9th Lancers to Kandahar

 From the very beginning of my NWF efforts a painting by Orlando Norie kept fascinating me:

Thus acutally since 2015 I've been pondering about painting a unit of lancers to represent those brave men. To be honest those figures have been lying on my lead pile for a while but during the last weeks I finally took the time to finish the horeses (they've been primed ages ago...) and to paint the riders. All in all I aimed for a twelve men unit to have them ready for any rule set from 'The Men who would be Kings' to 'Blackpowder':

The miniatures themselves are from Perry Miniatures' sublime Sudan range. Actually they represent the 10th Hussars fighting against the Mahdi rebellion with improvised lances to catch prone enemies. After I compared them to Norie's painting I came to the conclusion that they should serve rather well. There are a couple of small inaccuracies: The blanket on the back of the saddle is missing, the 9th lancers on the painting appear to carry an Indian style water bottle, it's not clear whether there are pugrees on the painting. Anyway I was ready to accept those minor flaws. Especially since I didn't find any better models.

There are several photographs of 9th lancers during their tour of duty in 1880. On these the fellows show a variety of clothing: home service pieces, padded winter jackets, khaki jackets etc. After some pondering I decided to paint the unit uniformly in khaki jackets and blue home service trousers.

For painting the figures I employed my trousted Vallejo paints. The khaki sheme is bases on VGC 'Khaki' while most other paints where from the Vallejo Model Color range. For the first time I didn't employ Wargames Foundry's skin colour sextette but Citadel's contrast paint 'Darkoath Flesh'. I'm really pleased with the result. Especially because it safes loads of time. It's just one layer. No more no less. With the Foundry colours I painted fours to six layers to build up shades, highlights etc.

For the lances I decided to use steel pikes rather than the delivered lead ones. My experience showed that the latter tend to bent and never get straight again. Although those don't represent the bamboo lances used at that time perfectly I appreciate their durability. The pennants are self-made. I cut them from common printer paper and apprlied super glue to give them a plastic like stiffness. Finally painted them red over white.

To pretect the models I applied a couple of layers of gloss and flat varnish by airbrush.

That's it for now. Soon there is more NWF stuff to follow but not now. I hope you like them. Please feel free to leave a comment to let me know.

Union Troops for Tactica

Main part of my winter efforts were troops for our presentation game at Tactica in Hamburg in February. Namely ACW Union troops. Somehow I didn't manage to post the units step by step so I'll present them all in one go now.

Infantry

For our game we needed several units of Union infantry. So I promised my friend Holger to deliver two 24 men units respectively four units of 12 figures. One of the units was painted before the Painting Challenge started but the other was to enter and leave the painting table around Christmas. Here it is:

The unit is made of 24 figures from the Perry Miniatures plastic boxes. Here obviously mainly skirmishing poses from box ACW120. Of course it's a bunch of work to clean and assemble all those parts but they deliver a wonderful variety of combinations to create unique units.

Two bases carry the colours. One the Union flag and one the regimental flag. They are by top-notch flag maker GMB Designs who delivers some of the best flags on the market. I decided to split the colours to have them truely in the centre of the unit when fielding all six bases. When using two 12 men units then each of them keeps one flag. To my mind that looks better than having two flags in a smallish unit of three bases.

The whole unit is based with for figures per 40mm x 40mm base. Somehow that took root as our standard basing for Blackpowder games.

Artillery

Every infantry brigade need a certain amount of artillery support. Thus I prepared three guns and four crew men per piece.

Two of the guns were based properly and with its crew properly attached to the base. The figures and guns are again by Perry Miniatures and come from their excellent plastic box. It contains enough parts to build three guns, three limbers and 18 crew. It is also versatile enough to produce either Union or Confederate artillery.

With the describtion from the leavlet it's possible to build figures according to the ACW artillery drill which I did more or less.

The third battery is kind of unfinished. The gun itself is painted as the other pieces are but the crew is kind of substitute. All four figures are completely painted but actually they are the remaining crewmen of the first two guns. They are meant to operate the limbers but in this time of dearth they were ordered to handle the third gun. Thus they haven't been based yet...

Command Vignettes

Those reliable Yanks needed some commanding officers of course. For our game I had the honour and pleasure to deliver a brigade commander and a divisional commander. The first one was made from the plastic sprue that the Perrys deliver when ordering Blackpowder 2 from them:

Actually I wanted to give him a standard bearer aside but then I noticed that this plastic figure is significantly smaller then the metal cavalry figures. Thus he had to stay on his own and I mounted him on a rund 40mm base. Nevertheless it's a wonderful frame. It has enough parts to build a Union or Confederate officer and has a large variety of options. Additionally it's compatible with the plastic boxes delivering even more options. For this very special incarnation of a Union colonel I used the plastic figure as a base, assembled another head and made shoulder straps and collar from greenstuff. Actually the figure comes with seperate plastic shoulder straps but I cut them when I tried to loosen them from the sprue so I had to sculpt new ones.

However our division needed a commander so I made another base representing this honourable officer:

Here we have three mounted soldiers. All by Perry Miniatures as well: One mounted general, a standard bearer and a trumpeter. The officer comes from one of the mounted generals sets while the soldiers are actually cavalrymen in sack coates. From my humble point suitable enough for an escort.

This time the flag isn't by GMB. It's rather a product of yours truely himself because he forgot to order the correct standard and didn't realise it until it was too late. Thus there was no other way then printing the flag by himself. Anyway I'm rather satisfied with the result.

Summary

Well that's it. In addition to the priorly painted unit all the stuff I brought to Tactica and main project this winter:

• 24 men unit of infantry. Flags by GMB only glued to shape and edges repainted. Whole unit based on 40mm x 40mm bases with four figures per base.
• 3 artillery pieces and 12 crewmen. Two guns with crew based on scenic bases, one gun and four crewmen unbased.
• 1 mounted brigade commander. Based on 40mm round base. Multi-part plastic figure with converted head. Collar and rank insignia resculpted with greenstuff.
• 3 men divisional command vignette. Three mounted figures. Standard self-made. Based on an oval base of 100mm x 50mm

Having finished those in time really made me happy and maybe kind of proud. Although my club fellows brought more figures by far, it was the largest amount of figures I provided to a presentation game until now. We'll set up ACW for another small convention in Germany again and I'm looking forward to seeing my Yanks on the field again. In Hamburg they earned their stripes and helped to win the day twice.

Rowing Boat with 13 men crew and 26 infantry passengers

Another humble contribution for our February show game in Hamburg was one of the rowing boats Perry Miniatures released last autumn. It a pretty piece sculpted by Alan Perry to represent a Napoleonic British rowing boat used for several landing operations during the campaigns in Flanders, Egypt, Denmark and Spain as well as in the whole Carribean area:

The boat itself is a two part resin kit with six rowing seamen attached already. In addition there's a supplemantary set of six further seaman and a coxswain giving it a crew of 13 Royal Navy seamen.

However the boats were meant to transport troops so troops were needed to man the 28mm equivalent as well. For this purpose Alan created two sets of sitting redcoats which fits perfectly on the boat's benches. One of the set comes with 18 soldiers joint to thress or fours while the other contains eight solitary figures to supply bow and stern with brave Brits. Altogether the boat has a complete 26 figure infantry unit in addition to the 13 men Navy crew!

Painting the boat was a rather unusual experience. The Navy figures were pretty much business as usual. Although seated the rowers were complete figure that I painted more or less like any other 28mm miniature. But the strung readcoats were a challenge. On the one hand the missing feet made the surface to paint smaller which should cause time saving. But on the other hands the details were much more difficult to reach causing loos of time. After all I presume painting these chaps caught sligtly less time then painting 18 standing figures.

The solitary figures of course went in the normal manner. Especially the officers are wonderful sculpts wearing the top hat which feeld iconic for the early campaign especially the campaign in Egypt. For that reason I decided to use the 'old' pre-1801 colours. It is doubtful whether the units at Aboukir carried these or whether they had received new colours with the Irish Saint Andrew's cross early enough. Since I wanted to use the wonderful colours by GMB again I opted for the oldish version since the newer (Peninsular) version is already bearing the battle honour for Egypt.

On our table we had three of these boats in addition to two further rowing boats by Britannia and a British gunboat I built from Laserdreamworks nice lasercut kit.

Unfortunately the boat itself isn't appropriate as an entry since I started working on it before the challenge started. During late summer last year I assembled and painted the hull but didn't manage to complete my work.

During challenge time I reworked the cabin, created the mast and painted three artillery pieces for it. At least the guns might find consideration here.

Well... That's it for now. Of course my share of the Curtgeld project which Michael A., Sander and I executed mutually is pending but this will be brought to your attention by our most appreciated fellow Michael. Yours truly is working on a couple (ten...) T-72 tanks in 15mm but they'll not be finished until our challenge time runs out.

My gallant crew... Good morning! - Royal Navy Captains finished

The painting challenge is on it's last days now and finally I managed to finished to miniatures to complete the first bunch of Napoleonic seamen:

When painting those gentlemen I always swayed between the Horatio Hornblower TV series and a recording of H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. Although the play is set in a slightly later period these sturdy officers reminded me of sorely afflicted Captain Corcoran. Simultaneously especially the left chap has the strict but fair look of Robert Lindsay's wonderful recreation of Captain Pellew.

Friday Night AWI: AAR Americans vs. British and Hessians - 26th April 2013

On friday we met up in the HQ again and after some weeks with fantasy stuff we decided to return to some historical conflict. So AWI was sheduled and we prepared a little game with three brigades on either side and no historical background. Anyway three brigades of the young United States met two brigades of British troops accompanied by a brigade of Hessian auxilliaries. This time I had the unusual experience to command a brigade of American separatists. Very uncomfortable for me to shoot on Redcoats since that's my ancestral side...
Please excuse the poor photos. Unfortunately I forgot the digital camera and had only my cellphone at my fingertips.

The Continentals entering the battlefield from the left while British fifes and drums sound from the right hand side.

From the very beginning things were tough for us colonials. Although we had a heavy 24pdr cannon and a unit of cavarly a nearly one on one meeting with the best trained infantry of their time is always hard. Anyway we wanted to our very best and when nothing is ventured, nothing is gained.

The Hessian and the middle British brigade in their initial deployment. I love this impressing look.

The first turns went promisingly. The British left wing underwent a heavy command crisis and remained motionless for the first turns.
Meanwhile their center advanced only slowly because Bernhard befell some truble with his ADCs too. One of his bataillons blundered and after a second bataillon went disordered he reorganised his forces and sent the grenadiers ahead.

A bloody good idea as he realised later...

Some of my boys awaiting the enemy.

Meanwhile we separatists didn't want to hide and tried to set up brave defense. On our right front where I commanded a brigade of regular troops I advanced carefully to take position at the edge of the field. Taking cover seemed a good idea although the Redcoats on my flank remained motionless...

On the right Kalle rushed forward with his militia. He brought a small but fast galloper gun to the other side of the river and took position near the brewery. Simoultaneously he wanted to push his bataillons into the center but those smutty amateurs proved too unreliable to achieve any serious support.
However the Hessians were busy with their flank threatened...

While the British were busy with solving their command crisis we Americans saw a chance to come into a good position. Maybe we could overcome their mighty middle brigade with concentrated fire while the Hessians are bount at their flank. Hopefully their third brigade will not enter combat until we achieved first success...

But reality overhault us when the forces clashed in the center of the battlefield. Even Holger's trained regulars weren't able to hold fire until the Redcoats were in close range so the unloaded their bullets too early and caused only light damage. Even concentrated artillery fire didn't break the British grenadiers' spirit and their fifes and drums sounded inexorably.

Our boys did their very best to withstand them but after the first volleys came in from short range the spirit of liberty faded. While the British reduced their speed and fired volley after volley the poor bataillons in our center broke and the Holger's brigade sounded the retreat.

Simultaneously Axel's Hessians found their formation again and shattered the poorly equipped militia troops. Although my brigade wasn't that badly hurt by now I felt defeat being near. When Heinz's brigade started to move finally my boys lost their nerves. Although I fired several volleys on the leading unit all shots failed to hit them. Even my artillery which was reliable during the first half of the game failed to hinder the British.

Thereby the game was over rather quickly after the British were able to send in their whole power. Two of my units broke and the rest betook themselves to flight.

Heinz's brigade presenting the coupe de grâce.

Anyway it was a great evening and an entertaining game. Victory went to our opponents but it was well deserved for the best trained army during the late 18th century. However it showed that a one on one ratio is impossible to master for the Americans. We will bear that in mind for the next games, I'm sure.

Finally there's a short sequence from the movie "Revolution" which outlines the development of this game precisely:

Thanks to Holger for finding this nice clip.