Perry Miniatures Spanish Guerrillas

Here are fifteen Spanish Guerillas from Perry Miniatures' plastic box set which I painted for our Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket games. They required some filling to assemble, but as usual are a delight to paint.

TMWWBK - Getting Away with It

The British camp by the Nile

For our April game, we played another game of The Men Who Would Be Kings, this time in Epic (13.5mm) scale using Rafael's beautifully painted figures, and this time using measurements instead of grids.

The genesis for this game came when I learned that Rafael has an Epic scale Napoleonic Ottoman army, a British army, but not a French army. I wanted to run a game using his armies, and recalled a scenario from Battlegames' Tabletop Teasers compilation that featured the French army looting an Egyptian site and the Ottoman and British trying to stop them - well, who's to say the British couldn't do a spot of looting themselves after seeing off the French?

I floated the idea to Rafael, and he got onboard, printing, assembling, and painting a ketch (that would end up doing sterling service in the game) just for the scenario. I made a few simple river barges (from wooden boat models bought off Shopee), tents, painted up a half-buried sphinx (snapped off an aquarium decoration also from Shopee), and based some palm trees (again Shopee) onto cork sheets, to which I added tufts to represent reeds - I thought they didn't look half bad placed against the river terrain piece.

Ottoman forces surge towards the British camp in the middle of the table

The British started the game divided into two parts, one in the centre of the table at the dig site, from where they must drive two wagons loaded with loot to the riverbank, where the other half of the British forces are. Docked at the riverbank are barges, and a ketch with howitzers.

The Ottoman forces are also divided into two parts, with one representing the professional and household troops of the local lord, and the other the local tribal forces.

To add randomness to the game, I forsook grid movement and returned to the tape measure, giving the wagons a move of 2d4 per turn. The random movement distance, coupled with the activation rolls and random move distance when units move At the Double, added suspense to each turn.

Ottoman Irregular forces

British forces hold off the Ottoman

Home stretch!

It was a close game, with the British successfully loading both wagons of loot onto the barges with the Ottoman Janissaries just one move away.

This is definitely one scenario I would like to run again.

Garrison Miniatures Villagers and more Gripping Beast Arab Infantry

To add to my collection of 28mm figures for skirmish games, I ordered some villager figures from Garrison Miniatures via ebay. I chose this specific set because I felt the clothing of the figures were generic enough to allow them to do double duty: for our Ruckus Reconquista games, and our Fistful of Lead Peninsular War games.

To provide our Barons' Wars figures with more opponents, I also bought and painted a sprue of Gripping Beast's Arab Infantry. This brings my total "Saracen" force to 20 foot and 6 mounted figures, which will be sufficient for most skirmish scenarios.

I have also ordered a box of Perry Miniatures' new Spanish Guerillas, which will give us more options for our Fistful of Lead games.

Battle of Znaim

For our game in February we played the Battle of Znaim.

The battle saw the French coming upon the Austrian army as their baggage train is making its way through the town of Oblass.

Fg and I, playing the French, initially planned to send two divisions across the river to our left and capture the town of Oblass, while the other divisions on our right screened the rest of the Austrians.

However, the Austrians moved their right wing up, and fg decided against crossing the river, and instead tried to capture the town of Tesswitz in the middle of the table instead.

The struggle for Tesswitz became the main focus of the battle, as fg sent two divisions to try to push the Austrians out. But the Austrians put up a stout defence, sending in their heavy cavalry to spoil the French attack - they were successful, but were in turn destroyed by the French light cavalry sent in a counter-attack the next turn.

Meanwhile, I pushed the French right wing forward to engage the Austrian left, and positioned the corps artillery so it could bombard Tesswitz.

But it was too late - the Austrian baggage train cleared the town, allowing the Austrian reserve to come onto the table. The French made one last effort to capture the town, but failed.

This was once more a tight game, with the clock being very unforgiving to the French. The Austrians started the battle dispersed, which gave the French a narrow window of opportunity to capitalise on their concentration.

We are planning another Napoleonic game for the month of March, so stay tuned!

Battle of Klyastitsy

View of the table from the Russian end

Last weekend we had a new player, Eugene, join the group with his Russian army. I chose the battle of Klyastitsy for our game.

This was an unusual set-up, with the game played across the length of the table. The French were deployed in three areas, while the Russians are entered the table from a narrow front.

The French army strung out along the road

The Russians originally planned a feint to their left and then a thrust on their right once the French had shifted their forces to their right. However, the attack in the left flank went better than expected, and the Russians managed to gain a foothold on the ridge forming the French first line.

At one point the Russian momentum faltered as their advance meant their generals could not keep all their troops within their command span. The French were able to exploit this by bringing up their other divisions, but fell victim to the same problem soon afterwards.

We called the game before the game clock ran down when a unit of Russian cavalry managed to capture the village of Klyastitsy (and we assume Oudinot's carriage, as they did historicall), and it became clear that the French could not hold their first line of defence; at the same time, there was not enough time for the Russians to get organised to press their advantage before sunset, so we decided that the French would abandon their guns and escape across the river under the cover of darkness.

Closer view of the cardboard buildings

One again the rules took some getting used to by the new player, and we encountered situations which necessitated some revision to the rules, but all in all I feel they suit our purpose.

The scenario required quite a lot of trees, and so wahj and I bought some, while FG completed his Woodland Scenics ones. I also bought a pdf of Russian houses and built several cardboard buildings, which will probably see us ready for future games in the 1812 campaign,

Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket

After weeks of work, we finally played our first game of Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket with our Napoleonic figures. It occurs to me that despite Napoleonic skirmish being a major thing in the writings of Donald Featherstone and the British wargaming magazines I used to read in my youth, this was the first Napoleonic skirmish game that I have actually played.

I used the scenario from a Sharp Practice campaign (which FG and I used to fight our Sludge campaign), pitting three squads of French soldiers - the 26th of the Line, the Legion du Midi, and the Hanoverian Legion - against two of British - the famous 95th Rifles. The Rifles had the advantage of range, and started hidden and in cover.

The rules were easy to pick up and remember, but despite only giving the Leader and Second traits (instead of giving every figure traits as per the rules) we had difficulty remembering to use them. The need to spend a full turn reloading after each shot made shooting less effective than in more modern games, so the French decided to force the issue with a bold advance into hand-to-hand combat. This turned out badly for them, and they fell back from the village.

Overall the rules are fun and quick, although I find that the use of a d10, while OK in shooting, makes hand-to-hand combat too swingy. I enjoyed the rules enough to want to expand my collection so I can provide both sides for a game that I can take to future conventions.

Perry Miniatures Elite Companies French Infantry 1807-14 again

Here are five more figures from Perry's box set, painted as voltigeurs of the 26th Regiment of the Line. I have chosen this unit as it was brigaded with the Legion du Midi, which I have painted earlier. While the uniforms are of the same cut, these guys were harder to paint due to the piping on their uniforms.

With these guys done, we are on track for a game of Fistful of Lead in October.

Perry Miniatures Elite Companies French Infantry 1807-14

Not a month before Perry Miniatures announced their "Skirmish in a Box" Peninsular War skirmish set, our group decided to get into the period. Never fails.

We knew we wanted a simple and fun set of skirmish rules that didn't require a lot of figures. After some searching, I settled on Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket - the rules seemed easy, and the card-based activation gave players interesting decisions to make, and I liked that reloading takes a full turn under these rules. Each player needed only five figures, which is a big plus for us.

Dom had about a dozen 95th Rifles pained, so I decided to paint up some "French". I settled on the Legion du Midi, which I painted a base of in 15mm years ago. Their brown uniform makes the distinctions stand out, which I thought looked really good on the tabletop.

FG took the Hanoverian Legion, and since I liked how well these miniatures painted up, I decided to do the 26th Regiment of the Line (which was brigaded with the two regiments) too. Wahj bought some Spanish guerillas from Battle Honours' 3D range, to balance the two sides.

I also purchased some dry stone walls and prepainted buildings, so hopefully we will be able to have a game in October.

Talavera (North)

Dom was back for the weekend and we finally got a chance to play the Talavera (North) scenario I have been planning for for a long. Despite the scenario representing only part of the battle, the number of units required were so big that we had to use double scale, hence the dice you see in the photos (to represent half-bases).

The battle saw three French divisions engaging the British (Dom's figures painted more than 20 years ago) left flank, hoping to turn their position, as well as the Spanish (Nabil's newly-painted figures) to the British left.

Historically, the Spanish took little part in the battle, but in our game I wanted to prevent them from influencing the main battle, and so resolved to rush their position en masse to take them out of the battle, before turning to aid wahj roll up the British flank.

However, the Spanish responded proactively, and prevented the French from enveloping them. Nevertheless, French numbers told and the Spanish were contained on their ridge. Then I made the classic error of being too fixed on the immediate objective and losing sight of the bigger battle. Instead of leaving a small force to contain the Spanish and diverting the rest of the division to my left, I tried to push the Spanish off the table. The Spanish held on, and I lost two precious turns before realising that that the French left flank was not making headway.

By the time the game clock ran down the Allies had won convincingly.

Peninsular War scenario and Midgard Heroic Battles

For our session in February we once more played two games.

The first game was another scenario from Michael Hopper, this time the battle of Monesterio. The game featured Nabil's newly-painted Spanish army, and the participation of two players from the wargames group we made contact with last year. The scenario required the French players to move their siege artillery train across the table, while the Spanish had to prevent that from happening.

The rules were once more our grid-based rules adapted from To the Last Gaiter Button, and once again the grid-based nature of the rules caused some confusion at first for the new players, but once they got the concept things moved quickly.

The Spanish forces advance towards the French. The artillery train can be seen in the corner.

The Spanish forces were handled boldly: the two infantry divisions advanced down two axes, while the cavalry went down the flank to cut off the French route of advance.

Nabil's Spanish see their first action!

The French sent their lone unit of cavalry on the Spanish right to threaten their flank, and for a while effectively held up a whole division of infantry. But they were too conservative with their infantry deployment, and failed to create a perimeter around their siege artillery train, which became exposed and were captured by the Spanish.

For our second game we played the Battle of Azanulbizar using Midgard Heroic Battles. I had planned on using my LOTR figures with the rules, and which better battle to recreate with them than the battle that saw single combat between dwarf and orc leaders?

We played the Last Stand scenario, with Azog and his goblins deployed before an East Gate of Moria terrain piece. I commanded the goblin left flank, and decided to push my forces out to prevent the dwarves from getting too close.

The goblin left flank

Nabil, playing Azog and commanding the right flank, allowed the dwarves to get into melee too quickly, where their superiority in armour soon told. Azog threw his bodyguard into the fray, and then promptly fled down the hill through a gap in the dwarven line; however, it was too late - the goblins lost the last of their Reputation token, and lost the game.

Dwarves surround the last unit of goblins.

Despite this being my second game, I think I managed to get most of the rules right, forgetting only the Brittle rule for the goblins. The game was quick and fun, and at the scale we played fit the niche of a second game very well.

For our session in March I am planning to run a game of Here's the Ruckus!, once more using LOTR figures. I know I had earlier dismissed the rules, but when I was looking for a set of medieval skirmish rules that had climbing, jumping, and falling rules, I took a second look at them and managed to "get" them, and so decided to give them a spin. Stay tuned for more!

Battle of Hollabrunn

Last week we managed to get together for a mid-week game of grid-based Napoleonics. What's more, we hosted two members from another gaming group whom we got to know at a convention we went to the month before.

The scenario was Battle of Hollanbrunn, a rearguard action in the aftermath of Wagram that saw Massena's Corps catch up with the Austrians.

The game started with a Vincent's Division holding Hollanbrunn in the middle of the table, and the French cavalry arriving at their base edge. FG, commanding the cavalry on the French left, thrusted his squadrons forward and engaged the Austrian cavalry. In doing so, he crested a plateau and found another two other Austrian divisions behind the town.

The Austrians sent their cavalry and half of Kottulinsky's division to counter the French movement - a fatal error.

The opening set-up

On turn 3 the player playing the role of Massena, arrived late to the session but in perfect timing for the game. He quickly assessed these situation, and Neuenstein's Division on a march through the woods on the Austrian left, and then sent the light infantry from the Friedrich's Division to skirmish against Hollanbrunn's defenders while he organised a grand battery on the ridge overlooking the town.

While there are no national characteristics in these rules, the French had six commanders (albeit two being cavalry commanders that commanded only their respective squadrons), to the Austrians' four. In addition, Vincent had to command both cavalry and infantry and artillery. Having over estimated the importance of the French cavalry attack on their right, the Austrians were in addition plagued by poor dice rolls on the part of their artillery, and superb dice rolls on the part of the French which saw them moving through the woods on the flank at great speed. Belatedly they realised their peril, but with only three real commanders to speak of they could not redeploy their forces in time to counter the French, lost the town, and only by running down the game clock did they avoid a French major victory.

Mid-point of the game, with the French flank attack developing and the Austrians making their countermove

It was a fun game, and the timing was perfect, with the battle played to a resolution just as the game clock ran out and within the time we allotted for play.

In the discussions after the game one of the players was inspired to start painting 15mm Napoleonics, and Martin was motivated to paint up a few more units for his British-Portuguese army, which will allow us to play some Peninsular Wars scenarios in the future.

Grid-based Napoleonics and Undaunted: Battle of Britain

For our November session we managed to get five players for another grid-based Napoleonic Game.

We played the action of the Austrian left flank at the Battle of Sacile.

FG, Adrian, and I, playing the Franco-Italian force, slogged through the forests and marshes surrounding the Austrian-held towns of Palse and Porcia instead of approaching them in the open; as a result our attacks went in piecemeal, and the Austrians were able to hold on to Porcia by the time the clock ran down, winning the game.

After the main game Adrian took us through a game of Undaunted: Battle of Britain.

I thought the flow of the game didn't really resemble aerial dogfighting, but it did give me an appreciation of the Undaunted game mechanics, and make me want to give the original Undaunted game a try.

For our December game we are planning a game of the second edition of Conquerors & Kings, so stay tuned.

Napoleonics and Battletech Destiny

The Austrian cavalry take the heights north of Aspern, while simultaneously the Grenzers advance towards the orchard west of the town.

Desperate fight for the heights.

Mecha mayhem!

Yesterday Rick brought along the 15mm Austrians that he had bought literally ten years ago for their first game ever. While we own a French, an Anglo-Allied, and an Austrian army between us, we have seldom played Napoleonics as all the rules we have tried before we too labourious to prep for and play; systems like Age of Eagles required special labels for the command base of every unit on the table, the application of which already take up a chunk of time.

When Rick mooted the idea of playing a game, I revisited the To the Last Gaiter Button rules for FPW, and decided to give them another go. Looking at the distances and ground scales, I realised that the game could easily translate to Napoleonics by halving the scale and making one unit a battalion; better yet, by seeing the number of bases as a representation of the Combat Effectiveness of the unit and not the number of troops in the unit, it made it easier to translate historical orders of battle to game.

At this scale we could only play games with one or two divisions aside, for the our scenario I decided to depict only one part of a larger battle, in this case the Austrian attack on Aspern, pitting 11 battalions of infantry, four double-squadrons of light cavalry, and three foot batteries (each of 2 bases) against seven battalions of infantry, three double-squadrons of light cavalry, and one foot battery of the French. Unbeknownst (but suspected) by the Austrian players, the French would be reinforced in the middle of the battle by two double-squadrons of heavy cavalry.

The game uses a grid-based movement, and the players were initially a little surprised by the short movement and "shooting" ranges for infantry, but they pretty soon warmed up to it and realised that the limited movement meant that once a formation is committed to a particular axis of attack, it would be difficult to change one's plans. This was made worse by the fact that the game had a running clock: the Austrian had to capture the whole of Aspen (represented as two grids in our scenario) by 30 on the clock for a victory, and to capture the road leading from the south into Aspern for a major victory. At the start of each turn each side rolled a d6, with the side rolling higher choosing whether to move first but let the other side choose which of the scores to add to the game clock, or letting the opponent move first and choosing which score to add instead.

In our game the battle centred on two actions: an artillery bombardment followed by an infantry assault from the west and the north of Aspern, and a fight for the heights north of Aspern. Our game actually ended more or less as the historical battle did at the end of day 1, with the Austrians controlling half of Aspern and the French still keeping the road south open.

For our second game we played Battletech Destiny, which as I understand it is not a set of wargame rules, but a mash-up of the combat rules from the Mechwarrior: Destiny RPG and Battletech Alpha Strike rules.

I enjoyed the more streamlined combat resolution of the game, but perversely I would have preferred to keep the fiddly hex movement and facing of Battletech Classic.

Our group will be trying out the Alpha Strike rules in the future too, so stay tuned.

Battle of Albuera

Our first big game of the year - and what better spectacle than a Napoleonic game?

The battlefield viewed from the south, with the Badajoz road cutting across the table, and Albuera in the middle.

For the scenario I chose the battle of Albuera, which is small enough for us to have room to manoeuvre on the table.

I tweaked the scenario to give the French a fighting chance by delaying the arrival of the Spanish armies, but gave the British more leeway in the deployment. Martin chose to deploy the 2nd Division on the hill to his far right, something which Beresford failed to do, and covered the gap between that division and the rest of his army with the cavalry.

The French players attempted a left hook as Soult did: fg attacked the left flank of the Anglo-Portuguese army, while wahj sent the cavalry across the stream to screen the two divisions which followed.

Seeing a gap between the two wings of the French army, Martin decided to send the cavalry across the stream, which prompted the French cavalry to respond.

The fighting on the Anglo-Portuguese left was slow and indecisive, but the French finally gained a foothold. On the right flank the 2nd Division saw off the French dragoons' attack - but the dragoons have done their job; in the climax of the battle, two divisions charged up the wooded hill and managed to dislodge the 2nd Division, causing many casualties.

At this time, the Spanish army arrives, and we called the game.

It's hard to say how both sides performed compared to their historical counterparts, but I don't think it really mattered since we all got to push colourful figures across the table.

Battle of Busaco

With Martin free to play a game on Sunday, I decided to do another Peninsular War scenario.

Problem with most Peninsular battles is that even with the scale of age of Eagles, we still don't have enough figures and tabletop area for a full battle. After some reading, I decided to depict only the southern half (or two-thirds) of the battlefield, pitting the French II and VIII Corps against the Allied 2nd, 3rd and 5th Divisions.

I gave Martin the option of deploying hidden behind the crest of Busaco ridge, which would oblige the French players (Thomas and Gerard) to approach the ridge blind. Martin chose to deploy at the crest of the ridge, and the French decided to attack the the two ends of his line...

The Allies deploy along the length of the ridge. The cork and bits of turf mark the rough ground.

The French approach, pushing their guns forward.

Line vs. column... well, supported lines, actually.

Panorama of the battlefield, showing the French attacks at both ends of the Allied lines.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, the French managed to occupy the highest points on both ends of the table, and even managed to haul their guns up to the crest on the southern end.

In its basic form, AoE doesn't really confer a "historical" advantage to the British Line vs. French Column match-up. The various scenarios that I looked at had different ways of dealing with this, but all seemed to give too much advantage to the British. I guess I will have to study this aspect again before our next game.

The luck of the Irish, or the Emperor's foreign regiments

After I received the Vistula Legion, I noted that I had room for just four more bases of infantry in the box I use to store my Napoleonic infantry. I toyed with the idea of getting four bases of Italian infantry to bolster my foreign regiment presence...

Then while looking for flocking materials on Sunday I uncovered the 15mm Napoleonic figures I painted years ago when we were doing Republique - all three units of infantry took part in the Battle of Fuentes d'Onoro. I soaked the bases in water, plucked the figures off, and then re-glued them four-to-a-base and I have four bases of infantry and one of cavalry. A lick of paint similar to that used by the ebay seller (Medium Flesh - go figure), some flocking, and they are ready.

So here they are, the Polish (infantry bought painted, now with their own colours), the Regiment Irlandais, the Legion du Midi, and the Legion Hanoverienne.

Welcome back to the fold, boys. Now let's go bash some Brits and Austrians!

More Toys

Two more packages bring in more toys for this week.

Shown here are a few of the 40 trees I bought from an ebay seller treefella.1. When I saw his poplars on sale I contacted him and basically bought as many trees as he could fit into a standard postage box. I got a total of 20 poplars and 20 deciduous trees (at one pound and a pound fifty respectively). Four of the trees broke off their bases in transit, but it should be an easy job to fix them back with a blob of epoxy each.

Posing between the trees is a unit of Duchy of Warsaw infantry I bought in an arms race with Rick, who is recruiting some 500 Austrians to try to throw off the French yoke. They have now been given their regimental colours by the Emperor (having a colour printer at home really helps), and I have repainted their eagle silver instead of gold which the painter has erroneously done.

With these two lots in, I am down to just one item awaiting delivery.

Time to get down to the serious business of painting.

Toy Overload!

Two packages arrived in the mail today for me, and fg handed me some more Space Marines to round up my force while I passed him some LOTR figures wahj passed to me earlier. It's all good.

Anyway, this is what I got today:

First up are these 15mm AB French Napoleonic infantry in pre-1806 uniforms. I got them because they were the only non-Legere unit DPS had on their ebay store at the moment and I wanted to buy a unit on impulse. Unfortunately they missed my request on basing the skirmishers on standard bases. No matter - they still look capital and will add variety to my force.

Then there are these 54mm plastic figures from the Russian company that makes Robogear. They come in semi-hard plastic and look quite good. I've posed them next ti my Perry WOTR infantry and on 40mm bases for comparison.

And then there's the one I've been really looking forward to: the cannon that came with the orcs.

I've planned to use it as a Thunderfire Cannon with the tracks from a Robogear vehicle, but looking at the whole package now I am inclined to paint it as is. I've also asked fg for his Devastator Squad Sergeant to use as a Techmarine because I don't really like the over-the-top way those guys look. I really like his pose and his gear, which give the impression of an artillery spotter, and the cannon looks suitable Gothic Sci-fi.

Lots of painting ahead of me...

Triple weekend

We had a bit of a party atmosphere this evening as all seven of us were able to make it for the session. Cocktails, beer, cakes and chips, War movies playing in the background... it's all good.

I had to split my main table into two and mobilise my coffee table to accommodate three games.

On the larger part of the main table Adrian and Thomas played their first game of 40K 6th Edition.

Thomas' Blood angels

Adrian's Eldars

 On the coffee table fg and wahj learned Impetus by playing.

wahj's Cathaginians bear down on wahj's Romans

On the smaller part of the main table Rick and Martin replayed the Battle of Corunna (the Rio del Burgo and Corunna Bay conveniently dividing the table from the giant (28mm) aliens and superhumans battling it out with outlandish gear.

The French push the British off Monte Mero

I spent most of the time helping Rick and Martin with the rules.

Corunna was fought on a rather narrow frontage, which scaled to a mere 2 feet in Age of Eagles scale.

As in the historical battle, the rough ground meant that the French cavalry didn't do much (in this case they did not move at all after the first turn), and it came down to an infantry fight.

Rather than to fight over Elvina as their historical counterparts did, Rick sent two of his divisions to his left to outflank the British position on Monte Mero, while Martin sent his reserves to counter the move. After much to-ing and fro-ing, the French had advanced much further than they historically did, but the British still held their own and held the road leading towards Corunna.

I think we are growing to enjoy AoE, and fg and wahj didn't think that badly of Impetus, so I guess we can settle on the rules bit and get down with the business and painting and playing from now on. There was a question of whether we should move into WW2... let's see, guys... let's see.