Plancenoit 1815

On sunday 19th of June we played a game loosely based on the actions around Plancenoit in the afternoon and early evening of the 18th June 1815. The French forces roughly represented the 6th corps under Lobau, Domon and Subervies Light cavalry divisions, the Young Guard in Plancenoit and elements of the Old Guard. In the photo above you can see most of the french deployment area with La Belle Alliance in the foreground and Plancenoit in the distance. The 6th corps and light cavalry is deployed between La Belle Alliance and Plancenoit and the Old Guard elements are drawn up on either side of the Brussels highway, awaiting (in theory), the order to advance against Wellingtons forces to the North.

The second photo shows the table from the South and you can see the Young Guard occupying Plancenoit. Also, to the rear of the Old Guard deployment, some dragoons are seen in disorder trying to rally after the cavalry attacks against Wellingtons centre. On the eastern edge of the table the Prussians can be seen deploying to attack Plancenoit and futher north to attack Lobau.

The Prussian cavalry arrive at Papelotte, held by a token Nassau battalion.

Another view of the French deployment, this time from the north.

And another view showing Lobaus corps in two lines.

Old Vorwarts encourages his men to advance as a battery opens up on the French line.

La Belle Alliance. John mentioned on the phone to me that he had a paper model of this building which he was going to make for the proposed Waterloo game which he and Paul had been planning (more of this to come in the future hopefully). Hang on, I said, I think I have an old Hovels building in my cupboard which I bought years ago and never got round to painting. Well I had a look and I had two of them! I have no idea why I would need two La Belles. Anyway I passed one on to John and he has painted it up and very nice it looks too.

Prussian cavalry deployed for the attack.

The leading Prussian brigade launches the first of many attacks on Plancenoit. While, in the photo below, John (commanding the French) moves his second line in the opposite direction! Hopefully we can get some more photos of the game posted soon as it turned out to be an exciting action which ebbed and flowed from beginning to end. As I have mentioned John commanded the French, and Paul and I (Dave H), commanded the Prussians. Almost all the figures used are Elite Miniatures, apart from a few Connoisseur figures, and are from my collection.

Hail Caesar

Paul and I had a game last night taken straight from the publication Hail Caesar,Paul commanded a Roman legion complete with auxilliaries and light cavalry, his task was to cross a river ,march down a wooded valley and attack a Gallic village.







My task was simply to stop him.

The game started with Paul sending a tremendous force against a hill just on the other side of the river,with legionaries and aux.inf,the hill was defended by a large warband,our random movement dice was thrown for the barbarians and true to form they charged down at the hapless Romans.







Some unusual dice from me saw the Romans thrown back across the river although they had inflicted some fearsome casualties on the warband with their pila.




Paul had no choice but to reinforce the melee and eventually succeeded in destroying the gauls.







Paul must have thought so far so good,however an advance over the hill triggered two Gallic cavalry units to move out of the woods and begin a slow advance against the Roman invaders.

Paul wisely shoved his archers to the front and began to pepper the cavalry who took a dislike to this treatment and retired back into the woods.



On the other flank an advance by 5 cohorts triggered another little sortie by the biggest warband I had,they came down off a wooded hill,preceded by slingers and archers,straight into contact with the cohorts and some cunningly placed heavy cavalry,and bounced like a rubber ball!!














































Having now beaten all the forward units of the barbarians,Paul consolidated his lines and advanced on the village,the last of my troops who just happened to be elite,emerged from the village ,and by a miracle of good dice throws were onto the Legion before they knew what hit them,well that was for the first round of melee, the second and third round saw them beaten and surrounded by superior numbers,




I had to hold my hands up in surrender and graciously gave in.







This was an excellent and exciting game,Paul did take some photos,and i hope he has time to post
them soon,there's always a next time!!!!

Great Northern War WIP

I managed to get a few photos of the Uppland regiment which I finished painting last month. I am quite pleased with them and I think they are an acceptable wargame standard. The figures are Musketeer Miniatures and they are very easy to paint with nice raised detail and a clean finish.

I still have to add the pikes but Musketeer had none in stock, and still don't, so I will probably order some from Front Rank. I have the flags, which are by Little Big Men, and will fit them when I do the pikes.

Also I have been thinking about basing all my Great Northern War and Mahratta war figures on hard board bases, as John has been doing, so these bases are just temporary and mean I can store the figures safely.

The above figure was a spare one I had and I have painted him in the uniform of the Queen Dowagers Life Regiment. I will probably paint a couple of garrison regiments in the future and this regiment has a particularly nice combination of uniform colours and flags. I have another 24 figure regiment to paint in Karpus but at the moment I have been painting more of the Mahratta figures as I want to complete my first Brigade of Mahratta regulars.

Our ex pat Chris popped in on Sunday to say hi and presented me with a Tiger mortar and crew (thank you Chris!) so I will endeavour to paint this up in the coming week. The figures are by Redoubt and (hopefully) they will look the business when painted.

Talking of Sunday, we played a game based on the Prussian attacks on Napoleons right flank at Waterloo (well it was the anniversary on Saturday!) and Paul took loads of photos, so either myself or Paul will post an AAR soon. We used my Napoleonic figures which was nice as they have been sitting in their display cabinet at home for far too long. Hopefully it wont take us as long to post the pictures!

Winter Quarters.

This game was played on monday 30th May,and was basically an attack/defence scenario.A British army under Marlborough aka John,is fortifying a winter camp when a large Franco/Irish/Bavarian army arrives on the scene intent on capturing the camp and denying it to the British and their allies,the Austrians and Prussians.
The game started with Dave and his Austro/Prussians marching onto the board and Graham with his Bavarians attempting to cross the river and stop him from assisting John who was defending the camp from a massive attack from Paul who commanded the French and Irish.

The photographs show the initial positions of the troops and are intended to be "eye candy" only,the full battle report will be posted by Paul later on .

This photo showw the Austrians arriving.




















The hustle and bustle in the camp.

This shows the hotly contested river crossing and bridge.

Paul decided to arrange his guns into a "grand battery" to demolish the gabion walls of the camp,and they did!!

French right flank cavalry and infantry.

Another shot of the French contingent.

This photo shows the distance the Austrians were from the camp.The Prussians arrived much later from the same direction.This was a very exciting game which was a near run thing.The attacker had 16 foot, 5horse and 6 guns against the defenders 12 foot 4 horse and 5 guns,approx.800 figs. on the board and the game lasted 18 moves taking about 3 hours.

Great Northern War

As I mentioned in my previous post I have now succumbed and purchased some Great Northern War figures from Musketeer Miniatures. The GNW is something which has fascinated me for many years but was poorly represented in the 25-30mm market. There seems to be a rising interest in this period now with both new figures and some interesting books available. My starting point was The Battle of Poltava by Angus Konstam, an Osprey title which I bought a few (maybe 15?) years ago. Then more recently I got a copy of Peter Englunds book on Poltava and as a result I resolved to start collecting figures for this period. Luckily the Musketeer Miniatures range has been expanded recently after a couple of years of stagnation.

After buying a couple of regiments of figures I purchased the above book. This is an excellent reference work on the Swedish uniforms and organisation. The only slight criticism I have is that the quality of the illustrations are a little dissappointing. Having said that there is more than enough information in this book to recreate the entire Swedish army of the GNW! I highly recommend it and I intend to purchase the follow up volume when I begin building my Russian forces.
Anyway below are a few of the figures I have already painted, in fact the first regiment is almost complete. This is the Uppland regiment, one of the Indelta formations. My painting doesnt really do justice to the figures but I still think you can see the quality of them in these photos.


NCO of the Uppland Regiment.

Uppland officer.

Musketeer.

And rear view.

Grenadier.

And again a rear view.

I hope to have the regiment based and with their flag attached by the end of this week. I am on night shift at the moment which leaves me with little time to devote to wargaming and quite honestly leaves me just too tired. Once this regiment is complete I must choose whether to complete the second one ( the Vastmanland), or get some more of my Maharattas done. I will see how the mood takes me!

Oh and of course the Vauban stuff needs completing too . . . .

New Terrain Pieces

While I was helping out with picking up some stuff from the wholesalers I came across these two pieces in the aquarium section.
Now being a wargamer I immediately saw their wargaming potential! I have it in mind to use them as jungle terrain for my Maharatta project, although I am sure John will think of a few more scenarios in which they can be utilised.

I have pictured them with a couple of my Maharatta figures (Redoubt) to give an idea of the scale.

As you can see they are fairly substantial and require no further work!

I really like them and I will keep an eye out for any others next time I am there. Especially considering I paid £4.50 for the two.

I have also posted a couple of pics of my first complete Maharatta regular battalion. This project is a slow burner (as I am a slow painter lol). However I am chipping away and I have another 16 regulars primed and ready to go and these will complete the Red turban battalion.

In addition to these I have about 20 almost complete sepoys sitting in my painting box. Why can't I concentrate on one thing at a time?! In the next couple of weeks I hope to get these progressed but, as John has mentioned in his post preceeding mine, I have been a little diverted by the Vauban fortifications and a recent purchase of some Great Northern War figures from Musketeer Miniatures.

I have almost completed the first regiment (Uppland). This period has been one which I have wanted to do for a long time and I have been waiting for the right figures to be produced. Now that Bill at Musketeer Miniatures has started to expand his range I have given in to temptation.

I will post some pics of these later tonight hopefully.

Followers

Hi to everyone who follows our little blog,we have neglected the blog over the last few weeks but , thanks to Paul , I have now been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and intend to do a weekly round up of what each member of our group is doing.

For example I have been re-basing everyone of my Ancient armies,
2 Imperial Roman legions.
1 Eastern Roman legion
3 Republican Roman legions
1 Carthaginian army
1 Macedonian army
1 Indian army
1 Persian army
1 Greek hoplite army
1 Spartan army
1 Gallic army
1 German army

They are all now based on 3" x 3" hardbord bases containing 6 or 8 figures per unit, all armies contain at least 300 or 400 figures, so i have had my work cut out but the end result looks good.( photos to follow, if Paul remembers his camera !! )

Paul has been busy finishing his 7YW Austrians, Dave has been busy painting some Great Northern War figs. as well as continuing with his Sepoys and building the Great Wall of China ( well if it gets any bigger that's what his Vauban defences will look like !) Graham is furiously painting his new garden shed , as well as Napoleonic Brunswickers and Saxons and keeps promising to complete his vast WW2 collection , we all think WW3 will have broken out before we actually see these however!!

I will attempt to explain our Wargaming Philosophy and an overview of our very simplistic rules in the next blog, if you are a follower, please take time to comment on what we are doing, and tell a friend about our blog.