French Regiment - Rohan Montbazon

An impending house move has meant I need to consider building a small collection for gaming on a kitchen table.

I had a half painted unit of Blue Moon French in 18mm for the WAS/SYW so I decided to finish them off.

Flags were downloaded from Kronoskaf and edited in MS Paint.

Miniature Warfare Magazine

My first wargame mag was Miniature Warfare by John Tunstill. I bought my first one in August 1969 and I still have 30 or so copies.  

I was flicking through them and found a few images that I liked.

Firstly Wargames and Advertising. Back in 1970 Wargaming must have been cool enough to be used to advertise chocolates. 

 

The figures look to be Staddens and may have been from John's own collection.

Next up a rather nice set piece.

The caption with the picture says they are Willie figures by Ed Suren.

Les Higgins - WIP

I have been able to get some painting done this week on a 30 figure unit of the wonderful Les Higgins 20mm WSS figures I bought earlier this year.

They are 75% done.

They look a bit vivid due to using the flash on my Iphone.  They are for my imagination War of the Saxon Succesion collection. This unit is the Hessian Erbprinz.

I have another 30 man unit to paint up as tSaxons as well as some Cavalry figures.

Saxon Flags

I was going to get some Saxon Flags from Maverick Flags but instead I knocked some out yesterday lunchtime at work using the flags Kronoskaf, MS Paint and a decent colour printer. 

Although cheap and cheerful they look ok on my Spencer Smith unit. Note the standard bearers are Tradition NCOs.

Basing Update

This week I have been able to complete the re basing on a few of my SYW/WAS collection.

First up a Hungarian Unit consisting of Front Rank and a few Crusader Grenadiers.  I painted these figures over a decade ago at at time when I painted eyes on figures. The unit is organised with the Grenadier company attached to bring it up to strength at 30 figures.

  

And to add a bit of fire power I have finished the re basing  of 2 light artillery pieces. These use Front Rank figures.   I iintend to use one Light gun for every 2 infantry units.

Anf finally I have finished the Saxon Spencer Smith figures. I need to get some Flags for both the Hungarian and these chaps. As far as I know only Maverick have Saxon flags.

Next up on the painting table are the 20mm Les Higgins figures started earlier this year.

Spencer Smith Saxons

I recently picked up some painted SSM figures from a fellow AMG member. They included some which were painted up as a French infantry unit however needed a bit of TLC.

I have applied some paint and they have been transformed into the Saxon Regiment Konigen circa 1740-45. The Saxon army during this period have trousers in the same facing colours which makes them rather natty.

Here are some before and after photos

And after 

To finish this 30 figure unit I will complete with Gilder style basing and some flags from Maverick.

Saxon Hussars completed

I finished painting the 6 Saxon Hussars last weekend and have now completed the basing in the Peter Gilder style.

Painting a fewer number of figures makes  it easier to keep the concentration levels particularly painting the difficult bits.  

These figures were challenging to paint for 3 reasons.

1. There are Hussars

2. RSM figures have less defined detail when compared to more modern figures.

3.  The colour combination of Red, Yellow and White was interesting.

Anyway here is how they turned out.

Morale in the War Game

Over the last few weeks I have been making some decisions on how I want to play my games using the War Game.

You will no doubt have realised that these are my preferred set of rules for 18th Century games. I do however have a few house rules.

Firstly I use these rules for both my Classic Prince August figures as well as my 28mm/30mm collection.  One point is that my unit size varies depending on which collection I am using.

Well I have decided that from now on all units will be based on the number 6.   Cavalry units will typically be  6 figure squadran where a 6 light Infantry will be a company.  Infantry Battalions will be 30 figures representing 5 companies. A 4 company Grenadier unit will be 24 figures.  Other units such as Militia may be 18 or 24 figures.

If you notice I am not having seperate Officer figures.  

Morale is going to be based as follows. For each one sixth of a unit lost a unit is -1 on its morale.  A typical unit still starts at base 6 however a unit must now beat the score of 6 to pass its morale test.

So here is a couple of examples. A 6 figure cavalry unit has lost 2 figures in a Melee. Therefore to pass it must beat 2 on a D6. 

A 30 man Infantry unit has lost 15 figures and there has lost 3/6. It needs to beat a 3.

Now you remember I am not having seperate Officer figures however I still want the loss of officers to impact a units morale.  So when a unit loses a one sixth of its strengh it checks to see if it has lost an officer.  A D6 is rolled and if a 6 is rolled an officer is lost. A saving throw is still allowed.    

So in our example above the cavalry units has lost 2 figures in Melee. Two D6 are rolled and a 6 and 4 are rolled.  The unlucky officer fails it's saving throw.  The unit is marked with a small dice showing the loss.  The unit morale is now -2 for loses and -1 for the officer.  It will now have to roll more than a 3. 

I have not yet tested these rules however I will try them out in a small Mollwitz game which is set up on my table and ready to go.

Saxon Hussars

This year has been pretty slow on the painting front.  What limited time I have seems to be spent on re basing.  

This morning I decided to re start painting my Saxon RSM Hussars. I have 12 of them that I started at least 18 months ago but I am finding really hard to motivate myself to complete.  So I got 6 of them out of their box and got the paints out.

These pictures show how far I got with them.

Let's see if I can get them finished by end of next weekend.  

Waterloo at the Armouries

Popped over to the Royal Amouries yesterday for the Waterloo week.

On the 4th. Floor they a small exhibit room which had some interesting stuff.

First up was the original painting of the charge of the Scots Greys. It looks good in close up.

Max takes his orders from the emperor. 

Made a nice change as he never listens to me.

Now this would have hurt.

In all I counted 11 games being put.  There were at least 3 participation and Max spent 4 hours joining in whist I chatted away to various people.

Here are few photos of the games. Black Powder and Blucher seemed to used more than other rules with a large 6mm Age of Eagles also spotted.

Max had fun however I feel that a bit more could have been done on the day with perhaps more games and re enactors present. There was room.

On the plus side the museum was busy and as this was free the public could wander around and have a look at Wargames in action.

Plancenoit

Last weekend we put on a demo game at the Triples show in Sheffield. This may be the last time we put on a game at this show.

We used some of Ian's extensive collection of Napoleonic 28mm figures. Ken supplied the portable table which looked very good. The buildings were from Eauns collection of scratch built Mike Sewell Normandy buildings. Although only 20mm they worked well with the 28mm figures.

Tim organised the accomadatiom and logistics. I just turned up to make up the numbers and spent the weekend talking to the public.

We used Lasalle by Sam Mustafa and they worked really well and get the game moving along at a cracking place.

The game looks pretty good and the portable sand table looked superb. Here are some photos of the action.