Imaginations: The Wars of Stagonian Aggression

 This past Sunday Murdock and I got together at a local hobby store to play a game of Black Powder with Jeff's collection of 18thC Bloodaxe Miniatures. The scenario was Crossroads, from Charles S. Grants Programmed War Games Scenarios.

Advanced forces of the Armies of Stagonia and Saxe-Bearstein arrive in column on roads from diagonal corner. They converge on village at the crux of 4 major arteries, that is - apparently -  of great strategic importance. Initially troops arrive piecemeal:

Stagonian light horse are the first to make it to the village:

The Army of Saxe-Bearstein moves with... less purpose, shall we say...

This allows the oncoming Stagonians to move their main body forward without hinderance:

Eventually Saxe-Bearstein manages to assemble something more like an army on the table although the force has become bottlenecked:

And yet more Stagonians stream onto the table:

A series of enthusiastically followed commands finds them in an excellent position on the left flank of Saxe-Bearstein:

This picture shows the Stagonians hemming in the rudderless forces of Saxe-Bearstein:

A small victory for Saxe-bearstein as, after losing their own light horse, they have pushed back the Stagonian cavalry, and broken the brigade through musket fire. Their own brigade of horse has just started to enter the field of battle as the picture shows (the Eldebrau Dragoons in the lower left):

Not long after however, both of Saxe-Bearstein's foot brigades were broken, and the orders to withdraw were given, leaving the crossroads and village to Stagonia:

The rules used were Black Powder, with period specific rules and unit stats from The Last Argument of Kings supplement. We did not use the rules for blunders and we halved movement distances since we were playing on a 4 x 6 table. 

Terrain For The Battle of Leipzig; Part 1

 At some point next year, possibly as early as March but potentially as late as August, our group will putting on the Battle of Leipzig over a weekend. For this event we will be making use of some of the terrain panels from our Wagram game as well as a few new panels on which the White Elster will be modelled. 

 I am basing the panels mostly on the table layout from the Napoleon's Battles scenario book:

We have made some minor changes including trimming off areas where there is little action, resulting in an irregular table. The red lines indicate the shape of the playing surface; the green dotted lines show the panels:

The river sections will require 5 new 2' by 4' panels and one 2' by 2' panel. To fit in with the other panels I made frames out of 1"x4 ":

7 mm MDF and 1" foam followed:

Using a hot wire foam cutter I sculpted in the river bed. I got a little deep in a few places so I had to backfill in some spots with Drydex spackling:

This weekend I will start applying sanded grout top the panels. 

Rocky Wasteland Terrain

A new-ish hobby store in our area just recently moved to a new, bigger space and has an eye towards hosting miniature wargames. A buddy of mine made them 4 gaming tables, complete with storage space underneath and recruited me to make some terrain for them. Although not strictly historical, in fact, most of the games played will probably be 40K, possibly also some Star Wars Legion, Warhammer The Old World and others, I am sure somewhere on our planet, at some time there was a rocky, barren wasteland like this.

The store owner bought 4 mats from Mantic Games; this scenery is for the Hellscape Battlemat:

Clearly, somewhere with serious volcanic activity. I chose to go with standard grey rocky out crops with little vegetation. I saw the mats briefly before starting this project and In Real Life this mat is neither as bright or as brown as this photo suggests. I may have to adjust the colour of the pieces once I have seen them on the mat.

The bases are based on Games Workshops recommended guidelines for tournament terrain. There are 6 , 6x12 inch pieces, 4 4x6 inch and 2 5 x10 inch pieces. 

All the rock is insulation foam, with chunks tore off with a pair of very rough nippers. 

The torn foam has a nice texture to it that I would not have got if I had used a knife or a hot wire cutter. The texture was enhanced with Sculptamold which was also used to blend the larger pieces into the base and each other.

A mix of mostly sand with some Woodland Scenics Ballast (both fine and large) was glued down and sealed with home made sealer.

After priming with a light grey, I sponged white paint, yellow ochre and burnt sienna over the rocks before spraying everything with Golden Acrylics High Flow Shading Grey:

The Shading Grey darkens everything and blends the sponged colours into each other and the base coat. After a couple coats of mat varnish, I added some 6 mm dry grass tufts and called her done:

I may have to revisit the colours once I have seen the terrain on the mat. For the next three tables the owner would like me to use Games Workshop's 40K terrain kits with the basing themed to specific Battlemats.

Bloody Miniatures: A Thunder of Hooves

 After spending quite a bit of time this past twelve months working on 15mm terrain for our Napoleonic and Crimean War games, I have returned to painting Bloody Miniatures. A Thunder of Hooves was the first batch of mounted figures from Bloody Miniatures. 

Pack BM 042 is The Troopers. Well armed and uniformly equipped, these would be great for representing horse of the New Model Army: 

Pack BM 043, The Flashing Blades, do look a bit dandy with their lace and feathers:

Pack BM 044 are The Lobsters. Hesselrig's is what obviously comes to mind when looking at these figures but they could easily represent a General's or the King's life guard: 

The final pack in this tranche is BM 045, The moss Troopers. Festooned with firearms, they would make great harquebusiers, bandits or even dragoons:

The mounts are modified eBob horses. The original mounts had large, thick draft-like necks with skinny, under-muscled haunches. Sculptor Nick Collier has bulked out the hind ends, making more  accurately proportional horses and modified the saddles. The double reins are (probably) anachronistic but I am not much bothered by that.

Battle of The Alma; The Game

 This past weekend was the Trumpeter's Salute gaming convention in Burnaby British Columbia; our game - The Battle of The Alma - was Friday night (which freed us up to play games over Saturday and Sunday).

The Battle of the Alma was fought September 20, 1854. The Allies, led by Lord Raglan and Mareshal Jacques Arnaud, landed troops and supplies over 5 days from the 14th to the 19th near the port of Yevpatoria, 45 KM north of Sebastopol. The Russian Commander, Prince Alexander Menshikov was suprised by the allies, he had not expected them to attack so close to winter and therefore had not reinforced the Crimea. What he had available, he rushed to the ridge above the Alma, a naturally defensible position, where the Russians deployed numerous guns in two hastily built redoubts. The force was intended to delay the allies as they headed towards Sebastopol, however, preservation of the Russian force - especially the guns- was utmost in Menshikov's mind. 

Our game focuses on the British attack across the Alma, and up the ridge towards the redoubts, with the French potentially appearing on the western flank (as they did in reality). The British are deployed north of the Alma (the left of the photo), with the French in reserve (unbeknownst to the Russians) and the Russian forces are on the plateau, top right of the photo:

Our host, Nate briefing the players on their objectives and the rules of the game:

The Allies objective is to claim the heights so they can continue their march on Sebstapol.  The Russian objective is to extract a heavy toll from the allies, though not at the cost of losing the artillery, which the Russian commander, Menshikov considered invaluable. 

The Russian defenders in the greater redoubt (the red beads denote that the Russian guns start the game a little spooked; the green dice are the command pips available to the commanders).

The British line becomes somewhat disjointed crossing the Alma:

The Highlanders on the eastern flank make good progress, leaving their compatriots behind:

Gunfire from the 42nd sees off one Russian battery but pays a heavy price. The 2nd Division on the right struggles to catch up:

As the 2nd Division cross the Alma near Bourliouk, the Russians prepare to attack . They were ultimately successful, pushing the British back across the Alma.

A second wave Highlanders reaches the lesser redoubt...

... with predictable results for the Russian gunners:

Almost too late to be any use, the French have scaled the cliffs and appear on the Russian flank, catching them by suprise:

With the arrival of the French, the Russian forces - despite their success in holding off the 2nd division- find themselves outflanked. The lesser redoubt was lost, and the greater redoubt found itself between two enemy forces: Nate called the game as an allied victory, much like the historical battle.

The rules were Nate's own, the figures are all from Eureka's 18mm Crimean War range.

The Battle of The Alma; Part 2

 I am very happy to say I will not be up late Thursday night, struggling to finish the terrain for next weekend's convention game Friday evening, as I have managed to finish this project well ahead of time!

With the panels done, I just had to make some emplacements to represent the Russian redoubts and a few vineyards. 

The redoubts were made with 15 mm gabions from Maverick Models and Evergreen Styrene strips, buttressed with insulation foam and then textured with a mix of ballast, sand and sanded grout.

The vineyards were fairly straight forward: Bachman Wire Foliage Branches in medium green, gently pulled apart laterally to give the impression of growing along an arbor.

I wish I had ordered more gabions. They are perfect and I could have made a proper, well fortified redoubt.

My Battlefield Accessories buildings will do for the village of Bourliouk:

The northern edge of the battlefield from which the British will assault the heights.

From the behind the redoubts, where the Russian reserve will wait:

Just a little more tidying up and we will be ready for Friday evening.