Sunday 22 November 2009

Buildings


Buildings
The buildings seen above may be of some interest to readers , they are veterans of many a battle but haven't seen the light of day for several years.
I bought them roughly 20 years ago from Duncan Macfarlane's Stratagem Publications , they were made by a German company named Schreiber and are paper . My wife made many of these for me , I used them for a fictional 18th century set up in 15mm and almost forgot about them until recently.
They are various scales between 1:120 and 1:160 if I remember correctly and I have a couple of dozen , some need some work on them though and I had a nasty accident when my tape measure shot from my fingers when I stumbled and smashed the roof in of one of them during a recent game.
I like the underscale effect of these buildings on the table and am very pleased to have resurrected them .
In terms of games use I prefer not to demolish and occupy built up areas a la Grant but use them more as obstacles to movement and line of sight. I do much the same with woods and count both features as impassable to any but loose/open order troops.

The War of 1749 ends.



The battle of Bergwald was a disaster for the Altstein army which was thoroughly demoralised and fell back in utter disarray.


This defeat persuaded Ludwig to ask the Duchess Katarina for peace and the suitable diplomatic moves were made on his behalf.
The Duchess was much relieved by this and accepted Ludwig’s offer unconditionally ( perhaps somewhat naively).
Fritz von Essling was recalled from Altstein territory and honoured in a victory parade by the Iron Fortress itself.

Thus the war of 1749 ended. What might the new year bring?.

Thursday 12 November 2009

The armies so far:- Altstein

The army of Altstein.
Brigadier August von Bruckenheim.
Revell SYW Dragoon.


The Blue Dragoons.


Zvezda Swedes.



The Jager Battalion.


Revell AWI British, Italeri AWI French Colonel.





The Blue Hussars.

Revell SYW Hussars.



Colonel Fandango's Grenadier regiment.


Revell and Zvezda SYW Prussians.

Von Tripp's Musketeer regiment.
Revell SYW Prussians.



Captain Mueller's gun battery.
Revell AWI British Infantry, AWI Americans converted and Revell TYW cannons and teams with an Airfix Captain Mueller.
Other units not yet painted are:
Two full musketeer regiments(Italeri AWI French).
The other two squadrons of dragoons plus command.
Some Battalion guns (Imex AWI artillery).

The armies so far:- Eisenburg-Essling

The army of Eisenburg-Essling.
Fritz von Essling.
A Revell Dragoon Officer.

The Eisenburg Dragoons and the Essling Fusileers.
All Revell SYW Austrians.








The Osterburg Musketeers (left) and the Eisenburg Musketeers.


Italeri AWI French and Revell SYW.





Captain Fiesler's gun battery.


Imex AWI crew, Revell TYW cannons and teams and a much cobbled together Captain Fiesler.


Other units yet to be painted are:
Another company of the Osterburg Musketeers to bring the rank and file up to 64 men.
A full regiment (48+) of grenadiers (Zvezda Prussian SYW).
An irregular light infantry battalion (from AWI Militia plastic sets).
Some battalion guns (Imex AWI).
A light horse regiment of some sort , I'm still undecided as to which models to
purchase yet!.


Thursday 5 November 2009

Thanks

Well , this is the first time I've done anything like this and I'm delighted with the responses that I've had. The campaign is in a lull at the moment while I get some painting done.The forces I have are still quite small so I need to get on. I've been asked to post some parade shots of my armies so I'll do this at the weekend hopefully. 

 I have been a wargamer since the mid '70s and followed many of the trends throughout and maybe I was a bit jaded. So to try something new I got into modern air combat with 1/600th scale planes and C21 rules.This was pretty enjoyable but my interest waned .

 Then I found the playsheets for "The Wargame" and "Charge" on the Battlegames site, I dug out some very old AWI Airfix soldiers that hadn't seen daylight for years and had a tryout,WOW!, this was a "road to Damascus " moment for me. Moving the individually based soldiers about into various formations was actually very enjoyable and the simple ,elegant rules mechanisms were a real revelation. 

So out of the shed came the Revell SYW boxes that had been stored away when my son was born over 12 years before. I discovered the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog and decided to copy this very inspirational project as far as I could.
Now as I am on a low wage with a family to keep, I decided to go all plastic toy soldiers for my armies. As the Revell Prussians in particular didn't have the sharpest detail (but some lovely poses IMO), I chose to paint them very basically and smother them in Future/Klear floor polish- Stokes style. I really like the shiny feel of the figures with this treatment and it brings out the colours well too. 

 Well, I've rattled on enough for now, bye.