all come with a seperate sword arm which I rather like. The only problem is they are a little small (or perhaps not as big) compared to the my Elite masses. They may work ok on their own, I'm not sure yet. I think I'll have to paint up a few and do a comparison.

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Grubby old Grenzers

2010-06-30T14:38:00.000+01:00

Grenzer regts 16 and 17

So, June quickly draws to a close, not a bad month in the world of Austrians, despite a crippling work schedule (Sir Elton John and Lady Ga-Ga being demanding souls), nonetheless, I got over 90 figures whacked off. This included finishing the second 48 of Grenzer. This means I now have 96 of these critters, all with green facings. Subsquently I can use them either as 2 x 48 man units or as 3 x 32's which is some nice flexibility. Eventually I will add another 2 x 48, so will be able to field 4 x 48 or 6 x 32!

32 man Grenze units are pretty weak in ITGM, which seems accurate.They fight and morale as militia - i.e only plus 1 for morale but they do fire as if they are veteran. So 48's can be a bit pokey in the right circumstances (sat in a village is always a favourite) They are still a bit hopeless in woods though (move as militia) which doesn't seem quite right. I might need to think about this.

Front Rank officer throwing his weight around with his slimmer Connoissuer squaddies

I'm going back on track with painting line infantry next, this will be the seventh German btn, probably with pale grey facings. The first batch have just been undercoated and are awaiting the old Army Painter treatment.

After six months of not buying (m)any Napoleonic figures my purchasing gland has been getting twitchy. I've been checking out the Sash and Sabre range- I've got some samples on order from Old Glory UK, command for both line and grenadiers. Even if they are not quite what I'm after I'm sure they can be shoe'd into a unit somewhere. I'm over halfway with the line infantry, and will wind up with 16 btns of Germs and Hungarians....but it doesn't seem QUITE enough...so maybe a division of the S&S chaps would round off my army nicely. We'll see.

FR command, Connoiseur and Elite make up the rest

The other Company I've been looking at are Alban. While I like their infantry a lot, I don't think they will fit very well with the massed Elite units, which is a shame. However, the hussars they make look fabulous, and I don't think a cavalry unit will present the same asthetic problems. I don't have any Hussar figures yet at all (that may change very rapidly) but Austrians really should have plenty. I'd like to wind up with 3 units, and I might make them 48 man regts.

3 x 32 or 2 x 48...the choice is mine

Saddened to hear of the death of Paddy Griffith, I re-read his "Forwards into battle" recently. A fairly seminal work IMHO, one of those books that upset a few folk because it challenged the way they LIKED to think warfare was conducted, and arrived at conclusions which weren't cosy with their view. Part of what good historian should do.

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A few landmarks of sorts

2010-06-13T14:10:00.000+01:00

The latest addition to the Austrian army: IR 37
The last couple of weeks have seen a few slightly notable points of interest.
First off, it was my birthday recently. Now once upon a time, birthdays meant wargaming related presents. That doesn't seem to happen as you get older. So any wagaming stuff has to be a "self-present", which is actually FAR better anyway, because you actually get what you want (not that I've ever really needed an excuse to spend money on wargaming). Also, getting older usually means you have more money, so, unless you are going to have a mid-life crisis and spend it on impressionable young women, you get some excellent "self-presents".
With all this in mind, I ended up in Foyles the other day (as opposed to one of those seedy basement clubs a few yards away in Soho..see "impressionable young women" above), where I spent a happy evening perusing the shelves in the silence you only get in bookshops. Three of the books I bought were ones I probably "should" have bought ages ago and just haven't got round to, a couple of the others were more impulsive.
First off, I got hold of the second and third volumes of "Thunder on the Danube" by Jack Gill. These are pretty much indispensible for anyone interested in the Austrians, particularly if you are leaning towards 1809 as I am. So they were long overdue. I've only dipped into them so far but they promise to be everything all the gushing praise I've heard for them has suggested. Looking forwards to reading them.

More IR 37. Less pose variation than in the German regts, but plenty nonetheless
The third book I bought is Adkin's "Waterloo Companion". Now, I've only a moderate interest in the Waterloo campaign. It has always seemed a bit of an aberration to me in the terms of the Napoleonic wars overall. So much has been written about it, and so many people (wargamers) base their entire impression of how Napoleonic warfare worked upon the way this battle (and campaign) was conducted, when so much about it is highly a-typical rather than representative of Napoleonic battles. Anyway, thats a bigger subject than I've got room for here.
That does nothing to change the fact That Adkin's book is brilliant. Packed with all sorts of detail, some of which anyone who has boned up on the battle will be familar with, some less so. The text is nice, full OB detail which corrects a few errors found elsewhere, some really lovely original colour uniform drawings, Highlights of the battle rather than a full narrative, and for me, the real winner, is some brilliant maps and detailed deployment diagrams. It really helped me understand a lot more about the battle, especially in terms of time and space. There is a lot there even for someone not that interested in Waterloo
The other 2 impulse purchases were the 2 slimline "men and battles" series from Histoire & Collections: "Hanau and Montmirail" and "1809, Essling".
Both of these are great little books. They sort of out-Osprey, Osprey if you see what I mean, same money, not brilliantly translated text, but excellent diagrams, a few contempory drawings I've not seen before, LOTS of full colour, detailed OB, and a few pages of "Beano annual" style uniform drawings.
(If every Osprey was as good as this they might be worth the money).

Painting Shakoes makes a nice change from helmets!
Other Landmarks recently are the passing of 500 figures painted so far for the year! Which is brilliant, because it means I'm bang on target for 1,000 by Christmas. The most recent additions are pictured here- Hungarian infantry. Less pose variation than the Elite Germans, but they still have plenty. I tried a slightly different white technique (through forgetfulness more than anything else), but they turned out fine. I just did Spray white, Army Painter and then Highlight white rather than add another off-white shade after the AP. It makes them a little brighter, but not that much.
Finally, I have had over 50,000 visitors to this little site. Which is ...extraordinary really... Thank you all very much for being interested in my little wargaming world...but, you really should get out more.
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GMB Versus The Flag Dude

2010-05-31T12:48:00.000+01:00

May has been a poor month for painting as I remarked last week, although things picked up in the last couple of days and I managed to up the number to 48 which was another German Infantry batallion, this time IR 63.

So not too bad, this means I'm still just about on course for 1,000 figures for the year providing I don't have too many more months like this.

A tiny difference between this unit and all my previous line infantry is that these fellows have a standard from The Flag Dude. I saw these at Salute and couldn't resist buying a couple. They are actually 7 years War standards but giving the "scrunching" its somewhat impossible to tell the difference, and, lets face it, if I hadn't mentioned this, you'd have never known.

IR63 Bianchi, sporting a Flag Dude standard

To be honest, trying to compare the 2 is a bit like asking which footballer would you prefer in your pub team, Wayne Rooney or Lionel Messi? Both companies are brilliant and worlds apart from anything one could produce for oneself, the quality of both is so incredibly high. Particularly given their relative cheapness.

Which gives us our first comparison. FD are £3.00 each while GMB are £3.50 for 2. With GMB you have to cost in the finial and staff which adds a bit over a quid for 2 flags so the cost is actually about the same(ish)...buttons really either way considering the effect.

Obviously the big initial attraction the FD is that everything is done for you, and done very nicely. Flag is "scrunched" rather attractively (though probably not realistically), The finial is included and the flag is attached to a lengthy staff,in fact the only thing that needs to be done is to trim this to a desired length and paint it.

With GMB you do have to do a tiny bit of work.

The pole needs to have its finial attached, and then the flag glued to the pole. My prefered method for this is to cut the flag out, fold it so its creased centrally around the pole before "dry fitting" it. Only then smear PVA glue over the inner surface of one half of the flag before folding in and lining the flag up as neatly as possible. At this point a bit of scrunching can take place. I always try and do it to expose as much of the detail of the flag as possible (otherwise, whats the point?). Then leave it for a couple of hours before giving it a few thin coats of brushed on gloss varnish to stiffen it. Finally give it a coat of matt (or not, depending on taste).

More IR63. Custom "scrunching"

The final analysis comes in the detail. The printing on the GMB stuff is slightly better, and their finish a little bit finer. Also the colours on these Austrian flags is a little more vibrant.

I can't comment on how this is with other periods. One nice thing is that the ranges are somewhat complimentary, there are items that each company do which the other doesn't.

I.R.24 Baron Strauch. Proud of their GMB flag

Oddly, the deciding factor for me is the fact that the GMB flags aren't the finished article which FD are.

The reason for this is that with GMB I glue the standard with the finial to the figure before priming. So all painting and handling takes place with a bare standard pole, but one which is firmly glued on bare metal with the glue painted over. Then, when the figure is completely finished and varnished I attach the flag as outlined above.

More GMB.

With FD flags this isn't possible. Because the flag is all done you can't attach it until after the figure is finished. One could prime the figure and then attach the flag, but this would mean having a great big flag flapping about (ok,not actually flapping but you know what I mean) while painting the standard bearer which I'm not that keen on. Subsquently, I ended up gluing on the FD flag once the figure was finished and then varnishing over the glue. Not ideal.

So, for me, GMB has it. Just.

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Thoughts on artillery

2010-05-23T21:07:00.000+01:00

I've been terribly busy with work so the painting total for May has been truly pathetic, just 20 figures finished for the entire month. Quite appalling. I might get a few more in before the end of the month, but maybe not.

I like to get in a little painting session most mornings before I head off, just 15 or 20 minutes, you know, cup of tea, bit of quiet morning radio. You

can't actually get a massive amount done but it adds up. Anyway, this past month I've been leaving an hour or so earlier, so no chance of getting anything done, and in the evenings I'm too knackered.

Thought though, can take less energy, and I've been thinking about artillery in ITGM.

This was prompted by something in Noel's blog http://garagegamer.blogspot.com/ where he mentioned they were playing a game using smaller sized gun batteries. I've done this a few times, where normal battery sizes are reduced by one gun, and its usually resulted in an excellent game.

Austrian 6lb battery: This could go down to a 3 gun battery

So, thinking about this leads to possibly expanding some rule changes to go along with this reduction.

I've always resisted tinkering with ITGM, its always seemed a case of "its not broke, so why fix it?" and to a certain extent I still adhere to that. Whatever set of rules, whatever period, there are ALWAYS knock-on effects from even the tiniest rule change. As long as these are foreseen then all well and good, but they often aren't. However, I think I can say I'm probably as familar with ITGM as much as anyone so I reckon I can cover most eventualities.

If we reduce battery sizes (4 gun down to 3, 3 gun down to2 and 6 gun down to 4) then obviously this will reduce the effectiveness of artillery on the battlefield (and I can already hear the Russian players squealing in protest). This needn't be the case. To compensate for reducing battery sizes one simply increases the number of batteries. Whats the point? I hear you say? It means individual batteries are not so powerful, are not quite so immune to enemy action, and would need to be sited more carefully and protected by infantry, cavalry or terrain.

There are a few other rule changes concerning artillery I'd like to throw into the mix while we are about it.

Horse artilley fire twice in a turn if stationary.

Why?

I've never read anything that supports the notion that horse gunners employed a higher rate of fire. I HAVE heard that when PG originally wrote the rules he lacked horse batteries so made the few he did have more effective.

So I'd do away with that rule. With most horse bttys now being only 2 guns (except Russian and Prussian which would be 3) it would make them less devastating. At the moment there is a tendency in games not to have that many of them. I think I'd sooner see more small battys than the occasional larger one.

Russian horse guns: Not so fearsome if there were only 3 guns and they fired just the once per turn

(from J.Lander's collection)

The benefit of having 2 gun bttys means that their frontage is less than a 6 man cavalry squadron, so providing they are anchored on terrain, or other troops then they can't easily be charged. They are however quite vulnerable to counter-battery fire..but it would be the same for both sides.
Another rule I would do away with is firing guns overhead (as opposed to howitzers) from the flat up onto hills and vice-versa. It didn't seem to happen much from what I can gather. No problem with firing over friendlies from hill to hill.

French foot artillery: Connoissuer figures

Lastly, there is the minus 4 incurred by guns firing cannister at single rank cavalry. Noel is convinced this is a misprint which has been followed by convention for years.

If one reduces the battery sizes, and does away with the minus 4 against single rank cavalry then it actually ends up about even (the guns might be a little ahead) when you look at the fire tables.

So, those would be my changes.

Incidental problems would be to do with the possibility of more formations with muliple bttys which would lead to more Grand bttys and convergence of fire. Therefore care would have to be employed in how you construct OB's.

Take a "typical" game.

lets say currently you have 3 corps, each of 10 btns and a cavalry regt each with a 4 gun btty. Plus a reserve btty of 4 guns. You also have a cavalry corps with a 3 gun horse btty

A total of 19 artillery models. If one reduced the btty sizes this would go down to just 14 models.

This may not be desirable. How to solve this? Giving extra bttys to formations willy-nilly might not be the answer because one increases the ability for units to converge fire. One solution could be in this instance to fiddle about with the poundage, ie allow some or all of the guns to be 12 pdrs, or one could perhaps give the cavalry corps 2 x 2 gun bttys. Or one could give some of the infantry outfits additional 2 gun horse btty's to accompany their inherent cavalry, and introduce a another rule forbidding convergance fire between horse and foot from the same formation.

Just a few thoughts.

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Fast Horses

2010-05-10T23:30:00.001+01:00

Front Rank (left) Elite collectors series (right) undercoated with 2 light sprays of tan, in this case from Army painter

Work has taken over lately so my painting output has plummeted, however, a few of you have expressed an interest in how I paint horses using oils. This is a very fast method for getting an effective look on brown horses without too much fuss. It doesn't work for grey horses, and black horses....well, I just paint them black.

I did do some pics a while ago when I painted the Austrian dragoon regt but they were a bit pony....Pony?...oh dear, sometimes I'm just too funny...Pony...Geddit?...(For those of you not familar with rhyming slang...), anyway, these are from some more recent general figures.

So, the first pic shows 2 horses just after getting a couple of coats of tan paint. It really can be just about any brownish paint. Whatever you use for the base will ultimately dictate the predominate colour for the end horse. For most cavalry units I would do some in this pale tan, and some in a darker brown to get a bit of variation. The method doesn't change at all irrespective of what you use as a base (as long as its some sort of brown). Add in some blacks and greys and you get a mixed unit.

Once the basecoat is dry I block in the leather work and mane/tail in black. On the Elite horse on the left I've left the mane and tail to be coloured later.

Now the main event, applying the oil paint: I use good old Windsor & Newton Burnt Umber. You can get it in any art shop.It needs to be thinned with white spirit to a thickish wash sort of consistency. You will just have to experiment with this. Then, just brush it on. It doesn't matter if it slops over the black bits you've just painted, just make sure you get a decent covering.

Then, you need to leave it a little while. Depends a little on air/room temperature, but 5 mins is probably about right. When you first apply the oil it will look wet and glossy. Quite quickly it will begin to dry a little, and start to turn to a more satin finish. This is the moment when you need to wipe it off. For this you need a dry clean soft cotton. I use an old Tee-shirt.

This needs to be done fairly gently, just lightly rub over the flanks of the horse. Use steady, LIGHT touches, removing the top coat of the oils. This will leave the undercoat still stained a little, and also leave heavier deposits in the folds and defined muscles on the horse. I usually leave the front and underside of the horse. This adds a bit of shadow.

I've wiped the Elite horse on the left, but not the right hand nag. See how there is still a bit of paint in the folds and on the underside.

Now I've wiped the Front Rank horse on the left. This looks a bit pale. If you are not happy with the result the solution is a very simple one; repaint with oils, just slap on another coat, and repeat the process.

So, thats it after a single coat and gentle wipe. Looks alright. This horse I want to have a pale mane and tail so I've now blocked those in with Vallejo ivory.

The Ivory is now washed over with a burnt sienna wash.

Next, the black, reins, is dry brushed with Vallejo German Grey, which is pretty dark, and the tail/mane dry-brushed with ivory again.

The Front Rank horse after dry brushing on reins, mane and tail plus a further really light dry brush with a pale grey (Vallejo Neutral Grey). The brass is touched in with ..brass, and any white bits (blaze, socks) primed also in Neutral Grey before finishing in white. If you want to do eyes (and actually can paint horses eyes- most people, including me, can't) then fine, go ahead.

One final point: Don't attempt to use a spirit based varnish within 24 hours. Water based types aren't a problem, but spirit gloss varnishes put on too soon can be a bit disastrous. Leave it a day and its fine.

TA-Da!! the finished product with a general sat on it, a Front Rank gabion and some yellow flowers .

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MayDay Parade

2010-05-02T23:11:00.001+01:00

All of the Austrians to date: 5 German line, 1 Hungarian, 1 Grenzer, 18 skirmishers, 1 battery, 36 Dragoons,

April was a busy month, so sorry for my lack of posts here. I'm afraid blogging is the first casualty in the time stakes when it comes to work, painting, home stuff etc. Sometimes something has to give.

Despite this my painting total for April was bloody impressive even if I say so myself, 130 pieces all told. A dragoon regt (counts as 72 pieces), another 48 of German line, 6 skirmishers, and 5 mounted generals. Not bad going at all. I didn't even really feel I was making a special effort. Most of the cavalry I got done while I was down in Devon at Easter, and the infantry were done over the odd week-end plus evening, likewise the skirms and general figures. Generals are always pretty easy as you can usually get an entire figure finished in an evening and still have time for everything else.

Dragoon column led by a spiffy officer

The dragoons were not quite what I expected, when I ordered them, I'm sure I asked Mr Moreby for all the figures to be with sword down, but given that with the rest of the order I'd asked for max variation he gave me half sword down and half "waving sword about overhead, unlike any cavalryman, ever" pose...in the end I'm glad he did, I replaced the rather fat little curved sabre with a very straight (and probably overlong) flattened pin, which looks a bit more like a pallasch, then, I cut a 'v' in the shoulder of the sword arm, which allowed me to bend the pewter arm round to something which resembled ' a point' , well, at least a bit more than the original.

GMB standard as ever- annoyingly Elite don't make an ensign figure

The trumpeters got similar treatment to bend the trumpets round in front of the figure (I hate that blowing the trumpet over the shoulder look), and added cords out of 5 amp fuse wire twisted in the Dremel.

I'm happy with the net result, at first I wasn't, but I these lads are growing on me.

When I thought about doing this unit I had in mind a regt which uses the same figures at the WHC by Doug Mason. It's beautiful, some of his best work. To this end I took a few pics of what he'd done the last time I was there in order to get some references of what he did, so I could try and emulate it. Comparing the 2 now I'm not even close, ...to quote Samual Jackson in Pulp Fiction: "Not the same ballpark? It's not even the same sport"....(he wasn't talking specifically about wargames figures but you get my drift)

A few head twists and arm conversions, all sabres replaced with pins, wire trumpet cords added

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Devon interlude

2010-04-18T00:03:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks again I took advantage of a friend's offer to house sit her house on Dartmoor while she is abroad. A very pleasant few days, which including being able to paint up the first Austrian cavalry regt (pics coming soon!).

The highlight of the trip however was inviting myself down to Noel's (25mins away) to have a look at his Smolensk game which I knew was in progress. I had intended just to nip down and have a chat and a laugh for a couple of hours. As it happened, one of the Russian players was absent so I was recruited to play on the Russian left flank for the evening. Great fun. I was playing against Eric who had massed plenty of cuirraissier plus copius quantities of infantry, but had plenty of ground to cross and would be funneled into a cone,so I thought I might be able to make a fist of it. The extreme left was a bit iffy though, if the Russian cavalry didn't do the business, then I was stuffed. They duly didn't. Failing to win 3 melees in quick succesion the French were rampant. Finally the dice intervened, The French rallied and clattered into the Russians who were caught at the halt..I outnumbered them but was subsequently 5 casualties down before the melee ...I think I had 37 die to roll to Eric's 28...I rolled 12 sixes!!....still only winning by 7...Eric obliged by only managing 6 more hits meaning I'd won by 1!...This held the French but meant he still had the numbers, as related in Noels' blog it wasn't to prove enough. http://garagegamer.blogspot.com/

Lots more pics of Noel's cracking collection and table and a less garbled account of the game can be found there.

Russian infantry advance into no-man's land and dither about

Elsewhere I committed the most elementary wargames mistake. Years ago, I recall geting some good advice from Mike Ingham. He told me to always make sure that when you commit a formation, have a clear idea of where its going and what you want it to do when it gets there. Now that sounds pretty basic, but its incredible how many gamers just point their troops in a direction and wait to "see what happens"...check it out the next time you watch a game...anyway, I did exactly this in the Russian centre. I rolled forwards with about 8 btns with vague ideas of catching the French in the flank as they advanced onto Smolensk. However, I went on too narrow a frontage, against larger numbers. I only worked this out when I got there, huddling behind a rise beyond which were hordes of Frenchmen....Not a smart move.

Neil spots my error, and displays his concern

If I went "over the top" I would get mullahed, so...I dithered...shocking..they just milled about under desultory artillery fire. Not a great moment.

The situation on the Russian left: French cavalry being temporarily repelled while Russian infantry and artillery mass in favourable terrain

The infantry on the left were better off. Again, outnumbered, but I had a decent position. Lots of rought terrain to sit a battery behind and a narow gap in which to fight the French with a village to provide fire support. Eric duly advanced into the teeth of the Russians and took a bit of a pasting on the way, this resulted in a big old duff-up between 6 Russian units and 5 French. The dice were pretty average and I couldn't get the big hits against the French. The melee resulted in a vicious draw with both sides pushed back.

The game was well- set but that was all we had time for that evening.

All in all, a highly enjoyable night, and I must thank Noel for his hospitality, plus of course Eric, Neil, Andy and Dom for putting up with me and my "London Ways"....(whatever they are?).

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Austrians going great guns

2010-03-20T12:56:00.000Z

I'm making decent progress with the Austrians, even if I do say so myself. I've now finished 5 48 man btns, 12 skirmish figures plus this battery pictured. I've also done the guns and half the crew for a second battery.

On top of this I'm 2/3rds of the way through a sixth 48, which I'm hoping to complete this week/end, though it might be tight as I'm away for work for 3 days tomorrow.

Anyway,its decent progress given my 2 year timeframe for finishing this stage (this stage? Gulp!) of the Austrian army, puts me about a quarter of the way through the infantry which I reckon is pretty damm good.

Most importantly, the psychological aspect is fine too, I'm not remotely bored with painting white infantry, quite the opposite, and on the whole my technique is improving both in terms of quality and speed which is really encouraging. I even now look foward to starting yet another 48.

However, I'm not going to do that, once these 6 btns are complete (tonight!) I will start on some cavalry,probably a dragoon regt in white. I expect this to take a little while, I will replace the swords with pins and have to convert a standard bearer as Elite don't make one (havn't worked that one out yet, but it can't be too tricky). I'll also do a "how to" on the horses as I go.

These guns are straightforwards to do. I went for a speed paint on the gunners which were a doddle. An evening's work for 8 (no muskets, no backpacks!).

I sprayed them with a desert tan primer, then painted the black plus grey highlights, washed the tan coats in burnt umber oils, did the flesh, washed and highlighted, facings in sienna finished in red. Grey/white belts and breeches which are then gone over in white. A few yellow and gold touches, and they are done.

The figures are half and half Elite and Connoissuer. I had about 30 gunners from Connoissuer sitting in "the Box" so I've just added extra Elite figures to bulk them out. I would have done seperate batteries but the pose mix of the Connoissuer stuff I had was a bit uneven so I decided to mix them. I think they look just fine with a mix any way. I have enough figures for about 4 x 4 gun batteries so they will become the 6Lber crews then the 12lbers will get all Elite crews. That is a little down the line though, I'll get these 6lb units done before worrying about that.

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bits and pieces on an idle saturday

2010-03-13T14:02:00.000Z

Massed French Cavalry: 3 Cuiraissier regts, 1 Carabinier, 2 Polish Lancer, 1 Polish Cuirassier, the Zastrows, Westphalian Guard Du Corps, 3 chassuer regts all supported by 4 Horse batteries

- All from mine and John Lander's collections.

Been a busy week, for a multiplicity of reasons, work plus I was away for a long weekend. I only mention this because the proposed house move (its been proposed for at least 10 years) may actually be taking shape. While I was away we found a property which sort of ticks all the boxes (there are a lot of them to tick). However, amidst all the discussion of domestic arrangements there was only one thing I was actually focusing on, which was the early comment made by my missus, while looking at the 2 outbuildings, which was "Of course, you'd better have the bigger one".....

We'll see...Long way to go yet, I don't even know for sure if the owner wishes to sell (its unoccupied).

Meanwhile, the Hungarians are getting a bit of attention, might finish them this weekend. Not mad keen on how they have turned out, no idea why, it might just be the figures.

Next up will be another helmeted unit, followed by artillery, which will give me a small corps of sorts, 6 btns, skirmishers and artillery. Enough to tack on to some Prussians or Russians for a game.

Whilst at John's the other week we did talk about expanding my Austrians....via a purchase...watch this space.

So for a diversion; a few pics of some French cavalry, a big old Cavalry Corps, (well, more like 2 really) with 7 armoured regts, 2 lancer, 3 light and 12 guns.

A good mix: Back rank (yellow facings) Connoissuer figures. Middle rank(red facings) Old Glory, Willie figures officer and trumpeter (a FANTASTIC figure) and Foremost. Front rank (blurry) Old Glory,and Foremost.

Not a bad turn out. John and I have a decent amount of French heavy cavalry apart from dragoons of which we only have 2 - there are a couple more lancer regts knocking around, plus several light regts of French and allies. Believe it or not, I would actually like at least 1 more French Cuirassier regt, if for no other reason than because 3 is such a rubbish number. One day.

2 of the French armoured regts, both painted by the late Ian Stables

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And now for something completely different

2010-03-05T14:05:00.000Z

The View from the Howdah

Something for a bit of a change, previously unseen on this blog; Ancients!

I went to see John a couple of weeks ago and gave him a small gift of a big piece of bunny-fur for him to experiment with. While it was rolled out on his table and we were discussing it's possibilities we thought it looked just right even unpainted for trying out his latest mini-project (mini by John's standards) of Romans and Carthaginians in 54mm.

He has had the Carthaginians for a while but recently took some time out from his world of 1/35th WWII in order to produce some Roman opponents. He reckons it took him about 3 months for a DBA army. Here are some of the results

The Battle opens: Cavalry skirmish on the flank. Warbands advance in the centre

Most of the figures are from HaT models, with a few conversions, notably the Elephants and the cavalry, spears are all replaced by steel versions. All these figures are John's work, 54mm (naturally) and very fine they are too, he thinks the whole lot might have cost about £50...cheaper than 25mm metals.

We played the game effectively on a 9' b 5' which gave ample room.

The lines close: Legionaries duke it out with spearmen and auxilaries

While Ancients is a world I enjoy visiting, I wouldn't want to live there, if you know what I mean.

I've had plenty of ancient armies over the years but its not really my thing deep down. Having said that, I really enjoy simple Ancients games like DBA. No frills, quick, just pure tactics.

The game we played was a great example, a little hesitency on my part almost lost me the game, and John capitalised. We eventually closed, and he managed to destroy 4 of my elements to my 2.This meant a win for Carthage. We decided to play out the remainder of the turn. There were only 2 combats remaining. I would have to win and destroy the enemy in both of them in order to gain a draw. This I duly did! Thats my kind of game, down to the last throw of the dice. Its what wargames should be about.

The final turn: sticky time for the Romans

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Austrians on Parade part II

2010-02-20T09:25:00.001Z

Grenzer Regt 16

This hasn't quite worked out. After putting up the pics yesterday which I wasn't too happy with, I thought I put up a couple more using natural daylight. For some reason these seem worse!

My camera skills don't do these figures justice which is a bit annoying. They look a lot better in the flesh, but it seems you'll have to take my word for it.

The Grenzers are a right old mish-mash. Connoissuer, Elite, plus the standard bearer, mtd officer and a private are Front Rank. Firing Line heads on a few of the Connoissuer figs.I think the mix is fine

Close up of IR 9

IR 9 STILL has a pink flag! Well, believe me, its yellow. The Front officer on show, the paint job looks much better for real (sigh) . One thing I've noticed is that these figures have turned out REALLY matt....I have a theory that it might be to do with the Army Painter. More anon.

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Austrians on parade

2010-02-19T22:28:00.002Z

I have now finished 4 x 48's of the Austrians (+18 skirmishers), which I think is not bad going. I feel heartened to realise that this is about 20% of the line infantry done! Although that does mean a bit of selectivity in ignoring the small point of the grenadiers, cavalry and artillery, but it makes me feel better. I should wind up with about 16 x 48 of line plus 4 x 48s of Grenzer, so I'm sticking with my 20%.

Considering thats about 2 months work which included a long period of doing no painting at all because of the Falmouth game I'm well chuffed. Even MORE so because in the last month I've also re-done the kitchen, laying a new oak floor, redoing most of the woodwork and re-decorating it. So, not only have I managed to get this done and keep up the painting, my Brownie-point quotiant with the missus is through the roof.

IR 4. "Hoch-und Deutschmeister

We also have a new tweak to the basing, in the above photo, you can see the addition of some little flowers which I couldn't resist from the Fredericus Rex catologue. I'd seen them on some other pics and liked it. I'm going to limit them to just one base per batallion (probably the command stand). I might bung some on Generals' bases etc.

IR 4 in the lead, IR 1 behind and IR 9 on the flank

IR 9 (green facings) on the left in the above pic is a bit wierd, its flag has come out pink in all these pics!.In the flesh its a slightly paler yellow than normal which looks quite good and faded. Must be my terrible lighting.

I couldn't resist breaking a golden rule with this unit.: Mixing manufacturers. The mounted officer is a Front Rank figure,bunged in with the Elite masses. Personally I think there is a lot of cobblers talked about how "you can't possibly mix x with y". It might be true if you have 12 man units but in a batallion of 48 it really doesn't matter.

I really like Front Rank as a company. They make what wargamers want. They do well detailed figures which are very painter friendly, they still sell singly instead of ripping folk off with packs made for "ease of production" (profit). They charge sensible postage. Individually their figures are lovely. The trouble is, if you put more than about 6 of them together they look boring. I've no idea why.

Some of their ranges suffer from "stumpy musket" syndrome, and their horses are a bit horrid, but generally they are great figures. They just don't do it for me. I wish they did. I find them really easy and nice to paint.

So, what next? I'm quite in the groove for doing the infantry, so I think I'll do 2 more 48's and finish some gunners and then I'll have a division of sorts, rather than pitch into the cavalry just yet. I might treat myself to a Hungarian regt next. Shakos rather than helmets which will make a bit of a change.

Little yellow flowers shown to good effect
Off up to Cambridge tomorrow to Lander's for the week-end (cashing in on my BP surplus) for a Crossfire game. I'll get in some Napoleonic phots too.
On a final note, I bought some paints from Net-Merchants this week. Brilliant service! Ordered them monday morning, they hit the door-mat on tuesday. I've never had anything but good news from this firm.Highly reccomended.

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A white I quite like

2010-02-16T18:44:00.000Z

Elite Austrians base-coated white with light tone Army Painter brushed on

Heres a quick run down on the latest version of my white painting technique. I've never been that happy painting white, I think this is a pretty common affliction amongst figure painters. Embarking on this Austrian project meant I had to sort this out. I'm getting there. I'm still not 100% satisfied but this version seems reasonable plus it's quite quick which is another all important factor.

Next step: The figures are dry-brushed with Vallejo "Grey white No.993

I kicked off with my usual undercoat of white from Halfords, before brushing all the relevant white bits with Army Painter Light Tone. I was quite generous with this, but if it pooled too much I spread it around a bit before it dried. Drying takes a while, probably at least 2 hours, if you are of a cautious nature then double that.

Final white highlights were Vallejo Ivory No.918, followed by "normal" white No.951.

Once the base white was sorted out I painted the figures as normal, blocking in the black on the helmet, boots, musket, cartouche and bayonet scabbard, then highlighting the musket in gunmetal and the black bits in German Grey. A tan base coat on the backpack, A dark brown on the musket, and a wash of Paines' Grey oils on the greatcoat. Block in the flesh, then the base of the facings; in this case "Gunship Green".

Then I washed the flesh with Burnt Sienna oils and the backpack and waterbottle with Burnt Umber oils.

Then a highlight for the facings in German Camo bright green, this needs a couple of thin wases sometimes to give it a bit of depth.

The greatcoat was picked out in neutral grey and the helmet given a quick dry-brush in the same to pick out the detail. Then the yellow crest was dotted on, and the musket highlighted in a light brown, the water-bottle was washed over with a Windsor&Newton brown ink and the flesh highlights done. Gold bits picked out. and Steel on the musket re-touched

Finally the white highlights were done, first in Ivory and then an additional highlight in White. A matt artists varnish brushed on and thats about it.

Like I said, There are plenty of people who achieve better results than this out there, but with over 1,000 infantry to paint time is a factor here. Whole thing from soup to nuts was about 4 hours for 15 figures (excluding the Army Painter drying time, in this case overnight). This is a sort of managable number for me. 3 approximate batches like this and I get a 48 man unit. These go into the box with the first 24 so I only have about 8 command figures to finish the unit. Then I think we might have a little parade of the first 4 btns!

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Still white, but slightly different

2010-02-09T20:22:00.000Z

Connoissuer Saxons painted by yours truly about 4 years ago

A while ago, I put up some pictures of the beautiful Saxon cavalry belonging to the Wargames Holiday Centre. Well, I found these pics of my own efforts. These are the same Connoisseur figures but this time the painting and conversions are mine. I would never try to claim my stuff could compete with the old master Doug Mason's but I was quite pleased with these.

A few differences,certainly (I don't have a Garde Du Corps regt for starters) but these figures I recall being a joy to do. I'd certainly do the white differently these days, the horses are almost all Firing Line and they supplied many of the heads for the Bonnet de Police, bandaged types etc. The Trumpeters ARE Garde Du Corps figures (Gilder never made trumpeters?????). Sabres were removed and replaced with steel pins, heads were twisted both on horses and riders, I got the effect I was after, which was of a charging unit with plenty of figure differences.

New swords, lots of head work, and some tortured horses!

Now, enough of this onanism....I'm well on the way with the latest batch of Austrians, and have settled on a method I like - which involves Army Painter!!! heresy, I hear you say...no, it works, not maybe the way the manufacturers intended but I've got there-as have a couple of other painters I've seen blogging- odd, how people independantly arrive at the same results.

The next crop of Austrians will appear soon. At which point, even though this Blog is by no means a democracy, I will be asking you to vote on what I am to paint next. However, that can wait till next time.

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Finally Austrians (I hope you lot like white...because you are going to be seeing a lot of it)

2010-02-05T17:18:00.000Z

Here they come, the first units of Elite Austrians. I've been painting quite a bit more than it appears here, as one of the methods I've been using is to mass produce figures which get painted but are waiting for other bods before getting based up. So I have nearly enough for 3 x 48 man units (2 line, 1 grenz) plus a load of guns and gunners and about another 20 skirmishers in addition to whats on show below. This way hopefully plenty of units will be appearing here at regular intervals.

This is very much a "work in progress" and I think my white style will change a bit as I produce more units. The figures here were sprayed white and then washed with a thin tan with then a grey white and finally a normal white applied. For the next batch I'm going to try a yellow ochre oil wash rather than the tan as I think this will be more controllable. I doubt anyone could tell the difference but you know how we all get a bit quirky about these things.

The Grenzers are nice, one of those very rare occasions where you can get away with mixing manufacturers. Most are Elite but I "found" about 80 odd Connoissuer Grenzer lurking in the Box. They mix nicely. They are old soft metal figures so I've managed a few head replacements and twists to give them variation, The 48 man unit is awaiting finials for the standard bearer but is finished other than that.
I also discovered that Elite do yet more skirmishing Grenzers in the old 1796 style headgear. I'll have to investigate these.
I like the green facings for these chappies. Just about every wargames unit of grenzer I've ever seen always has red facings....no idea why, they had all sorts of colours...(I'm drawing the line at pink, though)

As usual GMB provides the flags, Austrian standards being what they are these are really detailed, and make a massive difference to the finished unit
No need for any conversions in the line unit, there are so many variants in there anyway.
So, thats a bit of a start to my Austrian adventure. I had to smile the other day reading some waffle on TMP. Someone was enthusing about embarking and nearly finishing a "big project" which was some 150 figures....It suddenly occured to me that that was about the number I've finished and I sort of view these as samples as much as anything...hmmmm the perception of scale. Mind you, I bet his are better painted than mine.

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Back from Falmouth

2010-01-30T20:04:00.001Z

First Game for me: French Cavalry divisions eviscerate 2 German Motorised infantry Divs (pics courtesy of Phil Gray. More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dom_gamer/

As I mentioned I've spent a week down in Cornwall playing in the annual 1/285th Mega-Game. To be honest that was a large reason why I've not had much time since Christmas. However it's all over now.

Quite an intense gaming experience for those who are not familar with it; 30 players, + 3 umpires (there is a link here somewhere to Dom's rather crappy website), this year was France 1940 at platoon level. I confess I had serious misgivings about this game, the way it was set-up didn't encourage any conclusion other than a walk-over for the Germans- accurate, I grant you, but worth playing for a week? As it turned out my fears proved sufficently unfounded. On the tables the Germans were inevitably vastly superior. Generally better troops, better at concentrating their armour, able to use combined arms with infantry and tanks, liberal air support, little pluses in firing, better morale, faster, longer ranged tank guns, considerably more flexible artillery, vast quantities of mortars and infantry guns, the initiative of attacking.....they had it all. Except...it didn't quite pan out as the Germans would have wished.

The German command team put a huge amount of effort into their plan, and I must admit I felt somewhat sorry for them, because in the end, it's pretty difficult to do better than the Germans did historically, or come up with something that will work better than the Ardennes attack. Subsequently, virtually everything they did had been foreseen by the allies to some degree, both in terms of deployment of the 60-odd divisions of kit, the whereabouts and direction of the 10 Pzr Divisions, and their overall strategy, and the operational mix of forces.

The allied plan was a bit of mess. Real life conspired against the allied command team, we lost the French CO to pressure of work, I got flu and very busy at a crucial period. There was no communication allowed between the French and the Belgians...In the end good old Gerry stepped into the breach, he came up with a plan in a couple of days...sit and wait on the Belgian border?? Oh no...Attack, attack attack!

This proved to be a wise decision, it meant that the Germans didn't get a free run at the Belgians, and that their spearheads were contacted close to the German border. This in turn meant serious traffic jams and disruption to their immaculately constructed schedule. For the most part the French attacks were swatted aside by the all- conquering panzers, but, we had worked out that within the time-frame of the game (3 x 2 day battles) very few French formations would have to fight more than one action on the table. Not so for the Germans. By the application of some very rudimentary psychology it didn't take a genius to work out that Andrew and Phil (the German commanders) would load their pzr divs with assets and try to use them to fight all week. Why fight with boring old infantry divisions when you can play with sexy panzers? It's about the most rudimentary mistake to make as a German player at these games. I've played in 11 of these games now (gulp) and the thing I've realised is that its the German infantry which is their strength, not the Panzer divs. So, all week the German tank units were being driven hard, and winning, but the losses just mounted up. By the end of the week the umpires thought they had lost at least 50% of their armour strength, and 40% of the panzer infantry. Most of the tank losses were also on the good stuff -pzr III's and IV's and 38T's- (the way the rules work one tends to fight with the best kit out front).

The Germans achieved the requisite breakthrough on the Meuse but the hole was a small one and the campaign ended with the spearheads fighting the copius French reserves. The BEF were happy and intact. Officially the campaign result was a draw, though both sides had reasons to be happy.

Incredibly rare photograph of Brendan with a ruleset in his hands (We still await the picture of him READING the rules).

Ultimately, the great thing was that I don't think there was really anyone on either side who was that bothered about the result. As a week long campaign it had been a huge success.

The scenario was designed by Tony Morphet (actually, COLONEL Morphet to you), and he wanted to pass on a little of his lifetime of experience of running a real army to us pitiful amateurs. One of the things he wanted to get across was how inflexible real armies are compared to how most wargamers percieve things. So, all the plans were submitted prior to the event. Armies and Corps were given areas of operations, and a general stance and that was it. The nitty-gritty of moving divisions around was left to the umpires. None of this "Oh, I'll just whip this division round through this little gap and wind up on this flank" which populates most wargamers thinking. Questions were asked of army commanders at certain points, but on the whole both armies had to stick to their overall plan. (I think the Germans had a bit more flexibility).

The most important thing for me (and a lot of others) was that I had 3 really good 2 day games.

The first was an encounter game with 2 DLC's supported by a French Motorised division running headlong into 2 German Motorised infantry divisions supported by a leg outfit. We didn't know it at the time but it was one of the pivotal games of the campaign. The French objective was to cut a road used by the German spearheads for supply. If we had cut it, then the French might have won the campaign as it would have seriously impeded the leading panzers. We didn't quite make it, but we inflicted serios damage to the German units.

Game 2 was defending the Meuse Bridgeheads. Another DLC, a colonial division plus a dodgy "series B" division defending against 2 panzer divs plus a motorised division. I held the centre and hold it I did, always nice when things like your minefield and defensive fire-plan plus ATG traps all work, naturally the Germans penetrated elsewhere but they didn't get more than a small toehold over the river. A winning draw for the Germans.

Game 3 was a bit odd. A DLM plus 2 motorised infantry divisions (2 up, 1 back) fighting on a very narrow frontage against 2 leg infantry divisions. We battered ourslves against 2 vital hills and got shot to bits trying. Meanwhile the table suddenly got wider and a panzer div turned up on our flank! The .

DLM (commanded by Herbert, who else?) turned to face the threat and...frankly, shot the Germans to bits. An entire panzer regt was destroyed. Day 2 saw the lead French regts being replaced by reserves and we did the job properly on the hills, finally taking them though losing 3 French regts to 2 German in the process. The game (and week) then ended which was a shame as this game could have easily gone on for a 3rd day.

All of these games went down to the wire, All were tough draws in the end. I can't recall the last time that happened at one of these mega-games. Normally you have a duff game at some point, or a day with relatively little action, or a dull day where you are either motoring through or getting ground into the dust. None of that. 3 really good, close, interesting battles with opponents who were a pleasure to play with (surely the most vital factor). So a big thank you to Eric, Adam, Tim and Paul.

The set up before the first game: 5 x tables, 30 players, about 10,000 playing pieces
Next year there is talk of a scale change, and doing ALL of Market Garden at SECTION level...we shall see...Whatever is decided though, I know where I'll be next January.....Falmouth.

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January:

2010-01-09T22:13:00.000Z

Austrian Grenadiers and Heavy Cavalry mass on the Austrian right flank at Wagram at the WHC before Christmas.

I have been very quiet over the holiday period, to the extent that I've had mails from one or two of you enquiring after my health!...Well, I'm fine. The flu bout lingered on for quite a while, then it was Christmas etc plus I had more work to do over the holiday than I'm used to, so I'm afraid putting in an appearance here slipped down the list of priorities.

On top of this, my gaming/painting/planning/blogging opportunities at this time of year always get pushed to one side in order to sort out planning for the forth-coming Falmouth Mega-game. Most of my time is spent reading some of the 900(!!!!) e-mails generated by this plus staring blankly at reams of OB's, rules, Maps, intel assesments/briefings etc etc. Plus reading up on this years' effort; the 1940 campaign.

Most of the preparations have now been completed, the first map moves made, the fiendish Hun has invaded brave little Belgium (and Holland), the first games have been decided, table maps sent out, player teams assembled, dice sharpened, the kick off is in a week's time down in Cornwall, providing everyone can get there in the snow. Hopefully the weather will have calmed down a bit by then.

The most important news however is that this afternoon I picked up a paintbrush again after a month's lay-off. I'm finishing off some Elite Austrians. I've now just got about 10 figures to finish for the first battlion of line infantry, so I PROMISE to get these done, and pics posted up before I go down to Falmouth in a weeks time. There. I've said it. Now I have to do it.

Rear view as the flank attack squeezes the French

So, a few catch up pictures from the Wagram game that was part of Herbert's birthday week at the beginning of December. I played on the Austrian right flank driving the Grenadiers and cavalry around the French left. The way Gerry handled this was for everyone to deploy normally (on movement tiles) and begin as normal. As each turn went by Napoleon would be informed that a formation had gone whizzing off table round to the left. Eventually an ADC made contact with the Emperor and the extent of the Austrian advance was made apparent. The French troops were moved back and a horde of Austrian cavalry and Grenadiers materealised on their flank.

If my Austrian Cavalry turn out half as good as these, I'll be very happy. Figures from the WHC collection

The French had prepared for this and some 12 regts of heavy cavalry were dispatched to shore up the flank. This slowed down the Austrian advance, but like everything in ITGM it's all about combined arms, and the balance of infantry, cavalry and artillery slowly pushed the French back. Although they managed to mass their normally lethal heavy cavalry they just didn't have enough space to be fully effective.

Wagram: The French Guard Heavies and infantry plough through towards Aderklar

Further over it was a different story, the French Guard were released and crunched through the Austrian centre, sweeping through up to the riverline. After 2 days hard fighting it was declared a draw, while the French flank collapsed they had punched through the Austrian centre. It was, however, a cracking game.

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December.....

2009-12-20T21:19:00.000Z

Austrian infantry pile into Zokolnitz while Bernadotte moves up in the background

Had an odd month, went up to Scarborough for Gerry's and Herbert's week of Napoleonics. We had a great time, fought Austerlitz (twice) Wagram and Dresden. I've put up a couple of pics from this and have plenty more to follow, but time has been precious since I got back, plus I've had really bad flu which has been totally debilitating. You'd have thought that writing a blog was one of the few things you could do while feeling ill but I've had absolutely no energy. What little I have had has had to go on working, and I haven't even picked up a paintbrush. Its left me feeling extremely frustrated. A tough work schedule for this week and I'm even going in between Christmas and New Year (can't remember ever doing that before). However, I will get some more stuff up, I promise. Plus, I'm desperate to get some Austrians finished. They are sitting on the table looking at me accusingly.

Neil Sheardown (some of his cracking painting below) has asked me to do a piece on fast painting horses in oils which I will do in the New Year. Should be fun to do.

Massed Russian Heavy cavalry

Above is a quick bit of action from Dresden, a massive Russian cavalry attack towards the end of the game which was an Allied victory. The French army including 4 divisions of Young Guard (48 battalions of them!!!) couldn't hold against the hammer blows of the Allies.

Socially it was a great week, lots of dinners and Herbert got some good presents including a version of his favourite unit "the fighting 57eme" painted by Neil; These were the old Connoissuer Greatcoated French figures. Really manky campaign dress types, which is why Herbie likes them I guess. Here they are in a presentation case:

The Fighting 57th (mark II)

More of Neil's work below, some Elite French line. I really like these newer French march attack Elite figures. I did a few a while ago as Westphalians - I think about 2 or 3 months later they released the proper Westphalian range!- They are very straightforward to paint from what I recall

Nice new Elite infantry painted by Neil Sheardown, in the background Badeners move up in support.

Anyhow, its 9.30 and I'm knackered again so I'll try and get something more out later in the week.

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Off to Scarborough

2009-11-28T14:05:00.002Z

Zastrow Cuirraisiers: Connoisseur Figures from the WHC collection
A busy week at work, and a pathetic showing in the painting stakes, I'm afraid. However, my bit of a spurt at the beginning of November means a handsome total for the month so I'm not complaining at all.

I'm off tomorrow up north for a week of hardcore Napoleonics. I'm really looking forwards to it. It bodes for being a cracking week, its a birthday celebration for my old friend Herbert who has invited about 10 of us up to Scarborough for the week. it's also Gerry's birthday this week so he will be playing too.

The plan is to fight 3, two day games, spanning the heart of the period. The first game is Austerlitz, then Wagram, and finally Dresden.

I've played all of these scenarios before at the centre, however, Gerry says he has re-jiggered all three of these games so they will actually all be completely fresh and most of the players won't have played any of them previously, so there may be a few surprises.

Saxon Garde Du Corps: Lots of conversions

In the absence of any new painted units I've put up these pictures of Saxon Heavy Cavalry, which I took recently at the WHC. Lovely units, as ever lots of conversions with all the swords replaced including some quite mad figures tumbling from their horses. I think originally they were only half regiments painted by Doug Mason but Gerry wanted them expanded to full 32 man units. So Neil Sheardown did a pretty amazing job of matching his painting to Doug's original work and re-touching them.

With a little luck I'll be able to get my greasy hands on these during the course of the week.

A lot of time has also been taken up sorting out planning for the forth-coming game in Falmouth in January, been a lot of e-mailing and plotting going on but the ideas are forming. My initial rather doom-laden appraisal has been replaced with a somewhat more optimistic view (it has helped that I have since read the briefing correctly). The Umps are putting some interesting options available for the poor old creaky French Army.

More massed Saxons

So, I have a pleasant 4 hours or so in the company of Noel, who is doing the driving, I can also deliver to him his Wurtemburg cavalry.

Going to be a fine week.

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Prussian Fusileers and Austrian samples, plus a bit of a whinge

2009-11-21T12:58:00.003Z

Calpe Fusileers form a firing line
Been a little busy, firstly, last week-end saw me going down to Newquay for a 1/285th WWII game, which was a great few days. No pictures I'm afraid, partly because it wasn't that photogenic (not that it didn't look good), partly because I was so busy playing I forgot. It was a Normandy scenario playing a 2 day game from midday on 6th June which then influenced a second 2 day game based around Goodwood. We were using the Newquay lads take on the Mega-game rules and on the whole they worked really well. Not perfect, but well-tailored to the games we were playing. Importantly, they seemed well tested and the OB's and scenarios were quite well thought out with clear, achievable objectives for both teams. One of those games where both sides could have gone away saying they won.
Just when one has memorised one set of WWII rules along comes another. The rule set for the Falmouth Mega-game in the New Year has just been put out. These are based on the same set as the ones used for the game I just played. Despite being largely similar I wish I had the same confidence in them that I had in the set I just used. I can't help feeling that they haven't been tested enough, and that based on previous experience the scenarios COULD become wildly imbalanced because of the marked disparities within the rules (and scenario specific rules) between the opposing sides (France 1940). There is always enormous ingenuity on the part of players in these situations to maximise their advantage and I fear the "new" rules and doctrine guidlines do virtually nothing to restrict this. I have a horrible feeling the only purpose the French team will serve is to serve as spectators while the Germans just roll forwards. There is nothing I can see in them which leads me to think otherwise, and that the experience for the French players will be distinctly mediocre. Lets hope I'm wrong.
This year the game has gone back to a standard sort of hex/map campaign format. Probably a mistake. Last year they used a more abstract system for the 41 desert campaign. This worked up to a point and if there was one game where it would have worked well and allowed the umpires to adequately control the games played it was the 1940 Campaign. As it is I have little doubt it quickly degenerate into a series of very dull walk-overs for the Germans, with a series of compensation final games based on fudges. They are still looking for a couple of players for the Germs so if you fancy winning for a week with no thought or ability required then sign up.

Back to more picturesque things, I've finished the Calpe Fusileer btn. A firing line pose, with of course, no standard. These were finished the same as the previous btns the only real difference being the black belts rather than white, strangely less satisfying to paint. Perhaps I'm just a white belts man. However the results are nice and the firing figures made a nice change.

So, although I still have another unit of Prussians to do I have made a start on the Austrians. I did these samples just to make sure I was happy with the technique and the results are ok. It's a little difficult to imagine what these will look like en-masse so I'll just have to persevere and produce a full 48 before making a final decision but I think I'm happy with the process.

I went for Spraying white (what else?) then washing the whole figure in a thinned wash of Vallejo green ochre. Then block paint and highlight as normal with the white being done in white grey with white on top.

In the above picture the figure on the left is one of the new "Collectors' range" Austrians. I like the figure at trail. It has a seperate musket arm and there are 4 variants, I'll probably only use about 4 or 5 of these in a btn but with all the other variants available the unit should look really mixed. Not sure how much painting time I'll have in the next 2 or 3 weeks. I'm busy at work plus in just over a week its back up to the WHC for Herbert's birthday bash. Can't wait.

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Austrians Arrive!!

2009-11-11T19:27:00.000Z

I knew this would happen, a MASSIVE box arrived this afternoon from Elite Miniatures, typical, tomorrow I head off down to Newquay for a 4 day WWII fest, so I have a happy evening ahead packing, boning up on the rules for the game ahead, printing OB's, digging out my dice etc plus the small matter of sorting through 1300 Austrian figures....oh, and I think I'm supposed to spend a bit of quality time with the significant other prior to my departure. How is a man supposed to concentrate on his nearest and dearest when his head is full of Grenzers and whether the mix of variants will work?

To be honest, one obviously has to prioritise one's time here, and I've already spent a couple of hours going through the infantry and working out how to mix the figures. Having bought all these different units they need a bit of mixing up. I bought 4 x 48 of the new "Collector's Series" Austrians which are chock-full of variants to mix in with the old style adv/chrg mix. plus Mr Moreby bunged in about 90 of the other variants within the btns...all told I think each of the helmeted btns (of which there are 13) will get about 14 different infantryman plus different officers/stds drummers etc. They should look pretty whacky. The big strength of the Elite figures is the energy they can display. If you want seried ranks of identical march attack figures (nothing wrong with that- it can look great) then don't buy Elite, Front Rank will do a better job, and if you are short-sighted..Foundry. However, I really liked the idea of trying to replicate the feel of all those drawings of Austrians in action during the 1809 campaign, no orderly ranks but swarming mobs of infantryman rushing forwards....we shall see.

Anyway, a bit more sorting out then its time to get my head into WWII mode.

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Prussian Musketeers

2009-11-08T15:31:00.001Z

Calpe Musketer btn

Google seem to have a new pic uploader, seems to be a little more punter-friendly than the old one. You also get these BIG pics. Jolly good.

Just got round to basing up these Musketeers (apologies about the blobs of white glue under the grass tufts. they will dry and be invisible pretty quickly. These Calpe figures are possibly the most painter friendly figures I've ever encountered. For someone who has been brought up on Connoisseur they are so simple to paint. In fact, you would have to be a REALLY bad painter not to get a decent result with these. Even a cack-handed twat like me can make them look ok.

The usual massive mix of poses, which I like, I know its not everyone's cup of tea, but this is my blog, so tough. I used the same method as the Landwher, and these took about the same amount of time, so November is looking highly productive so far: 64 figures in 8 days. I won't be able to keep this up for the rest of the month but its a bloody good start.

Checked my bank account yesterday and there was a very significant difference all of a sudden which I hope means that Mr Moreby has posted the Austrians. Excellent. Trouble is I'm quite busy this week and then on thursday head to down to Newquay for a long weekend of WWII gaming (1/285th, so not very photogenic). I'm looking forwards to this, should be a good laugh, good crowd and it will be a good game. (D-Day, and a bit of Goodwood in 2 games). However, it is bound to mean a delay in getting stuck in to the Austrians.

I've got another march attack musketeer btn like this to do, plus a Fusileer btn in a firing line pose, going to be difficult to do before starting the Austrians. Discipline will be required which has never been my strongpoint.

Managed to remember to do the flag correctly this time, 5 coats of brushed on artist's gloss then a brushed matt coat. Came out as flat as a pancake (?)...ok, thats a mixed metaphor but you know what I mean.

I do prefer to brush on varnish these days, seems a bit more controllable plus I'm a lazy sod and in order to spray I need to go down 3 stories to the garden. The artists gloss is not smelly.

So, no hair-spray or other "magic" solutions....just brush it on. Not rocket surgery.

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Tying up loose Prussian ends

2009-11-03T13:18:00.012Z

Calpe Landwher battalion
I'm still waiting for these pesky Austrians, 5 minutes ago there was a knock at the door, I lept up, raced downstairs (almost breaking my neck). What was it? Some geezer flogging home deleivered organic meat. Not much use to a vegetarian household, certainly a lot less useful than a big box of toy soldiers.
Anyway, the excitement engendered by my waiting for these figures has given me a shot in the arm as far as painting goes. The last couple of weeks have been incredibly fruitful. I've banged out some Connoisseur Austrians in readiness to be joined by their Elite comrades (60 artillerists and Grenzers). So, this weekend saw the paint table empty.
What to start on? Now it would be Sod's Law that if I started something major like a couple of btns then these flaming Austrians would turn up half way through. In the end I bit the bullet and decided to try and finish the 4 remaining btns of Calpe Prussians I have, which have been sat in bags for about 4 years.
First off was the last Landwher btn, now with half an eye towards the impending Austrians I decided that speed was something of an issue. Not to the extent of compromising too much, but I wanted to try techniques which might cut a little time. To be honest, in the end I didn't really change much at all.

Casualties: not something I normally do
I also did something I've not really done before and kept an eye on how much time this was taking.
I did these in batches of 16, 8 to a stick, trying to keep each stick with figures vaguely similar in pose, I find this makes things a little quicker as you can develop a "rhythm" of sort.
I decided to use the prime/undercoat as a basis for a major colour. Once upon a time I would undercoat say, grey, and then spend more time painting the grey....well, grey...A lot of painters will be throwing their hands up in horror at the idea of using a prime coat as a "finish" coat, but by the time you have washed, highlighted and varnished, there isn't a lot of prime coat left.
I read someones painting tips the other day and they said they undercoated black, and then painted the whole figure grey...(????) and then painted the figure...well, it's their life..Personally, these days if a figure is predomitably grey I just spray it grey, likewise if there is a lot of black. I'd do it black and then wash and highlight. (You can guess what colour the Austrians are going to be undercoated in).
I think unless you are superdetail whizzo expert, and are just a decentish wargaming standard painter like me then you are really wasting your time. the differences are imperceptable.
Anyway, they were blocked in with a very thin Dark Prussian Blue wash on the coats and caps, Green ochre on the packs and belts, Sunny skin tone, Black on the boots, musket and cartridge box, highlight the musket barrel etc in gunmetal, Burnt Sienna as a base for the red on collar, cuffs etc. Block in the musket wood with German cammo black brown. All the extant grey bits were just washed with a thinned black (breeches, blanket rolls).

Big old flag
After that its plain sailing: wash over the Green Ochre with a Burnt umber oil wash, the flesh with an Indian red oil wash, musket strap is painted Burnt Sienna, and the musket highlighted with Leather Brown. Black bits are highlighted in German Grey. Red bits highlighted in...Red. When the oil washes are dry highlight the Burnt Umber washed Green Ochre with more Green Ochre, on the flesh more Sunny Skin tone. Grey areas are now highlighted with Neutral grey and then Neutral Grey+ white on top. Taches and hair are done with any old brown and/or grey. Brass is picked out in Brass and some Silver applied to pick out the musket lock and the musket bands.
The officers needed a few different touches, sashes were grey base coat washed black and then picked out in silver, white belts and buttons picked out in Grey White.
As I said, these figures were just washed over with a thin blue basecoat, so the pigment gathered in the folds which Calpe figures are good for. Some of them needed a second wash and I put a few highlights which were Dark prussian Blue mixed with grey, all in all the coats didn't need a lot of work to get a decent effect.
Matt Artists Varnish was slapped on.

About 12 hours total time over 3 days from start to finish
One peculiar thing happened; The flag is a GMB one which I've had for a long time (at least 4 years) Normally with these I varnish them with 3 or 4 coats of GLOSS varnish to stiffen them up, and then matt them. For some reason I didn't do this, and applied the water-based Matt straight on. This has resulted in some of the original ink running on the flag, only very slightly, and its not serious. I don't know if this was a one-off, a result of using water-based Varnish, or because the flag was old...I won't be doing it again.
Figures were based up using my normal method . Calpe figures are BIG as well as lovely, and were a bit of a squeeze on the base.
Anyway, total time was 12 hours. Not bad.

16 figures: about 6 hours
Next, I moved on to the 3 infantry btns, 2 musketeer and 1 Fusileer, I've completed the first 16 musketeers which I show here: These were painted with the same method and took about 6 hours. I was reasonably pleased.
The interesting thing here was that I was much more careful with the blue wash, subsequently these figures have just had a single washcoat over the grey undercoat. Thats it. No highlighting, nothing. Looks as if I've spent weeks blending it, but actually I haven't. Saves A LOT of time.

Musketeers: The blue is just a wash, no highlighting

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While we are waiting...

2009-10-29T19:35:00.007Z

Mameluks: From Mike Ingham's collection at the WHC...Amazing conversion work by Doug Mason
Nothing much happening on the Austrian front. Everytime I go downstairs I glance at the door in case there's a delivery note and I didn't hear the guy knock, but no big parcel from Elite as yet. Despite my impatience the reality is that it probably won't turn up until next week, all things considered. I'm just itching to get started on the white chaps.
I don't have many pics of Austrians, so, I'll put a few pics in here which have NOTHING to do with them.
I just love this unit. I've always coveted it, The figures are Mike's, converted and painted by Doug Mason when he was in his prime. My photos don't do the figures justice at all. They are extra-ordinary conversions. Every figure is different, arms and bodies built up with solder, weapons re-made. I think they were originaly Connoisseur, but I can't tell which figures were used as the basis

All the horses have been re-modeled, reins replaced by brass wire, the horses themselves have in some cases been taken from two different castings and then "cut and shut"..seamlessly. The manes and tails have been teased with a soldering iron to give them more movement

These pictures also don't show up Doug's painting to it's full advantage, the detail on the weapons and horse furniture is painstaking.

Amazing work...

Hey- ho, while I wait for these Austrians to turn up you'll just have to make do with more pics like this.

I have not been idle though, I'm painting up the Connoisseur Grenzers at a fair rate, and have been using them to experiment on techniques to use on this Austrian project, to be honest I don't think I'll change much, I'll paint them the same as I would most things, they look quite good and I'm happy with the speed I can do them. They won't get based up though until I can mix them in with the Elite kit, so you'll have to wait.

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What's next? ....LOTS of milkshakes

2009-10-26T17:23:00.008Z

Wurtemburg Jaeger: Connoisseur figures

So while all this Vittoria stuf has been going on I've not been idle.

Got a bit of painting done, finished the second battalion of Victrix Italians which was good, then polished off a dozen skirmishers for Noel, someof whom can be seen above. I also wanted to do some conversions to create a Wurtemburg Horse artillery battery. No-one to my knowledge makes figures for these, but I thought some Russian Guard Horse artillery gunners with Firing Line cavalry Rapenhelm stuck on them would work. The results are below: Quite a cute little battery.

Wurtemburg Horse Artillery. Connoisseur Russians with Firing Line heads

However, the major development of the past couple of weeks has been the decision to build a big old Austrian army. I've been thinking of what to do for my next painting project for a while, and hadn't come up with much. I had contemplated Austrians a while ago, along with maybe a Big French Guard project...but French Guard? I've got tons already...then I saw that Pete Moreby at Elite was doing his "Christmas Special" offer. I did a few sums and worked out that purchasing 6 of his Brigade packs meant an overall saving of about 30%. Pretty good. SOOOO... I got together an initial (initial....blimey) order for about about 1200 figures. This will form the core of an Austrian army. 16 x 48 man infantry btns, 4 x 36 grenadiers, 3 regts of light cavalry and 84 skirmishers. The skirmies I've ordered are mostly Grenzer so I should be able to make up 2 x 36 man btns out of these. I just happen to have a load of Connoisseur Austrians lying around in a dark corner; Enough cuirraissier for 3 regts (!!) about 100 Grenzers, about 30 gunners and more artillery pieces than I will ever need ( about 20 guns) So I've ordered a few extra Elite gunners to be going on with and can pad out the Elite Grenzers (which are lovely figures) with some of the Connoisseur stuff.

I've asked for the units to have as much variation as possible, including all the "variation packs" plus 4 of the 48's in helmet are the new collectors series which look really good. So by the time I've mixed them all up they should look extremely varied.

I reckon this little lot will keep me busy for 2 years, I might be able to speed things up. Austrians are actually pretty easy to paint, no piping, simple uniforms. I've laid in vast quantities of varying shades of white paint.

Now, the trouble is this week I'm "working from home" (cough), so I'm already in a state of nervous anxiety everytime I hear a noise which is vaguely like a postman/delivery man...I do feel a bit sorry for the poor old postie who has to deliver this- as at a rough estimate it should weigh over 20 kilos!

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Vittoria, the (inevitable) outcome

2009-10-18T19:15:00.027+01:00

The man without whom all this wouldn't have been possible: Gerry pondering on how to inflict further carnage.
Having examined the terrain and OB's, before going any further I should take this opportunity to thank Gerry (and Anne) for inviting me up to their's to play this game in the first place. Gerry and I had a great time on the table but an equally fine experience was to be had off it; some excellent dinners, and a lot of tea...and beer,.... and wine...I had a splendid time, all due to their unstinting hospitality, so many thanks, it was much appreciated.

9lber's from Alten's division pound Cassagne's infantry. KGL move up in support. (Connoisseur figures from the WHC)
The opening few turns of the game were fairly cagey, the only Allied troops deployed at the begining of the battle were the Potuguese and Spainish units and Dalhousie's division on the west side of the Zadorra. The 3 British cavalry brigades made an aggressive move to quickly cross the river in the south-western corner of the field While the infantry steadily moved up to the river line. There was desultory counter battery fire from both sides.
Having gained some inteligence by examining the troops on the allied side it was quickly obvious that the British would be one's delivering the flank attacks. I threw a couple of battalions out from Arinez plus the divisional cavalry to spoil and slow down the British cavalry. On the north western flank I extended the French line by moving half a dozen battalions to meet the Spainish threat there. The other moves meanwhile were to move the French cavalry ( Tilly and Soult) down to the Arinez area to counter the British cavalry. Meantime the 12 pdrs moved off to support the northern flank, planning to take up position between Maransin and Cassagene and form a hefty gun line in that sector.
D'Armagnac and Boyer remained in reserve.
This situation continued for 3 or 4 turns while the British cavalry attempted to ford the river and the French Divisional cavalry extended the French lines to the south, they were in for a shock however when two and a half divisions (Stewart, Cole, Ponsonby and Longa) emerged from the hills on their flank.
I started to shift further forces south from the Tres Puentes area, this looked pretty solid against the Spainish and I didn't need all of Laval to hold it. The attack against the Spainish was going moderately well.
The French were holding their own in the artillery battle and both sides skirmishers were popping away over the river. The Portuguese were taking a long time to cross.
Meanwhile the roads were clogged with fleeing baggage moving east.
"SPLAT" The Speedbump hussars meet the Horseguards
This situation continued as the British cavalry formed up, there were a couple of minor skirmishes as Soult's hussars moved up, which the French lost, meanwhile the British infantry poured onto the southern flank.
The firefight against Morillo's Spainiards was going well, a couple of dodgy morale rolls and soon most of the division was in retreat. The French were having trouble chasing them.
None of this however could do anything to impede the British cavalry. Tilly's Dragoons couldn't get into the sector in time and took up position east of Arinez. It was down to Soult's Lights to do the job...no chance. They were ridden down in short order by the British Heavies, a couple of fleeing squadrons pinned a French line firefighting Dalhousies' infantry as it crossed the river...this wasn't good, The line and a another supporting unit were charged and broken through by the rallied British cavalry. Suddenly there was a minor crisis developing west of Arinez.

Cassagne's infantry occupy a farm. Figures are the fantastic original Dave Allsop Old Glory French....Never bettered
Still the Portuguese made no headway, but that wasn't really their job, they were just there to pin. The artillery and skirmish battle continued unabated while Laval's infantry struggled through the baggage to get to Arinez.
Then, around turn 7 came the next British blow. Another two and a half divisions appeared on the northern flank. D'armagnac moved up to counter this and the French formed a solid, (but thin) line supported by 4 batteries of artillery along the river line.
This was then followed by ANOTHER two and half divisions including the Light Division pouring out of the mountains north of Vittoria, The French were seriously outnumbered here.

British cavalry mass before the 12 pdrs on the northern flank. They were cannistered down in droves
This was the situation as the game reached turn 10 to 11.
On the southern flank, the British were building up a solid line to assault Arinez with the French heavily re-inforcing the area east of the town,cramping the British deployment with Sarrut and the dragoons. Lamartinerre was slowing moving up to support this,hampered by roads full of baggage.
Arinez itself was under shrapnel fire with a number of Daricou's btns massed behind the village. To the west and north of Arinez was a sorry tale. The charges of the British cavalry had cut down 2 btns plus a lot of cavalry, 3 (untouched) btns were routing back and had carried off a battery. Daricou's units were huddling in square waiting for these to clear and then rally.
Fortunately the British had nothing to immediately exploit this, but the situation wasn't good.
On the western Zadorra it was business as usual with the Portuguese doing the hokey-cokey back and forth across the river.
To the north-west the Spainish were hard pressed but this was really a side-show.
Further along the Zadorra to the east D'Armagnac was wheeling into the left of the line to face off Bradford. This was a stalemate for ther rest of the battle.

Maransin's infantry deploy, my small contribution: Perry and Victrix
Maransin with my little Perry fellahs was firefighting across the river and doing ok-ish, but even by rotating the btns as they were worn down, it was obvious the French would run out of units before the British.
The same situation was developing (but faster) in Cassagne's sector. Here btn after btn was fed into an uneven firefight with riflemen, the Footguards and a cannistering RHA btty. Both of the latter were eventually seen off but at a high price. The French were simply going to run out of units.
On the eastern end of the battlefield the strategic axe for the British was falling in the shape of the Alten and the Light Division. Alten was gunning down the Spainish Guard infantry while the LD raced towards the exit road supported by the KGL cavalry. I don't think they actually fired a shot all game apart from the odd skirmisher, but they were descending onto the exit road at a rapid rate and there was nothing to stop them apart from a few squadrons of Spainish Guard cavalry.
The writing was very much on the wall for the French at this point.

French Dragoons get on the flank of the highlanders. It was about to get messy for the Black Watch
There were isolated areas of success for the French; Against the Spainish things were going well, and the btns facing the Portuguese were dishing out casualties. Around Arinez a few British btns were getting worn by fire, and pinned by repeated dragoon charges. Eventually one of the highlander btns was caught in the flank and ridden down along its length, while the other 40 man was shot to bits, as were a couple of British squares. However, the occasional British rout never evolved into a whole-sale series of routs although it easily could have done.

The damage was done to the French on the Northern flank. By the end of the game the French were wavering, they simply couldn't cope with the fire combination that the British could bring down on them.

Picton Volleys his way to the river, and takes up the slack for the British. In the background the battered Footguards retreat
All in all it was a highly enjoyable couple of days. Its not often that one gets the opportunity to play a one on one game on such a large table, and with that many figures (It was being replayed last week as a 3 a side game) and going it alone in such a scenario, is a bit different. You need to remember A LOT of stuff, the challenges are slightly different, and the simple physical side of moving around a large table (or series of tables) is a bit tiring. A straight-fowards line 'em up scenario would probably be easier as a 2 player game, but its a small point.

As a scenario...hmmmm ... Apart from Bautzen I don't think I've played in such a one-sided game at the centre. The Brits really do hold all the cards. Not helped by playing against Gerry who is not exactly a bad player....In terms of player pyschology Gerry as an opponent is hard to beat at the best of times. His only "weakness" (if it can be called that) is that he likes to generate a plan, then get "all his ducks in a row", and then execute it, so sometimes it's possible to throw him off balance (except he has usually taken your moves into account). The trouble in this game was that there were few (no) opportunities for this.
Anyway, anyone reading who has managed to get this far, and has enjoyed this lengthy account even a 10th of how much I enjoyed playing it, should be happy!

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Vittoria: Part II: The French

2009-10-13T19:33:00.015+01:00

Swiss, French and Berg infantry move off the heights of Tres Puentes (all figs from the WHC collection)
Ok, so in the previous dispatch we saw the British OB. Without further ado lets have a look at what the French have to defend angainst this onslaught:

Army of the South:

1st Division: Laval.
1 x veteran line
4 x 1st class line
2 x 2nd class line
18 skirmishers
2 x 6 light cavalry
1 x 8lb foot btty

3rd Division: Villatte.
2 x veteran line
4 x 1st class line
2 x 2nd class line
18 skirmishers
2 x 6 light cavalry
1 x 8lb foot btty

4th Division: Conroux
4 x 1st class line
4 x 2nd class line
18 skirmishers
2 x 6 light cavalry
1 x 8lb foot btty

5th Division (part): Maransin
4 x 1st class
12 x skirmishers

Maransin's Division deploys: My boys get an outing. Perry and Victrix from my own collection get a day out at "Wembley"
6th Division: Daricou.
1 x veteran line
3 x 1st class line
3 x 2nd class line
18 skirmishers
2 x 6 light cavalry
1 x 8lb btty

Dragoon Brigade: Tilly (staff officer)
4 x 8 dragoon
4 x 8 dragoon
6pdr horse btty

Light cavalry Brigade: P. Soult (staff officer)
4 x 6 light cavalry
4 x 6 light cavalry
6pdr horse btty

Army of the Centre:

1st Division: D'Armagnac.
3 x 1st class line
2 x 2nd class line
12 skirmishers
3 x 6 light cavalry
8lb foot btty

2nd Division: Cassagne
2 x veteran line
5 x 1st class line
18 skirmishers
4 x 6 light cavalry
8lb foot btty

4th Division: Sarrut.
2 x veteran line
3 x 1st class line
1 x 2nd class line
18 skirmishers
4 x 6 light cavalry
8lb foot btty

6th Division: Lamartinerre
4 x 1st class line
2 x 2nd class line
18 x skirmishers
4 x 6 light cavalry

Boyer's dragoon brigade (staff officer)
4 x 8 dragoons
6lb horse btty

Spainish Guard (King Joeseph)
3 x 32 2nd class line
3 x32 militia
6 x skirmishers
2 x 8 light cavalry (militia)
2 x 6 dragoon (militia)
8lb foot btty (3 guns, militia)

Reserve artillery:
2 x 12pdr foot btty.

All btns are 36 man except where stated.
All French foot artillery is 3 guns and a howitzer
All French horse artillery is 3 guns

The French can deploy anywhere South and east of the river Zadorra.
The Spainish Guard and the Reserve artillery must deploy in the environs of Vittoria.

Fleeing baggage clogs the French lines
So, thats it for the French....not great.
A quick look after the battle shows they are outnumbered by some 20 odd infantry btns. (8oo figures all told)
Plus the British have over a thousand veteran or higher classed infantry to the French 360. (plus all Brits fire as vets, in a game of firefight rather than melee)
The Brits have more skirmishers, plenty of which are rifle armed.
The French have slightly more artillery, but the British beinng all elite more than compensates for this (and they can fire shrapnel)
The French have slightly less light cavalry and it's penny packeted all over the place
The French have a bit more heavy cavalry.
The French have some 50' to defend and the Brits can pick their spots to attack.

The Deployment
The only inteligence the French possessed was that the British were attacking from the west, and that they could expect strong flank attacks from the south and north.
Faced with this, frankly, I was at a bt of a loss. Defend too strongly tothe west and risk the army being cut-off, defend the flanks and give the british a free ride over the river and still get taken in the flanks.
In the end I went for a rather predictable defence. A crust everywhere, with a central reserve as a reaction force.
One area where I thought I might do some good was in the North western corner where I thought I might be able to flatten out the line and remove an "apex" at Tres Puentes" subsequently I placed a strong division there (Laval) in the hope of mounting some sort of counter-attack. This sort of worked.
The other major problem was the village of Arinez.
I felt I had 3 choices here.
1:Sit and defend this "Apex" (slow suicide, the village was vulnerable to 2 sides and would be shrapneled to bits)
2:Mount a "picket defence" of a few btns plus cavalry slung out to impede the british advance.
3: Use a "minefield" tactic and not actually defend the village but mass troops behind it utilising it as an obstacle and making it untenable for the British to occupy.
In the end I chose the second when the the "minefield" was probably the sensible option.

Westfalian and Baden troops counter attack north of the Zadorra
The British Plan seemed pretty simple (and as it turned out, effective):
Pin the French on the western Zadorra using the Portuguese and Spainish, then administer the flank attacks using the quality British forces, cutting the retreat route safe in the knowledge that the French simply couldn't be strong everywhere (or was that anywhere?)
Part 3 will reveal the outcome!

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Vittoria refight at the WHC: part 1: The Brits

2009-10-12T13:20:00.014+01:00

So, the scene was set for Gerry and I to slug it out for a couple of days.
The choice of game was influenced somewhat by the fact that there is a weekend game coming up doing Vittoria, so it meant Gerry didn't have to change the terrain around again.
We completed this task on Sunday afternoon, only took about an hour, and laid out the buildings etc.
One unusual feature of this game is that the roads are packed with French baggage. We laid out about 40 models of limbers, wagons, caissons etc. all over the roads. In the game these had a real effect. They all headed towards the exit road in the north-eastern corner of the map, moving at just 2 x D6 per turn. They had priority over everything else on roads, could not be overtaken, and unformed anything they passed through. They blocked all fire and LOS. If they were charged or came under small arms fire they were abandoned, the model remaining on table as an obstacle. If a British unit came within charge range it had to attempt to charge. When it contacted it then had to loot the baggage for 2 turns before rallying. Then the baggage model would be removed from play.

The French Line on the western Zadorra. Baggage stretches away in the distance
British Order of battle:
CiC Wellington. adds +1 to morale of all infantry and artillery within 18"
1st Division: Howard:
1x 48 Guard
1 x40 Guard
4 x 30 KGL Veteran Line
1 x 30 KGL Elite Light infantry (rifle)
6 x skirmishers
6 x skirmishers (rifle)
9 pdr foot btty (2 guns, 1 how, elite)

2nd Division: Stewart
2 x 40 Elite Highlanders
5 x 32 Veteran Line
2 x 30 1st class Line
5 x Portuguese (PG) 2nd class Line
18 Skirmishers
12 x skirmishers (rifle)
9 pdr foot btty (2 guns 1 how, elite)

3rd Division: Picton:
4 x 32 veteran line
2 x 30 1st class line
4 x 32 PG 2nd class line
12 x skirmishers
6 x skirmishers (rifle)
9pdr foot btty (3 guns, elite)

4th Division: Cole:
4 x 32 Veteran Line
3 x 30 1st class Line
4 x 32 PG 2nd class line
12 x skirmishers
12 x skirmishers (rifle)
9pdr foot btty (3 guns, elite)

5th Division: Oswald:
4 x 32 veteran line
2 x 30 1st class line
4 x 32 PG 2nd class line
12 x skirmishers
6 x skirmishers (rifle)
9 pdr foot btty (2 guns, 1 how, elite)

6th Division: Dalhousie:
3 x 32 veteran line
3 x 30 1st class line
4 x 32 PG 2nd class line
1 x 32 Chassuers Britanique
12 x skirmishers
6 x skirmishers (rifle)
9 pdr foot btty (3 guns, elite)

Dalhousie's infantry attempt to cross the river
Light Division: Alten
1 x 36 Elite rifles (open order)
2 x 36 veteran line (open order)
2 x 40 veteran line
2 x PG 1st class line
12 x skirmishers
6 x skirmishers (rifle)

Ponsonby's Brigade: (staff officer)
4 x 6 dragoons (elite)
4 x 6 dragoons
6 pdr horse btty ( 3 guns, elite)

Von Bock's Brigade: (staff officer)
4 x 5 KGL dragoons
4 x 6 KGL dragoons
6 pdr horse btty (3 guns, elite)

Von Alten's Brigade:
4 x 4 light cavalry
4x4 light cavalry
4 x 6 KGL light cavalry
6 pdr horse btty (3 guns, elite)

Grant's Brigade:
4 x 4 light dragoons
4 x 4 light dragoons

Anson's Brigade:
4 x 4 light dragoons
4 x 4 light dragoons

Hill's Brigade:
4 x 6 Horse Guards

Spanish Formations:

Morillo
6 x 32 1st class line (2 dice for morale)
12 x skirmishers
6 pdr btty (3 guns, militia)

Longa's Brigade
4 x 32 1st class line
6 x skirmishers

Silviera's Division prepares to shoot it's way across the river
Portuguese Formations:

Silviera's Division:
9 x 32 2nd class line
12 skirmishers
8 pdr foot Btty (3 guns, 1 how)

Pack's Brigade
4 x 32 2nd class line
6 skirmishers

Bradford's Brigade:
4 x 32 2nd class line
6 skirmishers

Durban's cavalry brigade
4 x 6 Light cavalry (militia)

So, thats the British army. Impressive to say the least.
They were briefed as follows:
Flank Marches:
Up to 3 flank marching columns may be detatched: They enter on the north and south edges:
2 may enter to the northern edge, and 1 to the south.
Each may consist of a maximum of 2 & 1/2 infantry divisions (Pack, Longa, Bradford, Morillo each count as 1/2) and 1 cavalry brigade.
Forces entering on the Northern edge enter on the turn corresponding to the board number (ie. turn 1 to 9 ) depending how far east they wish to march.
Forces on the southern edge are the same up to board 6 except each march must dice for arrival.

Special Rules for the British:
British infantry:
Ignore Spanish routs. Regardless of how many spanish rout within 12" British infantry and artillery only ever count a minus 1 for friends retreating.
British cavalry: (Not KGL)
Roll 2d6 for rallying after melee.
British Foot and horse artillery is all elite and may fire shrapnel
Spanish infantry only roll 2d6 for morale
Spanish artillery fire as Militia but are 1st class line for morale
Open Order infantry in the Light Division are treated as follows when in a single line:
Ignore woods and rough terrain.
Recieve minus 4 modifier when fired upon by musketry and artillery
Recieve 1/2 casualties to skirmish fire.
Move as guards
Open order btns may interpenetrate each other with no penalty
When charged and passing morale they may evade (12") without unforming any friendly units in their path.

Next up:
The French:

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A Long week-ends gaming

2009-10-08T22:02:00.006+01:00

The view from the German artillery OP plane.

I've had a fairly fabulous 5 days gaming, to be honset I'm pretty tired after but its that happy sort of tiredness.

Last friday saw me heading up to Scarborough for a WWII game.

It turned out to be an excellent weekend, Gerry was putting on a post-Cassino Italy game which, amazingly, was not wall to wall kit but quite the opposite.

I pitched up and was placed on the German side.

The scenario was rather loose. The total German forces consisted of a single parachute regt of 3 btns, supported by 2 companies of pak 40's, 2 coys engineers and 3 ad-hoc armoured coys 2 each of 2 x stugs + a Tiger 1 and another of 1 marderIII plus an Elephant.There was a nebelwerfer btn of 3 bttys in support.

3 btns plus 8 AFV's and 6 ATG's to cover 28 feet of table ....tricky.

These forces were given the task of defending a dry river line, there was a single bridge in the centre of the line which was the only point at which wheeled vehicles could cross, the rest of the river was no significant obstacle to tracked vehilcles or dismounted infantry. Other than that we had no briefing. Given that we had 2 companies of engineers the inevitable bridge-blowing question was asked. Yes, it would take 10 turns to lay charges on the bridge.

We had no idea what we were facing but my guess was a British Infantry division and a tank brigade. Not far off as it turned out; although they had only 2 regts of infantry per brigade (there were indeed 3 brigades) plus 3 tank regts, and 2 coys of 17pdr towed guns, plus an MG btn.

So, we deployed. I played in the centre with a para btn, both eng coys, theElephant and marder plus the Werfer observer.We figured (correctly) that the bridge had to be the main allied objective. Everything was hidden apart from the Elephant which I deployed in view covering the bridge. This was a psychological ploy as much as anything and it worked, the Elephant didn't do a massive amount in the game but it did prevent the superior allied armour (54 AFV's versus 8) from using much of the ground around the bridge.

The view from the bridge: Dug in para engineers repel the British tanks.

It took the allies a little while to figure out that the bridge was their sole objective, (to establish a truck supply line), and it cost them. By turn ten they infiltrated 2 infantry coys along the river bed to attack the engineers at the bridge but it was too late, and the bridge was blown, on the flanks they made slow headway, there was a moment when a company of shermans could have outflanked the bridge but they swung right instead of left to go hunting down a battered tiger.

It was a difficult scenario, and had sufficient tension for both sides. Would the British work out just how weak the Germans were? In the end it took them too long.

Game 2: My Brits consolidate a factory building

We turned it around for a second game by swapping sides. With the suprise element gone the German deployment was made a little more flexible, but that didn't deter the Brits, who made a stronger push in the centre, and quickly gained the bridge. In this second game the Germans attempted to trade ground and probably took fewer losses than in the first, but it was to no avail. The bridge was captured intact.

All agreed the scenario was a good one, and the room for manouvre allowed by the low troop density was instrumental in providing a good game.

Next up, in the spring we will try an early war scenario.

So....everyone said there goodbyes and departed on Sunday afternoon.

Except me.

Gerry had very kindly invited me to stay on for a few days for a Napoleonic game:

Just the 2 of us:

Vittoria. A relatively small game by WHC standards ....a mere 420 square feet of table and aproximately 7,000 figures, a mere bagatelle for experienced Grand Manner players.....right.

Spanish infantry mass west of Tres Puentes at the begining of the game, the river Zadorra winds east into the distance

This will require at least one blog entry to describe, so stay tuned for a full description next week!

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Wurtemburg Cavalry....Have I been a complete prat all my life?

2009-09-30T12:49:00.009+01:00

Kavallerie Rgt. Nr. 4 Jäger König
I can't help feeling I've been a bit of a plonker. Since the mists of time I've always painted cavalry in the following manner: Glue rider onto horse, spray undercoat grey, paint whole thing as required.
Such stupidity!
While approaching painting these Wurtemburg mounted jager for Noel, I was struck by the fact that the uniform was very dark. Dark green coat and trousers, all belts and gauntlets black, black helmet. Seemed pretty sensible to undercoat black, despite my general dislike of black undercoat. Fine, we are all allowed to change our minds once in a while. The trouble was the horses, unless they are actually black, I REALLY don't like black undercoated ponies, and as these are light cavalry, bays and browns were going to be what I wanted. My method normally for this is to undercoat grey, then apply either a tan or dark brown, then wash over with the ubiquitous burnt umber oil paint. Relatively quick and easy, but the tan doesn't work well with a black basecoat.
Hang on...What if I painted the riders and horses seperately? Then I could base the riders black and the horses grey. Problem solved. Then....What if I sprayed the horses seperately as well??? Tan for the bays, grey for the greys (thats white ones for those who don't pander to horse-speak), and dark brown for the...dark brown ones. Blimey! this was a revelation! Now it might be blindingly obvious to all of you lot, but it is a good example of how we can get set in our ways. .
I explained how I'd never done this before to Mr Sympathy (John Lander) and he almost wee'd himself laughing at how I'd never worked this out previously. Thanks.

Rear view: Lots of black belts.
So thats what I did. Preped up 8 horses at a time, sprayed in strips of 4, either tan, brown or grey. Block in the harness, mane and tail black. Black wash over the legs, then splat on the umber wash. Wipe a bit off here and there with a dry cloth. Then detail with dry-brushing the tail etc and do some white markings. A little bit of brass on the harness.
It was SO quick! I could bang out 8 horses in about an hour or so, even allowing drying time for the oils. Varnishing does need 24 hours or so or the wash will come off.

As usual, plenty of head variants possible with Firing Line stuff
Painting the riders was fine too, and they were pretty quick with a black undercoat, which was then heavily dry-brushed in very dark grey, before highlighting with 2 lighter greys. Uniform in green. The Trumpeters were nice to do, a tan base and then highlighted with a very pale yellow (Vallejo German yellow). I'm not that keen these days on using a bright yellow, and this fits the bill nicely.
The white and silver lines on the shabraques took a while, but all in all it was a quick paint job with decent results.

There are however, 2 errors in this unit. 1 was deliberate as it actually conformed with Noels' instructions for the unit. The second one is a lot less conspicuous and I only found out about it about 1/2 an hour ago by which time it was too late to rectify.
So...Pedant of the month award and a punch in the mouth for those of you who can work out my terrible inaccuracies. I am waiting for the ground to swallow me up as I write this.
So, thats the Wurtemburgers all done apart from the Skirmishers, I'll start them when I get back from the WHC. I'm off up there on friday for a WWII game, which is followed by a game of Vittoria between just me and Gerry. I've never played Vittoria before...He said "You'd best play French"...I'm expecting a proper shoeing.

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4th French Hussars

2009-09-27T19:43:00.013+01:00

4th Hussars deploy on the Bunny-mat
Currently painting up the Wurtemburg mounted jager, which is going fine. When I have some pics I'll do a fuller piece on them.
Meantime, here's a few photographs of a favourite unit. When I was about 13, some 35 years ago(!) the first ever metal cavalry unit I bought and painted were some Minifig French Hussars. I had the old Almark painting guide which showed the uniform of the 4th regt. All that resplendant red and blue! Irresistable! I painted them up, and at the time, I thought they were the bees knees. The figures (I think) are long gone, and I didn't do too a bad job of them (my memory can be highly selective). So, a few years ago when I wanted to paint a French Hussar regt, naturally, the 4th regt were the obvious choice.
I had plenty of Connoisseur hussars but wasn't that keen on them. They are in the late cylindrical shako and I wanted the earlier, bell-top shako.This coincided with the discovery of the Firing Line range of heads, so I decided on a bit of a conversion to make up an original and unique unit.

Elite coy, new heads, bent arms and drilled out sabres
There was no trumpeter for the Connoisseur Hussars (or 90% of all of PG's cavalry), so I bought 4 of the FL early French chasseurs Trumpeters and a standard bearer, they are perfect for hussars dressed just in the dolman.
The Connoisseur officer is wearing the pelisse as a jacket which is quite nice, with new heads they become all different. One in colpack for the elite coy, one in bicorne worn fore and aft, and one with a bald bare head. Suddenly 3 completely different looking figures. They are all in the pics.
For the final officer I wanted something a bit more fancy, so dug out a Connoisseur Guard Chassuer officer and gave him a big plumed shako'd head- Suddenly he became a line colonel on a grey horse.

HELLO!... (I never knew Leslie Philips was a French hussar?)
The rest of the trooper figures were given plumed shakos and one with a bonnet de police, another the obligatory bandaged head. The swords on the original figures are held down, tight to the leg, so these were cut away, the arms bent out away from the body, hilts drilled out and replaced with beaten pins for sabres. They seem to get a bit more "movement" this way.
GMB as ever, provided the standard.

Horses are mixture of Connoissuer, FL and some Connoisuer personality horses
So, with a relatively small amount of work it's pretty easy to produce a unit which is unlike any other. Bespoke wargames figures on a budget!

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Work....such an imposition

2009-09-23T18:20:00.006+01:00

Guard Chasseur officer and trumpeter
Not been around at all for the last 3 weeks, working away, so no painting or gaming has been going on. This also meant I missed the annual trip to the WHC for Noel's campaign week http://garagegamer.blogspot.com/2009/09/another-week-in-scarborough.html which annoyed me immensely - the fact that it was deemed the best week yet coincided with my absence....read what you will into that.
I will get a bit of compensation in 10 days time though when I will head up there for a WWII weekend, an Italian campaign game using Gerry's new rules in their finished form. Also, Gerry has kindly invited me to stay on for a couple of days to have a game with just the 2 of us. Not sure what yet, probably a big old Napoleonic bash. Looking forwards to that.

Firing Line Guard Chasseur Regt

When I arrived home there was a big heavy box from Bicorne containing Noel's Firing Line Wurtemburg cavalry, I've not painted any of these before and have spent the afternoon assembling them (lots of seperate sword arms and heads). They look good. Obviously no photos yet but the poses are all very similar to their French Guard Chasseurs, so I've put some shots of them up. As you can see they are very nice figures and have a highly dynamic air about them, the seperate sword arm allows the figure to be cast a point which would not be possible otherwise, this also allows a pistol option

Firing Line line chasseur officer

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First Victrix Finished and the Wurtemburgers have flown the nest

2009-09-02T11:12:00.009+01:00

Finished the first Victrix Italians painted in the early uniform last week, and they turned out fine. Another box should be on it's way to complete the regt and then I'll just keep adding to them as I see fit. I think this is going to be a sporadic project rather than doing them all in one hit

Another view below with a rather blonde (for an Italian), drummer in the front rank, apparently, this really upsets some anal twats, (the drummer being there, not the blondeness) so if you are one; look away...NOW.

Perry mounted officer, GMB flag.

I must admit I do have a slight problem with the "lightness" of these Victrix guys. With the Perry stuff having 2 metal figures a base its not an issue, but these figures lack heft. In the end we are all a bit anal I suppose,which is why we are wargamers.

3 of the Wurtemburg Btns - chaps on the right lack a flag -typically it arrived this morning...a nice pink one
The other completion last week was the final battalion of Wurtemburgers from Firing Line Miniatures, I delivered these to Noel down in Plymouth over the week-end, so he is now the proud owner of 6 x 32's and a battery. Skirmishers are going to be a real problem. I'm still not sure what figures to use. I will however, order the figures for the Light cavalry regt today.

Noel has plumped for the mounted Jagers, which will look good in green

Close ups...having seperate heads makes for plenty of variation in adition to the 3 infantry poses shown here plus sargent/officer etc shown here. There is another infantryman with leveled musket who was rejected because those figures are always a pain because they inevitably stab the guys in the next unit..Firing Line also make the additional seperate heads which can be seen here (bandaged, baldy, Bonnet de Police etc) One or two of these add even further variation and character to a unit. The mounted officers are random Connoissuer figures I had lying around.

So..... The painting table is empty! What next?

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LETS TALK ABOUT BASING!!

2009-08-25T18:22:00.017+01:00

Ok, so it's not that exciting, but every little soldier you paint needs a base. A few people (ok, 3) have asked me about my basing techniques, its not particulary revolutionary, in fact, it's incredibly simple, which is actually the entire point; If you have an army of 100 figures, then you might well go for something more complex, but if you want to base lots of figures, quickly and easily, then this is as good a method as any. So here goes:

All you need:
Basing is pretty important, over the years I've done it all; those first Airfix plastics stuck on beermats painted gloss green, the radical move to neat mounting board, Tetrion, Basetex, green paint, brown paint, Miliput, Flock, static grass, pre-cut alluminium, you name it, I've done it....In the end its all bollocks...like everything else, if only I'd known, I could have saved myself a lot of time and grief and rung up Peter Gilder and he would have pointed me in the right direction from the word go.
The secret is 1.5mm plywood.
Basing has come a long way, most folk these days make a decent fist of basing their kit, but I'm still staggered by how many people dick about with all manner of bizarre materials which look bloody awful! Or who embark on incredibly complicated processes and make their life unbearable with unnecessary nonesense to little effect.
What I've learned is keep it simple.

First off...Thickness. A toy soldier on a piece of 4 or 6mm thick card, MDF (or the most hienous of crimes: The "Slotta base"), whatever, does not look good.
The base shouldn't overshadow the figure. I spent a lot of my working life in theatre and opera, and when a critic said the set was really impressive you knew he felt the show was crap, its a bit like that with bases, when someone says "Nice Basing!" you always think: " Why didn't he say nice painting?"
I've seen SO MANY figures on absurdly thick bases, just....don't.... do... it...1.5mm ply can be bought from a woodyard, £20 will buy you a 5' by 5' sheet which will base A LOT of figures (or you can nick it from the workshop where you work like I do). It can be cut easily with a Stanley knife and won't warp, curl, chip,..the corners won't look rubbish 6 months later. It's simply brilliant, and if you use anything else, frankly, you are a plonker.

So, get your little men and super-glue them onto a bit of 1.5mm ply. Super-glue is fine, you don't NEED to araldite or weld them to the base, super-glue will do the business.

Then, smear PVA wood glue over the base and up to the bases of the figure. Don't water it down, bung it on thick, (it's not expensive, for God's sake!) it will take out the height difference between the wood and the base of the figure, it will do the job just as well as laboriously building up the surface with Milliput, Tetrion or Green Stuff, the only difference is it takes a fraction of the time.

Next, dip the base into a tray of a mix of fine sand and something coarser, I tend to steal my sand either from the fire bucket in the garage up the road, or get it from the beach (Warbleswick has some lovely dunes where there is amazingly fine, dry sand). Fine sand isn't enough, however. It looks very boring. Pet shops sell "Budgie Grit" which I believe is made of crushed sea shells, this stuff is brilliant, and adds some nice "big bits" to the sand. Mix this in with the fine sand to taste, experimentation is everything here, so you are on your own. Then press in a few bigger bits of small stone, some folk use cat litter, but I always feel this looks like...well...cat litter...the stuff above is Railway modelling ballast, slightly rounded rocks in pale brown. I'm still quite fond of bits of carved cork bark, but anything that looks like big rock is fine. Again, personal taste in the end.

The PVA then needs a few hours to go off and set hard, and it does set hard. It helps stick the figures down, which is why you don't need Araldite etc. The water in the glue reacts with the super-glue and strengthens its bond even further. I must have based somewhere up to 10,000 figures like this and I could count those who have come unstuck on one hand. The first bit of colouring I use is an oil wash. "Burnt Umber" well thinned down with white spirit is sloshed over the base, including the exposed edges of the plywood, it soaks in. It just needs to colour it, no need at all to get a solid colour, you just need to tint the sand and grit with the dark brown.

This needs an hour or so to dry, if it needs more than an hour then you are putting on too much paint and not enough thinners, next step is easy, a nice big softish brush and dry brush on a tan acrylic onto the sand, highlighting all the texture you've put on. Currently I'm using Vallejo "Green Ochre" but any tan paint will do

Straight away, you can do the last paint touch, dry brush on white acrylic.... Yes, WHITE...pure white. It took me a while to believe that this wouldn't look pants... but it works, if its slightly off-white thats ok, but the brightness picks out the texture.

Finally, blob on a few dots of PVA where you want the grass to go. I gave up painting bases green a long while ago, green paint doesn't look like grass....it looks like green paint. I found this very fancy grass from a German company a while back :

http://www.fredericus-rex.de/shop/index.php/cat/c85_Wildgrasbueschel-lang.html

Its a bit pricey but worth the cash, I used to use sisel string pushed in when the base was wet which I could then paint green and highlight but frankly this stuff is much better.

Don't worry about splodging on the PVA, being the wonder material it is, it just disappears.

Then just place the grass clumps onto the PVA...easy...

Hey- Presto! The PVA has dried and vanished, and this is the finished result. Like I said, its not rocket surgery, I've just read so often how people seem to make basing a really complicated exercise, and a chore, which it really doesn't need to be.

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Guard? Yes, I've got some, and incredibly, some of them are Old Glory

2009-08-19T20:31:00.013+01:00

OG Old Guard (stiffened with a Connoisseur officer)

Old Glory make some truly horrible wargames figures, but, occassionally, they make some really good ones as well. I have 2 40 man btns of these fellows and found a bag containing another 48 the other day, so they are on the painting list. then I can use them as 4 x 32's or 3x 40's or 2x 32's and a 48...(you get the picture) 4 btns of Grenadiers should do the business ( Johns' got another 4, anyway) I didn't realise just how nice these are, LOTs of different poses, they are extremely animated, and VERY "shouty" which usually doesn't work with OG stuff, and is often their downfall, but somehow it works for these guys, some extra officers were required, from Connoisseur, (the Guard officer with his sword in the air is just such a great figure) plus a mounted colonel who is a Willie figure.

OG Light infantry (I think)

One young guard uniform I've always really liked is the Conscrit Chasseurs, they weren't around as a unit for very long; only from 1809 to 1811 but I always thought they looked "way kool" (as the young folk would say).
Very tricky to find figures for them, and in the end I plumped for Old Glory. I think they are Line light infantry flank coys. Again, light on good officers (Front rank and Foremost, this time), and a bit of a mental high porte pose but I like them.

The final piece of Old Glory Guardsters is this 40 man regt of Polish Lancers, the heads are a little big, but they are quite sweet. The big advantage of OG is that the quality of the metal they use is rubbish...???...which means they are very easy to bend and perform head twists, arm bends etc. As you may have noticed I like my cavalry units to be as varied as possible, so this is a bit of a help. Also, they used to (not sure if they still do) have a policy of only selling cavalry in packs of ten. Which is frankly, pathetic. Who actually buys cavalry in tens? About the only unit it works for is, funnily enough, 40's of Guard under Grand Manner ( coincidence?), but for 24's or 32's its pretty useless. If...no, when, I do the Dutch Lancers, I'll probably use Elite, as the trumpeter figure drawing his sword is REALLY nice...although the Connoissuer ones are still lovely (and the Elite ones are a straight copy of them)
The only other OG figures I've bought are a load of their generals...they do HUNDREDS, so you can get all sorts of stuff, I painted a load up one time for Gerry...lots of Pussians and Russians.
Anyway, the next 5 days will be spent in front of the telly watching the final test and painting Victrix Italians, so I should have them finished over the weekend.

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Painting Break: The first Victrix

2009-08-17T18:10:00.005+01:00

Victrix French as Italians

I've now finished the 5th Wurtemburg Battalion for Noel plus a foot battery, so before I embark on the final 6th unit, and maybe a cavalry regiment, I thought I'd have a little break and do some of the Victrix French I bought at Salute. To be honest, the other major reason is that I've run out of the right blue paint, so I can't do any more until that arrives (Don't worry Noel, its in the post).
When I'm doing new figures I'm not familar with I quite like just to do 6 skirmishers just to "get into" it. So, having finally plumped for painting these fellows as early Italians I knocked these out yesterday.

Hedges by Irregular

All in all I was impressed, the kneeling figure is a bit vague in it's detail around the back end but apart from that they paint up fine. One thing I did have trouble with was information on the Italians which suprised me, theres not a lot on the web and my own books were a bit vague and contradictory. In the end I used a lovely book I've had for a long time which has the prints from the "Otto Manuscript",most of the subjects are French but there are a few Italians, all drawn by an eyewitness in Hamburg in 1807. Ultimately this force will be about 6 line batallions plus a load of dragoons. Not sure about the Italian Guard but we'll get the line kit done first. I'm sure I will,as I think either Perrys or Victrix will eventually do French Guard infantry (which are right for Italian Guard)

Fancy grass from some German firm

So, I quite like these, I've already started on the first line btn, (the fusileer figures are actually easier to paint). I hope to have them finished next week or so, though I'll have to wait for the flags from GMB.

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More of John's Russians...Mostly artillery

2009-08-09T10:43:00.008+01:00

A Russian half battery defends a rather spiffy fleche

As promised, a few more pictures of Lander's Russian stuff. He has an AWFUL lot of artillery. I honestly don't know how much. I THINK he has....2 x line horse batteries, 1 x Guard horse battery, 1 and 1/2 Guard foot 12lb, 2x line 12lb, 3 x line 6lb...which makes for 51 artillery pieces, that sounds about right, I remember we once worked out the frontage of them all, and it was pretty scary (the above would be about 10 foot!).

On top of this he has quite a few limbers, pontoons, caissons etc which are nice bits of "fluff".

The first 2 pictures are of an Elite miniatures battery occupying a scratch built redoubt, John was rather keen on converting a lot of his artillery units, here the Elite crew have been tweaked to have them changing a damaged wheel as Connoisseur French infantry advance on them.

The Fleche is quite clever,made of aircraft engine filler (only about £400 a tin!) it sits on top of an existing hill and is moulded to its contours...then the hill can be used seperately.

12 lb foot battery: The backbone of every Russian army. Bicorne pontoon train in the background

Above is a 12lb line battery, this is made up of just about everything apart from Russian artillery figures! As I've said elsewhere one of the beauties of a lot of Connoisseur figures is their versatility. John has included French, British, Prussian, Spanish and ACW figures in the crews.

He hasn't done a lot of work, just changed a few heads, Russian shakos, added a few plumes and implements. The officer pointing with his sword is an ACW officer in a frock coat and sash. A new head, replace his Navy colt with a pin sword and suddenly he is a Russian officer.

Another view of the same battery, limber in support.

The mounted battery officer is the venerable and still great Connoissuer French infanty officer, berating a Spanish officer figure....you just need to be able to see the possibilities.

Russian Guard horse artillery

Finally, a view of some Guard horse guns, these are pretty much out of the box except for the officer which I think (can't really remember) is the Connoissuer French Marine of the Guard officer!...well, hes a bloke in a fancy uniform and a big hat, good enough, paint him green and there you go.

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A return to Napoleonics

2009-08-04T21:38:00.013+01:00

Elite minatures Jager Battalion beautifully painted by Dave Docherty (when he could still paint, before he discovered what his penis was for).

Got to spend the weekend at Lander's where an enjoyable time was had by all. We spent saturday afternoon mucking about with the Napoleonics and then a crossfire WWII game on sunday, trying out some ideas for John's demo game for Salute next year. Somehow my camera ran out of battery very quickly so I have no pics of the WWII game, which is a shame, as it looked cracking and I couldn't record my tactical prowess (cough!).

Subsequently (and I know you'll all be upset over this), we'll have to have a look at few napoleonics instead. I took a few pics of John's enormous Russian collection, we had a strange moment when we "lost" some 16 battalions of Russian infantry. Looked everywhere for them.... very odd, then we discovered an entire shelf full, that we had overlooked....phew! all was right with the world.

THAT'S a cuiraissier division. Elite and Connoisseur figures

John's stuff is fairly tidy, he does enjoy the whole conversion aspect, so there are few of his units which don't have some major work done on them. Swords replaced, head swaps, and quite a lot of major conversions turning figures into completely different ones.

Although the vast majority of his Russians are Elite figures he uses a lot of Connoisseur stuff for his conversions, the simplicity of a lot of these figures lends themselves to this. He also used to occasionally do his own conversions on Elite figures and then get Pete Moreby to cast up whole units for him. The Russian Guard cavalry below are a good example of this:

One-off Russian Guard mounted Jaeger.

There is a companion unit of Finnish guard jaeger to accompany these, again, one-off conversions cast up by Mr Moreby (he got to keep the moulds)

Finns present

More of John's stuff later in the week...more cavalry, infantry, and a few of his 50-odd Russian artillery pieces!

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In place of the weekend

2009-07-26T15:59:00.011+01:00

88 flak gun (why did I even bother with that description?) Panthers lurk.
I'm more than a little cheesed off this week-end. I was intending to head up to Mr Lander's in order to have a bit of a laugh, take lots of napoleonic pics and get in a game of crossfire with John's 1/35th collection. However, John had to unexpectedly work this weekend, so we've put it back to next week. Subsequently all you napoleonic fans will have to wait for the planned pictures of John's Russian collection. As a substitute I've put up a series of pics from a game we had a few years ago now, at the WHC using John's 1/35th kit. Many of you will be familar with his stuff from seeing the 2 demo games he has put on at Salute in the last 3 years (Sword beach and Market Garden). This was a prelimary game to D-Day where we tested out some rules and was an excuse to get the toys out. John wanted to try things out on a bigger table, so asked Gerry if we could come up and try it out there. Ged was champing at the bit to get his hands on some big panzers so off we went and the ensuing battle of Cagny was the result.

Panzer IVh and flak
To be honest I don't recall a massive amount about the game, although it went fairly historically, The Germans were kicked out of Cagny, then put in a heavy counter-attack which in turn bogged down the British, who managed to hold the town but by the end would have had to withdraw. I do remember it being a brilliant game

Whermact infantry jog through Cagny-the only troops I painted! Everything else is John's fine work
John wrote this up for an article in Wargames Illustrated in April 2006, so there are more pics there if you can find it, and detailed account of the game.

Shermans wait for the order "Driver Advance!"

John's talents (and some would say; obsession) with his 1/35th stuff is pretty extraordinary. I really keep working hard to get him back on the path of Napoleonic righteousness, so far, not much luck, but I will....just you see.

Britsh "O group" in Cagny as the Shermans roll past

It's not just the figures and vehicles that are John's work here, he did all the buildings from scratch as well. I've put in some B&W versions so you can see just how realistic some of this stuff is.

Recce regroup

Right! after that amount of arse-licking if I don't win the game next week, I'll give up!

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Some WWII bits and bobs, Nazi porn

2009-07-22T17:06:00.008+01:00

Britannia 20mm flak, homemade emplacements
Just thought I'd sort through some old WWII pics, a lot of this is relatively old kit which I've had a while, this is all for the Germans in the med, mainly Italy and Tunisia. Theres a lot of Britannia stuff, which is "sturdy"..thats being polite for a bit crap, but they are robust if nothing else.

Generic Tigers, they will do for anywhere.
The obligatory Tigers are Hasegawa kits which are VERY simple and great value, with Lammercraft crews which are excellent. Hairnet cammo nets.

Panzer III's: again good for anywhere.
These panzer III's are mainly all Fujimi kits, I got quite quick at doing them after a while, (despite the individual track links) Again, they are primarily for Tunisia and Italy, I'm sure they will crop up in Russia from time to time. There is an accompanying panzer IV btn knocking about somewhere.

Stugs: The're great.
Finally some assault guns, these are a mix of Mili-Cast and.....eeer...some metal ones, Friend or Foe miniatures, I think. They are very nice albeit bloody heavy, plenty of crews and stowage finish them off. Good for anywhere (apart from Tunisia)

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Been busy

2009-07-21T18:16:00.005+01:00

Westphalian Cuiraissiers painted by Neil Sheardown

I Know, I know.... I've been BUSY!

Work has taken over for the last couple of months, but the summer season has calmed down so normal service will be resumed. I haven't had a game or touched a paintbrush for the best part of 3 months. This will change this weekend-off up to Landers' for a 1/35th crossfire game, and I'll take some more napoleonic pictures. In the meantime, a couple of pics from Ged's birthday game last year (seems like ages ago now)

Gerry's Young Guard defend against Steve Scott's Austrians

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Prussian List

2009-04-26T13:30:00.009+01:00

Landwher on the attack, Connoissuer and Elite figures

Having done two possible French lists, I suppose its only fair to do one for the Prussians (I would do one for the Russians and Austrians, but have no decent pictures to go with those)

In a way, the allies are a bit more fun. Smaller infantry btns, so a bit more flexible points wise, still the same range of troop types. The Prusskis can also have howitzer batteries which are pretty effective sometimes, plus 4 gun horse batteries. I didn't include any horse batteries for the French because they are very expensive, and 3 gun batteries are so very vulnerable, both to counter-battery fire and to being charged by cavalry. I've just seen so many ridden down over the years! 4 gun batteries are a different kettle of fish though, and they can REALLY dish it out sometimes. Few things frighten me as much on a ITGM battlefield as a well placed enemy 4 gun Horse battery, so I've put one in this list, despite the cost.

One thing you will notice is I havn't put in much landwher...Sacrilige I know in a Prussian army, but I just don't think they are worth the points saving...I'd rather have some good shooters. You could include more of them just to bulk out the infantry to get some more skirmishers,but I haven't done this.

Partly, the way I've chosen this list is from watching the way Herbert (probably the best ITGM player in the world) plays with Prussians. He tends to ignore the infantry up to a point, and utilise the ancillary stuff, doing most of the damage with skirmishers and artillery, while the cavalry just negates the French cavalry. Following that logic, I'd have only bought Landwher.

However, not all of us are quite as adept as Herbie, though its something I wish to try out in the future.

Calpe gunners on the march,painted by yours truly

(Apparently the corps commander is a freebie so the French lists should have an extra 50 points).

The basic infantry division is pretty simple, not disimilar to the French, but a bit weaker due to it being 32 man units rather than 36's

Div Co =50

1 x Landwher=32

4 x 2nd class line=192

3 x 1st class line= 192

1 x veteran= 96

24 x skirmishers= 120

6lber btty= 130

Total= 812

Much cheaper than the French divisions, but no cavalry, in Prussian styly I've kept them all brigaded together.

3 x infantry divisions = 2,436

The Extras:

1 x 12ber btty= 190

1 x Howitzer btty= 150

1 Cavalry commander=50

1 Staff officer= 25

4 x 24 Light cavalry=480

3 x 24 heavy cavalry=432

1 x 4 gun horse battery=240

Grand total= 4,003

Calpe Dragoons, again my paintjob (I really need some more of these)

So you end up with a force that is probably weaker in infantry than the French, but has plenty of cavalry and really excellent artillery

27 infantry btns

72 Skirmishers

6 artillery bttys

7 regts of cavalry

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Cheese Corps

2009-04-25T13:00:00.007+01:00

Can't do anything without grunts. WHC action

To follow on from yesterdays blog putting together a hypothetical corps for Noels' forthcoming campaign, I've done another, also for the French. This is a fairly effective little outfit, and maximises the points system.

So:

Corps Commander = 50

1st Division:

Commander= 50

4 x 36 2nd class line =216

6 x 36 1st class line =512

1 x 36 Veteran =108

30 x skirmishers=150

3 x 6lb + 1 x How=130

3x 12lb +1 x How=190

24 x Light cavalry= 120

Total= 1,2166

The reasoning is as follows: Solid and punchy infantry component, but with 1 vet and enough 1st to do a bit of manouvering. maximum skirmish capability. The 12lb battery should probably really be a corps asset, but by having in a division then it can combine fire with the 6 lber.

Light cavalry for local support

2nd Division

Div CO = 50

8 x 36 2nd class line=432

24 skirmishers=120

1 x 6lb btty= 130

24 Light cavalry= 120

Total= 852

A cheap blocking force. Good enough to defend a position or get chucked into a big melee. Looks like its better than it is.

You won't see much of this in your campaign- French Guard Cavalry from the WHC
3rd Division

Div CO=50

4 x 36 2nd class line=216

3x 36 1st class line=216

1 x 36 veteran=108

24 skirmishers=120

1 x 6 lb btty=130

24 x Light cavalry=120

Total=960

A standard infantry outfit.

WHC French go over a wall. These are the lovely limited edition Old Glory original French infantry- miles better than anything they did since.

Therefore, the 3 infantry divisions + a corps commander have cost a total of 3,138. Each division has a cavalry component, and there is plenty of artillery. That means there is 862 pts still to spend,

I'm tempted to go for another 12lber btty, but that might be a bit over the top.

Some cavalry:

Cav commander=50

2 x32 Hvy Cav= 384

1x32 Cuiraissier=256

1x 24 Lancer= 168

Gives a grand total of 3,997

Thats 27 infantry btns

4 artillery btty

7 cavalry regts.

I'd play with that lot quite happily.

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Blog Cross-fertilisation

2009-04-24T21:08:00.010+01:00

Blog interaction!
I've read Noel's recent missive concerning his planned campaign http://garagegamer.blogspot.com/ and so I thought I'd see what my choices might be (and why) for a points based ITGM campaign. (I'm not playing in Noel's campaign, this is just an exercise)I'm not a big fan of points based games, but this is one way of geting a decent compromise, rather than say "My 4,000 pts of French are fighting your 4,000 points of Prussians, each army has to be capable of taking on multiple opponents, I'm not sure if the possibility of multi-corps games has been considered, but thats how it could get really interesting.

Skirmishers: They are worth the points
I was involved in one years ago and I seem to remember a few things, namely that while Peter Gilder was a genius, it didn't extend to writing a points system. There are a few anomalies: Skirmishers are a bit underpriced, and at 1:10 for formed infantry if you maximise their numbers they are very (too?) effective. Lancers are a bit overpriced, as are horse artillery. 2nd class line infantry are a bit of a bargin. 8lb artillery are generally not worth the money, while 12lbers most certainly are!

Cuirraissier, are they worth the points?
Given those thoughts I decided to do a little exercise and produce my own points army as per Noel's criteria.
The brief is to produce 3, 4,000 point corps. The only proviso is that a division can't be smaller than 5 btns. I thought I'd start with the French, although a lot more fun can be had with the allies.
For this first corps I haven't been too mental and stuck to vaguely believable forces, I may later post up a "cheese corps" for maximum effectiveness.
1st Division:
Div CO= 50
1 x 36 vets= 108
5 x 36 1st class line=360
2 x 36 2nd class line=108
18 skirmishers = 90
4x6lb+1 howitzer = 130
Divisional Total= 846
My reasoning for this is as follows:
8 btns is a nice little number fo a Div co to keep in range, having 1 vet btn to contest a wood or get into firefight is always handy, the 2 x 2nd class btns can skulk about at the back (these 2 pay for the veteran). 6lb artillery is good enough, (unless you know you are up against 6 rank Austrians, 8lb's aren't worth it)

2nd class infantry, they are a bargin
So, 3 divisions such as the above give a core of 24 infantry btns and cost a total of:
2,538 points.
This leaves 1,462 points for some extras!
First off,
Corps Commander = 50
3 x 12lb guns + 1 Howitzer= 190 (got to have one!)
1 x staff officer= 25
2 x 24 Light cavalry= 240
1 x 24 lancer=168
1 x staff officer= 25
2x 32 heavy cavalry= 384
3 x veteran 36 infantry = 324
6x skirmishers = 30
(these 3 extra btns can be shoe-horned in to 1 or any of the inf divisions)

Gives us a total of 4,004 points.
That would do for my first Corps.
A solid infantry base, plenty of artillery, some decent cavalry.

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Victrix French

2009-04-24T17:07:00.007+01:00

Two Drummers, just different heads
At Salute a few weeks ago I impulse purchased a box of the new Victrix french plastics. So last sunday I put some together.
Hmmm ...compared to the Perry plastics they are fiddly, it took me at least double the amount of time to put together a 36 man unit. Seperate heads, arms, weapons backpacks...However, the end results are probably worth it, theres a lot more life in these chaps than the Perry figures, and the sculpting is bloody marvelous. Above is one basic drummer with just a head swap, no problem having these side by side on a command stand.
The range of heads is mental! I think there are 108 different (not ALL different, obviously) heads in a box, so the variation possible is enormous.

Voltiguers, again, same bodies, diferent head/arm combos
The two pictures above are for the voltiguer company. These chaps are impressive. From the toe to the tip of the plume is about 44mm! Toe to eye is 28mm (of course)
Each picture is using the same body with different head/ arm combinations.
At £20 for 60 figures they are dirt cheap, there is a bit of a shortage of flank company bodies in a march pose (only 12) so in order to get more than a single battalion out of a box a bit of imagination will be required, but one could use 36 figures and bin the remainder and still be in the money. I've not investigated the kneeling body yet (8 of them in a box) fine for the odd skirmisher, but generally useless. There are, however, 8 officer bodies, which gives a bit of a surfeit which could be used with the Perry kit to remedy the paucity in their box..Yes, yes I know, "The Perries are in 1815 and these are in 1807 uniform, You can't possibly use them together"......Yeah, Yeah... whatever...., just watch me, and while you are about it ...Go and get a life!
There was some twat on TMP the other day banging on about how the Perry plastics are useless unless you only do 1815 with them (???)..I questioned him on this and asked whether he had seperate armies for all the different uniform variations the French had. He replied that he had. I wonder how big his collection is? 100 figures? 200?...even a 1,000?.. I'm sure he loves playing meticulous games with small amounts of figures....me? I'm a size queen..(just like my missus!!)

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Queen of the battlefield?

2009-03-19T14:14:00.018Z

Connoisseur Figures painted as Russo-German Legion by Ian Stables.

Not much gaming action or for that matter, painting been going on recently. I'm finishing off the third Perry Btn - which is great. So the painting table will be cleared pretty soon. However, I will be picking up 4 btns of Wurtemburgers and a foot battery for Noel at Salute which should keep me busy for a while. I'm looking forwards to doing the Battery, which is my tenuous segue for this post, I already have a Wurtemburg Battery but no pictures of it. Next time I'm at Johns I'll have to snap it, and we can compare my one with the one I'm doing for Noel...(hmmmm...what if the one I'm about to do turns out better?).....
Mostly Prussian Batteries on show here, I probably have more than I need, 3 x 12Lb, 3 x 6Lb,
1 x howitzer and 2 horse batteries, but as we always say at work: "I'd rather be looking at them, than looking for them". Well, thats my excuse.

Connoisseur Horse battery by yours truly
Most of the Batteries I have are Connoissuer, with a couple of Elite ones. I find the Elite guns a bit hefty, I have always been inspired by Doug Mason's conversion work he has done on artillery crews, its always seemed easy to me to do conversions on batteries as each figure can be different and it doesn't look a total mess.

Calpe Figures 6Lb foot Bty, painted by me
The Calpe Battery above has all 16 figures different, and these are straight from the catologue, which is pretty good.

Howitzer Battery painted by Ian Stables
These Connoissuer Howitzers are are a good example of the conversion possibilities, lots of head swaps, (bald fellahs seem to predominate)
Finally, below is one for the Franco-philes, I painted this line horse battery and did TONS of conversions on it, mostly it is Connoissuer line and guard figures with Firing Line heads, plus all sorts of other mental stuff like a mounted trumpeter (a Firing Line Chassuer au Cheval). Its companion (not pictured) was a rather nice Elite Horse battery that I did and then sold to Lander for a ludicrously small amount when I was pissed. Take heed! The perils of drink!

Conversion city, lots of head swaps

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Perry French

2009-03-02T14:11:00.010Z

2 btns + skirmishers.
So, here are the first 2 Perry Btns, they will be joined by a 3rd very soon (about 1/3 done).
I decided to do a bit of a mixture, so 1 btn is all Greatcoats, 1 in just coats, and the third will be a mix, this will make them readily indentifiable on the table and is a nice simple system with a bit of continuity whilst making every unit different.
In order to do this I needed more figures than were in the plastics boxes. I wanted more officers including mtd ones and needed a few more figures generally. There are "only" 2 variations of flank coys in each of the coated and great-coated figures, which is great if you are mixing them all up but a bit weedy if you are an awkward bleeder like me and want to seperate them out.
So what you are looking at above is 2 x 36 man units and half a dozen skirmishers. To get this I only used 2 boxes of plastics and then added in extra metals. I still have enough figures left over to get a third btn out of the 2 boxes. Each btn has a metal mtd officer, 3 metal foot officers, 4 metal flank coy figures, 3 metal centre coy bods plus 2 or 3 metal command figures. This way I have at least 2 metal figures per 6 man base which gives them a bit of weight- for those of us who like metal figures it does make a bit of a difference, they do feel a bit better. Obviously this increases the unit cost overall but its still very cheap.
Lets see....
2 x boxes of plastics =£30.00
42 metal foot plus 3 mtd colonels= £49.50
Total = £79.50

Thats enough to make up THREE btns with 5 metal and 7 plastics left over -plus 6 more skimishers.
So it works out to less than £25 a btn, which is still a bit of a bargain.

The "coated" btn
I will end up with a shed load of skirmishers, but they are nice to paint so I'll probably bang them out and they will end up on e-bay.
Having sorted out a 3 btn light infantry regt the question is: What to do next?
I know what Noels' answer to this question is:
"Wurtemburgers!"
If I am to continue with more of these, then the obvious next step would be a 3 btn line regt, but that is too obvious, Italians, maybe? Berg? I've already got 4 btns of Swiss, the Westfalians are sorted...suggestions welcome.

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Sovs get some Recce

2009-02-27T21:59:00.014Z

SHQ M/C's and Britannia scout cars

Off and on inbetween doing more Napoleonic stuff I've been adding bits and pieces to my 20mm Soviets, this project has been most enjoyable and the last few elements are falling into place. I started this with a few purchases at Salute last year, so I'm quite proud of having got a considerable force together and actually complete within a relatively short period of time (lots more pics knocking about elsewhere on the blog- look for tags).

There is now a complete Soviet Rifle division, enough T34's for a Tank corps (about 30) plus various assault guns, and now a recce btn. Artillery still needs to be finished.

The pics show a few odds and ends which fall in the broad spectrum of Russian recce troops, which in reality is just getting quite few troop types I liked and creating a unit out of them. Soviet reconnaisence battalions are reasonably well known for having no standard organisation, there are at least half a dozen different variations, so it is an excuse for a pick and mix type of approach.

The little BA 64 armoured cars weren't that common in the recce btns but they will double up as command and liason vehicles for things like tank and assault gun regts. The Frontline models are very basic with bit some good crew and extra bits they are sweet little models. I'm particularly fond of the big old Bertha smoking a fag, shes a Lammercaft figure.

Bertha eyes up some passing Motorcyclists

The Britannia bren carriers likewise will also do extra duty as tows for 45mm AT guns, but are also ideal as personnel carriers. As models they were a bit of trouble as the crew are all British- subsequently filing down British helmets to look like Soviets was a right arse...In the end I cut the heads off most of them and slung tissue paper tarps over the back....sorry to spoil the illusion!

For some reason I've always liked White scout cars, I remember a friend of mine having a model of one (Italeri, maybe?) when we were about 15 and I've liked them ever since

The Britannia ones are servicable models, but chuck in some AB crew and they look great. Again, they will do double duty as personnel carrier or command vehicles, hence the preponderance of officer types.

Scout cars with AB crew

Add in a few Dodge weapons carriers which were picked up on the bring and buy at Reading and the job is done

Some wierd SHQ figure doing something to his boot, while a Lammercraft NKVD man writes him a ticket

Lots more pics HERE:

http://s175.photobucket.com/albums/w138/christot2001/Russian%20Recce/

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The bit of wargames kit I like more than any other

2009-02-22T19:36:00.009Z

What is it in the above picture that I like most?
Is it the rather tidy Calpe Prussian reservist Battalion blazing away in the foreground?
Is it the Landwher regt boldly marching up in support?
Is it the way the rather nice Pentax I "borrowed" off my missus captured all this? (and she keeps asking for it back)

Nope, none of these things.

The Calpe figures are great, and I like the paintjob.
The bunny-fur they are on works really well.
The Flags are lovely, but its none of these.
Ok, I'll tell you what it is:

Its the low wall of grey rocks.
Yep.
The rather nondescript piece of incidental terrain. "Its ok" I hear you say...."But why is it so special?"
I'll tell you why I'll always treasure this little terrain feature:
It was made by Peter Gilder.

I've got 3 walls like that one, I've got nothing else made by the great man, nor do I have any figures painted by him unfortunately.
I never actually met the man. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of times and that was it. I only seriously got into 25mm Napoleonics in the early 90's by which time he had died.
I find it a little odd that I never met him.
The majority of my wargaming friends knew him from the WHC under his stewardship. I've been good friends with Mike and Gerry who are there now for many, many years. I met his widow, Doreen, when she would hand over massive bags of newly cast figures in exchange for toilet-roll sized wads of tenners (which, I'm pretty sure went straight down the bingo in Scarborough the same night).
I've heard countless stories about the man (yes, including all the dodgy ones) and the games he would put on.
I own thousands of figures designed by the man, I've played literally hundreds of games using rules written largely by him, on terrain at the WHC made by him.
I've built terrain, and wargames tables slavishly copied from his designs.
I've totally bought into the entire concept of Napoleonic wargaming that was his idea.
In the Grand Manner are more than just another set of rules, they are an entire way of playing Napoleonic wargames which in order to get the best out of them really require you to adhere to the whole deal.

The wall, and some nice landwher

They are what they say on the tin:
"IN THE GRAND MANNER"
Yes, you can have a fun game with them with about a dozen battalions a side, on a 6' x6' table. Yes, you can play them with 6mm figures and you'll get a good game.
However, that really isn't what they are about.
They are about playing a game with THOUSANDS of 25mm figures on a truly enormous wargames table.
If you dissect them, then there are countless faults; The gound scale and ranges don't add up, if you had all the artillery models you should have then you'd get a terrible game, the infantry re-inforcing thing is pretty bizarre; some people whine about "theres no proper command and control".
However, if you play them in the way they were intended, as large, multi-corps, multi-player games they play out just like napoleonic battles.
Deployment is crucial, a corp in the wrong place can lose you the battle, the arrival of re-inforcements in the right place at the right time can win it for you. Occasionally an heroic unit can influence a sector. (Note to the whiners: You just don't get it, ...if you have enough units, on a big enough table you don't need command and control rules). The cavalry battles swing back and forth, dependant often on who has kept reserves. It all adds up.
I still find it pretty amazing that one man was able to work all this out, and was capable of visualising it, putting it down on paper, and getting the result he did.
There are other napoleonic rules that enable you to fight Austerlitz in 3 hours with 200 6mm figures.....go ahead, enjoy...but is that napoleonic wargaming?
Well, not to me it isn't. (Thank God)
To me, and an awful lot of other people, including those who push around 40 figures in a "napoleonic skirmish" (what is that by the way? a brigade action of about 3,000 a side?) the concept of Napoleonic wargaming that Peter Gilder created is the benchmark of what to aspire to.
I'd even go slightly further, in that I'm pretty sure he designed his figures with his rules in mind. If you take some Connoisseur (or Elite, for that matter, who have a direct legacy) figures and put them in a 32 or 36 man unit, then they look right. Individually sometimes they can look strange, add 35 of their mates and they look spot on. Put them in a 12 or 16 man battalion and they don't work. This might have been deliberate or it might have been sub-concious but its definitely true. Sometimes you can take other manufacturers figures which might be individually lovely but put them in a unit and they look dull, or clumsy or just wrong.
So, thanks Peter, thanks for the rules, the figures, and of course, most importantly; thanks for those little walls.

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First Perry's

2009-02-13T13:20:00.006Z

First efforts: Skrirmishers
Got a big old parcel today from The Perry Emporium.
I bought a pack of the plastics out of curiousity a while back and must admit I was pleasantly surprised, I've never subscribed to the Perry fan-boy club that seems to permeate virtually everywhere in the Napoleonic 25mm fraternity these days. To hear some folk slavishly drivel on about "artistry" and "perfect human beings" etc is actually quite embarrassing sometimes, A lot of their work for Foundry was bloody awful. I think folk were a bit blinded by the fact that they were painter friendly and that they got good press and coverage in the wargames mags - Emporer's New Clothes (Note to self: If I ever start up a figure company THATS what I'm going to call it!).
However, these days, branching out on their own, they are making some nice figures. Not necessarily the MOST AMAZING FIGURES THAT WERE EVER MADE!!! which is how some of the more onanistic fans would have it, but nice figures nonetheless.
The queer thing is I reckon the plastics are actually better than the metals. Never thought I'd hear myself say that, but there you go. Some of the metals are a little bit spindly, and there is quite a lot of trimming of lugs etc to do, but nothing major. The mounted officers are very nice. I was delighted with the horses. I was afraid they would be Foundry-esque pit ponies but they are tall, and slim and elegant. Seperate rider and cast on saddle, but done in a much nicer way somehow than I've seen elsewhere.
I've painted up the first box of plastics and very nice they are too. They are very easy to paint. Which is why,as I said, I think they are so popular. I wasn't too keen on the figure mix in the plastics box so I've decided to go for a bigger project and mix in some of the metals, - more officers, mounted officers, command and a bit of variation in the infantry. If you build them out of the box its a pretty dull looking unit. No mtd officer, 1 officer, 1 drummer. Plus there is the mix of greatcoats and ...not greatcoats..I thought it might be more fun to have perhaps a regt of 3 btns of each - so have started buying metals (and more plastics) to accomplish this. Subsquently I've not based any of the line stuff yet until I get more figures finished so you will have to wait. I have however based up the 6 skirmishers which are above.
I must say I was impressed with the way the 3-armed ones sculpted these. 2 bodies, and 3 sets of arms that fit perfectly to both bodies. Extremely clever, so you can end up with eerrr...7...or 8? combinations. I was bit bothered about the lightness of the plastics getting knocked over in the hurly-burly of ITGM so decided to weight them down with these Mahooosive gabions from Irregular miniatures. It does the trick, believe me. They are now heavy. Future skirmishers will also be based in 3's (I've always preferred that) and will get plashed hedges, walls etc. Their own little bit of cover to lug about the table.
Anyway, I'm off to prep up these figures and watch the start of the second test against the West Indies...I've got a bad feeling about which of these is going to be the more pleasant experience.

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Connoisseur Prussians by Peter Fitzgerald

2009-02-07T11:29:00.012Z

One of the regiments from Peter, lots of one-off casualties and officers.
Back in the happy days when I was selling Connoisseur Figures around the shows I quickly realised that I needed plenty of high quality display figures to put on the stand. One range I lacked good figures for was Prussians.
Then at one show I was engaged in conversation by a charming gentleman who eventually introduced himself as Peter Fitzgerald, the man who had designed most of the Connoisseur Prussians. He happened to mention (In retrospect I think he did quite an elaborate and convincing sales pitch) that he was selling his personal collection of these figures because he was starting his own new venture (Calpe Figures).
Did I want to buy his collection?
Esque les Bruins fait le numeros dos dans les arbres?
He was selling 3 regiments each of 3 battalions, some skirmishers, a dragoon regt and an artillery battery. They were all lovely, I couldn't afford them all in one hit, but over the next few months I bought all of them apart from (with massive regret, now) the Dragoon Regt.

12 pdr Battery. Again, lots of one-off castings
As well as being one of the top figure sculptors out there, Peter is not exactly a slouch with the paintbrush either. He has a fairly unique style, going for quite a soft, muted effect. One thing I've noticed is he doesn't use any metal colours, instead using ordinary colour to get the effect. Sounds pretty wierd, but it works.
All of the units he sold me featured an awful lot of excellent conversions and one-off figures he had made himself, most of them variations on existing Connoiseur stuff, but with heavily altered poses, new heads, blanket rolls added- all totally unique. This posed a few problems later on when folk would come up to the stand and say "I want that figure" and one would have to explain that they couldn't get it. A lot of people stomping off muttering "why TF is it in then cabinet, then?" I did sympathise, but at the same time this was in the "good old days" of soft white metal, before rigid pewter became universal, and one of the strengths of the Connoisseur range was the incredible scope for conversion that was relatively simple. a few head twists or swaps, bend an arm here, and a small amount of skill with a soldering iron and it was possible to create totally unique figures. Some folk out there, like Peter Gilder himself or the erratic but monstrously talented Doug Mason could perform unbelievable conversions in a matter of minutes. Some people can turn their imaginations into reality, some can't. This ease of conversion was one of the selling points of the range to a lot of people, but for every one who liked to be inspired there were 2 who wanted to be spoon-fed...nothing much has changed there.

Another Infantry regt, these 9 btns have formed the core of my Prussians now for over 10 years

One-off Officer conversion, great work.
Anyway, so Peter went away and started Calpe, and did, indeed, continues to do, great work there. I've since bought a fair amount of his stuff, which we'll look at another time.
For all of Peter's urbane charm, he is a bit of a nutter though.... He designed all of the Connoiseur Prussians. Then he did most of the original Elite prussians for Pete Moreby, now he is STILL designing thousands of his own figures....Obsessed or what??

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Return after the Mega-Game

2009-02-01T19:04:00.008Z

The main hall, Brendan defending Malta in the foreground, Greece behind
more pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dom_gamer/ (thanks to Andy Smith)

Pitiful showing in terms of blogging here recently , so I guess I'd better make an appearence.

For the past week, and indeed the previous month has been taken up with the annual pilgrimage (and planning) down to Cornwall for the annual mega-game.
This has been going on for TEN(!) years now.. It consists of a week long WWII campaign in 1/285th and this year involved about 30 players.

There is a lot of pregame planning and decisions (which is my pathetic excuse for not blogging)-this year was a mediterranean 1941 campaign. Consisting of 3, 3 month strategic turns, which produced games in the widely varied theatres. In order to make it work, there were a few fudges, not least of which was that the Germans kicked off Barborossa in about march 1941!

This way they could run 3 games on the Eastern front during the week, simultaneously with Balkan, Desert, and middle eastern scenarios.

Overall, the system worked. In the past there have been games which have been run as a more conventional map campaign -previous games have included Kursk, D-Day (twice) France 1940, 2nd Kharkov. Personally I think they (we?) should go back to a conventional map game though it appears there is a groundswell of opinion to continue with this broader system, I hope not, but come what may I'm sure I'll be there. Not quite sure what will be the game for next year.
I had great time, fighting 2 games over Malta, the first with an Italian airborne division which after 2 days ended in the prison cages. This was then done again with the German Paratroopers showing how it should have been done. This was a cracking game which went down to the last die roll of the last turn.
For the third game I went to the desert - still commanding Paras- where I was a speedbump on the road to Bardia for 2 rather immense Commonwealth infantry divisions. It was a bit bizarre to spend a whole week fighting with micro-armour and not actually command a single tank or vehicle model.
There were a few command mistakes on both sides, and the umpires missed a couple of major tricks, but on the whole it had a good feel. This was indeed the 1oth game and quite a family atmosphere has developed, it is a very amenable week both on the tables and off it.
Blog here:
http://megagame-holidays.blogspot.com/
During the week I was also able to hand over the first 2 Wurtemburg battalions to Noel, like a twat I'd not taken any pics of them, which is a bit annoying. The next batch are now ordered and I'll start those in the next couple of weeks, those will be photographed.
Currently on the painting table is ......some Perry plastics! This quite surprises me to be honest, but I'm enjoying painting them. I'll follow up on how these turn out.
I'm getting a little bothered about my lead and plastic mountain, normally I'm pretty good at buying stuff and then painting it. Right now however I have 4 btns of Wurtemburgers plus a battery still to do for Noel, a burgeoning amount of Perry French infantry (between 4 and 6 btns, On top of this there are about 10 Soviet 20mm vehicles requiring attention, MORE tank riders (about 30) a couple of kits to make - on top of all this, I've discovered that Elhiem have done a range of 20mm infantry for Pzr Lehr (in the pzr battledress) which are going to be a purchase in the very near future.
Going to be a busy painting Spring.

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2008-12-22T13:54:00.000Z

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