A Passion for History, Miniatures, & Gaming
Life has been a bit hectic over Christmas – with holidays, work, catching up on gardening & clearing clutter (both wargaming and general household accumulation), and a few other matters – so I haven’t had much chance to progress any posts in January at all, even though I do have several part-written or drafted in outline. Meanwhile here’s a little eye-candy of a couple of my 28mm Napoleonic British units that featured in my ‘Hundred Days’ games in 2011!
I stumbled across Jeff Lower’s Blog recently care of Michael Davis – and he’s currently working on some new Victrix Austrians – and my gosh they do look good! The new Victrix ranges include two Infantry packs (a early 1798-1809 set in helmets, and a mid to later period 1806-1815 set in shakos), a Grenadier set (for 1798-1815), and a Landwehr Infantry set (for the later 1808-1815 period). You can check out Jeff’s progress on his blog.
Continue reading “Gosh those Victrix Austrians Look Nice!”Continuing with more of Lieutenant General Hendrik George de Perponcher-Sedlnitsky’s 2nd Netherlands Division in the Hundred Days campaign here we have my recreation of (Major-General) Willem Frederik count of Bijlandt’s (or Bylandt) 1st Netherlands Brigade; following on from the 2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment and the 28th Oranien-Nassau (Orange-Nassau) Regiment of von Sachsen-Weimar’s (Saxe-Weimar) 2nd Netherlands Brigade. So here’s some more ‘Work In Progress‘ type photos as I work on basing these chaps ready for service on the table top…
Continue reading “Bijlandt’s 1st Netherlands Brigade”Continuing with Lieutenant General Hendrik George de Perponcher-Sedlnitsky’s 2nd Dutch-Belgian Division in the Hundred Days campaign and the balance of (Colonel) Prince Bernhard of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach’s 2nd (Nassau) Brigade, and following on from the 2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment is the 28th Oranien-Nassau (Orange-Nassau) Regiment – the unit von Sachsen-Weimar (Saxe-Weimar) was Colonel of prior to taking over the 2nd Brigade on the 15 June 1815. So as these are near completion and following the ‘Work In Progress‘ type photos theme, here’s the Oranien-Nassau regiment…
Continue reading “28th Oranien-Nassau Regiment 1815”I have finally got around to getting to work on basing up my figures for Lieutenant General Hendrik George de Perponcher-Sedlnitsky’s 2nd Dutch-Belgian Division in the Hundred Days campaign. First up is (Colonel) Prince Carl Bernhard of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach’s (Saxe-Weimar in English) 2nd (Nassau) Brigade, with possibly my absolute favourite uniformed Allied unit from Quatre Bras, the 2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment. As they are now firmly mounted on bases ready for completion by flocking, varnishing, and fitting of standards I thought it was a good excuse to take some ‘Work In Progress ‘type photos of the near completed regiment…
Continue reading “2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment 1815”
Sometime (i.e. 2-3 years) ago I acquired several pre-painted 28mm French Generals on EBay – they were spur of the moment purchases put to one side for when I eventually got around to doing my 28mm French Napoleonic Army. As I am hoping to start work on that in the near future I thought I should work out what I actually have! As a result I’m trying to identify these figures – both maker and what they are (e.g. are they personalities or just generic ‘Generals’ or even just Infantry/Cavalry Colonels or ADCs?) – so I’ve posted them here in the hope someone passing by may recognise them and be able to clarify for me what actual manufacturer’s figure they are…
FOGN (Field Of Glory: Napoleonics) is a regimental game where 1 unit is a regiment. It has small units (1200-2000 men for infantry) and large units (2000-3000 men). This means it is an in-between scale game (sort of like Principles of War), where you can change formation into things that look like column, line, square and skirmish but aren’t really (and in practice you stay in one formation for most of the game in FOGN).
Continue reading “Lost in the Wilderness: Napoleonics?”
Over the years I have dabbled with numerous rule sets for Napoleonics, starting with some home grown ones, and most notably a Bruce Quarrie inspired concept based on articles in Military Modelling (UK) in the early 1980’s referring to gaming Quatre Bras and Waterloo with Airfix Plastic figures at 10 figures per battalion! Years later I had moved on, and although the club I belonged to had a scattering of players who played Napoleonics in 15mm (with Corps d’Armee rules) and 25mm (with club rules developed from Paddy Griffith works) I had moved on to 1/300th scale (6mm) to enable large grand battles with huge forces, and was using the Anschluss “Ebb & Flow” rules – designed for fighting large mass battles in 1/300th scale, and representing every battalion and skirmisher formation, and using no dice! Frank Chadwick’s Volley & Bayonet was also around, and although a generally good rule set it best suited 1/300th scale (which I we played for a while and got quite good game results historically) – but which for me lacked the visual appeal.
For a long time I had been musing over what to do about Napoleonics. However now I am back into Napoleonics full time in 28mm, re-enthused by the release of SHAKO II and possibly also LaSalle. I’ll be documenting here the assembly of my forces for Quatre Bras, along with gaming notes and more. Eventually I’ll be hoping to expand my forces to cover a portion of the Waterloo battlefield – Megalomania? What’s that!
It was my intent to include a SHAKO Order of Battle for the forces of both sides – but the new rulebook includes such an OOB in it! However I probably will be doing an expanded OOB at a later date to allow for the expansion of the battle beyond the critical stages as covered in the SHAKO II Scenario – allowing it to be played in a mini-campaign format, and to do ‘what ifs’ covering the possibility that Ney acted sooner and more vigorously…
The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) involved Napoleon’s French Empire and a shifting set of European allies and opposing coalitions. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe, but collapsed rapidly after France’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon’s empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat in 1814 (and a failed revival in 1815), resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France.
Meanwhile the Spanish Empire began to unravel as French occupation of Spain weakened Spain’s hold over its colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in Latin America (you can read more at wikipedia on the specific details). Meanwhile…
Continue reading “Wargaming The French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars”
