Napoleonic Skirmish - NO longer a Skirmish project - part 3

Oh dear what have I done now?

A few weeks ago I announced on this blog that I was embarking on a 28mm Napoleonic skirmish project well the scope of this project has changed.

It’s no longer a skirmish based project but a bloody great big battle project. I just couldn’t help myself.

Previous part here
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/napoleonic-skirmish-part-2.html


The British Forces 12 Battalions of Infantry (each 24 men) line up for inspection in various states of painting ......and some cavalry

I think it is fair to say that the sight of hordes of 28mm figures on the table has hooked me line and sinker. Last year I completed my ECW and Zulu projects almost and these have been some of the best wargames I have ever played. So why not go for the granddaddy of all 28mm visuals – the Napoleonic period.

In the last couple of weeks I have been hunting down deals on the internet, asking for unwanted boxes on the Lead Adventure Forum and slowly steadily building a rather large plastic and metal mountain. The learning curves from my previous grand scale projects have been taken on board which chiefly fall into three categories.

1. Determine the size of units in advance and before you buy.

For the Napoleonic period this has been quite simple – infantry battalions will be a standard size – 24 figures strong and cavalry units will be 12 figures strong. Each of these figures will be based singly but in movement trays of four. This allows for a rapid change between large blockbuster games such as Black Powder and individual based games (eg Chosen Men). Furthermore most rulesets that come out tend to group figures in units that are divisible by four (think Saga, Lion Rampant) and hopefully by doing this I’ll future proof the armies.

In the case of Line Battalions of the Napoleonic period two of four slot bases will be reserved for the Flank companies, one for the command base and the remainder standard infantry units. The flexibility of basing also allows for units to be shrunk or added to. Finally the four man bases can be positioned in line, marching column, attack column or square with little difficulty (march harder if the were based on 8x2 trays)

2. Determine what size of game you want to play and buy the figures before you start painting

Believe me when I say there is a rather perverse logic in amassing the forces before you start painting and yes this could mean a significant financial outlay at the beginning. Firstly bulk buying offers greater opportunities to save on postage and multi deals, secondly it forces you to accept that this is the next big project and deserves your attention rather than meander from one genre to another (that’s what I tell myself but NOT Mrs Shed).

Based on my crude calculations to have a meaningful game each player needs to command a minimum of 8-12 units (estimates based on our Pike & Shotte, Warmaster and Zulu Games. This means to support a 4 player (2 vs 2) games in the Shed I need a minimum of 16-24 units per side. So at the very least I need 16 British and 16 French units. On the basis that at least half need to be infantry I need 8 battalions per side (that’s 184 figures each) – a third will be cavalry (5 cavalry regiments per side) and three gun batteries per side. I decided on 12 Battalions for the British (this includes Rifles & Highlanders)

When you start looking at the numbers this way you can make an estimate of cost and total volumes. This is all based on plastic ranges at the moment – Warlord, Perry & Victrix

Infantry – 360 figures at c50p per figure = £180

Cavalry – 120 figures at c£1.50 - £180

Artillery – 6 Batteries at £8 each - £48

A total of £408 note this excludes command etc

With the judicious use of ebay etc I reckon this overall cost can be reduced by at least a third.  

Painting the Figures

There is no easy way to say this but when you embark on such a project you cannot expect to be playing in a matter of weeks. It will take months but dealing in volumes has its advantages.

For starters I’d recommend painting one complete battalion from start to finish – learn the figures, their shapes and nuances. This will provide an estimate of the total time it takes to complete a unit. The first British Line Battalion (actually 40 figures) took me around a week to complete in five sessions each lasting about an hour and a half. That’s 9 hours for 40 figures – works out around 10 minutes per figure.

Painting production can be sped up considerably by painting en masse…

For example last night I painted the boots and trousers of over 100 British Line infantry in one sitting. By the end of the week I’ll have painted the rest of the base colours – jacket , shakoes and flesh. Only then will I start finishing off each battalion in turn. 

I should add that I don’t do shading or highlights – just a block paint approach and the army painters dip and then varnish. These are for the tabletop and not display.

Oh yes whilst collecting the British Infantry I also started on the French...

11 Battalions assembled and a couple still to go

I am not going to work out the man hours required to complete this project (it’s too scary but as it progresses the momentum will drive me forward).

So with Salute just round the corner I think my focus will be on Artillery and Cavalry at the Show.

Until next time

Part 4 can be found here
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/napoleonic-project-part-4.html

10mm Napoleonic Battle Report

Last Monday night four of us got together to drag another genre out of the cupboard. This time it was my 10mm Napoleonics collection using Black Powder. The last time this featured in the Shed was back ion 2015 on the annniversary of Waterloo.

So Monday nights action pitted Mark & I as the French against Steve and Alastair (British)

The game was a classic French assault on a British defended position. The French had marginally stronger forces with each side commanding about 16 Brigades (mix of Infantry and Cavalry)


No full AAR to report just the pictures but I can safely say this was one of the most enjoyable games I have played for a longtime and reminded me how much I enjoy the grand scale



French Columns advance...we played on a 16ft table - loads of space for maneuver

THe French started towards the centre - intent on stopping the British from digging in on the hill

The French left flank was up against the formidable Highland division and heavy cavalry

Supported by the guard heavy cavalry the French push forward...you can just hear the music

The right flank soon saw the clash of horse with both sides cancelling each other out

Just before the charge !

By now the French Infantry columns had reached the hill in attack column formation

Fighting was furious on the left flank with fire exchanged

The assault on the hill begins (attackers lost their charge bonus)

The assault in the centre was supported by a further attack from the Guards on the French left - volley fire was not enough to stop the columns

The cavalry battle on the right ebbed and flowed and forced the British on the hill to retreat into square

Elsewhere the French were taking a pounding on their left from the scots - casualties racking up on both sides

The hill attack was going the way of the French - despite repelling the first attack more units were being thrown into the fray

Within a couple of turns the British hill collapsed - and with their cavalry a spent force the French could claim victory

Napoleon wins  !


As I said we enjoyed ourselves so much another 10mm slice of action is planned tonight

Come back soon

So what shall we play next week....

You might have noticed over the last few posts that the Shed has been hosting a variety of games each Monday night – it’s been one of my priorities for 2017  to dust of some of the collections I have in shed and remind myself why we embarked on these projects in the first place.

I thought it might be a bit of fun to list these collections and the typical rules we use so folks out there in the blogosphere can see what might be coming up in the future. 

I should add that some of these collections belong to my good friend Mark who owns his own shed and once he gets it refurbished Shed Wars will go back out onto the road (Woking actually !)

In no particular order….

Genre/Period	Scale	Armies Available	Typical Rules
Fantasy	28mm	Warbands and Monsters	Frost Grave & Dragon Rampant
Fantasy	10mm	Empire, Undead, Elf, Dark Elf, Orc, Goblin	Warmaster
Greek Mythos	28mm	Greek Heroes & Monsters	Home brew set in development
Ancients	10mm (Mark’s)	Romans & Celts	Warmaster Ancients
Medieval	10mm	War of the Roses/ 100 Years War	Warmaster Medieval
Medieval	28mm	Crusaders, Saracens, Robin Hood	Hail Caesar, Lion Rampant, Crescent & Cross
Dark Ages	28mm	Vikings, Danes & Saxons	Saga
English Civil War	28mm	Royalist & Parliamentarian	Pike & Shotte, Pikemens Lament
English Civil War	10mm	Royalist & Parliamentarian	Pike & Shotte
French Indian Wars	28mm	British, French & Native Allies	Muskets & Tomahawks
18th century Pirates	28mm	Pirates & Above	Home rules based on M&T
Napoleonics	10mm	British & French	Black Powder, Legacy, Age of Eagles
Napoleonics	28mm	In progress	In progress
American Civil War	15mm (Marks)	Union & Confederacy	Fire & Fury
Anglo Zulu war	28mm	British & Zulus	Black Powder
Colonial Expansion	28mm	All Factions	Congo
Very British Civil War	28mm	All Factions	Bolt Action
1930’s Pulp	28mm	All Factions	Pulp Alley., Bolt Action
World War 2 (early)	28mm	British & German	Bolt Action
Aliens v Predators	28mm	Predators, Aliens & Colonial Marines	Bug Hunt (Home Brew)
Post Apoc	28mm	Terminators, Mad Max	Home Brew
Modern	1/300	Russian & British	WRG Modern Rules

When I sit back and look at the list its quite a surprise to see that virtually all the major conflicts us wargamers are interested in are covered.

There are a few omissions – for example the Wild West, the Crimea, Indian Mutiny and Late World War 2 – but to be frank many of these do not interest me and are unlikely to feature in the shed (but we should never say never).

You will also notice that there are two primary scales – 28mm and 10mm (aside from Marks ACW stuff) – the rationale is quite simple I don’t have to have multitudes of terrain in different scales.

The games can all be fought in temperate, arid or jungle conditions and aside from my Frostgrave boards most of the stuff is quite generic and can fit with a multitude of periods. Afterall a tree in the middle ages is going to look the same in the 1930’s.

So whats up next…well as you will see in the upcoming post I have been somewhat carried away with one of my projects...

SAGA - Two versus one (until the doublecross)

Following on from our big Pike & Shotte battle a fortnight ago I  managed to put together a Saga game last Monday (10 days ago) for Alastair and Mark - a three way fight to the death.

Alastair has a nice write up on his blog which is worth while read
http://wargaminggallimaufry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/saga-three-ways.html

As mentioned this was a three way battle with last Warlord standing - two retinues of Vikings versus my solitary unit of Danes.

I suppose it was inevitable that the Vikings would gang up on my defending Danes.

The battlefield was set up to reflect the rugged landscape of Northumbria - one unit of Vikings would come in from the Sea (East edge of board) the other unit from the North of the village.

We were all playing with six point forces - typically Warlord, 2 Hearthguard units, 2 warriors  and a unit of levy archers

View from the Sea

View from West - the longship has landed

Another from the Sea

Final picture of battlefield  before troops arrive

The Vikings arrive !

So our game arrived with all the forces piling on from the edge of the boards. I decided the strategy of the Danes would be quite simple - Id wait for the Vikings to approach my defended position on the hill. Hopefully they'd end up attacking each other and I could capitalise on the outcome. 

As you can see in the above picture the Danes have surrounded the hilltop and are awaiting the Vikings to the East and North.

The Vikings (Alastair) emerge from the village

With the Viking pushing forward I pushed half my levy out to meet them - the unit got shot to bits but encouraged the viking to close up. By now their respective forces were getting close to each other.

The seaborne Vikings (Mark surged up the hill) towards the Church

The Village Danes push forward

Alastair then sprung his trap in two successive turns he charged the Danes on the hill and got beaten and attacked the Vikings in the field to his left. The fights were so frantic I forgot to take pictures !

The picture below shows the moment before the attack - the unit in the distance hit the rear of Marks viking levy destroying them and then turned on the unit ion the far field. The Danes look downb and watch from their vantage point



With both Viking units intent on fighting one another I released my House Carls and charged down the hill into Alastair's Warlord - the Dane Axes swiftly decapitating the first viking invader

With time running out and the Vikings down to a couple of dice apiece (the Danes had not lost any) Mark capitulated and declared the Danes victorious - Hooray - after the Pike and Shotte disaster I could chalk up at least one victory this year !

Come back soon ....

Pike & Shotte - Big Battle

A couple of weeks ago the Shed hosted its biggest game of the year so far this year - a big Pike & Shotte game with three players aside on an extended table nearly 20feet long.

I'd love to say that I had a great game. But I didn't !

The extra large table

My tactics, dice rolling and quite frankly my troops all performed horrendously. From the outset (I was facing Mark) I was in a real pickle and it just went from bad to worse. The Royalists gave the Parliamentarians a right good spanking.

No big aar today (history is only written by the victors) but just a few photos of the game

The Royalists on the right are having a good time !

More soon....

28mm Napoleonic Skirmish part 2

Hi Folks

I have been a very busy boy at the painting table over the last few weeks and can now reveal some of the work in progress on my Napoleonic troops - its going to take sometime to get sufficient forces ready for our first game of Chosen Men...


Part 1 of this project can be found here..
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/a-new-project-chosen-men-napoleonic.html

Please note none of the figures shown have their bases finished and are in movement trays to aid carrying them around

Up first we have a box of Warlord Games 28mm British Peninsular Infantry - these include command

Each box contains 42 figures - If I ever get round to painting enough for Black Powder (my ultimate goal battalions will be 24 figures string) so two boxes would deliver 3 battalions !

Rolling off the table after these red coats are the green jackets - essential for any skirmish. Again these are Warlord Figures - metal not plastic and they are great !

As part of my army order from Warlord I received some Perry prooduced British Light Dragoons - these had to be put together with the Tarleton helmets ! I ran out of matt varnish at this point so they are all a bit shiny from the dip (painted on)

Finally I got round to painting a couple of British mounted officers - again there is no matt varnish on these.

These have all been a real pleasure to paint...

Sitting on the table at the moment are 40 odd French Infantry, another 40 British Line Infantry (I could not resist), a British Horse Battery and some French Dragoons (Mounted and on foot) - . I hope to be able to show you these soon.

Only once I have painted this little lot will I attend to their own movement trays and bases.

Until next time

part 3 can be found here
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/napoleonic-skirmish-no-longer-skirmish.html

Spring is in the air - so its time to do some planting

Hi Folks

With the weather now warming up I can justify spending more time in the shed and so over the last couple of weeks I have been both building some new terrain and refurbishing some old. 

Hope the following is of interest

Up first are some simple fields. Whilst clearing the shed back in the summer I found a small bag of plastic aquarium plants. These are no more than a cm in height and have a small plastic stem. These look like great cultivated plants for 28mm (don’t ask what type of plants thought !).

It was a simple job to cut out some hardboard sheets – mark out and drill the peg holes and glue the plants in place. Once dry the field was given a basing of sand and ballast. This was painted up using chocolate brown emulsion. A quick drybrush and some grassy patches helped bring this to life.

Three fields which cost next to nothing

Add Walls for effect

Pretty good...will they work for arid climates

Yup....and yes I have two different coloured wall sets

Up second are my vineyards  - now when I decided that the peninsular was going to be deserving of my interest I quickly realised that I was going to need some custom terrain. Chiefly vineyards and olive trees. An internet search revealed that Noch produce both of these. An order was made.

The Noch Olive trees are good (if a littler small) but the vines are lousy and at £9 a box I was going to need a lot of these for meaningful terrain. I had to build my own. Casting around for inspiration on the web found a site that used woodland scenic armatures for the vineyards – Diary of a Gaming Magpie(http://infrequentwargamer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/scw-terrain-vineyards-finished.html)

What a brilliant idea !!

Again I cut out some board for the fields (four in total) and then measured out the posts for each end of the vine run. The posts were bamboo skewers cut to length and fixed in drilled holes with pva. Between these posts were drilled several holes for the armatures. These were then cut to the right height with clippers.

A mature and immature vineyard in progress

The finished article

Once the tree armatures were in place I treated the base with the same material used for the above crop fields. Before the base was painted brown I sprayed the tree bits dark brown. Added clump foliage with a hot glue gun and hey presto

These will serve well for any mediterranean based game

Now whilst on the subject of fields I had some coir door mat lying around - perfect for wheat fields. These I cut into an irregular shape stuck them down on hardboard and treated the base. Easy job and they look great. Indeed we have used them recently in our M&T game.

Add caption

You might notice that one of the photos above has shows a tree in the field - lets turn the base around....

and you can see there is a peg for the tree to slot in - this helps enormously with storage and allows trees or NO trees on the terrain. The peg can always be covered up with a bit of lichen

So I decided to rebase all my deciduous trees - you know the cheap ones that come from China.

Up until now I had been basing these simply in hardboard bases. A drill was used to create a hole and then the truck pushed through and hot glued in place. The problem was that the storage for these was massive and they looked unsightly. A new option had to be found.

Again I stuck with the hardboard bases - all the old ones were re-purposed but this time I drilled out hole and then glued in a two cm high tube of styrene.

Prior to cutting the styrene tubes I sprayed them all brown on a piece of wood with bbq skewers to hold the tubes upright.

prior to the spray

These were planted dark brown to simulate the trucks. All I have to do now is pop the trunk into the tube and hey presto a tree is standing. Not only that they store so much better...

a woodland base with pegs....

The finished wood

Here you can see half of the trees based - could noit be bothered to set them all out for the shot but as my regular gamers can always testify - Eric the Shed loves his tree covered tables ! 

More very soon