The Battle of the Admin Error (Part 1)

Yesterday we had another battle in the Hinton Hut. Matt G (Waterloo to Mons) flew in from darkest Essex, Nigel made an early morning drive up from Cumbria and Tony (Prometheus in Aspic) sortied across the Forth having collected Matt en route from Edinburgh – an excellent bit of logistics from all concerned.

This was the biggest game I have yet staged in the Hut having reconfigured my table to 8’ x 4’ specially for the occasion and laid out approximately 1,000 figures. Each general took control of half their respective army. Tony (Napoleon) had the French right, Nigel (Mack) the Franco-Austrians on his left. Matt (Wellington) took the right side of the Allied army whilst I (Blucher) had the left.

The initial setup of the armies - Allies on the left, Franco-Austrians on the right. The 8' x 4' table is running longways in the cabin and there was still a surprising amount of space for the four players.

This is the map I used for the initial deployments, the resolution of this image isn't great but you can get the gist from it.

I pre-deployed all the troops before the game but each player was allowed to make three changes to their dispositions in advance as below:

1. Swap the locations of 2 units (e.g. “swap the position of the 45^th Foot with the 25^th Foot”)

2. Advance an infantry/cavalry/artillery unit 8” directly forward.

3. Change the formation of an infantry unit (e.g. from line to column)

Victory Conditions - at the end of turn eight VP’s were to be calculated as follows:

6 VP for possession of an objective (red stars on the map)

2 VP for each enemy infantry or cavalry unit removed from play or currently routing

2 VP for each enemy general KIA

1 VP for each enemy infantry or cavalry unit currently disordered

1 VP for each enemy flag/eagle captured (cavalry capture a flag/eagle from infantry that they rout on a die roll of 4,5 or6)

1 VP for each enemy artillery battery destroyed

1 VP for each enemy skirmisher group destroyed

In the event of a draw the side who managed to use the most quotes (in context) from the film Waterloo were the winners!

Allied left (Prussians). As you can see I chose to push forward a couple on infantry units towards the VP objective on the hill.

French right. Tony has advanced his skirmishers towards the hill.

Allied right (Wellington). Matt made the smart decision to advance two of his units towards the church VP location.

French left (Franco-Austrians). Nigel has advanced infantry and a gun towards the VP location to his front.

It was only when we started to play that I discovered my admin error having made a copy and paste mistake that resulted in Nigel’s Toskana Dragoons being given an A+ rating (rather then the intended B rating). This was to have dire consequences for Wellington but more on that in the next post.

OPC Cuirassier – Test Figure

I’ve completed my test figure for what will be the 8th Cuirassiers. This unit will be made up entirely of one-piece castings of FN/102 Cuirassier Trooper (mounted) charging. The figures are vintage castings of very high quality, the swords are complete and there was very little evidence of flash when I stripped the old paint job (they had previously been painted as Dragoons). This is quite remarkable as Hinton Hunt OPC’s are notorious for having great boulders of flash attached, particularly around the horses hind legs.

The figures were amongst several lots I bought last year from Ian Hinds (as were the infantry unit I just painted) and I would classify them all as ‘first generation’ castings from a time when the moulds were still quite decent. This is borne out by the comment from Ian Hinds that they were originally in the collection of Neville Dickinson of Miniature Figurines fame.

As always, this OPC was a challenge to paint and doesn’t look too fantastic on a zoomed-in photo. However, I think they should look passable when mustered together as a unit.