Eureka Miniatures Early French Battalion 3

The third battalion for my Napoleonic Early French project done. This time it's a 24 man battalion plus command instead of the 36 man sized units I painted before. Our group here decided to reduce the standard battalion size a bit in the hope we can get them on the table a bit sooner. While 36 looks better I think 24 still looks OK but for painting it makes a huge difference. Well to me anyway, it's something psychological with those 36 sized units. When you start it it feels like a major project that will take ages to finish while a 24 sized unit feels just as another thing on the painting desk.
I will rearrange the other battalions so they gan go both ways but now I only need to paint 48 more to have six of them finished :-)


This was my final submission for the annual Painting challenge @Analogue Hobbies. It's in the fortnight theme bonus round which I recommend you to check if you did not already as there are some insane good entries over there. This is what I posted:
For the last stands in this years challenge I finally managed to get a decent sized unit done.  I love firing lines in an army. They are not the most practical for gaming but any of my armies needs at least one.
These excellent Eureka miniatures are initially painted for the Wars of the Third Coalition but I will allow them to be fielded up to 1807 and use them with a simple flag swap for the Revolutionary wars in Europe and even Egypt. So these battalions will give me a great base to expand on and paint up theatre specific units for the various armies in the future.

Eureka Miniatures Early French Voltigeurs

OK, I'm one tiny step closer towards the goal of building that Early French army I've always wanted to have . First goal is to build an all Eureka Brigade of four battalions, an artillery battery and some skirmishers. So, I'm about  halfway now. We'll see how to proceed from there but I definitely need a cavalry plan as well, and it not easy finding the right models.

Figures are Eureka's grenediers. I only had to cut off the grenades from the cartridge pouch for them to be used as Voltigeurs.

I've added them to the slowly growing French gallery for those who want more pictures.

Eureka Miniatures Early French Battalion 2

When it comes to the hobby there is not a lot that beats the excitement of finishing a 36 man Napoleonic unit. So when I finished this unit last week I just stared at them for an hour enjoying the moment. Now they have marched into a customized IKEA box waiting for battle for a long time probably.
As I've said in a previous post these are part of a long term project that, with little modifications such as a flag swap, covers the 1800-1808 period. 

Again, these Eureka figures are excellent and include some nice dynamic poses. The bayonets proved a challenge in basing as I wanted them to be able to represent different formations.So all bases (30x40) are marked underneath now with instructions where to put them in which formation. I've never been so organized I must admit. Flag is from GMB Designs.

Next week Salute! Hope to see some of you there at the Blogger meet up. Details can be found on Ray's bog here.

 

Eureka Miniatures Early French Battalion

Officer for Sharpe Practice games

Done... This first Napoleonic Early French  battalion kicks off a new long term project. I wanted to do an early French army for a long time and when some guys from the group had their eye on the Russians and Austrians last year this new project was born very quickly. My plan is to paint seven or so of these Eureka battalions. While initially painted for the Wars of the Third Coalition I will allow them to join the later army up to 1807 and use them with little modification for the Revolutionary wars in Europe and Egypt. So these battalions will give me a great base to expand on and paint up theatre specific units for the various armies in the future.

No Voltigeurs, Flag changed...ready to disembark in Alexandria

The Eureka miniatures are just fantastic. I've said this before on other manufacturers but the reason is I pick my minis very carefully these days. This French are really a different level with so many different figures full of character in the range. Even for this marching unit I needed just a few doubles. And the quality is superb. No mould lines, flash, broken bayonets or other annoying defects I still experience with other popular manufacturers. On top of that the sculpts have a great definition which helps painting greatly. They are somewhat pricey though, especially in Europe. I've ordered in the USA and another batch for pickup at Salute to reduce costs a bit.
Finally customer service from Eureka USA ans Australia was excellent so what can I say? I'm a happy customer..
Flags are from GMB Design. 

Not sure when I will paint the next battalion. Hopefully another one this year but I need to finish the Mexican skirmish force first for a game in December. January we go back to ACW to prepare our Gettysburg refight in July.

Back to blogging with some Nap battle pics

After a long summer/painting/blogging break I recently picked up the brush again and decided it's time to re-enter the blogosphere. My RSS reader (Gruml) is telling me I've missed about 4000 posts so you guys have been pretty busy this summer. I've marked them all to read now knowing I missed out on lots of good stuff.
Had a great holiday and I could go on for hours talking about it but I guess I better stick to the topic here.

To get started again a couple of pictures from a French-Prussian game Rob, Jacco and I played last June using General de Brigade. Can't remember (erased) a lot of the battle except that the French Dragoons were far more effective than I liked them to be.  It was the start of Nap campaign organized by Rob. Don't have much details yet but I will try to convince him to do a post here again.

Tomorrow night a FoW desert game organized by our FoW fans Sam, Marc and Rob Suchet. They prepared a scenario and the idea is that we play the same scenario using I ain't been shot mum in a couple of weeks time to experience the differences ourselves. More on that later.

Crossing the Sambre, General de Brigade AAR

With our complete group painting ACW at the moment RobP decided to distract us all from the period and organized a Napoleonic game using General de Brigade rules last saturday.  For the last years we played Sharp Practice (variants) for most of our gaming so this is a significant change from what we usually do. From a skirmish like setting to a couple of brigades on the table and a whole new approach on how to use troups etc.

While the group was expecting lots of difficulties with the new rules the really cool part was that it actually quite easy to learn. OK, you will have to go through some of the basics a couple of times but we picked it up quickly and got to play more turns than we thought beforehand. We definitely liked it and it acknowledged our choices in rules: Toofatlardies for skirmish, quick two man games and to get started in a period. Then building the armies up to brigade level for GdB or any of the rules based on GdB. Works for most periods since both sets cover almost all the major conflicts.

The game:
Rob sent us detailed orders and OOB a couple of days before the battle. In Dutch so I will do a very, very simplified version as I don't feel like translating today: The French had to march across the table to reach Brussels while the Allied basically had to stop them. Unaware of the opposing sides objectives we started the day by deploying the armies and giving the orders to the Generals de Brigades. The Allied forces made the decision to take and hold the farm with one Brigade which in the end proved a fatal mistake as the French columns neglected the farm and went straight at the Prussians in the center. Once the Brunswickers got their new orders to engage it was too late, the Prussians were being pushed back and losing their nerve. The Allied cavalry Brigade got orders to engage and threaten the right flank but got stuck in difficult terrain the overall C&C (who was that?) mistakenly took for a perfect hill to do some cavalry charging.  We had a great day trying out the game mechanics and discussing the new possibilities this brings. I think we had about 1100 points a side and played a 2x2,4m board. The distraction worked well as I am now planning the next army after the two ACW Brigades are done after the summer. Down to two choices but I have some time to decide with which I start.

You missed a good one Mister Suchet..
All the pics of the day exported to Photobucket

Prussian casualty markers, count the tufts...

One of the things that annoys me most when playing a game is the amount of gaming material that progressively enters the carefully laid out battlefield. Dices, casualty rings, rulebooks, cans of beer, you name it. Mostly in a horrendous colour to make sure it will get notified and providing a perfect view of the losses of a unit.

In order to prevent this our houserules state that you are not allowed to place any rulebook, glass of wine or other objects that not belong there on the table. This works pretty well and provides an excellent starting point for the next step to clean up the table from unnecessary clutter: painted casualty markers.

Luckily I had already painted two for my Prussians who are giving battle next Saturday, but they were unbased as I could not decide on how to do this. I did not want to paint numbers on it and thought of painting small stripes on the sides of the bases. But in a recent discussion with one of the group we realized the solution did not have to be complicated at all. Why not use tufts? we do it anyway.


All the Prussians are four on a base so I put one, two and three tufts at the different sides. The side pointing at the unit tells us how many casualties the unit has. Easy but effective I guess. Another advantage is that you can even create some generic markers without a casualty figure that you can use for any period. Just paint a base and put some tufts on. Good as starting point if you don't want to paint a marker for every unit and it will always beat a pink die or yellow casualty cap.

So, more things on the to-do list and in the meantime  it still will be dice. Any koopclub volunteer to make 20 or so generic ones ;-) ?

Minis from Calpe Miniatures

Sharp game report

Last weekend I played a game of Sharp Practice with Rob. I lost big time. While that's not really big news the way it happened was. At least for me. Those of you that know Rob (and you all do, he is that landwehr guy elbowing his way in at busy trader stands at the popular shows) also know his aggressive tactics. Basically he will charge anything in sight (he prefers cav units) and if no enemy is near he takes the shortest route to make sure he can charge next turn. Okay, he may be smarter than that but you get the idea. This game he deservingly won by a clever move outmaneuvering half my force who were comfortably waiting for some point blank shooting. Hmm, I didn't see that coming. 

Setup

To start of we set up the table and chose three victory objectives. Church, very small village and the windmill. We picked some units to game with and diced for the arrival location on the table.
The French (Rob) managed to hold the church from the attacking Spaniards while his other columns neglected the Windmill and went straight for the village. The British could not react quick enough and the Voltigeurs provided enough firepower to keep the British line busy for some time. The Spanish grenadiers defending the village did  not stand a chance and the French soon secured the second objective. Game over. Time for some more beers.

Some pictures of the game....The full album can be found here: LINK

First, Rob's heroes of the day...

Where are those French? Ah at the village...