91st (Argyllshire Highlanders) Foot

The 91st Highland Foot was one on those battalions that appeared in the early Peninsular War campaigns of Vimeiro and Corunna, that found itself shipped of to the Walcheren and subsequently ended up not appearing on the British order of battle until much later into the campaign.

For more information on the history of the regiment

http://www.argylls.co.uk/history/the-91st-argyllshire-highlanders-1794-1881/peninsular-war-1808-1814

Being a yellow faced, silver laced battalion they differed in appearance only slightly from their brothers in the 92nd Cameron Highlanders by not having the yellow stripe through their "Government Set" kilts.

The unit is made up of a mix of Fantassin and AB's. I'll leave you to decide which are which.

They have been completed to finish off my British force for Vimiero, next up the 42nd (Black Watch) Royal Highland Regiment, in time for Corunna.

Salute 2013

Had a great day yesterday at Salute at the ExCel centre in east London. I haven't been to Salute for about five years and I thought it was about time to go and have a look.

I was a regular attender from the early 80s when it was at Kensington Town Hall, then when it moved up the road to Olympia. In those days being on the west side of London it was just that bit easier to get to. The move to the east of London in the former docklands site which is now home to the Excel and the Millenium Dome now renamed the O2 centre, has added another forty odd minutes to the journey. This together with the travel and venue costs had put me off going for the last few years. However given that it is the premier show in Europe, and as all that is great in wargaming is produced in the UK (only joking), I thought it was about time to soak up some inspiration that a major show like Salute can supply.

The journey up to London from sunny Devon is a round trip of just over 500 miles, which entails about four and a half hours in the car up and back. In previous times I have split this journey up by staying overnight with friends and family but yesterday I decided to drive it in one day. Fortunately I was joined by three mates from the club, Vince, Ian and Steve H.and my eldest son Tom so we enjoyed plenty of good chat on the way up and back. We also met at the show one of the Devon Wargames Groups extended members John M who has lived for a number of years up near John O Groats in Scotland. John has recently been surpassed as our furthest away club member by Gus who has moved to Cyprus, but will be maintaining his membership for home visits.

The day started at 6am and concluded at 8.30pm when we got home. A day like this takes careful planning, so on arrival at the show, about 11am, we sorted out meet up times and Tom and I set off around the venue picking up pre-orders I had with various manufacturers and photographing games we had planned to see. Excel is a big arena and we decided to work our way up and down the rows of traders and games ticking off our list of people to see.

So to what in my humble opinion were some of the best games of the show. The games I have pictured are what I would be happy to present to the non wargaming public as our hobby of historical wargaming at its best.

First up is, what I believe won, best game of the show. A stunning 20mm Normandy encounter from the Nantwich Gamers "When Chaos Reigns - A detailed company level game using the Kampfgruppe Normandy rules. Grenadier Guards and King's Shropshire Light Infantry  with armour support assault over the River Orne into a large French town defended by experienced German infantry and armour"

The attention to detail had to be seen to be believed, with shoulder patches included on the British infantry. My dad who served with Guards Armoured Division in Normandy would have been impressed with this game. Very well done.

Sherman Firefly covers the advance

A rare sight in Normandy

 I'm afraid I don't get the American Civil War. The advance to rifled muskets and artillery for me take away the beauty of the three arms working together that Napoleonics offers in buckets. That being said I can appreciate the colour and pageantry of the blue and the grey.
Having walked the Gettysburg battlefield I was immediately caught by this beautiful rendition of the attack on the Little Big Top by Wargames Illustrated to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the battle.

Next up was a 15mm Stalingrad encounter by Arbuthnot's Terra Firma League of Gentlemen.
I love to see how people manage to model city battle landscapes and this modular terrain style seem to capture the look quite well. I certainly came away with ideas form my own collection.

I hadn't picked out any of the ancient of medieval games to look out for, but Tom called me over to check out this beautiful game. I'm sorry I'm not sure who the presenters were, so I'm guessing that this was the "Battle of Cravant 31st July 1423 - Lance and Longbow Society, An Anglo-Burgundian army encountered a Franco-Scottish army outside Cravant in Burgundy"

In addition to the great terrain and figures, check out the arms and heads of the less fortunate souls crossing the river, that Tom pointed out to me.

Back to my current theme, the Peninsular War, I managed to get a few pictures of the Victrix "Iberian Glory - Fast and Furious 54mm Napoleonic participation game with prizes". I love the detail 54mm scale has to offer. This had me wanting to get straight back to the painting desk.

Now I come to, for me and the unofficial Devon Wargames Group Salute Committee, what was the "Best Game of Show" but which actually received second best. The number of pictures of this game really gives a clue to my thoughts. Not only was it massive, but the standard of terrain, figure painting and overall presentation, just put it, for us, in first place.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present from the Essex Gamesters "Waterloo - A full size 28mm Waterloo display game. The team were in Napoleonic re-enactor uniforms giving a detailed talk about the battle".

To see this game was a real treat. The guys from Essex had set up the whole of the Waterloo field from Genappe to Hougomont. I was able to stand with Tom, who is not as familiar with the events of the battle as myself, and give him a blow by blow description of the battle by simply pointing out those events captured in this wonderful display game. Check out the pictures below and let me have your thoughts.

The French cavalry under Ney assault the Allied Squares

Bruswick Uhlans to the rescue

Belgian infantry resisting furiously



I love Carabineers

The Guards will hold fast

Watch out there trying to get in through the back!

The irresistible force meets the immovable object

The Nassau hold the gardens

Here comes his Britannic Majesty's Life Guards

The 42nd Black Watch line the sunken road

"Scotland the Brave"

La Haye Saint held by the KGL with the 95th Rifles in the sandpit

Hogoumont - the model, as the game was being put away

The Guard in reserve

More Guard and the Grand Battery facing the allies across the valley

"His hat was worth 40,000 men on any battlefield"

The Red "Dutch" Lancers of the Guard look on

I gather from the Essex lads that this game took three hours to put up. A massive thanks to them for a fantastic game.

So that was another Salute for another year captured in the memory. I had a brilliant day with lots of laughs with good friends. I managed to pick up some figures for my Napoleonic collection, some terrain including my bell tower as discussed previously, and some other stuff which I will talk about in future posts. I also want to offer my apologies to my fellow bloggers who I had hoped to meet at the show. I'm sorry guys but I didn't realise how much we had to do in so little time before hitting the road back to Devon. I hope we might meet up in future.

Peninsular War Scenario Files

I'm always thinking of ways to improve the blog and make changes.

This post is to let you know that I thought it would be helpful to those that want to use the Carnage & Glory scenarios if I put up a file containing every thing you need to play it using the system.

So starting with Rolica which I have play tested, I have made these changes. So if you follow the link it will take you to a file containing the Scenario PDF, the AAR PDF, plus the Army List and Order of Battle files, and the XL ID tags for the units.

As I complete the other scenarios I will take down the Scenario PDFs and post the full file as above.

I hope you C&GII players find that useful.

Yesterday at the Club - Thoughts on Rules and Scenarios

This week has been taken up with putting together one of the games for this month's meeting of the Devon Wargames Group. I have posted a full report on the game at  Battle of Grant's Hill 1776.

 

I was slightly out of the "comfort zone" in that having discussed with a friend at the club, Jack, that it would be cool to get his AWI 28mm collection out, I suggested we play them using "Maurice", forgetting of course, that they are really designed as a two player set of rules. At the Devon Group we are regularly getting about 10 -12 players turning up and so we plan to offer at least two and at yesterdays meet three games to get everyone involved.

 

I then emailed Jack over the intervening month and suggested that we could try out Carnage & Glory II - SYW/AWI set of computer rules.

 

I then had to start thinking about the logistics that went with that proposal as I usually plan a game around my own collections of figures, terrain etc and have all the kit ready to go on the day.

 

War in the Colonies, yesterday at the Devon Wargames Group

First thing, As I don't wargame in 28mm, I needed to get some new range sticks, at 1" to 25 paces produced. These range sticks are an additional aid to the usual tape measure as the system works on paces (a pace being 27 inches in real life) not inches, and the range sticks marked in paces really speed up the information players give to the computer operator, namely me. The markers for these sticks have been pre-produced and are freely available on the Carnage & Glory Yahoo Group .

Then not knowing how Jack's figures were based or the size of the units, I needed a detailed list of figures to work with. Other stuff like terrain, we have plenty of in the club.

With the list of figures I then sat down and thought about a suitable scenario based on the size of Jack's collection. I chose a quick solution by turning to Charles Grant's book "Scenarios for Wargames" about which I will discuss. The scenario chosen was No.7 Rear Slope, which I changed to "Grant's Hill" in honour of the great man.

Thus with the scenario in mind it was then a case of changing the order of battle suggested in the book to better match an AWI battle, the results of which you can see below.



The process described above really all came together last week, and given that we hadn't played this particular rule set before, the rules stood up to a "throw together scenario" typical of a lot of club games. Now to be fair, as readers of this blog will know, I have been using the Napoleonic set for my own games, but different period rule modules have their own quirks to be contended with, so at times it felt like a leap of faith pulling yesterdays game together.

 

If you've read the game report then you will see that things went off great and we had a really fun and interesting game. The American command team was Tom and Ollie, who being under 25 years of age definitely rank as two of our younger club players, faced with Jack and myself who as part of the majority of our club membership are well over the other side of that threshold. This clash of generations, and contrast in wargaming experience, probably mirrored quite well the difference in experience and capability between the American and British commanders in the early part of the AWI. Needless to say, one or two errors crept in to some of the command decisions made by our younger opponents, which were ruthlessly exploited (no they weren't, just joking). More like, it was a case of, "are you sure you want to do that because if you do!!"

 

Yesterdays experience has really reinforced my confidence in using this computer driven set of rules. When I think about how easy it was to prepare the scenario, turning up at club with the game prepared ready to go on the lap top, the fun of announcing a particular reaction or response by a given unit, and then the "wash up" at the end when a clear victory report is given with a post battle update of returning stragglers and walking wounded, I think this is ticking a lot of boxes that I want ticked when I play.

 

So from the rules to the scenario. In the week I noticed a post on one of the blogs I follow, sorry it escapes me which one it was, about getting hold of a copy of Scenarios for Wargames on Ebay for £20 and what a pleasing addition to the library this was.

 

 

I've had this book in my collection for many years and dip into it now and then but had come to view it as a bit dated and too formulaic. Since getting back into my Napoleonics, I have upped my reading around the period and with a view towards the Peninsular War in particular, have been keen to develop ideas about scenarios in general.

 

I sat down in the week and started to go through this book with yesterdays game in mind, discarding certain scenarios as I read because they were designed around bigger forces, different periods or would be more complex than I wanted for a simple game to be played at club. After I had found what I wanted, I then started to go back to the ones I had rejected and read them back thinking about any historical comparisons I could make. Indeed Charles Grant points some of them out in the book. His Rear Guard (2) is based on Corunna.

 

I was rather pleased how often I could think of comparison historical battles where these scenarios mirrored the historical event. Indeed as well as the Corunna example, I found myself thinking about my Oporto scenario as I read "Assault River Crossing". This also provided ideas for a later game I have in mind to recreate Wellington's crossing of the Bidasoa. The "Reinforcing a Town" scenario has given me ideas about a mini game to recreate the fighting in Fuentes de Orno. This battle spread over three days has, I have thought, always been a bit of a challenge to capture in a scenario format.

 

Where I think the work comes in when using this book is looking at the orbats. Obviously when Charles Grant wrote this book in 1981, he was making it as generic as possible so it would work with as wider options of rules and periods as possible. I, as other wargamers, will want to tailor these scenarios to our particular needs and adjusting the order of battle to better mirror the historical armies we are trying to model. 

 

What I think I might try is to re-write these scenarios to a Peninsular War/AWI theme, with pre-prepared orbats based initially on my own collection. It would be quite fun to have these pre-prepared so as to be able to put together a game at short notice with everything ready to go.

 

This week has made me take another look at an old resource. At some stage I would like to do a little bit of campaigning, and I think these old scenarios could have a role to play in that idea as well. More anon.



 

Spring Plans

Well with April finally here I'm starting to take stock of the first three months of 2013, where did that go! I'm starting to look forward to the next four months in terms of figures to get painted and games to play but I also know then that given family commitments, holidays, going out to enjoy the weather!! etc, the middle months of the year tend to be limited in time to focus on the metal warriors.

As you can see my plan has very much of a Peninsular War Napoleonic theme to it interspersed with other periods to play as I go. I have laid out a framework in previous posts of aiming to play a series of British battles from the war in a linear time format developing scenarios along the way and painting new figures to add to the collection as I go.

With Rolica done and dusted and the new table completed, its full speed ahead to Vimeiro, the themes of which I laid out in my post last month. I find it helps me to focus on what is needed now if I have a scenario plan in mind with the precise figure and terrain requirements to make it happen.

I decided that Vimeiro offered an opportunity to put together a core collection that would form the foundation of both my British and French forces, allowing me to add allied contingents as I progressed my scenarios into the war. My thinking is to be painting contingents for the next scenario whilst playing the current. Then to release my ideas to the wider world after play testing.

So how is the plan standing up to first contact with the enemy, General Time?

Well I have completed all the forces required to play my Vimeiro Light scenario, which based on Dave Brown's Wellington's Victories Scenarios Vimeiro Hill and Ventosa, breaks the battle down into the two actions that characterised the battle. I will be playing Vimeiro Hill at Legionary in Exeter next month as a demonstration game from the Devon Wargames Group. Between now and then I am aiming to play Ventosa at home on the new table, with a few mates.

Vimeiro -Full Fat version

In addition to that I have almost everything together to play my Vimeiro full fat scenario with everything in except Trant and his Portuguese who played a very supporting role in the actual clash. With the 91st Highlanders waiting to be done and three British Gun crews to be picked up at Salute, I just need to put a few extra river sections together and I can get the "big one" played hopefully in early June.

Speaking of Salute, I have sent off pre-order emails to War Modelling UK, Old Glory, Magister Militum, who I have asked to bring me one of these.

This little delight is going to be a centre piece on my Battle of Oporto assault river crossing scenario with the wine barges. You can see something similar in the picture below which comes from a very interesting Portuguese blog Port and not only

PASSAGE OF THE DOURO, by the division under the Command of Lt Gen.l the Hon.ble Edward Paget.

PASSAGE OF THE DOURO, by the Division under the Command of Lt Gen.l Sir John Murray:

Also Fighting 15s, TSS and Plastic Soldier, the last of which will be bringing up my copy of Kamfgruppe Normandy and the extra copy of the rules. I played the Kursk set in January KG Kursk AAR - Devon Wargames Group at the Devon Wargames club meeting and am keen to have a go with my Normandy collection, so watch this space for a report.

I am also looking forward to checking out the Xan figure range from Empress Miniatures, this range of Napoleonic figures look very nice in the pictures, I just want to see them in the flesh.

With regard to planning and building for the next game whist playing the last, I have already put the Corunna scenario together focusing on the fight for the village of Elvina. This will require at least two British line units faced and laced Blue and Gold to cater for the 1st Royal Scots and the 4th King's Own. There were no such faced and laced units in the Vimiero campaign, Yellow being the popular colour that season! and so as I also need KGL units later for Oporto and Talavera, the KGL will be standing in for these two illustrious regiments for my Corunna re-fight.

Now to a slight change in the plan. I thought it might be fun to post my scenarios before I play them, then you can tell me what you think (keep it constructive please) and I can tap in to the JJs Wargames Brain Trust for any gems. So I have put up the links for Vimiero Light, Vimiero Full Fat and Corunna. Please note, that I have posted the Vimiero and Corunna scenarios before play testing myself. In addition I have taken ideas from other scenarios and rearranged them accordingly. In so doing I have recognised those sources when known. There may be errors that will need correcting that I would probably pick up during a game, so play with them on that basis, and let me know your thoughts.

One thing I will point out is that I have put them together, initially, around Carnage & Glory as I really like this rule set and, following last months Rolica game,intend to play more games using them this year. I have even managed to commandeer Tom's old school laptop to become my official wargames playing computer. However if you are interested in playing these scenarios with other rule sets, don't be put off as the battalion strengths are based on historical sources and should easily translate to other sets.

Please check out the Carnage & Glory Yahoo Group as I intend to post all the game files in the files section there. If you do use the rules or are thinking of doing so, all the stuff you need will be there.

Tamiya's Small Pointed Brush - Update

Last December I posted how pleased I was with my newly acquired Tamiya paint brush after a long fruitless search for something reliable and long lasting. It already had had five weeks of use at that time.

I guess I should state up front that I do not hold shares in Tamiya, although based on my feelings for this lovely piece of kit I'm seriously thinking about getting some.

 

The reason why I've posted this now is I was chatting to a friend about painting and stuff to get at Salute, as you do, when I found myself telling him that if he bought nothing else this month he could do a lot worse than getting one of these brushes.

 

So why is it so good? Well bear in mind that I have been painting little toy soldiers for forty years and I've got through a few brushes in my time. I think on average, with using the brush pretty much every day, my brushes lasted, i.e. kept their point, for about three months. I may have been able to increase that slightly by washing them out occasionally in Tamiya paint thinners, that helps get out those microscopic particles of acrylic paint.

 

Ok, so I've now been using the same brush for over five months, working on all the figures I have blogged about in that time which include at least 6 x 24 man battalions of British and French infantry,  12 x Portuguese cavalry, three batteries of artillery, crews guns and limbers and casualty figures plus a few General officers. I think I can also include about forty 28mm Wars of the Roses figures used in our Xmas club game.

 

The "point" is my brush still has one and shows no sign of fraying. In addition I bought two new ones as a back up so at this rate probably won't need a detail brush for the next two to three years.

 

Anyway, if you are thinking about getting a new brush soon, you might want to consider this one.

 

British Napoleonic Artillery - Blue Moon

A month ago I announced to the world that I was the proud owner of a Blue Moon brigade of British Foot artillery. Since then, following painting Portuguese dragoons, British and French casualty markers and putting together the new table, I can now introduce my new table top warriors.

It seems fitting that they should be the first unit to get a photo-shoot on the new table, and to add value to the exercise, I thought you might like some range comparison shots.

So here they are, a Blue Moon 6lbr foot brigade with a Fantassin team of drivers

The first thing I would say is that for the money, I think these are a very nice sculpt that paint up easily. As you can see they fit in nicely with the Fantassin figures.

So in the photo below we have a BM gun and crew (left) next to the AB gun and crew (right) and with the Fantassin driver team behind.

I think you'll agree that if money were no object it would be AB all the way as the sculpt standard is superb. However if there it is one thing I really like with the Blue Moon option its got to be their guns.

If you can get over the fact that they seem to have missed off the elevation screw, the "chunkiness" and brute force look of the barrel, carriage and wheels seems to be more appealing than the rather delicate looking AB option. I have yet to see their howitzer model. I'm hoping to pick some up at Salute, but I think they'll look great lobbing shrapnel rounds at the Emperor's Legions.



BM left, AB on the right

BM left, AB on the right

AB on the left and BM on the right

AB on the left and BM on the right