Borodino at Enfilade 2016

At last!  The day of battle was upon us!

Field Marshall Hamm's beautifully painted French hordes advance against the Russian redoubts...

View From the French left.  Looks impressive, but in fact, nobody on this side of the battlefield did much of anything for the entire battle...

Doug's nifty field ambulance vignette.  They would have lots of work to do today...

View from behind the redoubt in the center of the Russian lines...

Cossacks skillfully screen the Russian left flank...

Polish(?) infantry advancing for the glory of the French Emperor...

More of Napoleon's legions...

As the game kicks off, my little cavalry corps re-deploys to cover a rather conspicuous weak point in our line located  behind the ruined village of Semenovskaya...

A delightfully painted corps of Cossacks covers the Russian far right...Beautiful work, whoever painted these...I love 'em!



The mighty Russian Imperial Guard await their orders to commit to battle.  As it turned out, the orders didn't come in time to make any difference, but hey...that's life.

The advancing French destroy the Russian infantry blocking the path to Semenovskaya, tearing a hole in the Russian lines.  It's my boys' time to shine!

My Ivans sweep through the smoldering streets of Semenovskaya and advance to meet the accursed Frogs!

The massed cavalry columns collide in a hurricane of steel and horseflesh as, to their right, the French reach the main redoubt, grappling with James' Russian infantry.  James fights his battle brilliantly, and, despite a horrible tactical situation, holds out to the very end...

My hussars blunt the assault of Bob's heavy cavalry but the French horsemen decimate my ranks before retiring.  Next time I'll know not to put light cavalry up against heavies!

French infantry defeat the battered remnants of Revsky and Borozdi's forces, killing them or driving them out of their fleches, but my horse artillery open up at close range and clear the French from the captured fortifications in the very moment of their hard-won triumph!

The French horse re-group for another round of attacks.  My Hussar division is wrecked, so my Dragoons go forward!

Count Pyotr Bezukhov asks "May I be of assistance to anyone?"  Unfortunately, he is not killed.

My horse artillery make their last stand near the woods.  I was proud of them.  Despite their limited range, they eliminated two French infantry stands and damaged another one before being crushed by the French guns.

Russian reserve cavalry gallop toward the inferno.  I don't know what they were doing, but I thought they were beautiful, so I took a picture.

My Dragoons meet the French charge...

Again they compel a French retreat, but again the French leave my ranks in tatters.  I have only a skeleton crew left to meet the last charge...!  ...And there it ended.  After a long, hard fought game, the Russian left wing was completely destroyed, while battered but grimly determined columns of French still stormed stubbornly forward.  It was over.  Doug called he game for the French.  An awesome game.

Cheers to Doug Hamm, who put on a great game, and to everybody who contributed as players, mentors and painters.  See you next year!

Russian Hussars at Borodino

The last unit of my Russian Cavalry Corps are these Hussars.  They don't look like much, but I am all out of time to work on them, and so unfortunately this is as good as they are ever going to get.

I've painted both stands as being of the Izoum regiment....

...shown here painted by Keith Rocco in the big mix-up with French Cuirassiers at Borodino.

Like the Dragoons, these are Perry minis, and they're not bad, but there's something about them that made my paintbrushes surly, unhappy and bad at their job.  I'm no happier with these than I was with my Dragoons, but try, try again, right?

The braid on their chests refused to allow itself to be dry brushed, for some reason.  Not sure why.

I brooded over letting them have their pelisses in spite of the fact that they did not wear them on the day of the battle.  I have the pelisses painted up, however, and will take them with me to the con in case I change my mind.  Pelisses just look so damn good!

My finished corps.  Had to re-base the gun as it turns out I had it on the wrong size base.  Grr.  Well, they're not pretty, but you don't have to be pretty to be able to fight, right?  We'll see how they do at Borodino.  I'll post some pictures of them in action at Enfilade sometime in early June. 


Urrah!!

Ol' Piet's Beer Cart: Thunder Mountain Dwarves' Baggage Train Part 2

An ancient and sacred tradition in the Thunder Mountain colony dictates that when the King's army marches to war, it does so fortified by a number of casks of excellent beer and cider furnished at he King's own expense. 

Although appreciated by all, for some Dwarves the 'King's ration' is simply not enough.  Those who need a little something extra while working themselves up for, or winding down from, battle can turn to some of the private ale-selling enterprises that invariably follow in the army's trail.

Shown here is one of the more celebrated of these entrepreneurs, Pieter Larsen, known to the soldiery simply as "Ol' Piet."  Like the army's other farriers, Piet fought in the ranks in his youth, earning many hair-raising scars and blood curdling war stories which he's glad to share around the ale barrel in the evening.  Like so many old war vets, Piet is well known for being a bit crotchety and  short of temper.  His club and hook hand serve as an excellent deterrent to those Dwarves who have a hard time knowing when to stop tapping the kegs.

Here is Piet's beloved friend and co-worker, Polly, well known for being just as cranky and violent as Piet himself.  Her hind legs have developed enormous strength over the years of hauling her heavy loads and a sharp kick from her aft hooves have been known to knock obnoxious customers out cold.

Tellin' War Stories

Taking care of business.

"Snerk...Hrmm? Just a few more minutes Sarge, few more minutes. I'll be right there."

The complete baggage train.  The pictures look a bit washed out because I used my wife's camera and I haven't really figured it out yet.  Well this was the very last piece of my 3,000+ point Point Oldhammer Dwarf army.  It has taken years and I still want to add another 2k points or so, but the muster of  Thunder Mount is finally 100% ready to march! 



Russian Dragoons at Borodino

Some more of my troopers for the Borodino game next month.  These are Perry miniatures, and I'm not keen on them.  I wish I'd bought more Front Rank guys. I like the nice, chunky proportions of the FR minis.  They remind me of old school Citadel minis and are fun to work on.

I love the stuff the Perrys did for GW way back when, but these Napoleonics lack a certain something.  I'm also not a bit happy with my painting on these.  I'm new to Napoleonics and kind of struggling with it.  To make matters worse, I'm having to paint these in something of a  hurry, as the Guard has dropped a school on me from out of the blue, which is going to trim away 3 weeks of time I could have spent getting these guys to where I'd like them to be.  I've still got to do 6 Hussars, and it's going to be a very rushed job.  Not happy about that.

On a sad note, it looks like these are the last pictures my trusty little Pentax Optio will ever take for TFTBB.  After some 10 years of gallant service in war and peace it seems he has finally given up the ghost.  He quit right after I took these. He could always be trusted to make my minis look nice. I'll have to try to learn to use my wife's camera until I can replace my old buddy.  Farewell, comrade.

Again, not happy with these, but they'll do for a weekend of wargaming, I guess. Can't spare any more time to work on them.  On to the Hussars...

Russian Horse Artillery Borodino, 1812

After a long and exhausting winter, its nice to see green grass and leaves popping on the trees again.  Yay, Spring!  The family business slows down at this time of year, so there's time to relax a bit and do things like sleep and paint, assuming I can get permission to do so from my son! There's also Enfilade!! I was invited to attend this convention by a fellow Guardsman on the way home from Afghanistan last year, and had a blast.

The two most memorable games I got to play were Napoleonics, one of which was Doug Hamm's Waterloo anniversary game, using his own set of rules.  We fought out Napoleon's nemesis a couple of times, and it was a riot.  This year Doug is putting on a Borodino game and I'm painting up some Russians for it.
My troops are the two tiny corps of cavalry commanded by Generals Korff and Kreutz, whose separate commands we are treating as a single corps for game purposes.  Here, as you can see, is my stand of horse artillery figures, all by Front Rank miniatures.

Doug's rules use his own basing system, and he is something of an iron fisted tyrant when it comes to making sure the bases are uniform.  Iron fisted tyranny is not always a bad thing, and in this case it is indeed very appropriate and useful, because several different players will be painting and bringing their own troops to the game.  Standardizing the appearance of the bases helps keep the game from developing that gypsy camp look and makes us all happier at the end of the day.
One thing that stands out about the bases to me is how thick they are.  (1/4 inch!)  Your guys end up standing pretty high above the game table and don't blend in very well with the turf, but the thick bases are easy to grasp and move around and help you to avoid doing something really embarrassing, like fumbling a heavy base of metal artillery figures onto another guy's infantry.
The flat spot in the lower left hand corner of the base is for a unit designation label.  The tiny die on the lower right hand corner of the base shows the relative strength of the unit.  A unit whose die shows a six is at or near establishment strength, while a unit reduced to one has been nearly wiped out.  The dice goes in the lower right hand corner because most of us are right handed.  It's all very well thought out.
Speaking of thins being well thought out...Garn!  I forgot to edge the base in black.  Knew I forgot something.  I'll have to fix that.

 

I still have 2 stands of Hussars and two stands of Dragoons to finish my corps.  Those should be showing up on the old blog pretty soon, and in May we'll ride off to defend mother Russia.  Last year I forgot my camera, (typical!) so I didn't get any pictures of the many beautiful games that were being run at Enfilade.  This year I won't screw up.  Expect to see some pictures of our battle here sometime early in June!

Flames of War German Grenadier Company 600 point Force Part 2: Pak 40 AT guns, Mortar Platoon and 3rd Rifle Platoon

About one hundred and thirty years or so ago, I started work on two armies for FOW; A British Grenadier Guards tank company and a German infantry company to fight them.  The project was interrupted by Afghanistan and a baby and petty stuff like that,  but now I'm finally getting back around to it.

Here's the Pak 40 platoon, ready to wreck some Tommy tanks. 

They're not spectacular or anything but I think they came out ok...

I was a bit annoyed at the quality of the crew figures on these models.  They were smaller than Battlefront's infantry figures, and not very well detailed.  I ended up replacing some of them with figures from other kits.  The guy with the shell on the gun to the left is a spare figure from the 8.8 flak gun kit.  Shell's a little over large for the pak 40, but hopefully he will still pass inspection somehow.

The command team..."See zem?  Blow zem up!"

The third and last rifle platoon, with Panzerfaust of course.

Not much different from the first two platoons...

The mortar Platoon...two sections and two observer teams...

I am partial to mortars.  So useful. Wish I had my own real life mortar platoon.

One of the observer teams.  The spotter peeks around a helpful shrub while his buddy pulls rear security.

The other observer team.  I'm terrible at painting the camo smocks that some of the minis are wearing.  Hopefully I'll get better with practice.

The finished 600 point force.  I had originally intended to include a platoon of three Stugs instead of the mortars and 3rd rifle platoon, but it didn't work out that way for whatever reason.  The Stugs and a pair of 88 flaks will make up the next 300 point block.

I have some old college pals coming out next week for a couple of days of marathon gaming.  I was hoping that I'd be able to get 1,000 points each of Germans and British finished by the time they got here, but I'm beginning to think I won't be able to get it done.  Still, made some progress on the army at least.  'Til next time...