3mm Napoleonic Portuguese Infantry for Blucher

Hi Folks,

Quite literally, I have a small update today.

Here are a few more brigades of 3mm Napoleonic Portuguese infantry to add to the collection for 'Blucher'. 

These are 3mm Napoleonics from Pico Armor (sourced from Oddzial Osmy out of Poland). The figures are based on 2" x 1.75" MDF bases with a 3mm thickness and rounded corners. The thickness is to allow players to more easily pick them up and the rounded corners is simply because I like the look of them (it gives the finished product kind of a wargaming chit appearance).

The common base size for 'Blucher' calls for a 3" frontage, but I've decided to go with 2" as it allows for very large battles to be played on the 8 x 5 surface which we typically use. To provide a little more perspective, by using this 2" base scale each inch equates to 150 yards, so one square foot on the tabletop is equal to about a square mile in the game. This allows us to better recreate sprawling actions like Wagram or Vitoria on a single tabletop.

Examples of various unit types, left to right: French foot artillery, infantry and heavy cavalry

To my way of thinking, painting these figures requires a fairly minimalist approach, maintaining just a basic level of detail to communicate what the figures are supposed to be.

For the infantry, I base everything up, texture the base and then prime the whole thing black. From there, I drybrush everything a light grey and then start applying over-saturated colours. 

The way I see it is that these figures should simply convey their primary features, first being their national uniform colour, with only a nod to other elements (namely face, hands, trousers, shako and bayonet), otherwise you can easily get drawn into the rabbit-hole of trying to paint fine details which will never be appreciated when seen en mass - in fact I find that too much painted detail can make the figure too 'busy', detracting from conveying the main uniform colour: French should primarily be blue, British red, Austrians white, etc. I think of these bases almost as boardgame chits, perhaps more like three dimensional playing tokens.

Examples of three British infantry brigades moving through a Spanish hill town.

Perceptive readers will have noticed that, since I base and prime everything from the start, I leave out painting the middle ranks or any inward-facing detail. Yes, in this scale I only paint the front of the front rank, the rear of the rear rank and the top of their heads and shoulders. Early on, I discovered that after painting every figure, if found the interior facing detail is completely lost once the strips of figures are based up. It's a complete waste of time and effort. So now I just paint the perimeter of the formations and I find that you can't tell the difference between the 'all-figure-detail' bases and those which are more minimalist . 

The basework is drybrushed two tones of brown with a khaki highlight. I then use a semi-opaque green tinted model railway emulsion to provide a base tone for the light scatter of flock I apply later. I'll often use a brown ink wash to make 'tracks' behind the formations, showing where they have trampled through the terrain. I then paint a mark on the front center which is used in the rules for line-of-sight and movement (here it is red edged with yellow for the Portuguese, but would be blue for the French, white for the Austrians, etc.). Finally, I print off a 3.5mm label to affix it to the rear corner of the base (these are so we can use roster sheets to track all the unit information).

So these five bases should cover the majority of actions where the Portuguese fought with the British in the Peninsula, with perhaps a couple more needed for the climatic action at Vittoria. 

Thanks for dropping in!

'Curte Vecchio' - 6mm Meditteranean Hill Town & 3mm British Napoleonics

A couple of months ago I prattled on about 'Blucher', a new set of rules which our group has been using for grand-tactical Napoleonics. This summer I organized a multi-player '100 Days' campaign for the guys which came off fairly well (you can read Peter's posts from his viewpoint as Wellington). We used the cards that came with the campaign pack, which worked absolutely fine, but I knew early on that I wanted to replace them with bases of massed figures. After a bit of hand wringing I went with the 3mm range offered by Pico Miniatures. These figures provide a great sense of mass which I think works very well for this level of simulation.  Over the summer I worked through a fair amount of the French forces (equivalent to 20 or so brigades/bases of infantry, cavalry and artillery), but in amongst that, I also managed to finish the British contingent which you can see in the accompanying photos.

As with my previous efforts, I've used a fairly stripped-down, minimalist approach to painting these little fellas (for those interested, the method to my madness can be followed up here). One thing I've discovered after dorking around with several hundred of these chaps is that you have to get the flags right as they really put the finishing touch on the unit. Nevertheless, since the cast flags only provide a teeny-tiny paint surface to work with you have puzzle out how best to convey their primary elements. (Believe me, after working on Russian and Austrian flags, with their double-headed eagles, whacky iconography and byzantine heraldry, one really comes to appreciate the elegant simplicity of the French tricolour!) Anyway, here are some of Nosey's lads, ready to go toe-to-toe with the best that Boney has to offer.

The red hash mark is to aid line of sight and indicate nationality.

Shown along with these British figures is another little project that I've wrapped up recently. This is a Mediterranean hill town offered by Total Battle Miniatures. DaveD from One Man and His Brushes was kind enough to pick this up for me from Salute this year. Thanks again Dave! 

This is the second set I've worked on from Total Battle. The first, shown below, was a small Austrian village, reminiscent of the village of Essling which was made famous during the 1809 campaign. That set featured four resin buildings on a flexible rubber base - a very nice bit of terrain. 

My first effort: Essling screened by Austrian forces painted by Greg and myself.

This time round it's a Mediterranean town set on a picturesque hill. Instead of rubber, the terrain base is a solid piece of resin featuring many nice details including insets for the eight buildings to fit within.

After seeing a few examples on the web I decided to tart-up the base with some vineyards, a few cyprus trees and a suitably heroic statue for the town square.

The vineyards were simply tiny bits of clumped foliage set with white glue. I then brushed in brown ink along the rows to give the impression of well-tended soil.

The cyprus trees were made from pipe-cleaners, shaped with diluted white glue and then painted in place.

The statue is a 6mm mounted figure glued onto a pushpin. Kinda lame, I know, but it works well enough. Like the buildings I kept it loose so it can be removed for when playing pieces have to occupy the town.

Now, I just need a few tables shaded with Cinzano umbrellas, a gelato bar and a couple pretty girls wearing big sunglasses... La Dolce Vita in Curte Vecchio! 

Ciao bella!

Have a great week everyone!

Wee Men In Belgium - 'Blucher' Napoleonic Rules & 3mm French Napoleonics

I picked up a copy of Sam Mustafa's 'Blucher' a few months ago, and since our local gaming group has had the opportunity to play the rules a few times this spring and summer I thought I'd pass along our impressions of the game.

In terms of game scale 'Blucher' is aimed at the brigade-level, allowing players to recreate those huge battles so iconic of the period.  Wagram, Borodino, and even Leipzig are all well within reach with this system. In order to do this 'Blucher' requires the players to accept a certain level of abstraction. For example, each unit on the tabletop roughly equates to a brigade of infantry/cavalry, while the artillery is modeled either as a concentration of guns (around 18 or so) or as being attached to individual brigades as dedicated batteries. 

So when you look at one of the 3"x2.5" unit cards you have to imagine a space of several hundred yards on each axis which is populated with 2-4 infantry battalions, or 2 cavalry regiments, or several batteries of guns all potentially arrayed in a variety of formations. While the grand-tactical scale of 'Blucher' won't be to everyone's taste (and really, what rules can claim that?), for myself I find it really appeals to that portion of my lizard brain which has always loved the grand scope and scale of the era. In my mind's eye, when I look at the table, I can see these huge formations moving across the landscape, banners waving, clashing and recoiling in amongst clouds of powder smoke and the thunder of cannon. Great stuff!

The unit cards themselves are pure genius. They contain most of the information players need to keep track of the unit: name, organization, strength, movement rates and any special abilities. Once you slip them into clear plastic sleeves you can easily track hits and make notes with water-soluble markers

I was chatting with the guys about the cards the other night and we all reminisced that, as young sprouts, we spent months (if not years) painting hundreds of napoleonic figures just to get our first game in. Over the intervening years I have seen loads of models at 'bring-and-buy' tables and on the internet from players who have either lost steam, discovered that they didn't like the period, or found that the rules offered did not appeal to them. With 'Blucher's' use of cards (either bought in the 'Hundred Days' package or easily downloaded and printed on coloured paper), players can be playing within hours of reading the rules, allowing them to determine not only if the rules are for them, but if collecting figures is what they want to do. In effect, it makes the rules incredibly accessible and allows players to get a taste of the genre before making the decision to whole-heartedly plunge into buying figures, terrain, etc.

The Battle of Quatre Bras using the cards from the 100 Days expansion.

As for our group, since April we've been playing 'The Hundred Days' campaign which, as I mentioned earlier, is offered as a separate add-on to 'Blucher'. The expansion provides cards for all the combatants who were involved in the Waterloo campaign, even allowing for a few 'what ifs' by including units which were historically on the flanks, guarding rear areas, and so were not present at the actual battle.  Nonetheless, with this system you can choose how you want to organize your forces and modify you deployments to create those fascinating 'what ifs' that are often discussed regarding those famous days in June, 1815.

For our campaign, we have eight players (four French and two each for the Prussians and Anglo-Allied contingents) while I am standing in, with whip and chair, as referee. 

For an added bit of fun I decided to conduct the campaign in double (triple?) blind, that is where the players have very limited knowledge of the movements and intentions of not only the enemy, but of their own allies as well. This limited intelligence (no comments from the wags pleeeaze) is mitigated through aggressive scouting, effective communication and good old-fashioned blundering around the countryside. I ask the teams for their daily orders and then I secretly conduct their movements on my own map (which has the full picture), notifying them of any sightings, reconnaissance, events, etc. In many respects it's much like classic Kriegspiel.

'For the cost of a few boot laces Napoleon has humbugged us.' The Hundred Days campaign map mounted a pin-board in the GM's office.

We're now at the closing chapter of the campaign and it's do-or-die for both the French and Allies. In fact, I think our next  battle will pretty much decide the issue. A real nail-biter to be sure.

The whole experience has really been excellent and I must take my hat off to the players for making it such a success. The guys have really embraced the various personalities of the period. Napoleon is supremely confident and dismissive of the Allies while his wing commander, Ney, is a worn-out maniac with a death wish; Blucher is suitably irascible and seems to suffer from a touch of dementia while his chief of staff, Gneisenau, is highly suspicious of the English;  Wellington is suitably xenophobic and has a constant eye on the Channel ports, just in case he has to make a quick dash to save Britain's only army. So, while the guys get to have fun playing the games and chewing up the scenery with the various characters, I in turn, have had a tremendous thrill watching it all unfold, reading all the correspondence and hearing the backroom planning. All in all, it's a wonderful recipe for a few months of gaming.

Okay, the other part of this post is to show what figures I've been working on these past few weeks. 

These are 3mm Napoleonics from Pico Armor (sourced from Oddzial Osmy out of Poland, I believe). The figures are based on 2" x 1.75" MDF bases. I asked Byron (over at SG2 Creations) to fabricate these bases with a 3mm thickness and with rounded corners. The thickness is to allow players to pick them up easily and the rounded corners is simply because I like the look of them (it seems to give the finished product a wargaming chit look).

The common standard for 'Blucher' is a 3" frontage, but I've decided to go with 2" as it allows for quite large battles to be played on the 8 x 5 surface which I typically use. To provide a bit more perspective, in this scale each inch equates to 150 yards, so one square foot on the tabletop is equal to about a square mile. Utilizing this scale allows us to recreate sprawling actions like Wagram or Vitoria on a single tabletop - in effect, it is like a quasi 3D map exercise.

Examples of various unit types, left to right: Foot Artillery, Infantry and Heavy Cavalry

For my way of thinking, painting these figures demands a VERY minimalist approach. The following list is what I've come up with to balance speed of production with maintaining a basic level of detail to communicate what the figures are supposed to be:

1) I glue the strips of figures to the base in groupings of three or four 'battalions' (3 ranks of 10 figures each) along with a few leader types (mounted officer and some trailing NCOs and junior officers on foot). Since these are French, I usually include a skirmishing screen at the front to reflect their tactical doctrine of using light troops. Every once in a while I'll include an artillery piece or a regimental band to break up the monotony and add a bit of visual interest. When all is said and done this gives a base with approximately 100 - 130 figures on it.

For heavy cavalry (i.e. cuirassiers) I base the figures in four ranks to give the impression of a mass of horsemen, whereas the medium cavalry (dragoons) get three ranks and light cavalry (Hussars, chasseurs, etc.) are setup with two lines.  I do this in order to give players a visual clue to what they're looking at on the tabletop.

For foot artillery I put four guns along with a 'trail' of caissons and support troops behind them. For horse artillery I just increase the amount of horses on the base.

2) Once the figures are glued down I then lay down a very thin skim coat of artists' gel medium. This provides some texture for the groundwork and helps to mask the transition between the figure strips and the surface of the MDF base. I leave a small area clear at the rear corner of the MDF base as I will need the space to affix the printed unit label.

3) I then prime the whole base using a dark brown spray, making sure to get into all the nooks and crannies of the formations. I often touch up with a soft brush to ensure I have complete coverage.

4) Once the primer is dry I liberally drybrush the whole base and figures with a medium grey. This will help to lift the brighter colours later on when painting the base and figures.

5) Okay, before I carry on I should outline a few opinions I have regarding painting in this scale: The way I see it is that these figures should simply convey their primary features, firstmost being their national uniform colour, with only a nod to other physical elements (namely face, hands, trousers, shako and bayonet), otherwise you can easily get drawn into the rabbit-hole of trying to paint fine details which will never be appreciated when they are seen en mass - in fact I find that too much painted detail can make the figure too 'busy', detracting from conveying the main uniform colour: French should primarily be blue, British red, Austrians white, etc. I think of these bases almost like boardgame chits, perhaps more like  three dimensional playing tokens.

6) Now, back to the figures. Next, I drybrush the castings in their national colour, in this case it's blue for the French. I pick a fairly unhistorical, vibrant colour as I find the scale needs bright tones to help make the figures stand out.

 7) Next I touch in their face and hands, trousers, shako and bayonet tips. The final piece is the tricolour flag. And that's it for the figures. Perceptive readers will have noticed that, since I base everything from the start, I don't paint the middle rank or any inward-facing detail. In this scale I only paint the front of the front rank, the rear of the rear rank and the top of their heads. Early on, I discovered that after painting every figure, the interior facing detail is completely lost once the strips of figures are based up. A complete waste of time and effort. So now I just paint the perimeter of the formations and I find that you can't tell the difference between the 'all-figure-detail' bases and those which are more minimalist . 

8) The basework is drybrushed two tones of brown with a khaki highlight. I then use a semi-opaque green tinted model railway emulsion to provide a base tone for the light scatter of flock I apply later. I'll then use a brown ink wash to make 'tracks' behind the formations, showing where they have trampled through the terrain. I then paint a mark on the front center which is used in the rules for purposes of line of sight and measurement (it is blue here for the French, but will be red for the British, white for the Austrians, etc.). Finally, I print off a 3.5mm label and affix it to the rear corner of the base (these are so we can use roster sheets for all the unit information).

9) ...And here is the finished product (this base is an earlier effort). Again, as you can see, it's fairly basic and stripped down, but when brought together with their companion bases I think they give a good enough impression of an army.

With each being a brigade this grouping depicts roughly two corps of infantry with artillery and cavalry support.

So, there you have it. A new Napoleonic rule set and a new scale to putter around with. The French army is well on its way to being completed so next up is the British and Spanish for some campaigning in the Peninsula. 

Thanks for dropping by everyone and have a great week!

Proof of Concept - 3mm ACW Regiments at 1:1 Scale

(Note: This is a cross-post from the Challenge blog.)

Alright everyone, this post exhibits a certain amount of nostalgic obsession and nerdy madness so please bear with me.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by miniatures and their relative scale. I have great memories of packing my Airfix plastics out into the garden and placing them at distances relative to their size (or the best I could determine, as math has never been my strong suit). So when the British were deployed amongst the peas and potatoes, and the Germans settled in amongst the corn and cabbage, they all somehow related to one another and therefore seemed more real to me. 

Anyway, when I started getting into historical wargaming in my teens I understood the need to abstract scales in order to fit scenarios onto tabletops, but I still held a desire to see these historical formations in their true form, at distances that reflected how the men of the various periods gathered, moved and fought.

Don Troiani's work seems to capture what it must have been like to live within the chaos of black powder battles...

These 3mm (1:600 scale) ACW figures (yes, they are very, very tiny) are from Pico Armor. I picked these up a few years ago in a fit of madness knowing I could finally indulge my fascination with 1:1 scale formations. I started working on a few bases, but soon became distracted by other projects (I know, how typical). Nonetheless, I found them tucked away in a drawer the other week, so pulled them out, the spark took light once again and so here we are.

What you see here is two American Civil War Confederate regiments. The one regiment on the left is made up of close to 500 figures while the other is about 340. These numbers align roughly to the historical strengths of average, campaign-strength ACW formations.

Each regiment is made up of 10 bases, with each base being a complete infantry company at 1:1 scale.

Below is a great educational photo. You can clearly see the incredible length of a mid-sized regiment drawn up into line (with another regiment in the distance). When I see this I’m immediately struck by what must have been a huge challenge of command-and-control for officer to exert their will over such a strung-out formation. I look at this and understand that having a good cadre of experienced NCO’s and junior officers was an absolute necessity for having any kind of battlefield effectiveness. 

Both regiments drawn up in line.

When you see the same regiments drawn up in open and closed columns it illustrates why so many generals (certainly in the Napoleonic period) liked to keep their soldiers in more compact formations as it enabled them to be better controlled and also it had a morale effect as they typically gained confidence by the closeness of their comrades. 

Column of divisions, two companies wide at full intervals.

Close column, two companies wide. Highly inefficient for combat but much easier to control.

Column, one company wide and at full intervals for ease of maneuver.

The 3mm farmhouse is from Pico as well. I’ve placed it on a pill-shaped base and made a snake-rail fence out of cut card ('Nells' the workhorse is in the paddock). 

Painting in such a tiny scale required me to rethink how I approached the whole process. The sculpting detail is surprisingly clear so it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole and attempt to paint these figures as individual models. But that way madness lies. Instead you have to think of these strips of figures merely as components of a mass and not get drawn into details that nobody will ever see. So with this in mind I primed them black, drybrushed them light grey, thin coat of brown wash, popped in three blobs of flesh for their faces and hands, brown for the musket stocks, bright silver for the bayonets and then put in some varied colours for blanket-rolls and hats. That’s it. Done. 

My first base. I has the Regimental Colours as part of a company (which is incorrect).

To me, the trick to doing microscale figures often comes down to the basing. It has to be minimalist enough for the figures to be clearly identified, but not so stark as to leave them looking simply like little nubs on strips. These come in strips of eight figures, so I mounted them in two ranks, but situated them off center on the base so players have a better sense to place facing the same direction (more on this in a moment). Then I used a smooth gel medium to build-up the base roughly to the edge of their bases so they are better masked. Once the gel medium cures I then drybrushed them shades of light brown and then use a green semi-opaque emulsion to infer grass. The only basing material I’ve used with these is a few traces of clump foliage to mimic bush and brush.

When I first started basing these I quickly realized that players needed some sort of visual queue to which way the units were supposed to be facing. So with this in mind I decided to design a special base for the colour party. As you see here it’s shaped roughly like an arrow with a rectangular tab at the rear in order to place unit identification (thanks to Martin at Warbases for manufacturing these for me). As an experiment I’ve tarted up one of these bases with a small piece of L-shaped plasticard and rare earth magnets so nameplates can be easily ‘clicked’ into place but otherwise be stored separately.

The Colour Party with arrowhead front and rear tab.

Magnetized rear 'L' tab.

I’ll be up-front right now in saying that this project is largely just a silly aesthetic and intellectual proof-of-concept, but who knows, if I get enough stuff accumulated I may try using something like ‘Black Powder’ to do a clash of brigade-sized forces in 1:1. Otherwise I think I may use four of these bases along with a colour party base to serve as a regiment in ‘normal sized’ games like Longstreet’. 

I have an artillery battery that I’m currently working on but more on that later. I’m not really sure if I’ll expand on this collection that much as what I’m really keen to do is Napoleonics in this scale. I have a suspicion that massed cavalry formations would look amazing done at 1:1 scale…

Thanks very much for sticking with me through this overly long post!

A New Madness - 1:1 scale ACW in 3mm

First, sorry for posting stuff that is unfinished but I just received these in the mail and I wanted to take a few shots and write a few lines about them. If you look above you'll see a 400-man American Civil War regiment, in 3mm, arrayed in line at 1:1 scale. I know I'm as mad as a March hare but I find the look of this amazing. Ever since I've been gaming with miniatures I've always wanted to see 19th century formations as they would have actually been deployed in the field and with these 3mm castings it can effectively be done. 

Even on a largish 5x8 table these units will be huge. This regiment in line takes up approximately 45 cm (18"), so a brigade-level action is about the limit, I think. Nonetheless, the good news is that with gaming the American Civil War there were many engagements fought at this lower level. 

These 3mm castings are from PicoArmour which I believe sources their stock from Oddzial Osmy in Poland. While barely discernable, these little guys actually do look like ACW infantry, cavalry and artillery. Of course these models are meant to be seen in a mass, not as individuals, and in this I think they are a great success. 

When you look at this unit you can really appreciate how hard it must have been to keep any level of command and control over these formations. Just think that this is an 'average-sized' battle-worn regiment. Some of the green Federal formations, fresh from the recruiting depots, would have easily been twice this size. In looking at this I can understand why good NCO's and junior officers were so highly valued as the Colonel would have only a limited effect in the center of these strung-out formations - especially if you compounded the problem with the sound and chaos of battle.

Each 20mm 'strip' has 8 figures and so my 'My Mad Plan' is to set four of them up in two ranks on 20(d) x 40(w) bases. This way a standard-sized ACW regiment of 400 men will require about 12 bases (48 strips).  A pack of 15 strips only costs around $4.00 so this project is as cheap as chips. I picked up enough to do (in 1:1 scale) two brigades of infantry, a couple regiments of cavalry, horse holders, officers/flunkies and two artillery batteries. I know, its pretty esoteric but it should look neat on the table. I'll follow-up when I get a unit painted and based. Ah, another project to add to the list...