Rear Guard at Donauworth - Part 4

 Turns 9 - 11

As the French artillery bombardment reaches its peak, General of Brigade Viallanes commits his cavalry to the attack. Both the 2^nd and 12^th Chasseurs charge into the Austrian infantry squares, but the stalwart courage of the Austrians manages to hold. This forces the French light cavalry to withdraw and reform before they can try again.

French Cavalry Charge the Austrian Squares

Rear Guard at Donauworth - Part 3

 Turns 6 - 8

All across the battlefield, signs of Austrian withdrawal increases as French reinforcements continue to arrive and the assault on Donauworth intensifies.

More Austrian Battalions Disengage and Withdraw Towards the Danube River Crossing

Rear Guard at Donauworth - Part 2

 Turns 4 & 5

The French success is short lived as the 7^th Hussars, badly routed in their earlier cavalry charge, fail to rally and flee from the field. The loss of their comrades demoralizes the 1^st Chasseurs. The commander of the 1^st Chasseurs falls back to avoid combat with the superior numbers of Austrian cavalry, thus effectively ending the threat of French cavalry on the Danube River crossing.

French Cavalry Flee from the Field.

Rear Guard at Donauworth - Part 1

 (Note for any of my readers. I write these reports on a word processor and then move them on to my blog because I find it an easer task to conceptualize the structure of what I am writing. Recently I had to change word processors and so some of the style might have changed because of this.)

Battle 2 – During Turn 7 of the Campaign, late afternoon.

Attacker: French

Objectives: Take the town of Donauworth. Capture or destroy as many Austrian units as possible

Defender: Austrians

Objectives: Withdraw from the battlefield with more than 50% (three brigades) of remaining troops intact.

Battle End conditions: 50% (three brigades)or more of the remaining Austrian brigades are routed off the field or after 12 turns (I consider that by turn 12 night will have fallen on the battlefield. This is something that I did not make clear in the last battle report).

Battle Overview

This battle takes place immediately after the end of Battle 1 – The Battle of Donauworth & Heidenheim, that was fought using the Blucher rules. At the start of this battle portions of both the French and Austrian armies are engaged in combat based upon where the previous battle ended. The French are still attempting to capture the town of Donauworth and destroy as many Austrian units as possible while the Austrians are attempting to withdraw from the battlefield. Some of the effects of the Rear-Guard battle at Heidenheim will affect events in this battle.

Under The Eagles - The Plan

After a long... long... very long hiatus hopefully I am back with an idea that will will give me a chance to do several things I enjoy doing, which would be painting and collecting Napoleonic miniatures, as well as playing solo table top war games. 

The Plan

This plan comes with three levels of play and multiple steps along that need to be taken along the way to bring this idea into action. Several of these steps have been completed or are underway as of writing this post.

Step 1: Choose Rule Sets (Mostly complete)

Choose or make rule sets to provide the ability to play at the campaign level, the grand tactical level, and at the Brigade/Divisional level. The idea with this step is to create a solo game experience that allows for campaign level gaming that can develop into game play with miniatures on the table. To do this I needed to find rule sets that allowed for the level of play in each of these categories. I was successful in my attempts for two of the needed rule sets, the third is one I will have to make on my own.

-Blucher by Sam Mustafa Publishing

I chose this rule set for several reasons. The first was that these rules are fairly simple and work well with 6mm scale grand tactical battles, which I want to play. The second reason was that this rule set has multiple sets of playing cards that can be used to represent miniatures on table top in lieu of actually having the miniatures. For me this will be just a temporary solution while I work on my 6mm Napoleonic armies, most of which I have posted about before I went off somewhere else. Anyways, these card sets allow for the building of armies from the French, Austrian, Russian, Anglo-Allied, Prussian, and Spanish armies from across the Napoleonic wars. The above picture shows one of the card set boxes and I have recently purchased all of the other sets.

-General d'Armee by Reisswitz Press

While Blucher provides the ability to play on the grand tactical level, my goal for the campaign level games needs to be able to handle smaller engagements that might be found in rear guard battles or the initial stages of a meeting engagement. Blucher can only support down to about 3 army corps on each side, which means I need rules for smaller-ish battles. I have not had a lot of time to read through the rule for General d'Armee, but what I have seen on YouTube indicate that this rule set might support battles of this type.

-General de Brigade by Partizan Press

Which leads me to the next rule set with which I hope to provide for brigade level battles. Which of these last two rule sets I use will require some play testing before I can make my final decision.

The other nice thing about General de Brigade, is that the creators of the game have written numerous scenarios for their rule set, which will help both with play testing and ideas for game development. 

Finally I need a rule set for campaign level gaming that can be used to integrate all of this into a single system of play. Unfortunately, I have never heard of or seen a pre-made rule set like this. Which means I have to make it on my own.

-Under the Eagles

While not the most original name, though it does fit the blog. I have already begun writing this rule set and have plans for how to execute the building of all of every aspect of the rules that I want. As I get these rules into a form of usability I will write some posts about them and I may even post the rules at some point.

These rules would support a multi-day (real life days) level of game play that would allow me to play the campaign on weekdays and the battles of the campaign on weekends or on days off. I will be endeavoring to keep the rules simple, but have a decent amount of engagement.

Step 2: Campaign Level Supplies

This step is going to take more research and testing as there is not a lot of pre-made material for what I want to do exactly.

-Maps

Initially what I thought would be a very challenging step, thankfully became very easy once I found maps that someone else had made for their own gaming system that meets my needs exactly. 

Murat Maps

These maps were made by someone I only know as Murat for their own campaign style game, but thankfully this person has made the maps free for anyone that wants to use them for their own purposes. These maps are based on a node movement system, which is not what I wanted originally (I wanted hex maps), but this work better for more of a free form style of game play. The distance between each node is supposed to represent the distance an army formation can march in a single campaign day.

I am planning on using FedEx's online printing service to print these as 36 in by 24 in lamented maps. The first ones to get printed will be focused on Austria.

-Game Pieces

I need game pieces that can be used to represent brigade or division level units along with artillery for every army I want to play with.  My current plan is to reuse board game pieces, but I am not sure about this as a solution. I want to be able to magnetize whatever I end up using so that the maps and campaign pieces can be placed on a metallic surface and stored or posted somewhere easily.

-Orders of Battle

This will be the hard part of this step. I have done research and not found a lot of what I am looking for as I need campaign orders of battle, not the more easily accessible orders of battle for the individual engagements. What I might end up doing is just smashing enough information together to sort of recreate the OOBs I need. I want these to be easily reference-able and in a format that can be used in support of the campaign rules. 

Step 3: Terrain

Currently I already have a lot of miniatures ready for play, I unfortunately do not have a lot of terrain to support this game play. Seeing as how I do not want to spend a lot of time making terrain, I am willing to spend the extra dollar to buy pre-made terrain

-Roads, Rivers, Forests, Hills, Farms, and Buildings 

On order right now is a set of forests and hills from a company called terrains4games. They are a company in Poland that makes all of this stuff at tabletop quality for a good price in the 28mm scale. If I like their work the next order will probably be roads and rivers. 

For the 6mm scale I am going to have to do more searching. Thankfully buildings and tress are already taken care off, as I bought a bunch of buildings from 100 Days line produced by Total Battle Miniatures. The trees I made by torturing myself for multiple hours, hence the choice to not make any more terrain unless it only involves some coats of paint and a few snips with some scissors.  I have an idea for hills, but hopefully the terrains4games products will solve the hill problem, which just leaves me with roads and rivers in 6mm as a problem to be solved.

For gaming surfaces, I came up with the ingenious idea of using portable tables and sheets of particle board to give myself the ability to set up about 48 square feet of game table. With the added benefit that all of that gaming space can be packed away when I am done fairly easily and quickly.

To furnish the top of that gaming space I am making use of the battle mats from Cigar Box Battles. These mats are very well made and also pack up quite nicely.

Step 4: Play Testing

Play testing has to take place at multiple levels. Already underway are tests and edits to Blucher with the playing cards as a miniature substitute. Next will be play tests with General d'Armee and General de Brigade. Probably the last to be play tested will be my own rules for the campaign level games.

This last area of testing will focus on a specific campaign that I would like to re-fight. For starters I have chosen the 1805 Ulm-Austerlitz campaign, which means I need 3 armies (French, Russian, and Austrian)

Step 5: Build Armies

Last but not least, build my miniature armies. The current focus is on 28mm miniatures for General d'Armee and General de Brigade as I already have an impressive number of 6mm Napoleonics. The French have good start in 28mm and the Austrians are underway currently, but the Russians will have to be started from scratch. For manufactures I plan on focusing on Perry, Victrix, and maybe some Warlord.

6mm will all come from Baccus 6mm. As I said above, I already have a lot of these painted, but there will be a focus on bringing the Austrians and Russians up to a level needed for grand tactical battles. I will post more details on the miniatures as I paint them.

So that is the overall big picture of what I have decided to do. You can look forward to miniature painting updates and play testing over the coming weeks. 

Under 28mm Eagles Update pt1

Here are a few quick shots of what the updated 28mm Napoleonics will look like when I am finished. I had to finish this lot before I could continue with the Imperial Romans as they were taking up space on my desk.
First some old photos for comparison.

This base has been redone.

This base has been redone.

I have only updated two of the large bases so far I still have one large base and two smaller bases to update for this command set.

Now for the improved and updated miniatures.

Sorry for the blur. I did not see it until now.

So what has been changed? I have reconfigured how I flock my bases, I have added highlights to the figures and then added a wash to give some tone and shadowing, I have updated the miniatures skin color, and I have added eyebrows to my figures. Yes I left those off. It really makes a difference when you add eyebrows to your figures.

Legionnaires Disease

No I am not sick. Though my desk is currently covered in Imperial Roman Legionaries. I got back from spring break a while ago and while I was at my parents house I remembered to grab my Imperial Roman Legionaries that I had left there. Subsequently I have been working these last few days to repair the painted figures and then begin to update their paint job, much in the same manner that I am working on my 28mm Napoleonics. I also went through and took stock of the number of figures I have and what all I could do with them. The following pictures are a few flights of fancy on that subject.

On a side note. I have a little bit of a funny story to go along with the title of this post. About a year ago I got an email from some group asking if they could use one of my old photos in a paper on Legionnaires Disease. I never answered because they wanted a photo quality that I could not obtain. Still it is rather funny.

As you can see I have a lot of prepaired figures and some that where painted to a rather bad standard(by my current standards anyway). The repair work is mainly focused on the water slide transfers as some of them have started to come off the shields as I did a pretty bad job at the time. Also there are a few figure that I may never use, as the poses that I set up are just awful. Oh to be a young and dumb miniature enthusiest.

Parting thoughts and shots. I have not done one of these in a while.
First up are some pictures of the two books that I use the most for painting Napoleonics. I was reading another persons blogs and happened to notice that he had recently been to a literary museum in France and they had a tone of figure plates on collection by this one French couple. I saw one of the plates and went "Hey now, I own a book of that stuff".

They are not worth more than about $25, so don't bother trying to hunt up where I live just to steal them. They are however, an excellent source for trying to figure out what colors to use for your figures.

The last thing I have on my mind is this idea of redoing paint jobs for my figures. I am dead set on doing this for my 28mm Napoleonics and Romans. The full realization that I was stifling my painting skill because I wanted a uniform look is quite startling. And as such I have been looking at my 6mm collection wondering if I should redo those figures as well. No firm plans as of yet besides a definite desire to redo all of the bases for my 6mm figures. In fact I plan on staying away from my 6mm stuff until I get one of these two current redo project over with.  

Just stop listening to me.

Recently I mentioned that I was looking at trying to figure out why I dropped my 28mm projects (other than money and space consumption being the issue). I have, in the last few days, been spending time looking over all of my old 28mm figures and I think I have it all figured out. For the 6mm range of figures there is no push or drive to increase the detail or quality of the figures as I paint them. I say this because I do not want to strain my eyes and I feel that the point of 6mm miniatures is being able to throw 5000 to 10000( or more) figures on the table and not even bat an eye. There is also that cost benefit as the price per figure for 6mm is very very small. It is also a way to tackle projects that I would never even be able to dream of affording or storing, such as the Eagles of Heresy project( masses of Titans and tanks is not something people can easily handle).

On the other hand, I look at 28mm figures and see the opportunity to add in lots of detail and to improve my painting skill. The Sons of the Emperor project ( still waiting for Kabuki to release the next figure that I am looking for) has kind of been a test bench for improving my painting skills. These results can be seen in the Lord of the Rings diorama that I made for my Dad last year. This has led to a revival of my Roman Legions and has such led to a revival of my 28mm Napoleonics.

Now this is not an all in revival, but it is a revival. I still plan on working quite heavily on the Romans and in the back ground begin the process of updating the paint job on my Napoleonics AND I am going to be redoing the bases for my Napoleonics. Thankfully in that respect I have been basing my miniatures with wood glue and all it takes to remove the figures from their bases is a few minutes of submersion of the base in water. With this new plan in mind I have gone through my 28mm Napoleonics, organized the storage of those figures, assessed what I have painted, what I have waiting to be painted, what I have yet to assemble, and what I need to close up some gaps in Battalions. This has led to some test paint jobs and to some test of the clean up process that will be taking place in the near future.

Big difference in paint job.

I will probably tackle the re-basing and repainting in a Battalion by Battalion process as I do not want to get in over my head. For the basing, I have been wanting to improve my basing technique for a while and I have purchased a lot of supplies to that extent. So look for lots of random stuff in the future.

A Matter of Perspective

A little while ago I finished my two regiments of the Old Guard Grenadiers for my 28mm Napoleonic line. Additionally I also completed in the 6mm range the two regiments of Old Guard Grenadiers . And I thought to myself "wouldn't it be cool to see them in comparison".  Well here they are.

The Breakdown 
Both the 28mm and 6mm Old Guard regiments have the same number of figures (96 total each). However the time to paint is way different. It took me about 8 hours to paint all 96 6mm figures compared with the 96+ hours to paint all 96 28mm figures. This does not even include the time for the basing them all(which I have never timed myself on). What about price? Not including paint, bases and basing material, which would be more expensive for the 28mm figures, the cost of the 6mm figures was about $8 for all 96 figures. For the 28mm figures the cost was about $70 for all 96 figures. The price break down per figure comes out to be $.08 per 6mm figure and $.73 per 28mm figure. So for the $70 it would take for 96 28mm figures, I could get about 875 6mm figures!!! That is about 18 regiments of 6mm figures. Net result? It is way cheaper, less time consuming, and easier( YES easier) to paint 6mm figures.

Reinforcements are on Route

Under 6mm Eagles update
So a few updates on all the projects I am working on are in store. The biggest update, in terms of the number of unites added to the available OOB, is to the French. I have completed a grand total of 12 artillery batteries(8 Horse batteries and 4 Light batteries). The Light batteries and one of the horse batteries will go to completing the French I Corps' Artillery park. The other 7 Horse batters will go to the II Corps(1x), the Imperial Guard(2x), and to the II and IV Cavalry Corps(2x each). Once again I am awe struck at the 6mm line. Nothing else compares to this.

Eight Horse Artillery Batteries.

Four Light Artillery Batteries.

The second addition to the French army comes in the form of two newly completed Cavalry Regiments. One of Hussars and one of Chasseurs. They are the 6th Reg of Hussars and the 8th Reg of Chasseurs. They are for the newly started 7th Cav Division in the French IV Corps. Note to reader: Do not ask why I paint what I paint when I paint it. It does not make sense to me either. As for painting these guys. If I ever get around to buying some of Perry's plastic Hussars, I certainly hope I have more fun painting them than I do with these 6mm guys. They are a pain in the butt to paint. Not sure why( I think it may have to due with all the colors and trying to make it look good on 6mm, generally not hard to do given the "paint what you can see at 3ft" rule). Anyways they are done and I still have more to do.

6th Reg of Hussars

8th Reg of Chasseurs

Next for the 6mm line I think I am going to start on some of French Line Lancers I have base coated so I can complete the French I Corps. 

Eagles of Rome update
I finished base coating the last two boxes of Warlord Games Roman Legionaries that I have. As well as having made another contribution to having trees cut down in the forests by ordering some more bases from LITKO. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for bases for their miniatures. All the shapes and sizes you could want. They even give a few options on what material you want them made out of and thickness. Enough of the advertisements. SO the plan right now is to use the bases that are coming in this order to outfit as many 12 figure Cohorts from all my Romans as possible. Once this is done I then should be able to tell how many more commanders I need. With that I should be able to get an order together sometime in February(provided I do not get distracted............ again).

Once I get all the command figures I need I should with just what is in these two pictures be able to make 16 Cohorts. I think I will try for two Legions then.


Under the Eagles update
So here is the now completed 28mm French 1st and 2nd Regiments of Old Guard Grenadiers. 4 full battalions of les grognards to give the Allies and French command a pain in the neck. Next I think I am going to start on either the 3rd Reg of Old Guard Grenadiers or finish the other Victrix French line Reg that is waiting to be painted. As well as getting some more Roman commanders the next order of Miniatures should also included some battalion commanders from Perry to round out a couple of battalions I have lying around.

British Army

The British Army

The British Army is the second of the two 28mm Napoleonic armies I have been building for the last couple of years. I plan on making a kind of dual purpose Peninsular and Waterloo campaign army. Most of what you will see in this post has to do with the Waterloo army though I do have some unassembled British Peninsular Victrix Infantry. As a side note I do not have any Cavalry for the British Army as of yet. When Perry Miniatures finally releases their plastic British Cav then this fact may change.

British Command

So far British command is off to a good start. I have a Corp Commander, Division commander and 3 Brigade commanders already done. I really would like to do an army command but seeing as I do not have all the figures I want for the command stands, this will have to wait. The other thing I need to do is finish my print out with all the names for the brigade to army command so I can fill in all those blank placards you see on the bases (Ps. I also intend to do this for artillery, that is why you may have seen blank ones on the French artillery and will see blank placards on the British artillery).

Corp Commander General Hill. Picton is just along for the ride. He will get his own stand later

Division Commander Wellesley for my Peninsular army.

And my 3 brigade commanders whose names escape me at the moment.

British Artillery

Now  for the one military arm that my British army has over the French, the artillery. The completed artillery park now holds 3 9lb guns and a single 6lb gun. The good for the British is that Victrix made an AWESOME plastic British Artillery box and I (during a cash flow increase) invested in four of those said boxes. With the addition of 2 Perry guns the British will be able to field a total of 14 guns when I am done with what I have in my possession currently. Now for some Horse Artillery.

That is an experimental battery commander base in the back ground.

A Perry 9lb and 6lb guns and crew

2 Victrix 9lb guns and crew

As far as how the artillery is going to be split up into formations I was thinking that maybe two guns would represent a battery? Not sure yet. However 1 seems to small, 4 seems to large and 3 is an odd number. Still thinking on this one though.

British Infantry

Plodding along right behind the French Infantry is my British Infantry formations. Currently I have a total of 4 completed Battalions. 1 Line, 2 Light and a Light Battalion of Highlanders. Ready to paint is another Line Battalion and an additional Light Battalion of Highlanders. Still in boxes are 4 Battalions of Peninsular Infantry( 2 Light and 2 Line) and 2 Line Battalions of Highlanders.

All four Battalions ready to fight

A Battalion from the 42nd Highland Regiment

4th Kings Own

69th South Lincolnshire

33rd 1st Yorkshire West Riding

Where I want to go

Currently I really would like to be able to do the following. I would love to get hold of those Perry Plastic Hussars. A few regiments would be a nice addition to the French Cav arm. I would also love to be able to get more artillery for the French as well. For the British I want to get a little more Infantry, maybe do some KGL? I would probably use Perry's plastic British Infantry for those with some Victrix flags. I would also love to start the British Cav arm, but this one will have to wait until plastics become available. Oh and I would like to get another Perry 9lb and 6lb guns so as to make the batteries look more consistent. The really big temptation right now is to start Russian (via Warlord Games and Victrix), Austrian (via Victrix) and Prussian (via HaT, Warlord Games and Perry) armies. All of the mentioned miniature companies have AWESOME looking lines out or in the works for those countries. However like I said earlier, monetary availability does not comply with my paining desires.

Note: To all who view this blog the picture at the top of the blog is out of date as I recently realized that I had painted the epaulets on my Guard Commanders wrong. This has been fixed.

Up next? Under the 6mm Eagles intro and French Army.