Some Cuirassier Progress

Just to prove I am still slogging away at the Cuirassiers here they are.

As you can see, for a bit of light relief, I have converted a trumpeter and given him a cheery yellow coat. I don’t normally like to chop up vintage castings but fortunately the previous owner had already removed the carbine from this figure which meant my conversion was guilt free.

I’m still marvelling at the excellent quality of this batch of castings. This has been a bit of a tonic as I remember ordering some of these in my last ever order to Hinton Hunt (probably 1974). What arrived were hideous lumps of flash metal with the vague outline of a Cuirassier and I never even attempted to clean and paint one. I think it’s fair to say that by then the moulds were completely shot.

Battle of the Admin Error (Conclusion)

 

This is the state of play approximately halfway through the game. I must say that at this point things weren't going too well for Matt and I.

What? Surely not another Allied cavalry unit broken!

Doh! Tony's Carabiniers have broken my Cuirassiers. There's something wrong with our bloody cavalry today!

The destruction of so many of our cavalry units has forced Matt to put most of his infantry in square. Luckily though the Toskanas appear to have ridden right past the Duke without seeing him.

My last cavalry unit still in good order - the Silesian Hussars - galloping to the left to see off Tony's troopers.

The West Prussian Fusiliers stood under a tremendous cannonade all day but at least these lads didn't break.

Matt hangs grimly on at the church - night or the Prussians must come (hang on aren't they here already?).

The now rallied Inniskillings face off against the Toskana Dragoons. Both sides are disordered and cannot charge for the moment.

Yes, you guessed it - the Silesian Hussars have just lost another cavalry melee and worse still BLUCHER is down!

Nigel throws his infantry against Matt's line but they have become disordered in the process. However his troops have secured the VP location.

Our last cavalry reserve - the Greys - are on the move.

For once the newbies have had an easy battle. In this their first fight the 25th ligne have been mere observers.

The Guard Lancers deliver the coup-de-grace to my Hussars.

More formation dancing from the Young Guard.

Finally the Toskana Dragoons are seen off by the Greys. But it's too little too late as it's the end of turn 8 and the final VP score is 32 to the French and 26 to the Allies.

So ended another highly enjoyable day of playing soldiers although I did feel a bit sorry for Matt being on the receiving end of some uncharacteristically aggressive actions by Nigel. Clearly there was something terribly wrong with the Allied cavalry (not just the effect of the unfortunate Toskana admin error) and I would say that throughout Matt and I both had some shocking die rolls. However, the game did look pretty which is something and it’s always nice to see the Imperial Guard loafing about and to watch in awe as Nigel manoeuvres his troops.

Thanks to Tony, Matt and Nigel for coming along and indulging me once again in the Hinton Hut.

The Battle of the Admin Error (Part 2)

 

Matt gets off to a solid start by advancing his infantry right up to the church. It looks as if those VP's will be in the bag by turn 2.

The Inniskillings trot forward supported by the Blues. There appears to be nothing to oppose them except some low-grade Austrian Dragoons in the distance.

Meanwhile my Prussian infantry are making a determined push for the Windmill. However Tony seems to be wanting to stop them with his Guard Lancers.

The 49th Hertfordshires are forced into square by the sudden appearance of French Lancers. No worries, the British cavalry will soon sort this lot out.

During our pre-game conference I assured Matt that Nigel wouldn't do anything too aggressive, so I was somewhat surprised to see him pushing the Young Guard forward by the church.

And he was coming up on the flank too - what had got into him today?

The A rated Inniskillings cross sabres with the B rated Toskana Dragoons. Hold on, due to the admin error Nigel gleefully pointed out that they were A+ rated today! Matt's troopers became disordered but the Blues were behind them so we weren't worried at all.

Tony was steadily bringing his infantry up towards the windmill. My men were in firm control of the VP site by now.

My horse artillery charged forward, unlimbered and fired at half effect - then this happened. This wasn't quite how I had expected this manoeuvre to develop.

Now Nigel appeared to be putting the Young Guard in reverse - was the Duke of York commanding them today?

The Blues join in the melee with the Toskanas while the Inniskillings leg-it following a second lost round of fighting.

In frustration Matt throws the Light Dragoons against a solid Austrian square with predictable results.

Meanwhile Tony has routed the Brandenburg Musketeers and is now taking on my Uhlans.

While the fight for the Windmill turns nasty.

Yes, Nigel is back where he started!

The Guard take a nap as the battle rages in front of them. None of these gentlemen seem to be even slightly ruffled.

Nigel sees off the Light Dragoons and consolidates his position on the hill.

While the Toskanas rout the Blues

To be continued...

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.