My 'To Do' List

Historicon 2010 is fast approaching! With about a month and a half left, here's what I still need to do...

* Finish the game boards! These are coming along quite well, and I should have them done in a few weeks so no real worries there!
* Finish half a battalion of French line infantry... again the work of only a few days if I can find the time to sit down and do it.
* Paint up as many French skirmishers as I have time to finish... ideally I will have 20 in my personal collection (enough to deploy five battalion voltiguer companies), but it may be rare in the game that all of the brigades are acting under the same orders so I might only need half that many for practical use.
* Rebase one battalion of British Light Infantry.
* Paint all of my Brigade Order Markers. I have one set done with three more sets to go.
* Paint the small Spanish village I built for the scenario. This is really just for decoration as it will end up in the corner of the board, but I want as much detail as possible for the convention. I'll have pics of these soon...
* Paint half a dozen Spanish civilians to add a little character to the village.
* Build the bridge around which the Republic to Empire scenario is designed.
* Finish the bases of my European buildings for our Beneath the Lily Banners game.
* Repaint/rebase half a dozen walls to match my current terrain.
* Get boxes to transport 30-40 units of models for the two scenarios (I have what I need to transport the terrain and other tools)!
* Get a king-sized sheet (or whatever I need to cover a 6x10' table) to cover the game tables to dress up our presentation a bit.
* Fashion signs for both games, which will be attached to the sheet via magnets so everyone knows who the heck we are.
* Work up play sheets for the second edition of Beneath the Lily Banners which will not yet be available by Historicon, but the manuscript is ready and we will run those games with the new version of the rules.

I'd love to add a couple of squadrons of Perry Dragoons, but I'm not sure I have that kind of time left. If cavalry makes an appearance the French will need to make due with the 5th Hussars (from my logo above) and the allies with the 1st KGL...

No Army Lists? No Problem!

We made the decision early on to avoid trying to create points based lists for Republic to Empire. The period simply has too many armies and too many variations to do any kind of justice to such a project without devoting a whole book to it. Even then, I'm not confident that such lists would ensure fair and balanced games. I will agree that such lists are useful to the beginner, but I would argue it's just as easy to pick a real brigade to use as the focus for a collection. After all something brought all of us into the hobby, whether it was reading about a specific battle, a particular general or unit, or even a Sharpe novel! The Napoleonic period is well documented and there are detailed orders of battle for almost any battle you care to draw from.

Republic to Empire has a chapter devoted to the process of turning historical formations into tabletop armies, but let's look at one of my British Peninsular divisions for an example of how to do this.

The British Light Division is a wargamer's dream. Colorful personalities, elite troops, and a mix of coat colors (no having to paint six battalions with the same uniform). The composition of the Light Division changed nearly every battle (and indeed this is true with most formations in the period). For my collection, I chose the Combat on the Coa to serve as my model. Oman's History of the Peninsular War series is one of my favorite sources for detailed orders of battle for that theater. Although I couldn't find detailed unit strengths for the Coa, the third volume has Wellington's army listed at Bussaco which took place a couple of months later:

Light Division, Brigadier-General Craufurd

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (804)
      95th Rifles (384, four companies)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (656)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (946)
      95th Rifles (358, four companies)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (546)

Republic to Empire is designed for a default 1:20 scale, but my collection was started years ago and is actually built on a 1:30 - no worries since you can field units of 18-48 infantry!

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (27)
      95th Rifles (12)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (21)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (31)
      95th Rifles (12)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (18)

Finally, I base my units in stands of six models so I round my units to multiples of six:

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (30)
      95th Rifles (12)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (24)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (30)
      95th Rifles (12)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (18)

That's it! This gives me a viable wargame force for small games that is colorful and historically accurate. At various times, the Light Division was detached on it's own and Craufurd was given a small cavalry element as well made up of the 1st KGL Hussars, 16th Light Dragoons, and a battery of RHA. Both cavalry regiments numbered around 450 in 1810 so I rounded down to two units of 12 models.

Veteran wargamers will not have learned much from this post, but it has been mainly aimed at the beginner who may be feeling lost without an army list. In a future post, I will talk about playing 'fair and balanced' games without using a point system.

More Rifles!

Part of my existing collection contains the Light Division and their most famous unit - the 95th Rifles!

As I mentioned before, I have plans to replace my existing collection with a combination of Victrix and Perry models. When I started collecting Napoleonics, Front Rank was the only manufacturer who made Cazadores that I liked.

The Light Division is a wargamer's dream:

1. An elite formation that saw action in almost every major Peninsular action (unlike collecting, say, the French elite Imperial Guard which probably shouldn't appear in great numbers on a wargame table unless you are playing really large games or very specific portions of a battle).
2. Lots of different coat colors! One of the soul destroying aspects of painting Napoleonics can be the endless drudgery of painting the same models over and over and over. The Light Division has red coated light infantry, brown coated Portuguese, and green jacketed riflemen!
3. It is a formation that was often detached on it's own in the Peninsula, making it appropriate even for very small games and skirmish level scenarios!

While I am very proud of my Light Division (only one brigade is shown above - I have both finished), the Front Rank models do not look good rebased with the rest of my collection. They are much larger than the Victrix I've used for the rest of my collection. They didn't look bad in the display case, but originally I based everything as single figures. I wanted to put the two light battalions on multi-figure stands and after trying to base the first unit, I found they looked terrible packed as close together as my Victrix units. The size difference was magnified as the models looked crowded. Thus I have made the decision to rebuild the Light Division with Victrix models (inclding the new metal Cazadores that will be out later this year). For Historicon, I only need Craufurd's original Light Brigade consisting of the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th. I MIGHT use my Front Rank 95th if I run out of time. They really are nice models and the size difference did not bother me until I tried to pack models onto 50x45mm bases.

The First Minis of 2010

I'm starting off the year with models I can use for both Historicon and my personal collection (clever, that).

When I set out to muster a new army for any period, I find an orbat from a battle that will form the basis of my collection. My initial foray into Peninsular Napoleonics for the British was Craufurd's famous Light Division. Having finished that (though I am now painting on building the division again using Victrix and Perry - more on that in coming months), I picked out Picton's Third Division to choose elements from next. I finished the first brigade (I'll post pics of them in the coming week) except for the 'penny packets' of the 60th Rifles that accompany the brigade. Eight of the twelve are pictured above and the other four are nearly finished...