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.

The Battle of The Alma

 One of our group is hosting a game at the Trumpeter's Salute convention next month and we decided to repurpose some of the panels from our Wagram game as - like Wagram - the Battle of The Alma, features a small river (the Alma) at the base of a hill. 

This is the map I am basing the panel layout on:

For this game I needed to make three more panels to extend the heights beyond the Alma as Russian reserves will be parked there, along with two redoubts (the goal of the attacking allies). 

The boards were covered in sanded grout and sealed with white glue:

.As part of the hillside was steep and rocky, I made use of some Woodland Scenics rock moulds:

Two layers of static grass (2mm Woodland Scenics and 4mm Peco), followed by scrub brush (Woodland Scenics foam bushes and Scenic Express SuperTurf) matches the new panels to the old ones.

The village of Bourliouk will be placed where the road meets the Alma, utilising the Battlefield Accessories buildings I made earlier. Although I am tempted to extend the roads as on the map, they do not play a key part in the battle and limit the new panels. 

There is still a bit of tidying to do of the original panels, and the redoubts and some vineyards to make before the battlefield is complete. 

Sarissa Precision's European Timber Framed Town Set

 I have some more 15mm structures for my Napoleonic terrain collection; this time from Sarissa Precision, their European Timber Frame Town set.

This set is more complex than the Battlefield Accessories buildings in that all the buildings are at least 2 stories and have the necessary etched timber framing. Like the Battlefield Accessories buildings I textured the walls with Polyblend grout. 

Even though I was careful, I still got grout in the lines, and had to go back over the buildings after texturing to scribe out some lines.

I decided to do all the texturing and glue the card shutters onto the walls before assembly and priming; it was definitely easier to do that on the flat. 

The way the chimneys are cut means that two sides have no scribed brick texture. I scribed some bricks into some .5 cm foamed PVC for the exposed sides.

Handsome little buildings even before paint is applied.

2 of the 5 buildings in the set are urban town houses:

One has a bar or shop on the bottom floor:

The other is a typical town house:

There are also two larger buildings, a little more rural but still suitable in a town:

One is a barn:

...and the other a farm house:

For the church I chose some fish scale tiles from Slater's Plastikard for the roof. I also filled in the MDF of the dome with wood filler to smooth it out, and added strips from styrene.

I like my buildings based so I plumped them down on some MDF and added pavers scribed into some foamed PVC sheet to give the buildings a bit more a urban look.

I paid a little more attention to the rooves when painting as that is what we will be looking at the most when war gaming. 

Due to various embellishments and the more complex nature of the assembly and painting, these kits took quite a bit longer to do than the Battlefield Accessories kits. Between the two sets I imagine I will have enough buildings for most games as most towns and villages will consist of two or three structures. Having said that, I still have a couple more buildings I would like to add. Thank you for looking.