The Napoleonic Invasion of Britain 1969

Back in the late 60s and early 70s I had a subscription to Miniature Warfare Magazine, the first 'proper' wargame magazine produced by John Tunstill. The content of the magazines was of variable quality and went downhill dramatically after 1971 but every now and then there would be something published that caught my imagination.

The January/February 1970 issues carried such an article entitled The Napoleonic Invasion of Britain by Bletchley Wargames Group. That sounds like a fun game I thought, Napoleon invading the green and pleasant land and the British throwing him back into the sea! At that point I didn’t have a British army or even a French one for that matter, so I never got to try out my own invasion, but the idea stuck in the back of my mind.

Having recently stumbled on a link to the Murat Maps I thought the map of Southern England would be perfect for an attempt at this piece of 70s nostalgia. Better than the map used in the original game, which was a modern Ordinance Survey Map - somehow ordering Ney to “advance up the A24 and take the second exit from the Horsham roundabout on to the A264” never really did sound right to me. The Murat Maps (click here) are a great free resource with potential (perhaps one day) to provide the basis for a huge Napoleonic campaign.

So, fortunately Rob has agreed to be my opponent in a play-by-email version of the campaign, and I’ll fight any resulting table battles as solo affairs. For hidden movement without an Umpire we will be using a 21st century version of Featherstone's 'Matchbox' system using the tabs on an Excel spreadsheet instead of matchboxes.

I have split the OOB’s for each army into quite small forces in the hope the campaign will throw up some interesting smallish scenarios that should be fun as solo games. I’ll see how we get on and keep you posted.

Light Horse Lancers

As part of my continuing project to increase all my 6-figure cavalry squadrons to full 12-figure units I thought it was time to turn my attention to the French. You may recall that I have some line lancers (FN/118 one-piece Lancer) that Don gave me that form half of my Lancer/Chasseur unit and these have been designated as next in line for an upgrade.

This has proved more time consuming than I had hoped as I have pretty much had to repaint the existing figures as well as paint up six additional ones. I find retouching existing paintwork is generally more work than starting from scratch because apart from colour matching I have to adapt my style to fit in with the original painter’s work. In this instance I’ve had to get by without any black lining which I find hard.

With the addition of sky-blue facings, the unit will now represent the 5th Chevau-Legers-Lancers as per the Hinton Hunt painting instruction sheet. I did have fun making the trumpeter conversion (from FN/320 2-piece Lancer) possibly my favourite conversion so far. I have two more figures to paint and then they'll be ready for basing.

The Royal Horse Guards

I painted the first six figures for this unit some 12 years ago, but I’m pleased to have finally expanded them to a full regiment which is no less than these splendid gentlemen deserve. They should be mounted on black horses, but I didn’t know this when I started work on them, so they are mostly on a mixture of dark brown mounts. All the figures are vintage Hinton Hunt castings of BN/60 Household Cavalry Trooper (mounted) charging.

Next I'll be evening things up a bit by working on some French cavalry.

More Officers and Gentlemen

I’ve just put the finishing touches to the last of the Blues ‘officers’ so they just need to be based and the unit is done. They do look quite smart, and painting these has certainly made a bit of a change from all those red heavies.

This means that I now have four regiments of British Heavy Cavalry which is a bit excessive I admit but one great thing about a retro project like this is that you can do whatever you want. I’m sure that back in the day we all took part in wargames that had a whole Division of Scots Greys, and three battalions of the 95th Rifles so why not?

There will eventually be one more unit of heavies as I can’t really ignore the Life Guards can I?

More Blues

The white frozen stuff has finally gone, the temperature in the Hut is back to a nice balmy 4 degrees, and I’m back painting British heavy cavalry. I’ve had to do this because increasing the Greys to a full unit has left me with half a unit of Royals that now need to be expanded to a full regiment.

Two things I noticed when I started to paint, firstly, I realised that I had erroneously painted the six existing figures as officers rather than troopers. The reason appears to be that my Blandford shows an officer and I never bothered to read the text. No problem, this just adds to the 1970s authentic feel of this project because it’s the sort of thing I would have done aged 12.

These are the first two of the extra 6 figures I need to complete the unit. They are both vintage castings of BN60 Household Cavalry Trooper but I have converted the one on the left to a bugler.

Secondly, I clocked that on half the existing figures I had failed to paint the scabbards. I’ve played with these figures on quite a few occasions but never spotted that before which makes me wonder just how much detail is actually worth painting if I don’t even notice it? Answers on a postcard please.

More 1745 British (Off Topic #30)

I have spent a good part of today staring out of our kitchen window as our neighbour’s car across the lane has gradually disappeared under a layer of snow now 8 inches thick. It’s getting to the point where we probably couldn’t get our own car down the lane even if there was somewhere to go.

With a forecast of minus 7 Celcius tonight (and it always gets 2 degrees colder here than the BBC says) I took advantage of a short break in the weather to remove all my paints and the painting tray from the cabin so I could set up work next to Mrs S’s jigsaw puzzle workstation in the kitchen (“do you really have to bring all that in here?” – “YES” I answered).

I'm going for a 1:20 figure to man ratio which makes Semphill's Foot 20 figures strong. The Grenadier companies were split between the flanks so there will be 2 figures at either end of the line. This will mean they are over represented but they will look pretty.

I did manage to finish up the first ‘base’ of Semphill’s Foot a couple of days ago. I have really enjoyed painting these, but they were more time consuming than I hoped (I’m always over optimistic about how long it will take to paint something). My plan is to base the British infantry in 4’s on 40mm x 40mm bases. At the moment the figures have a layer of gloss varnish but I’m not sure yet of the final finishing or basing style.

Finding any information on the backs of the Grenadier caps has proved more difficult than the fronts so there is some artistic licence here.

I will be returning to the Hinton Hunts soon but I have a few items for my Boer War project to complete first.

Scotland Forever!

Here they are The 2nd (Royal North British) Dragoons finished at last. The figures are all vintage Hinton Hunt castings brought together from different sources over the course of thirteen years, stripped, repaired and repainted by me.

Lock up your Eagles, here they come!

Ponsonby with the full Union Brigade - the Scots Greys, the Irish Inniskilling's and the English 1st Royal Dragoons. 

I’ll be staying in Heavy Cavalry mode for the next unit – The Blues.