Merry christmas everyone

more content on the way - and soon a sum-up of this year for me in modelling

An explanation

Hello everybody
For those of you that have been following this blog over the last week or so will have noticed that it has been a while since I last posted on this blog. I have been working on it, and there will be a post by this weekend. I will leave it up to you to speculate about what it is that I have been doing.

And it's finished!!

As many of you (I would hope all of you) are aware, recently I have been working on a holiday themed Napoleonic diorama, featuring a French Cuirassier feeding his horse during the French retreat from Russia of 1812. I am happy to announce that I have finished with this diorama, although I am as yet undecided about the name of it.

If you have any ideas about what the nae should be, or any tips on how I could improve on it, please leave a message in the comments section below. The most highly suggested name will become (if I approe of it) the title of my diorama.

More progress on my Napoleonic Christmas diorama

Hello there folks.
With the holiday season drawing nearer and nearer, as many of you have probably guessed from my previous post, I decided that it was time to honor the French retreat from Russia in the winter (or summer for me) of 1814. I decided to show a singular French Cuirassier, obviously seperated from the main body of the army, feeding and comforting his horse, probably after a Russian raid. I think it show's the nicer parts of the harsh enviroment that the French had to fight their way through, with less than a 30,000 men making their way back to France. At the moment I have almost completed painting on the figures, and will in the next day or so be finishing them off and working on the landscape that they are standing in. Please leave a comment below to advise me as to what I should name it.

A hint at my next project

The recature of Field-Marshal von Morris

Today came the battle, between the French and Prussian, for the recapture or execution of the Prussian Field-Marshal. It started out with small armies on each side, a force of 15 cavalry and 10 infantry for the Prussians, and 2 cannon and the capturers of 4 infantry for the French. The Prussians were quick to err, sending their cavalry into charge straight at my cannons. My big guns shot at the Prussians, quickly halting the advance and leaving 6 of 8 dead, and routing one of the remaining two. I then moved the guards into a safer position behind the cannons. He moved in to the attack again, this time killing one of my cannon crew before getting shot off by my infantry. I fired my cannons again, killing two of his infantry, and he took his next turn. It went a lot like this for a while until I had lost 1 cannon's worth of crew, and he had lost his entire cavalry and about 1/4 of his infantry. Things were getting desperate for him, but I only had 2 infantry and 1 cannon left. So he charged, all 7 of his remaining infantry, supported by a single cavalryman. It was hillarious. For a while at least. Until he elimintated my cannon and infantry and the Field-Marshal took off. He had one infantryman and one cavalryman left, plus the Field-Marshal, but he had won.

A tiny battle

Now that I've finally posted Friday's post, I can get back to writing the everyday relatively short posts about the stuff that I do most days. Today was one of those days, so we decided to do a very small game (3 people, 10 troops each), with Prussians and Russians vs French. This was a battle to the last man, and was started by the Prussians. The game progressed relatively quickly, with me taking the defensive while the other two fought it out. But then something rather odd happened. I realised that, leading the Prussian army, was Mr M's best general, the one who had so far survived every battle that he had played in, and he was pinned by the Russians. They captured him and sent away 2 men to escort him. I saw a weak spot left in the Russian defence, with most of their army away, and quickly surrounded and killed Sir Paintwell, the commander of the Russian army. So a quite succesful game all up for me.

My first experience with a new mat

It would be an understatement that I was getting slightly tired of playing completely on simply my wooden floor or table, and so yesterday I decided that I would cash out and buy a mat, simply one to represent the texture of grass, nothing fancy, 1.45 - 1.5 meters (4.75 - 5 feet). As you can see by the image below, I have simply used childrens building blocks to create the scenery around which I play, and have represented hills by placing objects of varying thickness underneath the mat.

Now to my experience with playing on it. It is quite a small mat and so we were playing with relatively small armies (40 infantry and 10 cavalry each - just a small skirmish), and was using some rules that I had come up with, and we were for the first time using cameras to track troop movements.

So on to a brief description of our game, which lasted around 2 and a half hours. I designed the terrain and let my opponent (Prussian) choose which side he would like to start his playing from. He chose the side with the town and forest, which in hindsight would have meant that he would have had an advantage to play defensively.
We tossed up for starting, and I won, and so began to move the front rows of my column into a single defensive row, at the base of the hill, and sent my cavalry around the base of the hill in an attempt to take the south of the town.
My opponent - let us call him Mr M, then proceded to prioritise capturing the town, putting my original plan for caturing the town aside.

Now I had in reserve a group of 20 soldiers, ready in case of the failure of the rest of my army, waiting. This included several of my veterans from previous battles, waiting in the rear of my army. I also sent out a small patrol of five men to form a bayonet hedge as an early defence in case of a cavalry charge from the side of the opponent. He proceded to attack these, a move that wasn't a particularly brilliant move from his behalf, with a scout force of only 2 cuirassiers, losing both of these for the loss of only two of mine. Having learned the error of this move, I presumed that he wouldn't come back to fight them, and left them there, without reenforcing them, just in case of another small attack.

I then moved my cavalry in toward the wheat field (yes, that's what that is), where he had placed another two of his cavalry, presumably in an attempt to draw my troops away from their ideal position on the hill. He had also sent several troops over the bridge to draw the main part of the fire. I attacked these, who were in skirmishing order, and so weren't any particular threat to my charge. His 9 troops, attacked by five of my cuirassiers, lost six of their number, taking out four of mine.

In his turn, he retreated his 3 remaining men, and sent his cavalry over the fence to kill my last remaining cuirassier. 

It was then my turn. I sent my remainging five cavalry into a charge at his, killing them both for no losses. I then moved the rest of my front line troops into a position where I could resume the charge and combine cavalry and infantry to take the bridge and thus the town.
In his next turn, Mr M (as we shall now call him) concentrated the majority of his remaining troops into the town, in a last ditch attempt to turn my attack away. He sent 10 of them into the area sorrounding the bridge, with the rest in a Guerrilla style hide away in the nooks and crannies. 

Now it was my turn. I sent my cavalry over the bridge at the same time that my infantry let out a volley of shots. It had a devastating effect on the enemy, killing 7/10 and routing the remaining three, who were then cut down by the sabres of my cavalry-men, for the loss of only on of my own, and I stormed my infantry over the bridge and into the town. It was then that the Guerrillas attacked, out of the shadows of the houses, and shot at my troops, but luck was obviously on my side, either that or they had been terribly trained, for all but one of their shots missed. He then moved his remaining cavalry in towards the edge of the town, and retreated those infantry that had been involved in the fray, leaving my soldiers prey for the oncoming cavalry-men. But it was my turn now. I sent my own cavalry onto the offensive, and formed bayonet hedges with those men who were close enough to others, moving these out into a more easily defendable position, waiting for the fight to come. The cavalry impacted on one another, sabres clashing, the sound of steel on steel. But only one side could come out on top. And I won it. All four of his cavalry had been defeated, for the loss of two of mine. And one of his losses had been a high ranking cavalry officer.

It was his turn. He moved his commander and five troops for defence onto a hilltop and sent the remainder of his troops into battle positions in a last ditch attempt to drive me off.

He was almost successful, killing over 95% of my troops before losing his last man. I began to move my reserve troops towards the battle, but he retreated, leaving me in conrol of the battlefield. I had won.

My amateurish attempts at Voltigeurs

A good four years ago, when I was just beginning to get into the hobby, I bought myself several Italeri 1/72 Napoleonic miniature kits, including the current main part of my infantry, the Voltigeurs. At the time I wasn't much good at painting fine detail (in fact I still aren't), and so ended up with not quite what I would have liked. So, come this year, when I was just getting back into Napoleonics after a long period of doing ww1 and 2 stuff (evrything from the ww1 'Eindecker' to the ww2 'Tiger Tank') I decided to fix the mess that I had created with my extremely uncoordinated hand. After just over a month of off and on painting, I am finally at a point where I can say that I am almost done with them and am now doing minute details such as regimental insignia. I have decided to base them on the 1st regiment of the Young Guard, with their yellow plumes.

 While waiting for these to dry I have also been doing a side poject of Prussian Cuirassiers of the Garde du Corpe. These have been relatively simple to paint, the uniform being largely white, with small amounts of red.

A quick word about myself

As this is to be the first post on this new blog, I would like to say a quick word about myself and what you can expect from it. I am a wargamer/painter and will make/play anything historical, although I have a slight inclination to Napoleonics, specifically those in 1/72 scale. I am based in New Zealand and will generally be found most evenings working on some sort of model project. In the Napoleonic Era, I have drifted towards the side of the French, notably that of 1814 - 15. This blog will mostly consist of updates on modelling projects that I an doing, with some mentions of notable wargames that I have. Anyway, thats enough about me for the time being. You can find more out about me in the coming posts.