Thursday, November 28, 2019

18e Ligne


With the Austrians having received major reinforcements recently, the French were asking for more troops as well!


Due to lighting conditions, I took these shots on a moss covered old picnic table in the back yard!


Definitely adds some interesting texture, although I think it's a bit distracting, too!


These are Old Glory figures once again.


TYhey are Early French in Bicorne in campaign dress, with some "Energetic Early French in Bicorne" thrown in for variety (and because I needed a few more figures to make a full unit!).


I like the long coats of the earlier Imperial uniforms. 


The flag is downloaded from Warflag, with a bit of paint enhancement. 


Another day with different lighting allowed some shots in my usual outdoors location - the grey cover of the hot tub!


"Young man..., I say young man... it's fun to be in 
La Grande Armee..."


The 18th Ligne traces its origins back to the Regiment Royal Auvergne, itself formed in 1776.
As part of the IV Corps, it fought at Austerlitz (1805), Jena, Eylau,  and Heilsberg (1806), Ebelsberg, Essling, Wagram, and Znaim (1809). 


As part of the III Corps, it fought at Smolensk and Borodino (1812). As part of the II Corps, it fought at Dresden, Leipzig, and Hannau (1813), Magdebourg, La Rothiere, and Montereau (1814). In 1815 the regiment was part of the Army of Alsace, and saw action at Suerbourg and Strassbourg.


A very Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!

Monday, November 25, 2019

3rd Quarter Statistics


Only almost 2 months late, so that summer is becoming a fading memory, here are the stats for the 3rd Quarter...

Expenses:

July 2019
Historicon:  Room  $320, meals $160, Gas and Tolls $50, 
Historicon Purchases: Paper Terrain 15mm European Village $45, 3 packs of  28mm Hedges (4 each, ? same seller as last year, buy two get one free) $20, D10 dice x 35 $15.
Ascension of the Galaxy Spaceship Rules Kickstarter $9;  
Total $619

August 2019
Staples (Really useful Boxes, another discount coupon) ) $60.80 
Lancashire Games (Unit marker holders) $68.86
Total $129.66

September 2019
No purchases


3rd Quarter Total: $748.66

The 3rd quarter is almost always the highest expense quarter due to the cost of attending Historicon; purchases there were minor this year, however. 



Painting:

July 2019
3 Bavarian mounted officers (30 pts), Baden Artillery (2 guns, 8 foot and 1 mounted crewmen) (70 pts), 2 one horse wagons (40 pts)

August 2019
4 Baden mounted officers (40 pts), Baden Artillery Train (Limber, 4 horses, 4 crew) (55 pts)

September 2019
No painting (aside from the Lodestone buildings, that is!)


3rd Quarter Total:  195 points

The 3rd Quarter is usually the slowest for painting, and this year was no exception! 



Games:
Play tested Jared and Dillon's Franco-Prussian War and My Berg Isel scenarios for Historicon, ran 3 games at Historicon, assisted/played in Tim's 3 Jacobite games. 8 games total! As usual, I was gamed out for a few months afterwards!  :-)

Monday, November 18, 2019

Austrian Infanterie Regiment #12 - "Manfredini"


Here's the final of the "Fab Five" Austrian German Line regiments in helmet.  :-)


I.R. #12 from 1792-1809 was Infantry Regiment ‘Marchese Manfredini’, the inhaber being Feldmarchalleutnant Federigo, Marchese Manfredini.


Later, from 1809-1815 the regiment was "Furst zu Liechtenstein’ the new inhaber being Generalmajor Alois, Furst zu Liechtenstein.


The regiment was recruited in Moravia (Olmutz) and Galicia  (Tarnow and Bochnia). 


The regiment has rather somber dark brown facings, with brass buttons. 


In 1809 it saw extensive combat,  fighting as part of Aloys Lichtenstein's brigade of St. Julien's Division, part of  the III Corps under Hohenzollern. It and was heavily engaged at Teugen-Hausen, where it lost 1/3 of its men, and Prince Lichtenstein was severely wounded. . It fought again at Abensburg, and was in Reserve at Eggmuhl. On the North bank of the Danube, it fought yet again at Linz-Ufahr, and the regiment's Colonel was captured ij the pursuit thereafter. It was reorganizing during Aspern-Essling, but fought yet again, still as part of the III Corps, at Wagram and Znaim.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

A Mighty Fortress is our Goal...

Eric has finished the l;atest and hopefully semi-final rfevision of his Vauban's Wars siege rules. I hope to run another playtest of those rules within the next 3-4 weeks. For the last game, I knocked together the components for my Fort very quickly to have it more or less ready for the game. In the time I have had since then I have upgraded the components and added some new elements.

    When it comes to a Vauban Fort in 25/278 mm size, there aren't many great options, especially in the US. Scott Washburn/Paper Terrain makes a really great collection of  Vauban Fort sets in grey stone or brick, but even in paper, to get everything I needed would cost over $150, not to mention the time to put it all together, which I didn't have. Resin, if even available,  would be even more expensive, especially if shipped from the UK. Thus, scratch building it with simple construction was the only viable option for cost and the need for it to be ready within 10 days or so!


The trickiest part would seem to be designing the Bastions. 

Fortunately, our fellow blogger Rafael Pardo provided a nice template in his blog post a number of years back


I edited the diagram to just give a basic template for the bastion, and experimented with some of my figures to get an idea what size I wanted the bastions to be; it worked out that printing the template out about as big as possible on a sheet of standard 8.5 x 11' paper worked out about right. 


The bastion shape was cut out of 1/4" thick foamboard, which I had a lot of from a sale at  Michael's several years back. A little trial and error lead me to make the interior walls about 1.25" tall, and set back about 1 inch from the edges of the Bastion footprint. 


 The interior walls were added using white glue and straight pins. 


During construction it became obvious that I needed to mark the reverse side of the base with the 1" set back as well, so that the pins would go into the walls from below properly (you can see the pinheads if you look closely!). 

From the same sale at Michaels, I had a bunch of 2 inch wide sheets of ? basswood.


My original plan was to use these for the s,loping exterior of the bastion. 


However, it rapidly became evident that this material would be rather a nuisance to work with... so back to Foamboard for the sloping exterior. 2" wide strips wound up being about right. These were then rough fit and cut to size and shape. 


More glue and straight pins... not bad

I then realized that instead of the 2 bastions that I had planned upon, I needed at least four; fortuinatley, once the method was figured out, they were pretty easy to duplicate. 

For some reason, Vauban Fort scratchbuilding has been popular recently; below are two far better efforts than mine:

Peter:

Anton:

Of course, 3_D printing for thopse with the equipment, time, and patience is another, more modern way to get to the goal. I certainly had neither time, money, nor patience for that approach, either!


The straight wall sections were made in the same fashion, as well as triangular foot prints for the Ravelins, and everything spray painted dark grey. 


Far from perfect, but functional, and the whole thing was finished in 10 days, and ready for the game last month, which was the key parameter. However, once the game was over, and knowing that I would probably want to run at least one more play test, I started to consider how to improve upon the looks with minimal expenditure of time and money!


During the game, Barry commented that adding some stonework "wallpaper" would be a simple enhancement. I agreed, and found some free images of, well, walls. I liked this one the best, and used it to print my stonework pattern. 

Overview of the Fortress, ready for ther next game!


Zooming in a bit...


The stonework paper is more visible closer in. 


Another view.


I dry brushed the interior parts with some light grey and medium brow paint.


I also needed a quick and inexpensive way to represent the Covered Way and the Glacis, which I didn't bother with for the earlier game. I had bought an 8 foot long length of 1/4 round, 1" molding, figuring I would use it for the Ravelins, but that quickly proved top be a no go. So, I resurrected the idea for the covered way and Glacis!  I sawed off 8" lengths, spray painted them dark brown, glued them to the 8" long by 2" hitherto unused basswood pieces, which were first themselves spray painted medium grey. To add some interest to the interior, I cut craft sticks into 2" lengths and glued them to the inside of the molding pieces to suggest a retaining wall. They were then suitably stained, dry brushed, etc. 


I used lengths of sponge pressed into thin smears of craft  paint to print a stippled effect on the "earth" of the exterior of the "Glacis", using first tan, then a medium orange-brown, and finally a bright green to suggest recent earthworks. I toyed with using flock, sand, water putty etc to texture this, but finally decided any of those would be prone to flake and chip off, and went with durability and functionality first. Still, I think they look pretty respectable.

    Finally, I saw on TMP that Acheson Creations in the US was having a 20% off sale through November 15th. Their range includes a lot of siege suitable items, especially lines of Gabions, so a number of them have been ordered last week, with arrival still pending. Thus the next siege game should be a considerable notch up in style!

Saturday, November 9, 2019

The Lodestone Modular Buildings, Kickstarter #2

The Lodestone has launched their second Kickstarter. This one runs through November 30th, after which they plan to open their online store.  This version has Raised fantasy buildings, Desert Sci-Fi buildings, and Sci-Fi industrial buildings. Visit their Kickstarter for all the details, including videos and explanations of the Lodestone concept.
 The top image illustrates the three new buildings for the Fantasy range. The external stairs have been reworked so that they can go parallel OR perpendicular to the buildings. 



There is also an added walkway set, which reminds me a bit of an Eowok village.  Here they have also added some elements drawn from the first KS buildings, illustrating the versatility of the Lodestone concept!


I chose this pledge, which gets me one each of the new buildings. 


 I plan to add one extra raised Tower to my other raised buildings...



and a set of walkways to that pledge. 


Details of one of the building components


This is a close up of what the raised building based upon the Large Square Box looks like. 



The new Sci-Fi Desert buildings...



and the Sci-Fi industrial buildings. As illustrated in one of the videos on the Kickstarter site, the "skins" of both of these  can be removed and reassembled to make Sci-Fi style walls.

You can use the Lodestone label on this blog to see a lot more about the buildings from their original Kickstarter The Fantasy buildings look great just as they come out of the box, but a little bit of extra paint "kicks" them up another notch altogether!
\

UPDATE November 11th: 
The option to get the skins only (without the basic boxes, assuming you have them already) has been added to the choices; this saves about 4 GBP/$6 US per building (and cuts down on shipping cost as well). I might take that option for the extra raised "tower(s)".

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Austrian Infanterie Regiment # 21 - "Prinz Rohan"


The fourth of the five new Austrian regiments is I.R. #21.


From 1808-1810: Infantry Regiment ‘Prinz Rohan’ Nr. 21 (Inhaber: Feldmarschalleutnant Viktor-Ludwig, Prinz Rohan von Guem). Earlier, from 1778 - 1808, Gemmingen, and later from 1810 - 1815 Albrecht, Graf Gyulai.


The regiment was recruited in Bohemia, in the Koniggratz area. 


In 1809, the regiment fought at Ratisbon, Aspern, and Wagram.


The "meergrun" (sea green) facings are depicted as a turquoise shade by some, so I went with that for this unit, which has brass buttons.