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.

French 25th ligne Completed

As you may have guessed these have taken me a lot longer to complete than I expected. Several reasons for this firstly, I got sucked down the rabbit hole of rebasing my old 15mm AWI armies – I have no idea why I did this. Secondly, I got knocked out for a couple of weeks by the dreaded lurgy. And thirdly, the world descending into further chaos seemed to demotivate me (for a while) from painting toy soldiers.

Worth the wait I think - I do like the look of French line units.

Now they’re varnished and based up I am very pleased with the finished look. I took more care with these than my original unit of FN5’s by doing the edging for the collars, cuffs, and turn-backs, whether this is really worth the effort I’m not sure.

It's nice to see their backs too - something Wellington would agree with.

For the record the figures are all very nice vintage ‘first generation’ Hinton Hunt;

1 x FN/1 Officer (charging)

1 x FN/4 Colour Bearer (charging)

20 x FN/5 Fusilier (charging)

1 x FN/6 Drummer (charging)

1 x FN/8 Officer (marching)

I'm not sure how many of those flags I've painted now!

The completion of this unit goes some way towards addressing the imbalance of line and Guard units in my French army. Next, I intend to do the same with the cavalry by painting a unit of Cuirassiers.

A trip to Foy’s (off topic #33)

Yesterday I made a trip to Tony’s to play a game with his amazing War of the Spanish Succession armies. His figures, as I’m sure most of you know, are mainly from the old Les Higgins 20mm range and they have a wonderful slender style quite unlike anything else in this scale. As you would expect, Tony has painted or renovated or commissioned and based these in his house style but with a nod to the more ‘toy soldier’ look they have been finished in gloss varnish.

I’ve seen some of the figures before via Tony’s blog and by Zoom but there is no substitute for seeing the massed ranks arrayed on the table in person. We had a most enjoyable game that I think ran for 10 turns as a playtest of Tony’s Prinz Eugen rules. I took some photos, but I’ll keep the narrative brief as I don’t want to reveal any spoilers before the full battle report appears on Prometheus in Aspic.

The armies arrayed for battle - Austro-British on the left and Franco-Bavarians on the right. I didn't count but there must have been around 700 figures on the table.

This is what I call a 'proper' British army with everyone in red even the gunners - wall to wall stiff upper lips.

Interesting to see a French army that's not in blue. Wonderful paintwork and presentation. Wellington's tree is doing service as the Elector's tree in this battle.

The Austro-British (me) begin to advance against the enemy held ridge.

The same view from the Franco-Bavarian lines.

This photo looks like something out of a Charles Grant book!

The British have a foothold on the ridge - to see how this plays out you will have to check out Tony's blog.

In other news… I finally got around to fixing the roof covering on the Hinton Hut following the various winter storms.

Hopefully the roof will stay intact at least until Christmas.

Friends for the 45th ligne

I have been putting it off, but the time really has come to address the imbalance in the French OOB and add some more line units. To that end I’ve painted a test figure of FN/5 Fusilier (charging) for what will become the 25th ligne who were brigaded with the 45th at Waterloo.

***EDIT*** I've taken another picture as the last one was too dark - FN/5 Fusilier (charging)

I painted my own version of the 45th back in 2008 and they have certainly seen some action since then having carelessly mislaid their Eagle on at least three occasions. Back then I struggled to scrape together the required 24 figures, but I have been gradually adding to my stock whenever I see any at a decent price. Although I have a reasonable number now, I find it odd that in all that time I have never come across any of the marching figure (FN/7A) which would have provided a bit of variation.

It was frustrating painting up the test figure because I had just opened a new pot of Foundry Red which turned out to be no better than coloured water. After five coats it still wasn’t covering so I ditched it and bought some Vallejo Flat Red which did the trick. I’ve had most of my Foundry paints since 2006 so I dare say they have reformulated them but I still think it would be a good idea to include some pigment.

Another cabinet re-shuffle (that joke is wearing thin) to squeeze Semphill's Foot onto the bottom shelf where I can admire them from my painting desk.

Finally, just to say I have resolved the issue with Semphill’s Foot not fitting into my display cabinet through the very technical process of bending the paper flags slightly.

Semphill’s Foot Finished (Off Topic #32)

You may remember that about a year ago I started work on a unit of British 28mm Crann Tara infantry for the Jacobite Rebellion. I don’t like to leave units part done but I was finding it hard to fit these in with my Hinton Hunt production schedule, so my New Year’s resolution was to crack on and get them finished.

The Crann Tara range has some lovely sculpts, the flags are by Flags of War.

I’m very pleased with how they turned out and it was great fun sticking the foliage to the bases, which is something I don’t get to do with the Hintons. I decided to use a gloss finish on the figures because I find it helps to hide the painting imperfections and anyway it’s hard for me to change old habits.

I used a bit of artistic licence with my basing for Culloden Moor as there probably wasn't any heather growing on it at the time of the battle but it just seemed right!  

This was never supposed to be a proper wargame project, so these lads were destined for the display cabinet however, as it turns out, the flags make them too big to fit on the shelves! I have really enjoyed painting them so there may be another battalion in the future and in the meantime, I do have a unit of Jacobite Highlanders to take care of when I can get up the courage to tackle the tartan.

Pavlovski Guard Grenadiers

The Pavlovski’s are finished and luckily for me too late to take part in the recent Campaign with Rob. This brings my rather small Russian force up to a total of three infantry units but hopefully there will be more to come.

Looking a bit anachronistic for Napoleonic warfare but then who doesn't like a miter cap?

I read somewhere that the miter caps were handed down rather than replaced and that some in use in 1914 had bullet holes in them from Borodino.

The figures are:

21 x RN/7 Pavlovski Guard, marching

2 x RN/1 Pavlovski officer, charging (one converted to standard bearer)

1 x RN/14 Infantryman, charging (converted to drummer with head swop).

The flag is from my 1995c stock of Revo ones that have long since lost their sticky but this is easily remedied with Pritt Stick. The drum was donated by a Newline Designs Highlander.

Next, I think I should be doing something to even things up a bit by adding a unit of French infantry.