Goodwill to all men

Apparently the world is going to end tomorrow at 11.00 am GMT so I thought I’d better put this blog-post up now rather than leave it until nearer Christmas. This is FN82 French L.I. Voltigeur (charging). I have five of these figures that I’ll be using to complete the Carabineer Company of the 9^th legere.

A quick look back over this year’s crop of posts reveals that I have added a total of 52 painted Hinton Hunt foot figures and 5 mounted personality figures to the armies. This may seem pretty weedy compared to the prolific output of many other wargamers, but for me it is pretty good going – and this year I have painted every one of them myself.

So it just remains to say – A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers.

Now I'm off to the garage where I have built a survival chamber under the wargame table...

9th legere Officer

This figure is FN/80 Light Infantry Officer (charging). He is one of six figures that will make up the Carabineer Company of the French 9th legere. Although technically light infantry, this will be a full 24-figure unit based in close order.

Over the course of this project I have found that taking a paintbrush to these old figures makes me appreciate them far more than merely looking at them ever could. This one is a gem, the pose is lovely and full of character and it reminds me why I decided to collect Hinton Hunt figures back in the 70s. My wargaming school friends back then preferred Minifigs because of the price, the superior mail order service and the virtually flash free castings – fair enough I suppose – but I could never get very excited about the way they looked.

I’ve actually already painted one of these before as part of the 10th legere (click here to take a look). For the new unit I will be using castings of FN/254 Voltigeur (charging) to make up the Voltigeur and Chasseur companies, all from the figures recently donated by Douglas.

Back to the… drawing board!

We finished the rule play-test game this week and the good news is that the Duke of Wellington finally broke his run of bad luck and won a battle. The bad news is that I finished the game pretty disappointed with the latest version of my rules Muskets & Marshals.

I realised that I had fallen into the trap of over complicating things, which was contrary to my original aim of a simple enjoyable game. For me wargaming is about having a bit of fun (and hopefully winning of course) but during much of this game I had the same sinking feeling I used to get in maths exams.

After some head scratching and some fairly drastic cutting, I have reduced the playing rules down to just three sheets of A4 paper with another two or three sheets of other rules and definitions. I’m going to do some more solo play testing but I think I might finally have cracked it.

For the battle report click here.