Napoleonic Wargaming Update - Choosing the first regiment of the British force.

I bought the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Napoleonic Uniforms recently and it arrived today with a unit of Perry Miniatures Nepoleonic Line Infantry. Inside the book I discovered a regiment I had never heard of, the 36th Regiment of Foot - The Herefordshire regiment, my home county. So I have decided my first unit was to be these, and then researching upon the internet has discovered they also fought in the Penisular War, the right area for my Napoleonic Wargaming.

All seems to be going well...... too well......

Mixed Updates

Along with a few members of Dice and Decks Gaming Club. I attended Firestorm Games Bring and Buy Sale in Cardiff today, and used the profits to purchase some more miniatures, and the West Wind Productions rulebook - Empire of the Dead.

Along with this the Napoleonics took a step forward with the addition of:

- 9 Pounder Cannon and Crew from Perry Miniatures

- 60 British Napoleonic Highlanders from Victrix

- 20 French Napoleonic Dragoons from Perry Miniatures

Also I purchased some new paintbrushes from Army Painter to help paint Tartan!

Historical Wargaming - "Black Powder" and Napoleonics?

Black Powder is a ruleset developed by Warlord Games (their first release, now one of three choices of rules for historical gaming, with the 2nd; "Hail Caesar", being already mentioned). The book seems smaller in comparison to Hail Caesar, but no less lacking in detail and quality.

I bought the book in preparation for my hopeful Summer 2012 project (and onwards from there) of Napoleonic/or other Black Powder era wargaming. The book didn't help as it provided so many other wars/forces to choose from it's made it hard to make a choice (although Napoleonic Era remains the top of the list). The 54mm Victrix British Napoleonic Era models are for Skirmish Games like Sharp Practice, so 28mm is the scale I'm gunning for with this ruleset in mind.

Now it's a matter of money to begin collecting suitable forces for the required era....

Expanding on Napoleonic Wargaming.

I have decided since Warhammer 40k is wearing thin, to sell some of the less used forces and parts of forces for this system in order to expand my latest interest in Napoleonic Era Wargaming, having got some 54mm for Sharp Practice - a Skirmish Wargame. I have decided to use 28mm for large scale games. 

I have Black Powder, by Warlord Games coming in the post, being a fan of Hail Caesar! (despite not having played a game yet). So hopefully I'll have a set of rules to nose through in the coming weeks, until I can summon funds to start a force off.

Realm of Battle Gameboard Update - Painted tiles.

Over the weekend I recieved my desert colour paint and started to paint the board. So far it's taking roughly a can of spray per tile, not a good ratio really, but can't be helped.

Progress so far in pictures:

Cliff tile showing covered skull patches. The cliffs are actually brown no to show up better and make the board more interesting to look at.

Skull patch tile, the patches will be filled with realistic water eventually to make ponds, the skulls have been modified into rocks at the bottom of the pools.

My Newest Project.

To go with my current wargaming theme of delving into various wargames that are set in the different military time periods in history. I have delved into the period of big hats, red jackets and Officers with incredibly posh and long-winded names! - The Napoleonic Era. 

This is likely to be the last of the time periods I delve into; I've covered Ancients with my Romans, Modern times with my Force On Force collection (which is coming along swimmingly) and now the Napoleonics. This hopefully won't result in me collecting another massive force, since the rules I'm using are more for fun then serious playing of scenarios - the rules come from a company called Too Fat Lardies and is called Sharp Practice; based on the heroics of the character from the novels and the TV series. It involves between 30 and 120 men, and is based on most literature. You have the normal Men/Troops (the background characters) and the Big Men (Main Characters/Leaders and so on). The idea being about Skirmish games rather than large scale battles.

To the hopeful end of me not going over the top as usual, I am using a larger 54mm Scale for the Miniatures. With a 54mm box of British Peninsular Infantry from Victrix starting off the team. They arrived as of yesterday and are massive compared with the normal size I use for wargaming (28mm Scale). I have two assembled and one painted, but all need bases - in this case I'm using 40 x 40mm Square Bases from Games Workshop. The painted individual is one of the Big Men from the rules, representing a Squad Leader, since the Victrix box contains two sets of 8. 

I have generated a character using the generators for Main Characters found in the rulebook, and came up with an average leader, not super fit, not liked nor disliked and an average swordsman, and given a status of "Fine Fellah". I as usual for most of my main characters for any wargame a name was generated using a random name generator found on the net; and Sgt. Maxwell Isiah Holt was created. The second character is the other Sergeant, a "Sickly Cove", and slightly under average, however he is a General's Son (wealthy) and universally loved by his men - Sgt. Darwin Sandford Melchief. Using these two as a review of the character generators, you can end up with some strange mixes of characteristics, men who look ugly as sin and are poor soldiers might be incredibly rich and liked by the soldiers? Seems a good system to me, and creates an amusing feel to the game.

Victrix does alot of Napoleonic Miniatures in 28mm and has only recently started 54mm, with the British being the only set available, but with French coming very soon!

Pictures:

New Stuff!

Unboxed - 4 Sprues - 16 Troops

54mm v 28mm Size Comparison (Games Workshop Space Marine representing 28mm)

Assembled Troops

Assembled and Painted Sergeant

Close-up of Sgt. Holt.

Realm of Battle gaming board update.

Having converted a few of the tiles to cover the pre-moulded skulls, I have undercoated the tiles and started to paint the board. 

Having started Modern Wargaming in addition to Warhammer 40000 and Ancient Wargaming (although I haven't played a game with rules for the latter yet!). I decided to try and make the board fit all games to the best it can, so I have gone for a desert board with green/vegetated areas scattered about it. 

Paint is en route from Humbrol, along with some new varnish, as my previous pot has manged to seal the lid on and is almost impossible to remove without permanent damage to it. 

I apologise that I have yet again failed to keep up the pictures to fit in with my updates, but don't despair readers! Pictures will be taken and uploaded by the end of this week.
EDIT: I have uploaded pictures, so now everything is up to date. See my previous post on Modern Wargaming and the Gallery for the new pictures.

Modern Wargaming Post - Reinforcements.

Good News Everyone!

My second order from The Assault Group has arrived, consisting of reinforcements for exisiting forces and some new units to test:

- 4 SAS

- 4 Iraqi Republican Guard - acting and being painted as ANA

- 16 further Afghan Insurgents and one free extra model, also part of the Insurgent force.

Pictures are here:

The newest reinforcements.

Insurgent reinforcements

ANA and SAS models

Iraqi Republican Guard - painted to represent the Afghan National Army

Modern Wargaming Post - Tuesday Afternoon Games.

I played a few more games of Force On Force on Tuesday afternoon, a game largely dominated by some awful dice rolling. I began playing as the Insurgent force for a few games, and swapped with my opponent after a few games, as my dice rolls resulted in total defeat in all games, this was a scenario where a fireteam had to reach an approriately moddelled fuel depot and destroy (by remaining in contect with it for a turn). As the British, I had to rescue a High Value Target from the middle of the board and evacuate him, either via the Chinook (we have started using the Close Combat and Air-insertion/evac rules), or off the board. This game proved a very bizarre one, and didn't go off to a good start as the Chinook carrying my fireteams was bought down before it reached the LZ, killing two members of one fireteam (Bravo Fireteam) and another one from the other (Alpha). From here on the game was exchanges of fire with Insurgents and their M60 Weapon Team - which was trying to block my escape route. The M60 was routed and sent scurrying off by the Alpha fireteam with three men still going, but Bravo team caused some light wounds and was then destroyed in return against the two insurgent fireteams blocking the objective. However, the Alpha's managed to cut their way through the two infantry teams, picking up a POW and the objective before making it back past the downed chopper and off the board (thankfully due to some poor rolling for the newly rallied M60 team - or what was left of it!).

All in all, it helped conslidate what we already learnt from Friday, and introduced some new rules, like the Air Insertion and Close Combat rules, which are reasonably easy to learn.

I regret to say there are no pictures, I'm going to try and start taking more in the future to help people get an idea of what's occurring.