Basing Great Northern War Saxons

So I promised a post on how I approach basing.


Now I know most of you are aware that I have a basing department working away in the cellar here, but I did teach her all I know. When I finished this unit of Saxon Cavalry I decided that I couldn't wait for the basing department to come home from University in York and add these to the waiting list so it seemed two birds with one stone was the way forward.


So Beusts Curassier finished, I glue the figures to laser cut MDF bases. for my Great Northern War collection I am using 50mm by 800mm deep for all units. It can be a bit tight on width but gives that densely packed formation look I wanted. The depth allows you to shift position of troops and to some extent makes up for the lack of width. It also means that all the models are inside the base and protected from my fat figures and those of my fellow wargamers.

 I use black grout as the basic media for my basing, Black means if it chips its not as visible, I do find however that a new pot of this can be a bit too sloppy, I like it when it is a bit drier and so gives some grain when it dries, this is important for the finish as you will see.

 I then add fine fish tank gravel. I have lots of this from all the tropical fish I have kept over the years but cat litter (ideally unused!) is a good substitute if you dont happen to have any gravel.

 I scatter it on and press it in slightly with my basing knife. No need for glue it will set in the grout. The best knife I have found for tis was an old penknife blade which snapped off. Its short narrow and pointed so gets into all those awkward places. However as this has been nicked by the basing department and currently resides in York I used a butter knife on this occasion. Shh don't tell the wife!

 Over the radiator it took about 2 hours to dry. At this point I am painting the base coat which is Saddle brown by colour party. Making sure I get in all the nooks and crannies.

 I then add a wet brush skimmed over the top using ECW Buff. I use a flat brush which is pretty bristly and get plenty on. It doesn't want to be too wet, ideally the base coat will still come through quite well.

 

 I then add a dry brush of light stone, you can use any ivory or plain linen type colour though. For this its a much lighter touch. The brush is lightly dipped in the paint and the paint wiped off. Then just the lightest of brushes over, perhaps slightly heavier on the gravel to bring the rocks out. I find that the three colours adds some depth to the basing.

 

 We are now ready to add the grass tufts and bushes. I personally like to use lots of different colours and the odd flower bush to add a dash of colour. Others prefer a limited pallet of colours, each to their own. I use lots of different tufts but most are purchased from ebay and are fairly cheap. I find using tweezers or similar to get into awkward places works for me, the basing department has smaller fingers than mine so doesn't need them. The tufts are already self adhesive so no need for any glue.

 And there you have it. The tufts cover a multitude of sins where the wet and dry brush might have been too heavy. Some people prefer a grey brown earth, the process though could be exactly the same with different base coat colours to kick off.

And there you have it, the finished article. I am pretty happy with how these came out and hope this is in some way useful to one or two out there.


The next Saxon foot and my first Russian foot are nearly ready so hopefully have a workbench update with these very soon.


Thanks for reading.

GNW Saxon Cavalry Regiment

Hi, having painted the last of the Saxon Curassier's for Beast's regiment, I decided I would get them based up and also photo the basing process. I will do a separate Post on how I base but for now I have some images of the finished unit. I will almost certainly do another 9 man unit of these to follow.


Many of the Curassier units that fought in the major engagements had yellow or buff facings and I was keen to add a unit with a contrast to the buff gloves and red coats. Beaust's fought at Fraustadt so I am happy that they fought in at least some of the major engagements in the earlier part of the war. Their Black facings are an ideal contrast and the saddle cloths also set them off quite nicely.


Wargaming chum and fellow Great Northern War enthusiast Truls has also recently painted this unit and has a post on his blog here http://apartmentofwar.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/beust-regiment.html
initially I had planned to try a different unit, but the colour scheme for this one was too tempting so sorry Truls!

 The figures, flag and flag pole are all Warfare Miniatures and are very dynamic. I bought this as an 18 man regiment and the price was pretty good too. You can only tell on some figures but they do all have a breastplate under their coats.


I specifically chose to add a pack each of bareheaded and floppy hats to the regiment (Warfare allow you to pick and choose codes within the deal) to give them a slightly more irregular look. The arms are all separate you get enough to do nine with pistols and nine with Swords. I intend to do both lots with Pistols ideally, so hopefully I can figure this out when I get a load of Swedish Cavalry soon as they may come with extra Pistol arms I can swap.

 Below gives you a view of how the figures sit on the bases.  I wanted the unit to have the feel of a solid wall of horseflesh pounding down but not be as structured as the Swedish Wedge.

So exceptionally pleased with this unit and I am looking forward to the release of the Swedish Cavalry.


I hope to have a further post soon showing my process for basing using how I based this unit for the pictures.


For now thanks for reading.

Workbench

So, lots of posts but not much around painting progress. I have managed to get a few things over the line so thought I would share the latest.


I have 5 more Ebor Russians completed. I reckon that's 4 more to do and the first battalion is complete

Two Saxon standard bearers for Pistoris's regiment.  Intending to do 2 battalions of these. Each Brigade then being two Regiments each of two battalions.

 Then a further three Saxons for the same unit. These are a Warfare Casualty, an Ebor seargent and a Wargames Factory private. Again 4 more figures and this battalion is complete.

 The 5 more Cavalry for Beusts regiment. These are all Warfare and are the troopers with Cuirass under their coats. Really enjoyed doing these. They are also the rest of the unit for the 4 I painted as part of my post on how I paint.

 And here are all 9 of the first unit of Beusts. I intend to use these  to show how I approach basing. Part way through already so keep an eye out for that real soon.

 Lastly a couple of Foundry foot Cossacks. My plan is to have a regiment of Cossacks on foot, mainly in grey coats. These guys are a cheat. I picked them up painted from Ebay. The colours and style of painting are very similar to mine and I decided that they would help kick start my unit of Cossacks with some minor additions, I added highlights to the paining then dry brushed the hair, moustaches and caps.

So two more posts to follow shortly. The first will be the Basing post using the Saxon cavalry and then I will do a separate post with the finished unit and some background on these Cavalry.


That's it for now, thanks for reading, see you soon.

Sharp Practice Carlist War AAR

Back in May I was lucky enough to play in  a participation game with Dave Imrie and chum Jack at the Partizan Wargames show. I did enjoy it but as usual when playing rules for the first time wasn't entirely sure about. Since then we have talked about using the rules for a variety of periods, mainly on the basis that it would be a much smaller outlay in terms of number of troops for a Sharp Practice force.

I picked up a set of the rules and tried to read them through. Now this is something I am particularly bad at, I just struggle to read anything that isn't fun so after limited success I decided we had better try a game and see if we could learn that way instead.

In the end I found I had two games on consecutive nights. However as I forgot my camera both times I only have shots from the second game at the East Leeds Wargames Club in Garforth.

For both games we used my Carlist War collection. These are the only figures where the basing allows us to use them for Sharp Practice. It did mean that my Carlist Generals were demoted to Junior officers and NCO's but at least gave us something to start with.

For the first game we set up a six by six area at Wargaming Chum Daves house with Dave and Howard taking opposing sides and me getting a small command but trying to help the other two with the rules.

The Liberal forces had 3 platoons of French Foreign Legion, an FFL skirmish unit, a troop of Guard Cavalry 2 platoons of Cazadores and a further 2 skirmish units.

Facing them were 2 lots of 2 platoons of Carlists with 5 skirmish units. 

It took us quite some time to get going, the movement and firing sequences were simple enough, however we did find that with only 2 actions other than with the skirmishers everyone was pretty reluctant to advance as this would mean loosing the ability to fire that go so the game desolved into a firefight with the Liberal Cazadores coming off worst.

It wasn't quite the dynamic game we had hoped but played OK. One of the key issues had been keeping a track of which units had gone and which had not.

On night two at East Leeds I had the advantage that I had played the night before and two of the other players and read the rules thoroughly. Chris Flowers and I took the Liberals (I again had the Cazadores) whilst Chris Charlton and Steve Shann had the Carlists.

I had reduced the number of Liberals slightly but removed 2 skirmish units from the Carlists and replaced with a gun.  Most of the Carlists had cover an the table was slightly smaller at 6 x 4 feet.

 The game progressed much quicker and both sides began to take fire from their enemy pretty quickly.There were a number of sublteties we had missed the night before which did enhance the game. However again we sa that only the skirmish screens really attempted to close as everyone else spent their time firing and re-loading. 

 The Liberal Cavalry made a gallant charge on a Carlist skirmish screen, however by the time it got there it had lost 4 troopers. The ensuing melee despite hitting foot from behind with Cavalry did not go well. The Foots three dice left one shock and 2 kills whilst the Cavalry's ten dice only killed one skirmisher. The Cavlry promptly fled.

 By the time it reach the table edge there were three riders remaining with 12 shock points.


Mean while the firefight in the centre took its toll on the Carlist position and all three units were in trouble. However the Cazadore skirmish screen was in even more trouble and the FFL skirmish screen was destroyed entirely. At this point the gun was brought back under control and began to do damage to the FFL three platoons.

Suddenly it was 10pm and I had to pick the wife up from Leeds after a night out. The Liberals were in trouble and we agreed it was a narrow win for the Carlists. A better game but we do need another couple before I am likely to invest in any figures. That said I have plans for a Napoleon in Egypt force and possibly a retreat from Moscow force so fingers crossed.

Bemis Heights AWI AAR

We had a game at Chris Flowers Barn today on his 14 x 6 table and had decided to do an American War of Independence game with Black Powder. Dave provided the majority of the figures and fancied something from the Saratoga campaign. We trawled the Black Powder Revolution supplement and Bemis Heights looked like a game we could adapt for a number of players.


Initial order of Battle has 7 Crown battalions against 13 American Regiments. As we initially thought 6-7 players were coming we could add a small number of troops to some of the Brigades and each player would then have a brigade to play with. At the last minute we found out there were actually 10 players so had to add some units to create enough commands.


Essentially the Orders of Battle were as follows


British
General Grant, 1 British line battalion, 2 British Light battalions 1 unit of Scouts
General Reidesal, 3 Hessian battalions, 1 Hessian Grenadiers in Redoubt, 1 small unit Jaeger, 2 guns
General Phillips, 2 Grenadier battalions and 1 light gun
General Haw Haw 3 British Line battalions and 1 unit Jaegers
1 British Battalion and 2 Guns


American
General Morgan 2 Rifle units, 1 Light Infantry and 1 Militia
General Poor 3 Continental Regiments and a gun
General Learned 4 Continental Regiments and a gun
General Rich 2 Continental and 2 Militia Regiments and a gun
General  Ten-Broek 4 Militia Regiments


Generals Haw Haw and Rich were made up Generals and Brigades many of the rest were beefed up to give players a game. So the British had an extra 6 Battalions and the Americans an extra 3.


Haw Haw and Ten-Broek were both off table and would arrive on move 3. We were playing Black Powder with amendments making units fire before moving rather than the other way around. This proved to work very well indeed. All forces were set up in initial deployment areas to speed up the game.

The above map from the Revolution supplement gives you a rough idea of initial set up, our table was a fair bit longer, you can see the initial layout above too from the American deployment area.

Above is the view from the Rebel extreme left where Morgans brigade marches on pictured below.

The American left advanced quickly with no initial resistance, the right though struggle to get going giving the British Grenadiers time to deploy on their flank in the woods.

Howard seemed happy with his command of Hessians and no wonder the redoubt was a formidable obstacle.



The troops elsewhere were fairly evenly matched but Mark had Grants three battalions against 6 Rebel units plus Morgan's riflemen and a gun. He probably had the toughest fight of the game.

Above the British Grenadiers enter the woods to flank the Rebels on the right of their line.

Meanwhile Richard had appropriately gained Rich's command and was attempting to steam roller through the middle left.

The pressure eventually told on the British Right, Mark commanding Grants Brigade was forced back and his units destroyed one by one until his last unit was finally overwhelmed after a valiant but one sided fight. We had opted for Brigade morale rules rather than Brigades automatically breaking after 50%. As each player only had one Brigade this meant everyone got a game, we also felt this worked really well, although you might not use this for a 2 hour club might game.

But as Grant breaks, Steve with Haw-Haws Brigade marches out of the woods and into the fray.

In the centre Chris Flowers broke the first Hessian battalion and two guns and was then able to mass three units against the remaining Hessian unit facing him and see that off too.

Howard might have been smiling slightly less with the loss of his Germans but the Crown forces now had a new line of fresh troops stretching from one redoubt to the other, so things were far from over.

Meanwhile on the right of the American line the Grenadiers had broken the first 2 units of continentals an then engaged the Militia reinforcements in a  bitter fire fight for three moves. With their amazing morale saves (anything but a one and a re-roll) three volleys only managed to see one casualty on each of the battalions, eventually they managed to see of the American Brigade which was completely destroyed.

By this time we had been playing for about 5 hours, each side had lost a full brigade and a couple of the other brigades were looking shakey, both sides however had plenty of intact troops left and all to play for. Another hour or two might have seen a final conclusion but at this point we all decided that Sunday dinner was beckoning and it was time to finish.


The Americans had achieved none of their objectives and I have my doubts if they could have taken both redoubts, so a British victory I feel.


The rule amendments worked really well and I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed their game. Some fantastic figures from Dave's collection and great terrain (and lunch) provided by Chris Flowers.


Thanks to all the team for a very enjoyable day.