Innies or Outies?

I've started basing up my Saxons and am coming up hard against the point where I have to make a decision. I am now standardising my units on a 36-figure basis for the regular infantry*. Do I want to include my command figures in this total? At the moment I'm looking at six bases of six figures plus an officer or NCO figure per 12-figure company plus a mounted officer, drummer and a couple of standard-bearers.

 The alternative seems to be to drop one of the stands of figures and replace it with one mounting an officer, drummer, mounted officer and a pair of ensigns. The first image in this post has just such a mock-up, whilst the others are variations of my current arrangement.

*Why? Because this feels like a good compromise between piddly little units of 12-24 figures on the one hand and unmanageable monsters on the other. I admire those people who can maintain the focus and stamina to put out 72-figure units, but I just cannot do it. Charles Grant-style units of 53 figures are my absolute limit!

I think 36 figure units give me a chance of occasionally finishing them off and eventually offering the prospect of putting on actions like (shall we say) Quebec with a reasonably-sized table. I also think that they represent an opportunity to do two-battalion regiments where you can properly hive off the grenadiers, merge them with those of another regiment and come up with a viable grenadier battalion.

Prestonpans - The Anglo-Hanoverian Army

Commander-in-Chief North Britain: Lieutenant-General Sir John Cope
Adjutant General: Colonel Lord Loudon (64th)

Cavalry: Brigadier Thomas Fowke
13th Dragoons (Colonel James Gardiner)
14th Dragoons (Lieutenant-Colonel William Wright)
567 Troopers

Infantry: Colonel Francis Lascelles (58th)
55th (Lee's) Foot Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Halkett - 5 Companies
57th (Murray's) Foot Lieutenant-Colonel Jasper Clayton - 10 Companies
58th (Lascelles) Foot Majoy John Severn - 8 Companies plus two companies of Guise's 6th Foot
43rd (Murray's) Highlanders - 1 Company
Loudon's 67th Highlanders (Captain Alexander Mackay) - 3 1/2 Companies
1,464 Rank and File

Artillery: Major Eaglesfield Griffith and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Whitefoord
6 1 1/2 pr "Curricle" guns
4 Coehorn Mortars

These figures do not square up too well with the casualties suffered on the day - 1400 of the Anglo-Hanoverians taken prisoner. 300 more were killed and another 170 escaped the fight.Unless I was mistaken in assuming that all the cavalry got away. A closer reading of my Duffy suggests that the 13th at least were fairly hotly engaged, but were mostly overrun standing. Perhaps more of the cavalry were lost than I had earlier thought. perhaps the Anglo-Hanoverian army was not quite at the "2300" strength I had originally thought. Perhaps their strength was more in the order of about 2000-2100 in total.

Also, my earlier assumption of basically three regiments of foot and two of dragoon starts to fall apart when we examine the actual breakdown of the forces involved. As can be seen there were lots of small-fry, interestingly including  four and a half companies from two highland regiments. Whether to fold them into the 55th and not worry or to set them apart as the Picquets is another decision.

I shall have to think this over and see what turns up. My original conversion of men to figures assumed that there were 1900 infantry which I scaled down to 108 - a 20:1 (weeeell, roughly) ratio. That may have to change.

Christmas Greetings

The Saxon Leib Grenadier Garde

 I started painting some Saxon infantry in oh, I don't know, 2006-7.

RSM Prussian Grenadiers led by a French (!) General

 They have languished ever since, barring the odd spurt of enthusiasm.

von Bruhl's Regiment

 Finally, after all this time and a well-timed prod from Jim, I finally got on with them. I still need standards, but with Christmas on us, I think I might be forgiven not having them ready until the new year.

I'm pondering a re-organisation on a 36-figure standard. I've not yet decided what to do with the command figures - integrate them into the line or stand them seperately as you see here. I'm thinking of 30 "hatmen" and a detatchable half dozen grenadiers to allow me to put together provisional grenadier battalions.

I always did like the various Naploeonics done with Elite and Hinchcliffe Miniatures that adorned many a cover of WI that had the mounted officer just protruding on a funny little polygon.

...And just in time for Christmas

I say there, chappie, I'm looking for a florist

 Among my best eBay purchases ever.

You won't find one here, mon ami.

One starts to consider that one's own painting style may possibly be touch fussy and could benefit from a little simplification.

Last Days before Christmas

And a last chance to acheive something before the end of the year.

Can it be done?

Ha! Remember these?

Let's see, shall we? Stay tuned...

The Jacobite Army

RSM 95 Jacobite

The Osprey on the Culloden Campaign (#106) has the most detailed breakdown of the Jacobite Army at Prestonpans that I have yet seen.

Without any further ado:

HRH Prince Charles Edward Stuart
Adjutant General: Colonel John Sullivan
Lt General William, Duke of Atholl
Lt General James, Duke of Perth
Lt General Lord George Murray

Perth's Division
Clanranald's Regiment - 200 men
Glengarry's Regiment - 400 men
Keppoch's Regiment - 250 men

Murray's Division
Duke of Perth's Regiment - 200 men
Appin's Regiment - 200 men
Lochiel's Regiment - 500 men

Reserve (Prince Charles)
Atholl's Regiment - 500 men
Cavalry - 36 men

Having had a bit of a look at the size of the units the Anglo-Hanoverians are fielding, it seems to me that I am working at around a 18/20:1 man:figure ratio. Thus:

Perth's Division
Clanranald's Regiment - 10 figures
Glengarry's Regiment - 20 figures
Keppoch's Regiment - 15 figures

Murray's Division
Duke of Perth's Regiment - 10 figures
Appin's Regiment - 10 figures
Lochiel's Regiment - 25 figures

Reserve (Prince Charles)
Atholl's Regiment - 25 figures

You'll note that I've fudged the figures on Keppoch's Regiment and dropped the cavalry altogether. It seemed a fair enough trade and works in with my feeling that the Jacobites would not have been packed as tightly into their frontages as the Anglo-Hanoverians - I am looking at five figures per 45mm wide x 40mm deep base.Looking at the organisation of figures purely in terms of infantry bases, this would give us 18 Anglo-Hanoverian ones versus 23 Jacobite bases.

I noted the fairly detailed Anglo-Hanoverian Order of Battle in the same Osprey and will present it as an alternative to that already worked through.

Deconstructing Prestonpans

An old image from my black undercoating days.

Looks to me like the sequence of events (barring all the pre-battle maneuvering) was something like this:

The Anglo-Hanoverians* deploy in line, with the cavalry on the wings. The guns are awkwardly deployed on the right of the infantry wing on a low rise. Whether this rise was a significant feature I cannot tell and there is no mention of it in the sources I have so far read.

The Jacobites  advanced in two large bodies either side of some marshy ground which encumbers the centre of the battlefield. A third body of troops under the Prince formed a reserve behind them.

Is this the origin  of reports the Jacobites advanced in a mass, the centre retarded by the marshy ground so their “line” formed a “V” with flank attacks going in first?

The Anglo-Hanoverian artillery was not effective. The Dragoons were static; their only contribution was to fire some mounted volleys at the Jacobites as they came on.

Whatever the reason, the Dragoons in the front line broke on contact and fled. I would surmise that the Jacobite reserve effectively pinned the Anglo-Hanoverian centre whilst the large bodies on the left and right simply collapsed the Anglo-Hanoverian line.

There you go - Prestonpans in a nutshell.

*Yes, I read Duffy's "The '45"

Ground Scale and Recreating Johhny Cope's Army

Just as an addendum to my last, I have done a little back-of the envelope figuring with regard to recreating Cope's army.

The infantry shall consist of three, 36-figure units. I will take away  three "companies" of 6 grenadiers as piquets,  leaving  three 30-figure and one 18-figure unit.

The dragoons shall be represented by a pair of 12-figure dragoon units each in three four-figure squadrons.

There shall be a derisory 2 guns and 3 gunners. Enough to fire them both once and one of them (perhaps) a second time.

Doing a little figuring based on a 15mm per figure frontage for the Infantry and 20mm per cavalryman, I came up with a few figures for ground scale for a Prestonpans fight.

The infantry would occupy a front of 81cm with an additional 48 cm for the cavalry and a notional 10cm for the guns. This when you throw in a few centimetres as spacers between units comes in round figures to 150cm. These are maxima which take no account of the fact that a couple of the dragoon squadrons were behind the main line of battle. Still, as they say, close enough for a game of toy soldiers.

Looking at the Battlefield Trust map of the battlefield, it becomes apparent that Cope’s line occupied a front of about 500 metres. Scaling this down to match the frontage of our wargaming units, we discover that our ground scale is in the order of 3cm to 10metres.

Musket range is therefore in the order of 15cm or 6 inches!

See? Some things really never do change.

Numbers at Presonpans - The Anglo-Hanoverians

One project I have in mind for my year without lead is to put together a little Jacobite collection from the lovely 28mm RSM95 figures available from DPC, based on Prestonpans.

This would benefit my “British” collection insofar as it would prompt me to add some more troops to it, especially come cavalry and let me get some Jacobites started. I’m even thinking of doing some of the Black Watch who might do double-duty as Jacobites. This will feed into two of my longer-term goals of “doing” the failed British assaults on Fort Carillion in 1758 and one day to play out the campaign against Quebec in 1759.


So then, Prestonpans. About 2300 Government troops faced about 2500 Jacobites. It’s not clear how the Anglo-Hanoverian Army breaks down numerically, but so far as I can tell, the foot were broken up into four units – three infantry battalions from the left and at the extreme right a fourth unit of foot composed of piquets from each of the foot regiments. I have no idea as to what their composition was, but I’ll call them Grenadiers. At the left and right extremities of the line were one each of two regiments of dragoons. Each of these was of three squadrons.

In the aftermath of the battle it transpired the Jacobites had taken 1400 of the Anglo-Hanoverians prisoner. 300 more were killed and another 170 escaped the fight. I would suggest that as they dragoons fled at the start of the fight that most of these would have been infantry, giving us a total of about 1900 and 400 dragoons.

It seems that of the Jacobite army, no more than about 1000 of them actually came into action.

Any questions or comments are most welcome. More on the Jacobites later.

Quarterly Review

Well, here we are at the end of another painting challenge. This one has been longer than most and i think this will show in both the amount and variety of what got dome. Naturally I have done nothing of what I actually intended, (4 x Charles Grant-styled Saxon Regiments from RSM Prussians) but what they hey.

I started the quarter on a bit of an Operation Torch kick with lots of French "armour"...

Improbably saggy-tracked Airfix M3 Lees...

 Some excellent Minimi French trucks and

Some PSC M5s.

 Then it was Ancients. mostly Rose Prestige like these Immortals

 And these rather plain Medes

 A few Garrison phrygians. Pick the ones I didn't paint.

 More Rose in the form of some Skythians.

 Then we reel back a Millennium to these Eureka Minoans. How cool are cow-hide shields?

And some Phrygian Mercenaries.

 Then we went off to Port Macquarie for a week and I got started on some Staddens who are masquerading as "Littler Britons".

 Oh, I do like them

 The gunners are patiently waiting for me to convert them some arms. The dear little fellows.

Then there's Lord Rakehell, fresh from the Crimea.

While we were away, I wanted to experiment a little with my horse painting technique and when I returned, I raised a little stud to service the various on-going projects I had on.

Just for laughs I painted up 36 of these little fellows who've been knocking about here for a LOOONG time.

Oops, nearly forgot the Greeks. These are just a small sampling. I think I got through 50 or so in the time I had. As the clock ticked down and it was time to assuage a little guilt and do these guys:

They'd been sitting in their primer glaring at me for about 6 months! So there you go - the 90 Day Challenge. About 270 Olley Points. Phew.

Oops, I did it again...

... I painted something random.

La Garde

I'd had these sitting in a box for months. All those blue-primed little eyes, beseeching me. So... I graced them a wash of dark blue, painted all the flesh bits in ... flesh. All the black bits in black, the brown bits brown &c, &c until I came to do the facings.

Let's see, methought. I've done la Rosee, von Prittwitz's. Time for the Leibgarde? Why not. A quick flip through Knotel, Knotel and Seig... Red? Oh, that's a bit dull. Still, and... done!

That's three Alzheimer units done. There are about two and a half of the Prussians, plus a field artillery battery complete as well. I've another Prussian unit of foot plus two of Lancers lined up and ready to go. Then there are those Stadden Brits.

With whom shall they throw their lot?

On a completely different note, if you were considering a smallish Jacobite Rebellion game done completely out of existing stocks of metal, what would you do?

I'm thinking of a game something like Prestonpans, following the orders of battle that can be teased out of Duffy, perhaps element-based. Probably element-based.

In terms of granularity, I'd be wanting to depict the Anglo-Hanoverian dragoons at a squadron level and allow for the piquets on their right. It'd be nice to show the artillery off with 2-3 models (there were half a dozen coehorns and another half-dozen light field pieces) and 3-4 gunners. All with RSM miniatures plus a few Cran Taras. Heaven knows, I'll probably paint up some Irish Piquets at some stage, too.

"Ooh, Shiny" moment of the week? Minairons Spanish Republican Infantry in 20mm. Resist them if you dare.

Hurrah for the Gunners!

Fairly 'armless.

Awaiting their arms are a couple of Stadden infantry converted-with-paint to serve as gunners. I'm going to make a go of slicing some rifle arms about to see what can be done about their final look.

Thanks to everyone for their comments on the "Year Without Lead" post.

Having made the decision, I feel surprisingly good about it all. I've even had a friend join me in his own Lead Fast. Who knows - perhaps this could become the new "Movember"!

I'm planning to start on New Years' Eve and carry through the whole of 2014. To answer Jeff, yes I have a few last minute purchases planned.

Ross, I agree on your point about being more tightly focussed. A few small games would not hurt either.

PS - doing something about my eBay account might not hurt, either.

A Year Without Lead?

For some reason this week I've been in something of a reflective mood with regard to how I've been approaching my hobby in recent months. I think it comes from looking at a painting desk littered with bits and pieces of projects begun with wild enthusiasm and then dropped about three weeks later.

I've seen myself do this before. I think it was what led me to become for a while a disciple of the "project management" approach to the hobby. This had it's benefits. there is no way opn this earth I would have painted quite so many Spencer Smith plastics as I did (about 1200) going about in my usual amateurish way.

I dropped it though as it seemed too joyless a way of pursuing the hobby. Sure, I was getting excellent results, but I wasn't really enjoying the process too much. So, in pursuit of fun, I let myself go mad and pursue any old thing with no goals in mind whatever.

Now this was very satisfying, at least to the spendthrift in me, but it did lead to a big painting funk in the second half of the year as my piles of unpainted or part-painted things started to sap my will to continue with anything much.

So what to do?

What to do? Part of me wants to take a complete break from the hobby for a year and see whether I want to carry on afterwards. Knowing me, I doubt that's at all likely, but I am really in a mood to pack everything up and at least NOT BUY anything for a year. Part of my current malaise is at least partly based on guilt at pissing away huge amounts of money on stuff that basically gets put on a pile and left.

I'm curious to see how much money I'd save if I took a year off - a year without lead as it were.

Perhaps this is the year I could live off my hump. Maybe I could try to turn my lead-mountain into a lead mole-hill.

A year without lead.

Colenso, 15th December 1899

I'm finding myself quite inspired by Ross's efforts on the Boer War at the moment and as a result have taken up reading Pakenham at the moment as well as warious other bits and bobs including the Practical Wargamer Yearbook for 1999.This has led me on to read up a little on Colenso, Buller's last battle before he was superceeded as the commander of thritish forces in South Aftrica by Roberts.

Colenso was planned as a battle fought in the cause of the relief of Ladysmith.

As far as battles go, it was something of a flash in the pan as things went wrong for the British from the get-go. The boers would see it differently, of course! and indeed they had made masterly use of terrain and concelment in preparing their positions which, in conjunction with the smokeless powder used by their rifles and artillery used, rendered them practically invisible.

Buller wanted to assault the Boer positions on the far side of the Tugela which meandered through the battlefield by means of certain drifts (or fords) which provided crossing points. It would have been a bloody business for obvious reasons, but Buller had numbers (21,000 men in five brigades) and ought to have been able to do it.

However, things went terribly wrong, and the battle turned more into a rescue operation.

Rather than fight the whole battle out, the following possibilities come to mind:

Pulling Hart's Head out of the Noose.
*Hart believes his own maps rather than his native guide and actually finds the Bridle drift. The battle is then a straight crossing of the Tugela by his four Irish battalions in the teeth of the fire of one Boer unit.
*Hart's western-most unit stubles across the Drift by accident.
*Hart sees that he's heading straight into a salient, realises his error and sends out patrols left and right to ascertain the location of the Drift. This could make an interesting game. Sort of a river crossing where you have to find the ford!

Pulling Long's Fat out of the Fire.
*Long realises he's too close to the boer trench lines and pulls back, covered bu the naval guns.
*It's all gone horribly awry for Long, and it's down you you to save some honour by retreiving the guns in the face of intense rifle fire. This might make a good skirmish game. The British player might be tested by deciding on more or less infantry fire-support at the expense of additional gun teams.

Keep the Kop!
* Your Cavalrymen and Mounted Infantry have taken Hlangwane. If you had some guns and infantry to protect them, your fire could enfilade the whole Boer position, rendering it untenable. But could you hold out against increasingly strong Boer counter-attacks and will the Staff reply to your pleas for re-inforcement in time... or at all?

The Walking Dead...

Urrrh... Brainzzzzz...

Not too sure why I painted these, really. I seem to have had them in my collection since about 1986. I guess they finally "arrived" in the painting queue!

I would like to get some suitably undead decals for the shields, though.

Now - evil glowing green eyes or not?

Slowly but Surely

The Band Plays On

 I'm taking my time with this job, obviously! The next 2-3 miniatures are primed for painting now.

Re-Enactors?

Littler Little Wars

 I'm just starting to get into the swing of things for my "Littler Little Wars" project. As you can see, I've made a start on a few things as I try to come to grips with the overall look I want for the miniatures. I've compromised to a degree - I didn't really want to do a job as straightforward as that on the original Britains because I want to be able to use these with my Franco-Prussian War minis. 

 I won't be using line infantry as gunners. Fortunately the Stadden infantry come with a moveable rifle-arm on a peg which I will replace with something more suitable for a gunner. With a blue coat and a ball replacing the spike on his helmet, I feel he will do admirably.

How could I go past this glorious Boer War 4.7 " gun from TVAG? I bought a brace to make up a neat little battery. I tried to keep the paint job as true to the Britains gun as I possibly could. I might detail the spy-glass just a little... Half a dozen gunners to serve the gun with an officer to direct their activities per piece, two pieces per battery and a mounted officer to oversee the lot. I'd love to find something suitable to use as a GS Wagon.

 While I was away I took along a few horses and a few notions to try out. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

And Skinners Horse take them out for a spin. They all need degrees of touching up due to handling whilst they were being painted. Curses! Oddly though, in looking at them I am reminded that Britains boxes only held about half a dozen cavalry and eight infantry. Food for thought?

The Army of the King of Kings

The Great King has many of these, for yea, truly, they are without number. Or provenance. Can anyone shed any light as to who might have produced these? I initially thought Tradition 25mm, but no, the catalogue is mute on these.

I bought them off eBay about a year ago thinking, that with a little work they could be made quite acceptable. Now I'm thinking they are pretty acceptable in their own right and have moved right on up the re-basing schedule.

On the topic of the Tradition catalogue, there are some nice-looking hoplites there. Hmmm?

UPDATE - I've created a new blog to carry the burden of all these portentious ancient writings:

http://spaaaartaaans.blogspot.com.au/

Finnish Sturmi

The Bits

 Sometimes - more fool I - I get to work early, sometimes I can't be bothered getting up from my desk on my lunch break. So what to do?

Make a plastic model kit of course! The Airfix StuG III has always been one of my favourites and despite being more than fifty years old, holds up pretty well today. Oh sure, the details may be a bit soft here and there, but dimensionally, the old girl's pretty good. Well, in every way except the weedy main armament.


The Bob

 So, a quick fossick in the spares box and we have one of many PAK 40 barrels left over from all those Opel Blitz kits and we are sorted.

Next step, while enthusiasm was high was to take the pin vise and drill out the wheel holes - all eighty-four of them. While the pin vise was still hot, I carefully drilled out the PAK 40 muzzle-brake.

So, a few words on the kit - it's a StuG III G, late production type with the cast "sow's head" mantlet. A fair basis on which to produce one of the batch of 30 the Finns took delivery of in 1944 and then modified on the basis of their own experience.

For me this means concrete armour on the drivers and loaders positions, an armoured shield on the drivers visor, extra applique armour on the lower hull sides, adding the tool-box rack over the rear engine deck, fine mesh grills over the engine intakes and then of course plastering the while thing with zimmeritt.

The first step then will be to assemble the hull and get those applique plates on.

PS - This morning whilst at home I got cracking on a dozen of the 20mm Garrison Phrygians to go with some of the new chappies - using these latter as painting models. Lovely kit.

Well, well, well. Look what we have here.

'Shun!

So, after teasing you all unmercifully with hints on reception commites and so on, they have arrived.

I had been talking on and off for months about acquiring these from an enigmatic and doubtless wildly eccentric gamer, rules writer, raconteur and general man about town. It was a long dance, but finally we took the plunge*, and I certainly am delighted to welcome these and other figures to my own ancients collection. I will be doing a few more posts on the RM collection as we go on, so watch this space.

Today we have a neat little phalanx of Rospak Greeks. I've been an admirer of the "Rospak" plastic ancients for some time and am glad to say they look as good in the flesh as they do in various images I have pored over in the on-line world. So far as I understand they were only relatively briefly available in 1981-82 from Heroics and Ross and are therefore fairly difficult to find nowadays.

*OK, I finally extracted my finger...

Welcoming Committee 2

Not the 300.

Perhaps waiting for some Persians? Who can say. Rose Prestige Greeks from Garrison Miniatures. Shield decals are from VVV and the wire spears are from North Star. The rest is all me. And I think I need to invest in some microset and microsol. And some gloss varnish.

The Shape of Things to Come

I got a couple of nice packages in the mail yesterday. One from TVAG with my 4.7" guns in it, and another all the way from Sweden. Now apart from the Emperor Napoleon I and a small selection of the Grenadiers of His Imperial Guard, there were also a few nice British bandsmen.

I am holding myself from doing anything more than cleaning and priming them at the moment as there are another 8 Greeks in the queue ahead of them, but the weekend is starting to beckon.

Plots and Schemes

What's that Sahib?

One has as ever too many projects on the go. You may have noticed over the past couple of weeks images of old Rose Medes, Traditon Redcoats and so on. These are part of my two principal projects at the moment. On the one hand I'm getting an ancients army off the ground. It's looking like it'll shape up as Greeks and Persians, so I'm assuming Marathon and Platea will be on the cards at some stage. I've just knocked out a dozen Skythian/Saka archers and for the first time in a really long while I am really enjoying the painting. I'm just about to move onto a 24-strong Greek Phalanx (first of about 6 or 7, I think) who are also from Garrison/Rose and they are proving to be good fun as well, so things are looking up.

With regard to the bengal lancers above, I want a Britains-style army in 30mm, so off to the lead-pile and the Tradition catalogue I went. I had the Bengal lancer castings knocking about for quite a while - they'd been looking for a job and nothing quite seemed to fit, but this just might do. I'll add to them more cavalry from the "Crimea" range. Hussars first; led by Lord Cardigan methinks, and why not? Then some infantry - from the Corps of Drums range, I'm looking at three 18-strong units, with an option on the HR Grenadier Guards and some of the Household Cavalry, too.

Artillery is tricky, but there is a 4.7" in the Houston's Guns range at TVAG, and I think the Conoisseur Colonial 9lb might also do the trick. Gunners will need to be worked up from the Stadden infantry figures, or perhaps from the Indian Army range?

Anyway, give it six months and I hope to be out in the backyard with a smart brigade facing off against my Alzheimers and Prussians with a clockwork train and a monitor to boot - all in time for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Reception Committee

Led by Hornaphernes the Mighty, the Medes stand ready in reserve

Awaiting new arrivals are my 30mm Rose Prestige Medean infantry. A lovely figure and so easy to paint. The next block of 8 is ready to be started. 24 down, 16 to go!

Test Shots

Stadden 30mm British Infantry 1890

 A valiant Toy Soldier marches by. I wonder how this might look with some of the Houston 4.7" on Land Carriage that TVAG are selling. Hm.

Yes, I lost the left arm

And now that I see him, the piping on the tunic needs a tidy up, I forgot the piping on his collar and - ah - shouldn't the cuffs on his tunic be of the "jam pot" variety? Still, I do like the way the jacket, trousers and equipment came up. Checking my Osprey, it looks as though his personal equipment was very accurately done, too.