The Great Redoubt: A Game of the Battle of Borodino

The Great Redoubt: A Game of the Battle of Borodino (1979) (Boardgamegeek.com link)

I found this game about a year or two ago in a 2nd hand store. It is the only wargame I've ever seen or found in one. It was mixed in with the kids boardgames.

1979 sends its regards

The Great Redoubt is a [...] wargame that recreates [...] the Battle of Borodino, the most costly engagement of the Napoleonic Wars. Historically, the French attacked repeatedly, forced the Russians back, but failed to drive them from the field. After an unprecedented carnage, the French were marginally successful.

Each hex on the mapboard is roughly 400 yards across. Each combat unit represents one actual regiment, brigade or division, cavalry brigade or division, or massed artillery formation.
Each strength factor represents approximately 250 actual men or 3-8 guns. Each turn equals 30 minutes of actual time.

315 counters (4 of which are blanks)

Review on Boardgamegeek.com from 2013. 

Spanish Youtube review 2021 - Showing the game in action. 

GURPS: Age of Napoleon

 I had to get this second hand because it's long out of print.

I doubt I'll ever use it, and the history section of 20 years is barley covering anything. The Peninsula was a few paragraphs. Still, it gives an introduction to the topic at hand.

Unboxing Video of Warlord's Epic Battles - American Civil War

 

An unboxing video of the soon to come out (it's on the way I think?) Warlord Games Black Powder based Epic Battles - American Civil War. 

The video is spoiled a bit by one of the guys when he keeps walking away (?!?) from his microphone. They dis Warlord's rules a lot, but agree it's going to be good for the newbie to get into ACW. 

My next tournement?

    

FOGN at Conquest this year

I was browsing the Conquest web site and found something I didn't think I'd see. Napoloenic wargaming at Conquest!

https://www.conquest.asn.au/event/field-of-glory-napoleonic/

Field of Glory Napoleonic is a miniatures wargame in which players use a few hundred figures grouped into a dozen or so units representing a Corps of many thousands of troops in battle against an enemy Corps in the Napoleonic period. The Napoleonic period is very popular with historical gamers as it has many famous personalities and battles as well as lots of figures in colourful uniforms on the gaming table.

Players will use a Corps up to 500 points. Lists are to be from the second edition FOGN books and the “FOGN 500” pdf using the “FOG Napoleonic Army List Generator 2nd Edition"

Players are to provide their own 15/18mm armies and terrain pieces.

The rules used will be FOGN Second Edition, the “FOGN 500” pdf, the “Tournament points” pdf and as follows:

• Play will consist of 3 rounds of 2.5 hours starting at 12.30pm.
• The draw will be by Swiss chess by wins and accumulated tournament points score. If necessary an
  extra player will play byes to make the numbers even.
• Scoring will be by wins for Places. Countback for places shall be by the results of their games if they
  have played each other, otherwise by tournament points.

Trophies will be awarded to the Top 3 Places and Best Army.

The files referred to above are available in the files section of the “FOG Napoleonic's” Facebook group.

There's only 8 places, and I need to  get some terrain before hand, but I only need 3 and a road...so 2 small hills and a forest? Hopefully the order I did will arrive by then. 

I used to go to Conquest religiously since 1991 but missed the last few years due to...family changes. I need to go back, and this a great reason to so. Maybe I can get a game of Dune in too.

And now I need to theorycraft a 500 point list! I have the army to do that now I think (even before the new bases arrive next week) so I can start doing some small solo games to learn what works and what does not. 

The current rules for 500 point army lists are:

FoGN 500 is a shortened version of the FoGN designed for quicker games or for small tournaments. FoGN 500 games differ from a normal 800 point game in that:
    • Armies are maximum of 500 points.
    • A maximum of 1 artillery unit may be used.
    • Lists stating a minimum number of 5 or 6 artillery bases, are only required to field a  minimum of 4 artillery bases.
    • Where the army lists require a player to have at least 3 more infantry and cavalry units this shall be at least 2 more infantry than cavalry units

So no Russian armies with 6(hundred) artillery pieces. Probably less cavalry, though you can still do them. Very hard to do 4 divisions or high quality commanders. 

My First idea for a 500 point Army:

 

  

A new table

A smaller area but more space

I had 2 tables of 8 foot by 2.5 foot from Bunnings...but it was too big. I could barley stay on both sides and had no room at my painting area to backup.

 

So I bought 3 tables of 4ft x 2 feet for a 6 foot x 4 foot standard wargaming table. The tables aren't completely flat next to each other, but putting a game mat over them covers the gaps up.

 If I ever get a bigger room to play wargames in, I'd go back to 8 foot x 5 foot because it gives a great area around the table to put stuff off-table. 

Bonus points if YOU can identify the maps and posters behind the table.

2nd part of my FOGN army washed with Army Painter Soft Tone

 2nd group of my FOGN army washed

I have washed the second group of my FOGN Anglo-Portuguese army. This time I used Army Painter Quickshade Wash Soft Tone. I agonized on which colour to do, but decided I wanted to keep as much colour as possible.

The two on the right are washed, the two on the left are not.

A close up. Washed is right, unwashed left.

Only the 9 pounder in the bottom right is not washed here.

Left is washed, right is not washed.

The white horse needed the most work, to keep it going too brown. I still need to put some bushes down, paint the edges (think I'll go with a dark brown), varnish and then put the flags on. 

Or is put flags on and THEN varnish?

I've finally been able to put an order in for more bases plates to olympiangames.com.au who said they were sending me emails I didn't get (what!?!). Should arrive next week and be finally able to get my army complete on the table for some battles! I will still need to paint my Generals, ADC's and LOC :(

Currently  I have the following units on bases:

1 Heavy Dragoon

1 Hussar 

3 British 6 pounder guns

1 British 9 pounder gun

1 British 6 pounder horse artillery gun

1 Portuguese  6 pounder Portuguese gun

1 Light infantry Musket unit and 2 skirmish attachments

1 Light infantry Rifle unit and 2 skirmish attachments

1 Loyal Lustrian light infantry rifle unit and 2 skirmish attachments

1 British infantry unit

1 Highlander infantry unit

2 Portuguese infantry units

1 Conscript/Spanish Guerrilla unit

Blacklist Miniatures: Fantasy Series 1 - arrived and its huge

Many months ago I saw this on kickstarter and thought- Hey that would give me a lot of figures for any future role playing, and maybe some units for my Oathmark army. 

It arrived today.

It's enormous! The stretch goals I mean!

Painting them all gives me nightmares...I expect if they ever get finished, it will be by my son. Who is 3.  

The figures are all hard plastic so I don't need to glue them together, which is fine for me. They look pretty much exactly as was advertised and I'm quite happy with them.

There's a Series 2 coming out to Kickstarter next month. 

You can get Series 1 from https://www.blacklistgamesllc.com/blmfantasy

Elf Bowman on their stands, Kingdom Background idea

Elves firing arrows, and my Kingdom background idea

So after many months and a failed attempt foiled by old Games Workshop glue, I have finally got 2 units of Oathmark on their stands.

It's two units of 10 Elf Archers from North Star Elf Infantry boxed set. I wanted Elf Archers because they have a very good chance of activating every turn, they are good shots who can fire at anything in range (and not just the closest target) and then can fire OVER units in front of them. 

I didn't put knives on them because it's less to paint if I don't. And they should never BE in close combat....right? One man in each unit has a standard and another a helmet as a Sargent. The standard bearer will be the unit champion which makes it very obvious. I want a flag on them as well, maybe a long triangle one. 

SPQR: A Clash of Heroes Starter Set

 So I saw this on Warlord's website and had a sudden attack of IT MUST BE MINE.

I've wanted some heavy infantry and spearmen for my Oathmark army I just started putting together. And I've always wanted a Roman army. And the game is small so it can hopefully be played solo easier.

There is a LOT of negative comment about the 1st edition of SPQR that came out in 2019. So much so, Warlord is giving AWAY the new rulebook to every new boxed set of units! It must have been pretty bad, I hope they spent some time to actually playtest and work on the game this time.

I'm also getting some Roman officers to maybe use in my Oathmark units to help match them up as an army. Later on I need some catapults and cavalry, and using early Roman Cavalry would work for that too.

I might cut off the plumes from their heads though. And get a standard bearer that can put a flag on. 

More bases flocked and painted

Two more divisions have their base flocked and painted. I did a grey rock base, then yellow dry brush and then a dark green dry-brush/paint. I tried to cover up the areas that didn't have rocks on them with the dark green. 

I did a darker green this time, which I think works better than the previous batch here.

I still to use a wash on everything, do some touch ups like red on the artillery torches, glue on grass tuffs, put black on the end of guns and paint the bases edge (I think I'll do a dark brown) and the never yet done flags.

I really should have spray painted the bases first before putting anything on them - probably a very dark green.

Another two divisions on bases

 More units on bases

 I've run out of magnetic bases from olympiangames.com.au, so this as much as I can base.

Portuguese Line infantry on the left, (Heavy) British Dragoons on the right.

Some of the Portuguese have green plumes, which from my reading is incorrect - all troops should have white plumes- there was no difference in any flank companies in the Portuguese line battalions. I'll need to over them in white.

I also need to trim the bayonets off the front ranks again - they poke too far forward to fit without getting bent anyway from use.

I probably should have put the Dragoon "officer" on a the single white horse, but oh well. He's just an officer because he's sword seems ton have disappeared, so the right side horse still works for a battalion commander. 

Six of the Portuguese needed one leg re-attached from the base, just needed some more super glue to do it, but they are a bit wear as all of them really only have 1 foot on the ground. 

All figures are from Stonewallfigures.co.uk,

Memes. memes everywhere

NapoleonicWarMemes

I can't belive I didn't know this existed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NapoleonicWarMemes/

That's a lot of Coalitions

From here.

MODULAR TERRAIN FOR WARGAMES Kickstarter

MODULAR TERRAIN FOR WARGAMES

Fast setting modular terrain made from durable & flexible resin and ready to use.

I found this Kickstarter and it looks very good. I think I'll back it.  The river and river banks look very nice, and it would make a normal game map have small dips and rises and folds look a lot nicer and realistic. 

The mats are flat and flexible so are east to carry but figure's wont move much around them either.

The tree's are for 28mm, but they are looking at offering 15mm stone walls that would work for me too.

Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series: Requiem The Final Episode

Way back when, Dungeons and Dragons started as a wargame. This is the final never filmed episode of the  D&D cartoon. I liked it. 

I hope one day Hasbro or someone makes a new cartoon series. It deserves one. If it was me, I'd do  Baldur's Gate.

I have ordered some terrain, explosions, movement trays, markers and 2 books

Ordering some terrain, explosion markers and books

 

I have ordered some Flames of war pack 15mm blast marker - red and yellow ones from budsblastmarkers.com. There's a scene in Waterloo with a cavalry attack with smoke billowing behind them and it looks very cool. So I'm ordering some 15mmish scale markers to do the same thing for disordered (yellow) and wavering (red). Would be good for any wargame I think, designed as they are for tanks blowing up.

GURPS Age of Napoleon. No one seems to have written a novel of Wellington...IN SPACE. There's a bad series based on Hornblower, but not a land campaign. I'm surprised Games Workshop haven't done a 40k version.  Out of print and I'm getting a 2nd hand copy. Reviews say it's actually not very good, but I have a dozen GURPS source books to add to it already. 

Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon. Lots of people rave about this book, so it was either this or The Campaigns of Napoleon. 

Some plastic makers and steel movement trays from https://litko.net/. Showing fire, smoke, wavering/disrupted/routing and charging.

 

 

 

 

 

And some official Field of Glory terrain from https://miniatureworldmaker.com.au/. Hills, trees, enclosed fields, a village, impassible terrain and some other items.

I need to choose what regiments to use in my army

What Regiments do I use?

The last thing I need to do for my army is put on flags - and to do that I need to decide which historical regiments I want to represent.

I started the army based on the  Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro.

I know I want a battalion to be the South Essex (Sharp's fictional regiment) but can't find their flag in the right scale, so might do one of the other Essex battalions. One of them is a Highlander unit, and I've got the 95th Rifles...who don't use one being light infantry.

This ancient post on TMP suggests they were going to use:

For a while I have been dithering about which Napoleonic army I should paint to face my growing 28mm French army. I had been contemplating using Spanish, British or even Dutch, but couldn't decide.

Well, I have now come up with an idea. The army to face my French will be ... Richard Sharpe's army!

In other words, I'll do an army based on the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. This could include both fictional and real-life units, such as the British South Essex Regiment (fict), 33rd Regiment of Foot (1st Yorkshire West Riding), 74th Highlanders, Royal Marines and the 95th Rifles (2nd Battalion); Spanish such as the cowardly Regimentia de Santa Maria (fict) and the somewhat better
Garda Real Irlandsa (sp? - fict), plus, of course, lots of guerillas; Portuguese cacadores; Kings German Legion cavalry, American privateersmen - and many other various units that Richard Sharpe belonged to, fought with or that otherwise crop up in the books.

Basing my army on a fictional novel series will give me freedom to paint lots of interesting units that in a real army would probably not have been brigaded together.

 And I need a rocket battery in 15-18mm, that no one seems to sell. 

I do want to use the 23rd Light Dragoons who charged impulsivity into a ravine at Battle of Talavera.

I am also constrained in what flags are available in 18mm.

Wellingtons System: Tactics vs the French

From The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wellington's Army 1809-1814, by Charles Oman

This is the key tactics I need to use in FOGN when playing my Anglo-Portuguese army. 

Via a thread on TMP called "Useful Stuff" which is full of links to books and notes on anything and everything from the Napoleonic wars.  

From Wellington's Army 1809-1814 by Charles Omen

Sir Arthur Wellesley had been nine years absent in India before he returned to England in 1805, so that he had to learn the difference between the Republican and the Imperial armies by new experience. The problem had long been interesting him. Before he left Calcutta he is said to have remarked to his confidants that the French were sweeping everything before them in Europe by the use of column formations, but that he was convinced that the column could, and would, be beaten by the line. What he heard after his return to England evidently confirmed him in this opinion. A conversation which he had with Croker, just before he set sail on the expedition which was to end at Vimeiro, chances to have been preserved in the latter’s papers, under the date, June 14, 1808. Sitting silent, lost in reverie for a long time, he was asked by Croker the subject of his thoughts. “To say the truth,” he replied, “I am thinking of the French I am going to fight. I have not seen them since the campaigns in Flanders [1793–94]79 when they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Bonaparte must have made them better still. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful. But though they may overwhelm me, I don’t think that they will outmanœuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as every one else seems to be, and secondly, because (if all I hear about their system is true) I think it a false one against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are half-beaten before the battle begins. I at least will not be frightened beforehand.”

Wellesley went out to Portugal, there to try what could be done with steady troops against the “French system.” But it would be to convey a false impression of his meaning if we were to state that he simply went out to beat column with line—though the essential fact is sufficiently true. He went out to try his own conception of the proper way to use the line formation, which had its peculiarities and its limitations. The chief of these were that—

(1) The line must not be exposed before the moment of actual conflict: i.e. it must be kept under cover as much as possible.

(2) That till the critical moment it must be screened by a line of skirmishers impenetrable to the enemy’s tirailleurs.

(3) That it must be properly covered on its flanks, either by the nature of the ground, or by cavalry and artillery.

Review: The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsula

A review of: The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsula

by David Gates (Author)

This very thick book is an excellent and very well covering story of the War in Spain, Portugal and Southern France between the French Empire of Napoleon and the various armies of the Portuguese, British and Spanish in the Peninsula War between 1808 and 1814.

Written in 1985, it goes into great detail of the various invasions and campaigns. It goes into far more detail of what's happening on the Spanish side and area that other books like Wellington in the Peninsula or The Peninsula war, that understandably focus more on the British armies.

Feburary 2021 status update

Where I am, and where I want to go, as of February 2021

Posted to the dakka dakka historical fourm

For the last year I've been getting into historical wargaming, for the first time in over 26 years. My very first wargame was playing with WW2 plastic army men and firing sticks via spring cannons when I was 10. I actually started wargaming getting some 1/72 scale Napoleonic figures when I was around 18. I played a few games at a local club but I saw some 40K and WHFB games...and didn't return for 25+ years.

GW and their prices have cured me of that. I started another Imperial Guard army to take my mind of things 2 years ago but paying $40 for ONE FIGURE was a disappointing and discouraging experience. One day I might go back to building my super heavy tank army, but there doesn't seem to be any new IG army ever coming out :(, and the whole GW-nothing-but-Space-Marines-count has got me off them.

I do not recall now what got me interested in it again, but I've gone back to the local clubs for historical Napoleonic wargaming. The first rule I found of historical wargaming is "play what everyone else plays locally". Which is Field of Glory Napoleonic 2nd edition. This came about because after the first edition some locals decided to re-write it and get the local club players converted. As it's pretty much written FOR club and tournament play now, I suspect that wasn't too hard. Local is Australia/NZ. I'm lucky in that one of the co-authors was able to show me how to play the game and loan me an army to play several times. There are other people playing Black Powder and some sort of home grown rules I would like to play at some point. 

TMP: "Best Campaign/Year to Collect" Topic

Why the Peninsula War?

 Someone asked on The Miniatures Page:

I am looking at collecting 2 armies but undecided which to collect.

Most colorful units so the army is not all the same is the main thing, but also an interesting campaign.

 My Answer:

The Peninsula war!  Nearly every unit from the French Empire shows up (Including Napoleon at his height!) vs Spanish, Portuguese, Guerrillas, British, Scottish, Irish (on both sides!), Royal Americans and Militia in every type of uniform or lack there of and lasting years.

And you can start simple with 2 armies and work from there (with one of them being the French vs lots of choices).

The campaign goes back and forth with both sides winning and losing (even Wellington has multiple retreats and reverses!) with all sides winning and losing battles, campaigns and events. Heroes, Villains and Varied Terrain! EPIC sieges lasting months that are Stalingrad level of intensity to multi-corp army battles lasting several days to small skirmishers between small units on all sides that can be done on a 1-1 scale.

The battles vary from basic attack and defend to envelopment, mass cavalry charges, artillery barrages and the day being saved by reinforcements arriving just in the nick of time.

And of course there's Bernard Cornwall's series on Sharpe and his adventures that got made into two dozen movies, rather than OTHER campaigns that merely get a single movie about them.

Being the English get to play a big role there are masses of books and places to read about it on the Internet and many manufacturers have figures in every scale for any sizes game from 2mm up.