2nd Portuguese Line, "Lagos"

 

The second Line Regiment was recruited in Algarve province and quartered in Faro. 

The regiment formed part of the 2nd Portuguese brigade, along with the 14th Line regiment. 

The regiment belonged to the organizational Southern Division, and thus had red piping on the shoulders, turnbacks, collars, cuffs, and the front seam of the single breasted jacket. 

The second regiments distinctions otherwise were dark blue collar and white cuffs. 

The wonderfully colorful flag is by Adolfo Ramos once again.  The figures are by Brigade Games.

The drummer in the back rank has red and blue lace decorations on his uniform; the drum is dark blue with red rims. 

Egyptian and Assyrian pieces from Acheson Creations

With the Portuguese army expansion already done, I have been working on some foamboard hills for my Waterloo game at HAVOC in a few weeks. I had original thought I would do that for my 3 Historicon Waterloo games last year, but ran out of time. There isn't much to show yet, but there will be in the next week or two. 

I am planning on running two different Chariot era games at Historicon this July, using the To the Strongest" rules by Simon Miller. While Acheson Creations sold off quite a bit of their extensive line of scenic items last year, there are still quite a few excellent pieces that remain, and they are still introducing some new items. Here are some I acquired this winter with a view towards those games. 

A set (? Set) of six smaller sphinxes; these are about 30 mm tall. 

These were found in several locations lining the approach to an important Temple. 

Assyrian Tree of Life; these panels are about 75 mm tall.

Nisroch, Assyrian god of Agriculture; about 65 mm tall.

Smaller Assyrian Winged Bull (I have two large ones already). 

Side view; about 35 mm tall. 

Celtic Steles.. perhaps suitable for the future Viking armies?  The stone pattern is from Scenic effects, purchased several years ago. I plan on using these to help build the walls of Nineveh. 

6th Cazadores Battalion 1811

These are the last of the Cazadores to be added to my expanded Portuguese forces. 

These fellows are from the 6th Battalion, and have yellow collars and cuffs, piped black. The figures are from Brigade Games. 

I made one omission on these troops, since corrected; they should have a bras plate on the black crossbelts on the chest. 

The 6th was based in Minho province, and quartered in Penafiel. 

With 24 Line Infantry units of 2 battalions, and 12 battalions of Cazadores, the Cazadores numbered roughly 1/5 of the Portuguese infantry. 

"Square Eagles" with Will

A few weeks agio I had a new wargames freind, Will over for his first tabletop wargame. Via comments on the blog. we learned that were but 2 town apart here in NW Connecticut. For a first wargame, "Square Eagles" seemed well suited. 

We played Scenario #3, "control the River", from Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames. We added 2 infantry units each to the force of 6 generated by the OHW tables.

Will took the Austrians (white), and I took the Bavarians (Blue), the action doubtless occurring at the outset of the 1809 campaign in April, wit the objective being to control both river crossings. 

Austrian General Eisnerweiss is hit!

After dressing his wound, General Eisnerweiss returned to the fray at the second crossing, and was hit again. "I guess maybe painting those red circles on my white jacket wasn't such a great idea after all!"!" 

A little more lucky dice for combat and Rallying, and Bavarian General von Andreas has prevailed as dusk falls on the field.

We had fun with the game, which took less than 2 hours to play. Will is a very talented artist, who worked for DC Comics for many years, and now does free lance work. He later told me he was off to a big gaming convention this Spring, courtesy of one of his clients. He did the graphic work for some of their products! He is already hard at work painting up some 28 mm Piano Wargames figures!

3rd Cazadores Battalion, 1811

In 1811, the number of Light Infantry (Cazadores) battalions in the Portuguese army was doubled, from 6 to 12. 

While the brown jackets and pants were retained, the other details of their uniforms changed significantly. 

The yellow lace on the jackets was replaced by black, and many facing colors became in part black; those that were not black were now piped black. 

The shako changed from the Barentina to one more like the British "stovepipe shako". 

Each Cazadores battalions had 5 companies; one of these were sharpshooter or "Atiradores", and usually had black plumes as opposed the green plumes of the other four companies. The Atiradores were at least theoretically armed with Rifles, and some other men of the battalion might have riles as well, as available. 

This unit is the 3rd Battalion of Cazadores. It had black collars and cuffs. 

It was based in Beira province, at Aguiar de Beira. 

Portuguese Cavalry Regiment # 6

 

The 6th Cavalry Regiment was designated as "Braganza", after the ruling house of Portugal. 

The Portuguese cavalry had buff belts. This unit carries Carbines The Portuguese Cavalry was generally considered fairly poor. Portugal has very rugged and mountainous terrain, and was not good horse country. Most regiments were chronically understrength and had insufficient mounts even for the men who were on hand. 

My original, sole regiment of Portuguese Cavalry were Minifigs (with the correct uniform details for the Portuguese  cavalry, such as the red plumes on the helmets. They were absurdly overstrength at 12 figures (instead of my standard 8 figures). The officers from the Foundry command sets for the British Light Dragoons were wearing bicornes, which I didn't like at all, so they were dispatched to the "Command" ranks. Thus a couple of the Minifigs (who were also equipped with Carbines)lightly updated and added to the ranks, one serving as the standard bearer. 

This regiment had red collars and cuffs with yellow piping and turnbacks. 

It seems the natural leather horse furniture was also customary for the Portuguese cavalry.