Württemberg Update

Hoi,

In the last Black Powder Battle report I posted I mentioned I had to use a Württemberg detachment to supplement my French forces.I am actually building a brigade sized force for them of 3 line infantry regiments, each with a stand of grenadiers, and a separate light infantry regiment. The latter is the last to be done since yesterday I finished the last Line Regiment featured here.

Enjoy:

What's great is that you can make this 4 regiment brigade from just ONE box of HÄT Württemberg infantry for about €11,- beat that! ;-)

 Cheers Sander

Listening to: :"The Best of John Foggerty"





 

Feuer! Part II

Hoi,

Today's update brings you an Austrian 7YW infantry regiment. While researching uniforms for the Austrian army I stumbled along the site of www.kronoskaf.com/ which I have mentioned here before. There you can find about any uniform used by most of the major, and even some minor, nations involved in the conflict. There I found out that several regiments were raised in the part of the Austrian Empire called the "Austrian Netherlands" that's most of present day Belgium and the Dutch province of Limburg where I have been born and raised and live now. So logically I am going for some regiments from this detachment.

So I hereby present the Sachsen-Gotha Regiment:

About almost everything on these uniforms is WHITE, I hate painting white... oh well, I guess they turned out pretty well enough. While reading up on the 7YW, quite a lot of comparing with the Napoleonic wars is unavoidable. I was amazed just how large a part of the armies of those days consisted of cavalry, being used to Peninsular British amounts of cavalry. Also tactics seem indeed to have been pretty straight forward. Anyway I am looking forward to the release of the new HäT Prussians in order to paint them as British- and Hanoverian units. Until that time I can just make do with all the Austrians still awaiting paint.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Immersion" by Pendulum

Feuer!

Hoi,

Let's talk a bit of painting and collecting psychology today. When I started collecting figures I was pretty much solely interested in the history of the British Redcoat in the period roughly from 1700 up to 1900. Specially with Napoleonics I was mainly delighted to paint redcoats and neglect all the other nations. I absolutely hated painting all the French infantry units being uniformed exactly alike without even the slightest variation to distinguish between the line regiments. Couple this with an inability to paint white uniforms and a hatred of painting French troops was born.This only changed with the release of HäT's 8095; 1808-1812 French Infantry big box. I painted some testshots http://www.hat.com/Othr6/Sander04.html and had to do some more research to get them modestly right and so I was struck by the many ways you could paint them, specially when using campaign dress, and tried some of these with black basecoat and so black-lined shadows for the first time. Now I have 3 and a half showcases of figures of which 1 is entirely dedicated to French Napoleonics and their Allies.

The same is now pretty much happening to me regarding the 7YW Austrians. I still hate doing white uniforms but the Revell 7YW Austrian, all 3 sets of them are just so darn good, that a simple paint job will get the best out of them. I only ever started to collect them to convert them to Brits and use them as enemies for the Brits, but now I like painting them just for the fun of it. Some time ago I showed you my combined regiment of grenadiers and now here are my first 3 bases of artillery. Judge for yourselves!

When observing these chaps closely you'll notice that there are red-faced- and blue-faced uniforms. The red ones depict the actual artillery crew members and the blue ones are train personnel oft pressed to help serve the guns to replace casualties or to supply the guns with ammo from the caissons. Two of the guns are the Revell supplied field-guns and one is a HäT Austrian Napoleonic howitzer. I intend to make some limbers and caissons for them as well.

Hope you like them as much as I do.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Garage Inc" by Metallica

La Haye Sainte Revisited, Part I

Hoi,

Holiday is over, sadly, but I still have found some hobby-time. A long time ago I had a version of the famous Airfix La Haye Sainte farm building. I put it together, rather inexpertly, and used it in early wargames and mucking around with toy soldiers. At some point along the way it got wrecked and I had to throw it away. Last year I was really getting into building scenery for the gaming table en got a put-together La Haye from Martin from www.miniatuurwereld.com. I decided to revamp it and get some decent detail on it to make it look better then the original kit. While researching the real building I found out that the kit doesn't resemble the actual building by a long shot. So in the end I decided to still revise the building but use it as a more "all-purpose" farm rather then the La Haye Sainte pur sang.

Here are the first pictures of this project.

First up the building as I got it from Martin:

The main farm house revised by me, mind you it's still pretty much a work in progress so not finished by far:

To be honest, I guess it well take me ages to complete the total structure but I do believe the end-result will look pretty nice.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Vive L'Empereur" military marches from the Premier Empire

Army Showcase Part IV: WW1 Early War German Army

Hoi,

The 4th army for my showcase series is the Early War German army for the Great War. As usual we'll start with an overview shot:

Cavalry (Take a good look since this will be just about the only time that I used Strelets figures)

The mass of Infantry, 3 companies of regulars plus some Jäger

Close up of an infantry company

Close up of the Jäger

Hope you like it!

Cheers Sander,

Listening to: "Rock in Rio" by Iron Maiden

Holiday Update Part XIV: Labels

Hoi,

Finally added a "labels" section to the blog. Now I've started out with the idea of labelling all old posts but stopped with that when I saw just how much work that'd be. So from now I'll just label all new posts and those are the ones mentioned in the brackets in the labels section ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to "The Idle Prentice" by Gin lane

Holiday Update Part XIII: Battle Report

Hoi,

Last Sunday, Mark, Jan-Willem (Pijlie) and yours truly played a game of Black Powder Napoleonics. The game was based on capturing 3 objectives: both armies (French and Allies: Dutch, Brits and Prussians) needed to occupy a farm and crossroads and the Allies needed to destroy the French Artillery battery which the French had to prevent from happening. For me it was the largest game I played with my Napoleonic figures and I had to employ pretty much of all my late war troops. This forced me to supplement the French with a two battalion brigade of Württembergers which is pretty anachronistic but I just don't have more French infantry painted at the moment. I am doing something about that as we speak by the way. For Mark this was the first time with the BP rules and he wanted to have all of the basic rules pretty clear in his head up front, so I got a refreshment course as well, being a bit rusty on most of the rules myself.

Jan Willem played the French (General de Division Jean-Guillaume de la Flèche), Mark was at the helm of the Prussians (Herr General Oberst von Zinn zu Mann) and myself featured as Commander of the Dutch-British  contingent (General Alexander Offstreet), as the lads said: I've had a lot of fun coming up with them names so I couldn't stop myself mentioning them here.

Without further ado here are the pictures:

The set-up of the table, my gaming room was pretty much cramped up by the additional trestle table.

Some deployment pictures

The battle is joined:

Mark and me discussing our next step

In the end the game went something like this: the heavy cavalry on the French right wing was being stalled by their Dutch Belgian counterparts and failed to make in impression, the Dutch-British centre marched towards the crossing and took on the artillery  head on. On the French left wing the Prussians managed to wipe out more then half of the division and since the French cavalry on the left, by then had two of it´s 3 units shaken that division was annihilated as well. The Prussian Jäger managed to occupy the farm early on in the game and the French were unable to get them out. So in the end half the French army was broken and the Allies had 2 of the 3 objectives in hand with the guns a turn away of being charged by the Black Watch... Jan Willem had no option left but to sue for peace...

Jan Willem and I also played a game of Great War but that I'll show you later on this week,

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Ixnay on the Hombre" by The Offspring