Lasalle in the Hundred Days

The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line: 42nd Royal Highland (the Black Watch) & 1/28th North Gloucestershire.

Somewhere near the Franco-Belgian border, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton surveyed the ground before him, by a strange quirk elements of his ‘reserve’ division, the 5th, had ended up near the border just as the first reports of Napoleon’s crossing reached the Allied forces. Wellesley would need time to concentrate his forces, so his Division would need to delay the initial advance elements as long as possible – and it wasn’t long before news of their arrival was received. Choosing a place with some hope of defence and a good line of withdrawal Picton deployed his troops, Major-General Sir James Kempt’s 8th Brigade on the left and centre, and elements of Pack’s 9th Brigade on the right, supported by Rogers’ Foot Company of 9pdrs on the high ground. Major-General Sir Dennis Pack meanwhile had hastened to the rear to collect and organise reinforcements and lead them forward to the battle…

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Empress Miniatures new Maori Wars Range

Joy, oh Joy! The ether has been alive with chatter of the announcement of this new range for a couple of weeks now – and they really do look like some lovely figures with nice clean casts and great sculpting. I have been wanting to get into Maori Wars in 28mm for sometime – but to be honest there just hasn’t been the figures available to inspire me, only Eureka having anything reasonable – except they are later period (2nd & 3rd Maori Wars) and while their British chaps look quite nice their Maori just don’t get me excited (perhaps they are not animated enough). However now that Empress have released their range everything has changed, as it were, and now there seems little reason not to do some Maori Wars gaming (and hopefully the Empress and Eureka guys will be a close match size wise to allow use of both)? Continue reading “Empress Miniatures new Maori Wars Range”

Do You Know That General, Monsieur?

A posse of 28mm Napoleonic French Generals

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…

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An Aquarium of Thorn Thickets

Dervish Jihadiyya fight from an 'Aquarium Thorn Thicket'!
Dervish Jihadiyya fight from an 'Aquarium Thorn Thicket'!

When BattleCry 2011 in Auckland was looming earlier this year I had promised Gerry from Castaway Arts to help with some Colonial TSATF demo & participation games (and provide the troops & terrain to save Gerry bringing it over from Cairns, Australia), and as part of that I wanted to try and have some new troops and terrain on table to add something fresh to the appearance. The troops were covered by the presence of the first of my Gunboats (which had just been completed for me by Kieran of 6mm Wargaming) and the inaugural outing of my British Infantry in Grey Uniforms (See the report of our third BattleCry 2011 TSATF Game). However terrain was a different story – as always I was leeching off Kieran for his Palm Trees – I do have my own, around 400 of them actually (and about 10 different types and sizes), but getting to basing and finishing them is a different story – but anyway, it otherwise was pretty much all standard stuff (well illustrated on this blog over the past few years). I needed something quick, easy, and cheap, to churn out a piece of quick new terrain…

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A Not So Small Migration

WordPress LogoOver the last few days I have been migrating Wargaming.info from Joomla to WordPress – for a variety of reasons – but needless to say it has required a reasonable amount of effort (and has been the third such major migration I have done in about 4 years in my quest to find the ideal platform). The site is now back up and running in its new environment, however it does unfortunately mean any external links to specific pages on the site will mostly be broken (while in Joomla I could load multiple aliases for pages, the by maintaining external links to old page addresses, I have yet to figure out how easily that can be done in WordPress). Also it may or not break RSS subscriptions – so you may need to reselect RSS notifications if you had these previously. So first of all my apologies to anyone this affects!

I have not as yet completed all work, but I wanted to get the new design up and running as soon as possible, so:

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An Old Friend Thought Lost

In the last week the Major General Tremorden Rederring’s Colonial-era Wargames Page has been inaccessible across the ether – and the concern that it may have been lost for good! However as events have transpired it is just temporarily down due to technical issues and David Helber (the Major-General himself of Ouargistan) has reported that he hopes to have the site back up and running before the end of April [2011]. Meanwhile if you are looking for something from the site it’s accessible on the “Way-Back Machine” archive. Continue reading “An Old Friend Thought Lost”

Selective Laser Sintering Armour

RPG Manufacturing Cromwell IV Model
RPG Manufacturing SLS invoked Cromwell IV Model

Reviewed in Battlegames No.25 and announced on TMP, RPG Manufacturing Limited are venturing into the Wargaming & Modelmaking arena, with the first of a new range of precision ‘1-piece’ castings that includes several variations on the Cromwell IV and Panzer IV ausf G & H. These models are made by fusing together progressive layers of nylon dust into a 3D model using a CO2 laser (a process called SLS – Selective Laser Sintering). This is somewhat similar (in general terms) to what existing 3D ‘Printers’ do and other similar processes (for example there was an episode in the most recent series of the U.S. show “Bones” that used this technique to recreate a human skeleton from 3D scans). In our case these models are designed in a CAD application, and then scaled to the desired scale (e.g. each RPG Cromwell & Panzer IV are available in 1:100, 1:72, 1:60, 1:56, and 1:48 scale – the models being identical except for their size).

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TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [3]

Having successfully returned to their base (game 2) Valentine Baker Pasha’s forces weren’t able to rest – a delayed communiqué arrived advising a steamer was coming down the Nile to rendezvous with them at the village of al-Ġardaqaḧ as-Sūdān and it included more civilians! Baker Pasha would have to assemble another, reasonably strong column, and rapidly march the 2 days across the desert to the Nile, through the territory teeming with Dervishes, to reach the village in anticipation of the steamer’s arrival. Continue reading “TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [3]”

TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [2]

Following the disastrous battle of the expedition to locate the missing European Civilians (TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [1]), Baker Pasha and a handful of survivors had managed to evade the victorious Dervishes and rejoin the balance of the local Anglo-Egyptian forces. With the entire countryside now up in arms and no hope of a second attempt to locate the civilians Baker pulled his remaining force from its isolated position and immediately began a rapid withdrawal to their regional capital and barracks town, hotly pursued by the Dervish forces. Continue reading “TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [2]”

TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [1]

February regularly sees the BattleCry Convention in Auckland, one of the larger NZ Wargaming events that is usually well run and encompasses more than just miniatures gaming (i.e. board gaming, card gaming, LARPing, etc). This year Gerry & Carolyn Webb of Castaway Arts (from Cairns, Queensland, Australia) decided to attend with a trade stand and some TSATF (The Sword And The Flame) demo games – as I’m a big TSATF fan I organised with Gerry to help him with the games, and provide all the troops and terrain – thereby saving Gerry & Carolyn having to cart their own from across the Tasman! The games were run as Public Participation & Demonstration games; although the former is a fairly rare concept in New Zealand so not overly familiar to many local gamers. Continue reading “TSATF at BattleCry 2011 [1]”

A Little 1809 Lasalle Affair

Austrian Horse Battery
Austrian Horse Battery (1:72 Plastics)
Lasalle by Sam Mustafa
Lasalle by Sam Mustafa

It was clear fresh morning as L’General-de-Division surveyed the ground – he looked remarkably like L’Empereur himself, even down to his stature and dress – there was a stationary mass of white across the rolling fields, Austrians by the gods, and he meant to teach them the superiority of French esprit de corps and steel! His men were ready, his sub-commanders Michel Ney, Joachim Murat, and Eugéne de Beauharnais were ready, the horses and cannons were ready – but first he needed a plan… Before he could muse over the days prospects a courier came breathlessly galloping up, his ADC soon came to tell him the news, it was not good – “the Austrians have collected the entire region’s supply of garlic!” “What!” exclaimed the General, “no garlic for our foraging troops – this will not do, not at all…”

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TSATF Colonial Games at BattleCry 2011

Gerry Webb of Castaway Arts (in Australia) will be at the BattleCry 2011 Convention, here in Auckland on the 19-20 February, with his ranges of Figures and running some The Sword And The Flame participation demonstration games. And I’ll there with Gerry giving him a hand with the games. If you are in Auckland that weekend and interested in Colonials, or just Wargaming in general, pop along for a look at Auckland’s largest regular annual convention (expected to have over 300 gamers participating) at the ASB Stadium in Kohimarama – full details are at the BattleCry website. Continue reading “TSATF Colonial Games at BattleCry 2011”