One-Hour Wargames 14: Static Defence

We are currently running a simple campaign comprising linked scenarios from Neil Thomas' book One Hour Wargames.  The outline of the campaign is described here, with the idea that whoever won the first game would get to choose the next scenario from a limited but branching list.  As recounted here, I won the first encounter, a 20mm Napoleonic French versus Prussians affair, which meant I got to select the second game we would play.

The scenario I chose was No. 14 Static Defence, where the defender was required to occupy two objectives (a hill and a built up area (BUA)), whereas the attacker only needed to hold one of them by the end of the game (15 turns).  Furthermore, to add to the defender's woes he would at all times have to keep at least two units within 12 inches of the hill and two units within 12 inches of the BUA.

For this game we stayed in the Napoleonic period but I was able to field my new, 15mm Warrior/Roundway Russian army for the first time.  My opponents would be French with some Bavarian allies and the rules used were our trusty WRG 1685-1845.  Order of battle was as follows:

Russian (6 units)
1 x Murmansk Musketeers (Lithuania Inspection)
1 x Rostov Musketeers (Lithuania Inspection)
1 x Tomsk Musketeers (Siberia Inspection)
1 x Ekaterinoslav Grenadiers (Lithuania Inspection)
1 x Emperor's Cuirassiers
1 x 6th Jägers

French/Bavarian (6 units)
2 x French Line
1 x Old Guard
1 x Bavarian Line
1 x French Cuirassiers
1 x French Foot Artillery
 
The scenario puts the defender in the difficult position of having to defend two objectives but not knowing which one the attacker will go for.  The obvious objective would be the BUA, because it is closer to the attacker, but that's not how I decided to play it.  The map below shows the terrain and also what happened...

My plan was to attack the hill at the defender's side of the board, bypassing the BUA altogether.  I would advance directly to and assult the hill using my cuirassiers as a screen, whilst my jägers would invest the central wood to harass the enemy from there, thus securing my flank.

The French plan was to defend the BUA in strength (with the Old Guard and the artillery in attendance) and use the cuirassers as a mobile defence in the centre.

My plan went well.  As my infantry advanced in column up the left towards the hill, my curassiers surged forward to engage their French counterparts, whilst my jägers marched into the central wood.

The cavalry quickly engaged and the French found that they were no match for my newly painted Russians.

Meanwhile, the French, realising that the BUA had been completely bypassed, desperately started to move the defending troops out and towards the other side of the table, forgetting (perhaps) the requirement to stay within 12 inches of that objective.

In the centre things were going very badly for the French cavalry.  Being forced to flee they were pursued (and eventually caught) by the Russian cuirassiers (note hastily redeploying French artillery about to be trampled).

As for the Russian infantry, they stoically (and inexorably) continued their advance towards the hill changing into line formation for the assault.  The two defending French infantry regiments looked on, nervously.

And so to the attack.  As the Russians got closer, the French fired and forced the Tomsk regiment on the right of my line to halt.

But the regiments of the Lithuania Inspection continued forward, returning fire, when something rather unfortunate (for the French) happened:

This resulted in the French regiment on the left being all but blown away and its tattered remains turned around and fled.  The Ekaterinslav Grenadiers then moved forward putting foot on the hill, menacing the remaining French infantry.

Meanwhile, the Bavarians and Old Guard were moving towards their collapsing right flank (the Russian cuirassiers having chased the French cavalry off the table in the background), but we all knew it would be too late.

And so it proved, as a full volley from the Tomsk Musketeers punched holes in the last French regiment on the hill and the grenadiers moved in for the kill.  It was all over.

So, a resounding victory for my new Russians and a great start to their career.  I would take credit for the win, but perhaps their general deserves most of the glory.

And with two wins under my belt, my thoughts turned to the next game in the campaign.  According to the system I'd set up the choice was between No. 13 Escape and No. 18 Counter-Attack.

I swithered a bit between the two, but considered that as I'd won two games in a row I ought to make the next one more of challenge for me, so I decided on No. 13 and that will be the next AAR in this series.

One-Hour Wargames 16: Advance Guard

This is the after action report (AAR) for the first game in the One-Hour Wargames Campaign that we started recently.  The idea was to begin with a neutral 'encounter' sort of scenario and see how it went from there.  For this game my freshly painted 20mm Napoleonic French (Italeri mainly) would be up against Geoff's Prussians.

The scenario allowed both sides to have six units and the objective was to be in uncontested possession of the central village after 15 moves.  For this game we used the One-Hour Wargames horse and musket rules, slightly amended. The book suggests that orders of battle be decided randomly.  Consequently starting forces looked like this:

French
3 x line infantry
1 x light infantry
2 x cavalry (dragoons)

Prussians
3 x line infantry
1 x cavalry (dragoons)
2 x artillery

As you can see from this, the French started with more infantry (including light infantry) and more cavalry than the Prussians, who were lumbered with two artillery batteries.  As we shall see, the lack of mobility, in what was suppposed to be an encounter battle, with both armies marching on to the table, doomed the Prussians from the start.

Scenario 16: Advance Guard

My plan was very simple: to advance my line infantry rapidly to the objective, using the cavalry to sweep round the open left flank (see map).  One of my infantry units would meanwhile hold the gap between the village and the wood to cover my light infantry into the wood on the right flank.  The plan worked perfectly.

French troops rushing the village

Cavalry to the left of me, infantry to the right

In fact the Prussians had barely got going before the French were already in the village and were beginning to threaten both flanks.

Prussians caught flat-footed

On the left, one unit of French dragoons immediately engaged the Prussian cavalry in hand to hand combat, whilst the other sneaked round the back of the melee to threaten the advancing infantry, forcing it into square.  In the centre the Prussian infantry stopped to fire at my troops in the village whilst another French infantry unit moved up on the left of the village.

Meanwhile, on the right my light infantry had advanced (very) rapidly and had managed to get into the woods without being intercepted.  Again the Prussian infantry had lined up opposite the French and started to engage in a fire fight.

From this point on things deteriorated very rapidly for the Prussians.  On the left after a few rounds of back and forth, the Prussians dragoons were defeated and the French dragoons then moved against the flank of the infantry facing the village.  Meanwhile the other dragoon unit had crossed the front and/or side of the square and charged the Prussian guns before they could bear, whilst the French light infantry in the woods had extended into line to engage the other Prussian battery from cover.

Not looking good for the Prussians frankly

The last blow of the game came when the French dragoons crashed into the flank of the Prussian infantry.  And there was nothing he could do about it.

Contact!

Neil Thomas' rules for horse and musked are quite brutal (to say the least) and the Prussians were swept away in one go.  And with the very real prospect of the adjacent Prussian line about to suffer the same fate, with the Prussians having basically no chance of getting into the village let alone taking control of it, that was the end of the game.

Endgame

Overall, the game was a frustrating one for the Prussians.  They were only able to deploy slowly because they had two artillery units and were deficient in cavalry.  The fact that the French got to move first, combined with the rapid movement rates, long shooting ranges and brutal outcomes from any sort of reverse, which define the OHW rules, meant that right from the start the Prussians were always going to have an uphill struggle to win.

On the other hand, it was an emphatic victory for the French and even more enjoyable because for most of my troops this was their first battle.  Perhaps it is true that the better the paint job the more likely one is to win, if I may say so myself (this thesis may require more research).

Anyway, with a win for the French the honour falls to me to choose the next battle and I have decided this will be #14: Static Defence, which will feature in the next campaign AAR.

Hurrah and Hussar!

Just to prove I'm still capable of painting figures as well as making buildings, here are a few squadrons of French Napoleonic hussars I completed this month.

1st Hussars

These are Italeri French Hussars (#6008), which are very nice figures and easily match the dragoons I painted recently.  The figures come in a variety of uniform combinations, with some sporting campaign overalls, with or without pelisse worn or slung.

2nd Hussars

I decided to make six bases and paint each pair as a different regiment.  So, to get a variety of uniforms I settled on painting the 1st, 2nd and 6th regiments.  The box comes with 17 figures, so to make up the last squadron I had to add a figure from somewhere else to get to a round 18 figures and therefore six bases of three.

6th Hussars

The extra figure is wearing a busby, thus masquerading as an elite company trooper, and is actually the officer from the Italeri Guard Horse Artillery set (#6018), the rest of which may feature in a future post.

With these hussars, I'm nearly done with 20mm French Napoleonic cavalry, although I did get a box of Italeri French Light Cavalry #6080 (i.e. Chasseurs a Cheval) a few months ago, which as a cavalry type were more numerous and more commonly deployed than hussars.  So I may get around to painting them next year, once I've got a few other projects out of the way first.

French Generals

I've not posted for quite a while but that doesn't necessarily mean I've been idle on the wargames front.  Although I have.  A bit.  Anyway, here are some figures I completed recently.

They are three 20mm Minifigs French generals that I must have bought some time in the 1980s and which have been lying around undercoated for decades.  So, as I've been painting 20mm French Napoleonics recently I thought I'd get these finished too.

Acceptable casualties.

Having improved my horse painting (in my opinion) over the past few years with my efforts on dragoons and cuirassiers, etc., the horses were straightforward.  However, for these guys I wanted to have them on round bases (not WRG 1685-1845 standard general bases, note) with something else going on to distract from what are fairly dull figures (apart from the paint job obviously).

For the first one shown I finally managed to work in a casualty figure from my first ever box of Airfix Napoleonic French (c. 1976), just lying there whilst the general rides by nonchalantly.

The next one is probably the dullest figure in terms of pose (ignore the hat), so I painted him as per the illustration on the dust cover of my trusty 1977 reprint of Jack Cassin-Scott's Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars in Colour 1796-1814, which apparently was Marshall Bessieres' getup.

You want it in green and red?  Why, anything you say colonel.

For this one I decorated the base with some gravel and behind the figure is a tree-stump made from a clove I found in a takeaway curry (I've got a few of those drying in my bits box now).

Note clove pretending to be a tree-stump.

It was a bit bendy even after drying so it has had a good few coats of paint to stiffen it up.  Also, I had thought to add some foliage to it but then considered that maybe there would be just too much green on this one.  It's amazing how much you can write about something you found in a curry.

The last figure is more soberly attired and sitting calmly on his horse beside a wheel from a (1970s) Airfix cannon (the one that came off the cannon on a dragoon base in fact).

Three wheels on my waggon... no wait, here it is.

However, displaying remarkable sangfroid the general is ignoring something else going on on the other side of the base, which is slightly more alarming.

Well pick it up and chuck it back then.

As you can see, a large cannonball has furrowed the ground just next to his horse.   This was made using one of those round headed pins you used to get with new shirts.  I cut most of the pin off leaving about 5mm so I could secure it into the base.  A spot of black paint and some light dry-brushing with steel finished the job.

Jägermeister

I've still got the painting bug and am currently working on my 20mm French Napoleonic collection (see earlier posts this year).  Having completed various infantry units and some excellent Italeri dragoons, I thought I should really paint those Esci cuirassiers that have been under the bed since about 1990.  In fact I'd been in two minds about painting them at all because the figures aren't as good as the dragoons by a long chalk and I was thinking maybe I should just get some Italeri carabiniers instead.

Deliberating on all this I was of course distracted along the way and impulse-bought and painted some HäT Industrie Württemberg cavalry (Jägers) in the two weeks it took me to decide what to do.  These were the first HäT figures I'd painted and I found them quite nice with a lot of well defined detail.  The plastic, although a bit flexible, takes the paint very well.

There are only four poses (12 figures altogether) on three identical sprues in the box (and only two types of horse), but one man on each sprue comes with a choice of arms that you have to glue on.  I made one of them a trumpeter in the vivid yellow coat.  I think the troopers look quite good in their black gauntlets, dark green tunics and yellow trim.

Based up for the WRG 1685-1845 rules on 60mm x 40mm bases, with my usual concoction of coarse sand, painted dark earth then dry brushed in a sandy colour and then flocked, I consider that they've turned out very well.  And I think I'm really getting the hang of painting horses now after my initial hesitations. 

Oh, and finally, here are the cuirassiers. I had two ancient packets of them stashed away and was able to make quite a few bases although whether they'll all get an outing at the same time remains to be seen.

So that's it then, apart from six bases of Italeri French hussars to finish and perhaps one or two more Italeri line infantry regiments (possibly to be painted as Saxons or Swiss, just for a change).

However, I'd really like to get some HäT Württemberg infantry now, as well as the HäT French Guard Chasseurs a Pied, but neither seem to be available in the UK at present.  Still, I could always acquire and paint up some carabiniers in the meantime...

A Few More French

As the title of this post suggests here are a few more 20mm(ish) plastic French Napoleonic infantry that I completed last month.

These are the next regiment of Italeri French that I posted about a few months ago.  As I mentioned previously there are enough figures, including command figures, in the two boxes I got to make six regiments of 16 figures each.  These are based for the WRG 1685-1845 rule system.

Reviewing where I am now though I'm not sure I'm going to need many more infantry regiments so I will take a view on what I need and whether I should be using my time more usefully on some of my (many) other projects.

However, next up on the plastic Naploeonic front are some cuirassiers and some very nice Italeri Hussars (in shakos) which I am looking forward to getting finished.  I'm also going to get a better camera as these images are far too blurry and not up to my preferred standard.

Pretty in Pink

Like a lot of people I've always been a bit nervous about painting horses and therefore cavalry, but needs must and I actually enjoyed painting these 1/72 scale Napoleonic French dragoons by Italeri.  I decided to get these figures because previously the only plastic cavalry I had had were the original Airfix cuirassiers, which are really terrible figures.  Plus, I thought it would be nice to have dragoons instead for a change. 

The figures are excellent and the plastic is quite stiff and takes the paint fairly well.  There are 17 horsemen in the pack so I could therefore just about make six bases of three (on 60mm x 40mm bases as per WRG 1685-1845).  The box art has them depicted as one of the regiments with pink facings and so I thought 'you know, why not?' 

After the figures had been washed and glued together (with standard PVA) they were undercoated in black acrylic.  I painted the horses first, giving them a liberal coating of Tamiya Red Brown (XF-64), Hull Red (XF-9) or Linoleum Deck Brown (XF-79), apart from the trunpeter's horse which was base-coated in light grey. 

Thereafter, using a combination of dark washes and highlights the horses were finished.  Quite easy really.  Once the horses were done the riders were painted using my usual 2-stage technique, that is I block in the main areas with a shade coat and then just add one layer of highlighting - my eyesight and skills aren't good enough to do more than that (plus I've not got the time).

For the final base I was one figure short of the 18 that was needed, so instead I had two figures galloping past a destroyed cannon.  This was an old Airfix one from the 1970s that was still knocking about but had lost a wheel.  This was repainted and added to the base.

I quite like this little diorama because although actually the same figure, the riders look different because they are on different horses.  I also like the way they seem to be looking down at the gun as they ride by.

French Infantry

Things are a bit chaotic at the moment (at work and at home) and my small workbench is barely visible what with half painted figures, bottles of glue and bits of polystyrene and cardboard all over the place.  All the signs of frenetic multi-tasking.  Anyway, here are some figures that I finished last week or so: Italeri French Napoleonic infantry.

These are very nice figures and far outstrip any other 1/72 scale plastics I've seen (mainly on Plastic Soldier Review, rather than in the flesh).  Being later period figures they are wearing trousers over their breeches which makes a change from the old Airfix figures I have painted previously (see here and here).

I also took the opportunity to make them a bit more campaign style with some of them wearing brown trousers.  The poses in the packs are fairly static but they are nice and robust looking and the detail easily rivals things like the 28mm Perry plastics (in my opinion).  In fact these figures are actually quite tall, being closer to 25mm than the regulation 20mm.

There are voltigeurs and grenadiers in the mix but for my units I just painted them all as fusileers (although I left the red strips on the grenadiers' shakos - I may paint over them later).  I quite like the figure reaching back into his cartridge box, although from some angles he looks like he's massaging his lumbago.

Having bought two packets of these I can make six 16 figure units (based on 60mm x 20mm bases as per WRG 1685-1845) and because there are three officers, drummers and standard bearers per pack that means I don't have to scrabble around in my spares box looking for figures to convert for the command elements.

For information, my painting style for this scale (and 15mm) is to undercoat in black and then paint a shade coat (light grey for white areas) and then overpaint the main colour, letting some of the shade layer show through.  I'm not patient enough to do that whole three layer system thing required for larger figures.

For the faces I paint them a sort of rust colour and then dab four points of flesh on the chin, nose and cheeks, which does the trick.  Finally, I base them using coarse shelly sand stuck on with PVA glue, giving it a wash of dark earth, followed by a dry brush with a sand colour and then with some Javis flock added leaving plenty of earth showing through.

French Artillery

It's nice to be back painting again and here is what I finished last week, some French Napoleonic artillery.

Esci cannons with Airfix crew

These are 20mm plastics and the guns come from the Esci foot artillery set, which actually has guard artillery crew.  Being a bit more down to earth I prefer to have fewer rather than more guard units and therefore I paired the guns up with some Airfix (line) artillery crew.

12pdrs

The Esci set is quite generous and comes with two normal cannon (12pdrs I think) plus two howitzers.

The howitzer

I had managed to misplace one of the howitzer barrels over the years (it turned up just after I'd completed all these, of course) and so I used a cannon from the Airfix set.  The Airfix gun carriages are far too small and have the wrong number of spokes on the wheels, amongst other problems, but the gun itself when put onto the Esci carriage doesn't look too bad.

Airfix cannon on an Esci carriage

As the cannon I used was from the Airfix set I nostagically crewed this piece with the few figures I had remaining from the the very first Airfix artillery figures I got, from sometime back in the 1970s.  Not many of them left but they still paint up OK (I had refurbished the remaining marching figures as an infantry unit previously).

The guns and crew are on 40mm x 60mm bases and my usual basing technique of coarse shelly sand painted in Revell Dark Earth, with a bit of dry brushing and then selective flocking, completed them nicely.