HMS Bienfaisant

   A project that I need to get better at working on is my Battle of Dogger Bank (1781) navies. I'm always really pleased with the ships I finish for this project and the box they are stored in is something I can happily just sit and stare at*, but the process of rigging the ship is an ordeal if you aren't in the right frame of time.

*although my mate Neil's ones are a work of art that put mine to serious shame

   Every ship I've painted for this project, so far, has been for the Dutch navy, this is the first ship for the British, HMS Bienfaisant, a 64 gun ship of the line captured from the French.

   I had a plan to try and do a ship a month this year to just keep them slowly trickling out, its now march and this is the first, so that's going well.

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A Busy Week For Games

   I'm not massively in the habit of posting game photos on here and I'm not really sure why - I've made sure I have at least one photo of every game that I plan to put on my end of year post, but that leaves some photos that I'm really pleased with that just go into the photo bank. Last week I managed to play some games with new armies and I'm pleased with how the boards ended up looking.

   The first game was my Winter Germans vs my brother's US using the Bolt Action rules. I've been working on adding some scenic bits to my 28mm western Europe scenery collection, which was mostly just telephone poles and teddy bear fur fields, but I think they make a difference, although with a new mat that is much more toned down than the dark green that Wayland Games always put out for us.

   The photos are in no particular order but the end result was a US victory, the preliminary bombardment hurt me much more than my brother and it took me about 3 turns to get all my troops moving at which point I was already in a bad place. The only big upside was that I took out his tank in the first turn or so and that left my little Marder 3 to just roll around the board causing a nuisance of itself.

   The second game we swapped sides of the war and I got my new US out, while my brother used his Germans - not winter this time!

   The second game was a essentially a rerun of the 1st game, the US infantry outclassed the German infantry for the bulk of the game but the second turn death of my Sherman and my 57mm AT gun being unable to do much more than scratch the Panther's paint work meant that the German big cat just spent the game picking units to take off the board - I have never been so happy to have a farm on the board as I was in this game. It ended up as a draw on objectives but it was a pyric draw for the US.

   On the Wednesday club night I also ran a Napoleonics game for a few of the members, with myself and Neil umpiring. Mostly I just wanted to get my 15mm Napoleonics onto the table and test my ideas out.

   We played a version of Quatre Bras with the Nassau (and some allied troops) holding a fork in the road to slow down the French advance. Rebels and Patriots is a brilliant ruleset for Napoleonics in smaller figure count games but in 15mm with blocks of infantry, it does have limitations - the French column for example stalled badly the moment one unit failed a move test, but all in all it ran pretty smoothly and it looked impressive on the night.

   The Allies held the field in the end, but with a few more turns the French would have overrun the fork in the road, there were just so many French units that didn't make it anywhere near the Nassau. The game has given me a bit of a boost to look back at getting troops done for this game, at the very least another cannon or two per side, more cavalry and some baggage?

   Watching the French Cuirassiers go through a unit of infantry like it was melted butter was a definite highlight of the game. While I didn't get to roll any dice on this one, its really nice seeing people having fun with something you've done and as two of the players were new to the hobby, seeing them grasp the rules and getting on with a game was excellent.

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Napoleonic Cuirassiers but smaller?

    One key unit I wanted to test was a unit of French Napoleonic cavalry, and this was for two reasons; 1. It would give a unit of cavalry per side for a test game. 2. I wanted to see if using the new Warlord Epic scale figures would look too jarring in scale to the rest of my regular 15mm stuff. 

   Expanding on the second point, I had already bought the 15mm Essex Miniatures British cavalry so I didn't want to add to those units or mix different figures near them, but what about the other side? I've been given 3 or 4 sprues of the Epic scale French cavalry that came free with Wargames Illustrated as my mates were never going to use them, along with some infantry sprues and I think one British sprue. While I don't have any immediate plans for them - although they might be good for other games, so nothing is getting thrown out - I wanted to see if as a stand alone unit, the cavalry might work.

   I decided to only paint up a single unit of French Cuirassiers so that time sunk into the project is as limited as possible, but that I should still end up with a useful unit if the idea does work.

   Compared to regular 15mm figures I suspect that the difference in scale would end up being jarring if seen next too each other too often, so while I suspect they will get replaced, I do still have a unit that can work in games, but I'd appreciate some feedback as I'm torn.

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Royal Artillery but smaller

    As Operation Panic Paint started to draw to a close and I lost what little focus I had and started to just paint whatever came to hand*, I did manage to tip some more useful units onto the desk to keep myself at least in sight of the right track. As I mentioned with the Napoleonic French cannon, I felt like a gun a side would make for a more interesting regular table top game, so I wanted to make sure I finishe done for the other side too.

*Yeah . . .

   This Royal Artillery cannon plus limber and crew came in the same order as the French one, from Essex Miniatures and I painted it in the same colour recipe as my 28mm one.

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6th Light Dragoons

    The final push of Operation Panic Paint went much better than planned, however, as my old job wound down and my new one started up what I forgot to get done was the photos of units as they were finished, so nothing new made it onto the blog. I've had a spare bit of time so I've gone back and tried to line up some posts to show what I finished towards the end of March.

   In this post we have a mix of fictional units from two very different sources. If you've read the Matthew Hervey series and the Temeraire series you'll know where I am coming from.

   First up are two units of British Light Dragoons from the fictional (at this point in history) 6th Light Dragoons from the Matthew Hervey series of books, which I am only a few books into currently. In the novels they were at Waterloo, so I figured it would be cool to have some units to represent them. The figures are from Essex Miniatures.

   Last up is a Light Dragoon Dragon rider. Let me explain. The Temeraire series is set in the Napoleonic wars and the author likes the idea that even in alternative history there are events that need to happen, however, what is different is that there are dragons. Without giving any plot away, there is a dragon corp as an extra wing of every nation's military and I've wanted to do something with this since reading the books a few years back. I've gone for a light dragoon on a small dragon (from Alternative Miniatures) to represent one of the messenger dragons rather than a front line battle dragon. I'm pretty sure the dragon riders in the books wore different uniforms, but that's not something that I was worried about in my army.

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The Nassau Question

    Being a bit* of a butterfly in all aspects of my life, be it hobby or historical interests etc mean that the subject that I am reading everything I can find about and making detailed plans for how to make it part of my hobby one week, could be a barely remembered idea a few weeks later. That includes the subject of this post, the Nassau.

*Understatement

   When I initially planned to do bits of the Waterloo conflict in 15mm I had made plans on which units I needed to represent units at different points for different scenarios and it became clear that I needed the 2rnd Nassau. A regiment's worth were ordered from Essex Miniatures following my company as a single unit method, bases were magnetised as place holders and put into my "British" box and the figures were put into my backlog. Move on a year and with the French origins of the regiment firmly in my head, there is a very confused Mike trying to work out why I was putting them in the wrong box.

   But back to painting; I'm a tad surprised that these have been painted and are being blogged about at this point as there are at least two other Napoleonic projects that I've marked as higher priority, but I was sticking figures to lolly sticks and fancied doing a quick test unit to see what they looked like and I got carried away.

  There is a minor risk that these are the French era uniforms and not the British but I'm not an expert in spotting the differences so I'm not 100%, the key thing here is that the unit is recognisable for what it is and won't be mixed up on the board.

   I've painted a command figure to represent the Colonel or player, a unit of Grenadiers (with an extra 2 elements simply because I had the figures and it made no sense not to paint them while I was going through this project), 4 units of line and 2 units of voltigeurs (with extra elements as well).

   If I can get a cannon for the "British" and some horse painted for each side I'll have more than enough to do a test game. Back to the painting desk.

I'm also counting this as my second finished project of the year project of the year.

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Answering Napoleon's Call

    Carrying on with what I have named Operation Panic Paint, is another big project that I wanted to get finished off, as it feels like the win at the end of each batch is a lot smaller than you get with other projects, and I really want to see them on the table asap, the 15mm Napoleonic Waterloo French. These are the last figures that I need (if the plan works) for my planned La Haye Sainte scenario, which will now mean I have representatives from 2 regiments (with a unit representing a company*) of French line, vs a regiment of KGL 2rnd Light holding the farm itself.

*Although I am wondering if I should double up the figure count

   This post is another one of those ones where the figures I am blogging about have been supplemented by figures finished previously that didn't get their own post at the time.

   First up is a whole regiment's worth of men**. I've been slowly putting finished models on the shelf behind me in a less organised fashion than this so seeing them all lined up properly feels really good. Represented (and subject to change as I'm not sure if I'll end up adapting anything) is a command figure, command stand (which will probably replace a stand in the grenadiers), the grenadiers, 4 units of line, then 2 units of voltigeurs - totalling 77 men in a painted regiment.

**Using the analogy above

   While I was working on the new regiment, I also included the last figures needed for my first one, and to be honest, I'm not sure why I didn't just suck it up and finish these before. Once you get past the white step, they aren't actually that hard to paint. These were painted just before the Goths and include the first dog that I decided needed to be on a unit base.

   This is also a post where I admit that Operation Panic Paint encouraged me to get carried away and add new stuff to my backlog, in this case, a cannon, with associated crew and limber and the pair of mounted colonels to act as commanders for each regiment as I am toying with an idea, seen above. The cannon will make regular games a bit more interesting as my French collection was just infantry at that point***.

***barring an experiment in cavalry I am going to carry out

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5th Line KGL - light Company

    A bit of a let down after the amount of finished figures on the last post, this week I think I burnt myself out by pushing too hard over the long weekend, so to ease myself back in, I picked a fairly easy job, two units of light company from the King's German Legion 5th Line Battalion. If I've got my history right, the light company were sent to reinforce the KGL 2rnd Light Battalion at La Haye Sainte, so this is my representation of that company (12 figures per company at the sec until I can get a game in and see how it looks).

   Like the other 15mm Napoleonics I've been painting, I've used the same recipe I use for my 28mm, just with grey trousers rather than white.

   The only thing worth noting more for how much it annoyed me when I realised was that in my haste to order the first batch of bases for my 15mm Napoleonics project, is I ordered the wrong size bases for my skirmishers. The guy I copied (can't remember which blog it was now) put his skirmishers on 25/15mm bases to match the width of his line infantry who are on 25/20mm. I, for some unknown reason, ordered 20/15mm - in the long run it doesn't matter, all my skirmisher will match and I have no real interest in rebasing figures so recently finished, but it's something I will remember every time I look at these armies.

Again, I apologise for the photo quality.

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KGL 2rnd Light Battalion

    Everything came together a bit quicker than planned with this post, so it's going to be a similar job to the last one, with scenery and Napoleonics.

   So first up are the figures, in this case it's a whole project - the King's German Legion 2rnd Light Battalion. There is a risk I might need to buy some more to defend the whole of La Haye Sainte, but 8 units worth of skirmishers felt like more than enough to start with as I need to add a couple of units of light company from a KGL line company, which will bring the defending force to 72 points, which when a normal size game of Rebels and Patriots is 24 points, means the game is already pretty big.

   The figures are from Essex Miniatures, breaking Old Glory's monopoly on my 15mm Napoleonics. I have to admit, I wasn't hugely impressed with the figures when I saw them online, but they were cheap and would arrive quickly, so I figured they would do the job, in person, however, I'm much more impressed with them. I assume the squat nature of the images online is due to compressed photos rather than compressed sculpts, so I'll be visiting Essex Miniatures when lockdown is over.

   Lastly are the extra tree clumps I said I had ordered on the last post. Once I knew N Gauge trees would work for what I was doing and I could get them cheaply enough to build a decent collection of clumps, I decided the next step was to add in the one type of tree I will always pay extra money for to put on a railway layout, the willow. There is something about a model willow tree that breaks the tree mould of any model as we all know model trees are either clumpy deciduous or are cone shaped pines, add a willow and your eyes are drawn to it every time. I also bought a much wider tree than the ones that come in the box sets, again, to break up the silhouettes and make sure the trees had enough variety to look believable. These 3 new clumps get me to 13 in total which fills out a decent sized lump of a board.

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Skirmish Line in the Trees

    As ever, while I should be focussing on getting a single project ready for the table, I'm instead bouncing around like a crazed grasshopper, but I scrounged a few hours of hobby time and wanted something fairly simple I could enjoy painting in that time, so the two units of 15mm French Voltigeurs, ready sprayed, fitted the bill.

   The figures are from from Blue Moon via Old Glory (I think?) and are, in my opinion, the nicest 15mm Napoleonic sculpts out there. It's just a pity the range isn't a bit bigger. I also had a spare flank company figure from my grenadiers, so I decided to use one of the officers from the command pack and create an extra base - as in a few cases coming up, I'm not sure how this will be used, but it solves the problem I'm starting to have with 15mm of the spare figure.

   As ever, I apologise for my photography, 15mm isn't my friend for close up shots.

   Sadly, I'm now waiting on a back order for the rest of my French troops - I gather Old Glory UK ships over figures in bulk, so I'm waiting on the next shipment - which means I'll spend a bit of time painting the other side while I wait for the rest of my order to arrive.

   However, this gave me an opportunity to look at another recent purchase. One of the things halving my scale has done, is it has meant most of my scenery now looks a bit daft next to these new figures, so I'd been on the hunt for ways to bulk up my scenery collection fairly cheaply.

   The roads in the top photo are part of a big set I bought from eBay and are better than I imagined they could be, so I'd tempted to buy a few more just to make sure I always have enough matching roads. Then I got an email from Warlord games saying they had partnered with The Model Tree Shop and were offering their N Gauge tree collections as scenery for the Epic ACW range. Now, I've bought loads of trees from them in the past for my model railways, so I knew they would be good and I put a basket or two together but didn't know how many trees I would realistically need, then it dawned on me, I had loads of Warlord medals to use up. . . Two heavily discounted boxes later and I was on my way.

   24 trees has made me 10 bases of various densities and I've painted an over sized base without any trees on that I can put the clumps on during a game to represent wooded areas and move trees off as figures move through. I plan to paint another couple of big bases so I can have 3 big woods, and I have since placed a little order with the model tree shop for 2 or 3 small bases worth of trees just to keep the numbers up.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the terrible photography

15mm french

    Like I said a few posts back, this 15mm thing has really gotten me thinking about my hobby and while the conclusions I am starting to draw won't be the same ones others might come to, I am becoming convinced that 15mm might be God's True Scale etc.

   With that in mind, I was on the Hovel's website and I noticed they sold resin models of the farms at Waterloo. I would love to have a miniature version of Hougoumont sitting on a shelf but I doubt it would see much table time as I'll never be in a position to refight Waterloo as is. But it was when I saw La Haye Sainte that I really got thinking, why can't I refight a set piece from the battle? So instead of playing the whole day's worth of action at a single farm, we refight one bit - in this case I am planning on a scenario based on the initial infantry attack, if the King's German Legion can hold then we can work out a winner and loser from that, without getting complicated and adding the 5th battalion trying to relieve them or the French cavalry's attack which will complicate matters.

   So with that in mind, I researched the King's German Legion* and ordered an army for them and for the French. As is my normal practise, I then started painting the biggest side, although I have been hampered by running out of black spray.

*A story for another day . . .

  I'm still toying around with how I am going to represent troops numbers, but as a first go through, I plan to paint a Rebels and Patriots size unit to represent each French company - although I might double up in the future. This first batch is the Grenadiers, the 2rnd and the 3rd, with the 1st, 4th and voltigeurs left to go. The figures are from Blue Moon, I think, but sold via Old Glory UK at the very least.

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Cavanuary 3 - The Pride of France Pt.2

   The title to this post is purposefully misleading* but it felt like it followed on nicely from the last Cavanuary post. This entry is a unit that is a full on backlog unit and the exact reason I wanted to do the Cavanuary specialised month. The unit in question is French Napoleonic Lancers and there are some things to say up front - Yes I know that there were no Lancers in the Peninsula and that the uniform I have picked is much better suited to the Russian campaign, however, they were a gift and I didn't want them to go to waste**.

*Not even sorry
**And having seen what my mate's lancers could do, I needed to get mine finished***
***See the last Napoleonic post

   I went with the colour scheme from the box, carefully avoiding the red of the elite companies as elite doesn't suit my way of playing. Happily, shock troops in Rebels and Patriots come in units of 12 which is how big the Warlord Games box of Lancers is, but, even more happily, the box comes with metal parts to give you an officer and musician but no horses for them and it just so happened I got a sprue of Lancers with my copy of Wargames Illustrated last year who could donate their horses giving me options on how to field them (although I need another 4 to boost them up to Sharpe Practise sized units).

I just need to get them on the table now and under my own command . . .

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Re-enforcing the red coats

   Following on from the Highlander diversion, it's back to my regular red coats - the South Essex. This Napoleonics painting drive has been because of a planned game that my mate Neil wanted to run to test our 'Napoleonics would work in Rebels and Patriots' theory* and he wanted to try it big, at the 50-60 point level, which is getting on for somewhere just over 2x the normal size for a game. As I sat down to sort out unit cards I realised I was very short of points. Even with all my South Essex, Highlanders and 95th I wasn't quite at the points, but then something dawned on me, I was into (in my head) too many unrelated units territory. One of the things I try to do, in my wargaming, is make armies make sense, so why does your 5 unit army include elements from 4 different military organisations. If you are playing a unit representing a bigger force, then fine. If you are playing 1:1 scale (which I do for 28mm) then I'm not as big a fan. That's just my personal opinion and with that the rant is over.
   So, I went to Front Rank and built an order. Obviously a needed a cannon - cannons are brutal for their points and I knew the French would have one - and I picked up the crew (Sharpe Practice sized team to cover all eventualities), a limber and horse team at the same time. I picked up the last few men I need to boost my Highlanders (from the last post) to R&P sized unit strengths. I also picked up a few red coats - including a command group - to fill the last few slots**. Then while I was there I had a think - and going full circle - I added two units of red coat light company to swap out my 95th for.
   The banners are shamelessly stolen from the Wool Shed Wargamer, thanks a lot.

*The theory needs a snappier name
**Not all pictured as I couldn't remember which ones they were

Both units of British Light Company skirmishers, definitely going to add another couple of units here.

The Royal Artillery train. I'd like to add an ammunition team to this in the future, but for the moment this will do.

   With the varnish still drying on the cannon crew and limber we set our models out and got on with the game, and it was only at this point the scenario was named - Quatre bras - so my troops were all wrong. Saying that, it was one hell of a game;

The British holding the line at the start of the game waiting for the bulk of the army to arrive.

I really must paint my officer up a proper command staff at some point.

It doesn't look like much, but that was a lot of French troops coming our way.

 The British re-enforcements holding the crossroads while the French Lancers worked there way through the left flank.

   Obviously, as I was on the British side, it's safe to assume it was a French victory but it was a close run thing. As any gamer will tell you, if X had worked, or Y hadn't happened it would have been a very different game. In this case, it was our cannon never managing to deploy and the French Lancers working their way through our flank unopposed, but that's the joy of wargaming. Thanks for running the game, Neil.

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