New Year, New (and some old) Plans

 As the old year draws to a close, of course it's natural to think about what was achieved since 1st January, and what  might be planned for the New Year,  in hobby terms. 

I suspect that everyone looks back and thinks 'I should have done more', and I am no exception, but it's been a fairly happy hobby year. My main project has been the 1859 Risorgimento armies  - I completed painting  6mm figures to build Austrian and Piedmontese  forces sufficient for the army lists in Neil Thomas Wargaming 19th Century Europe, and to play a first game with his rules, which went well. I've since acquired more figures, of which more anon.  In addition, the Dominion of.. rules allowed another, smaller game in the same theatre - a fast and furious refight of  Palestro, 1859 . So, only two games in the period, but the armies are set to expand, and larger battles will follow.  I have been happy painting the smaller figures - more than I had expected - and also enjoyed the challenge of using a mix of Napoleonic and ACW figures from Commission Figurines to represent Austrian, Piedmontese and French troops - and at £2 for 96 infantry, the budget is not stretched!  

Piedmontese in 6mm - Baccus and Commission Figurines

 

A second, and maybe more long-term project came up rather unexpectedly, when I took the plunge and bought a large batch of 'pre-loved' Minifigs 25mm SYW and AWI figures from the Whitehall Warlords club, via their bring and buy stall at the Broadside show. It turns out there were about 1100 of them! It's been a lot of fun sorting through  and trying to identify them; I'll admit that with limited time, I've only got as far as starting to put them into standard box files by nation, and ultimately many of them  will probably need re-basing - quite a job! But crucially they are painted, and could be on the table pretty quickly - I hope to set up a 'fun' game with simple rules (Young and Lawford's Charge, perhaps? ) in the near future.  I'm currently totting up the combined forces available, when added to my existing Seven Years War  Portable Wargame armies - it's about time those were back on the table, too.  

 

I didn't run as many solo games as I would have liked, but I was able to game with others - special mentions to old friends Tony and Reg for hosting fantastic large Napoleonic and  ECW games,  and of course to Jon Freitag for his remote hosting of  many a great game -  Italian Wars, Wild West, Reconquista among others. Not forgetting another remote game - MS Foy's splendid Spanish Succesion battle.  Many thanks to all of you! 

Shows were a highlight - I managed to get to Cavalier, Salute, Partizan, Broadside,  The Other Partizan, and Warfare. All great fun, inspirational and a chance to chat to fellow gamers and bloggers - great to meet you all!  Last but not least, a big thank-you to Neil of Aufklarungsabteilung blog for inviting me to attend the on-line Virtual Wagaming Club - really inspirational stuff ('we're not worthy!') and again, great to 'meet', albeit virtually.    

So, what's next?  I've got a few ideas.. First, of course - those 6mm Risorgimento armies. I've made a start on the next batch of painting,  having taken the primer spray to what will become the Austrian  2nd Division : 

 

Plenty more to be done after these - I'm going to have to get into a daily painting routine!

I have a little Pike and Shot  period project idea - though I'm slightly ashamed to admit I mentioned it in my list of things to do this time last year!  I have a bit of a fascination for the battle of Freiburg, 1644, and it's time to try to turn it into a game. As mentioned last year, I have the recent and excellent Helion book on the battle, by Stephane Thion ; 

And recently realised that I've been sitting on a board game of the battle for several years, without ever playing it!  GMT games Under the Lily Banners from their Musket and Pike Battles Series includes a scenario for Freiburg and four other battles. 

.. and here's the map from the game

 There are actually two scenarios, covering the two days (3rd and 5th of August) of the action, and it will be interesting to compare the orders of battle from the game with those given by Stephane Thion. This all goes back 30-odd years, to when I was browsing one day in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop and found a rather aged biography of  the great French Marshal Turenne, which of course included this battle and featured plates showing contemporary illustrated maps.  I've had a penchant for Turenne ever since, and this battle seems especially interesting as it brought together the two outstanding French commanders of the ThirtyYearsWar and after - Turenne and Enghien (aka 'The Grand Conde') - only for their combined genius to order a blood-soaked frontal attack on Mercy's Bavarians well-prepared defensive positions!   Given the book and the game, I'm sure I can develop a scenario, or maybe more than one - it might be interesting to try different sizes of game, from  Dominion of Pike and Shot  upwards?  I think The Portable Pike and Shot Wargame rules would be worth trying.  I think a good place to start would be to actually play the board game.. 

Thanks to  Dominion of the Spear rules, I've had a bit of a rush of enthusiasm for Ancients again, and acquired the beginnings of an Indian army for  DotSp and/or DBA - more painting required, but at least not too many figures!   So I was very pleased recently to be loaned a copy of  Philip Sabin's Lost Battles book,  by  my good friend Chris aka  'Nundanket'.  I've heard so much about this book, it's sure to be a really interesting read - thanks, Chris!

 

Plenty more to be getting on with;  as I said above, those Seven Years War / AWI  Minifigs are going to have to get onto the table, perhaps especially the AWI side of it, given the anniversary of 1776 that's coming up.  And the D-Day Dodgers have been in abeyance somewhat - I think they need some appropriately Italian scenery and terrain.   Hmm... what's the chances of doing all this? Well, there's only one way to find out! 

All being well, I am going to start with Under the Lily Banners ;  maybe my next post should be a report on that.  Until then, keep well everyone, and a very Happy New Year to you all!    

 

Merry Xmas 2025

Gosh, where did December go? I thought I'd get at least one more blog post in, and have made some progress painting the 6mm Risorgimento armies, before Xmas; but no, here we are on The Night Before Xmas, and it all seems to have got away from me. Truth be told, a surprisingly social time was had since my last posting, and not very much hobby time. Need I say, I hope to correct that in the near future? 

So given the above, this is just a quick one to wish a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all who have stopped by and read this blog over the past year, and especially to those absolute stars who left (invariably friendly and supportive) comments, and thus made it all worth while.  I just got a bit carried away and actually counted the comments left this year, and there were 39 different readers who commented - thank you all very much!  Not that it's competitive, but extra thanks to top commenters Neil P, Steve J, Jon F, Chris/Nundanket, Alan Tradgardland, Richard and Norm - blogging heroes one and all! 

I wanted to put up a seasonal picture, was casting around for red-coated troops, fir trees etc, when my eye came to rest upon this chap: 

 

This rather splendid picture is on the front of my new National Army Museum membership card, which arrived in the post today.  I have thoroughly enjoyed attending several of their (free)  'Friday Insights'  talks this year, and developed a taste for the scrambled eggs on toast in their excellent cafe! 

It's getting late, I'd better close - many thanks again to all who have read, followed and commented, and to all those whose blogs I have read, followed and commented on, too -  it's lovely to be part of such a friendly hobby community. 

Now the tree is up,  it's almost The Day - have a very Merry Xmas, all!  A bit of a summary of what I'm hoping to get on with in the next post.. until then, keep well everyone. 

nb there are no hobby-related gifts under this tree 

   

Risorgimento 1859: Organising the Forces

Having recently  acquired a selection of reinforcements for my 6mm Risorgimento 1859 armies (from Commission Figurines), it's time to make a start on organising and painting.  Let's start with the organisation;  up to now I have simply painted enough figures to make a minimal representative  'army' from the lists provided in Neil Thomas' excellent book Wargaming 19th Century Europe , basing them according to the rules in the same book. Now, I want to expand the forces and put them into reasonably realistic orders of battle.  A very good source of information turned out to be the Osprey Campaign series book no. 207 Solferino 1859 , which gives sufficiently detailed orders of battle for the Austrian, French and Piedmontese forces in that campaign. 

 

Neil Thomas is careful not to specify exactly what a 'unit' in his rules is representing; I think this is to allow the depiction of different-sized engagements with the same rules, so an infantry 'unit' might perhaps represent  a battalion, a regiment or even a brigade on the tabletop.  Having looked at the OOBs, I decided to treat one Neil Thomas Infantry unit as (roughly) a Battalion,  one Artillery unit as a Battery and one Cavalry unit as a Regiment.   Using those parameters, I  am aiming to represent one division each of French and Piedmontese troops and two divisions of  Austrians.  Hence roughly equal but somewhat differently-organised forces, given that each nation's organistion of regiments/brigades/divsions  differed slightly.  I thought I would take actual Division organisations from the OOBs and represent them, with the real names of commanders, brigades and regiments - at the very least that would save having to invent names!  

So without further ado, here is a summary of the OOBs I am aiming at : 

Austrian : these will be (more or less)  two divisions of the VIII Korps, commanded by Graf von Benedek :

 1st Division - commander FML Berger 

    Brigade Watervliet 

        - Kaiserjager Battalion nr. 2    (1 battalion skirmishers) 

        - Line Infantry IR7 Baron Prohaska (4 battalions)

        - 1 Battery Field Artillery 

    Brigade Kuhn 

        - Grenz  IR4 Szluiner, battalion nr. 2  (1 battalion skirmishers)         

        - Line Infantry IR11 Kronprinz Albert von Sachsen (4 battalions) 

        -  1 Battery Field Artillery 

    2nd Division (part) - commander FML Lang 

        Brigade Phillipovic 

            - Kaiserjager Battalion nr. 5   (1 battalion skirmishers)   

            - Line Infantry IR17 Prinz Hohenloe-Langenburg ( 4 battalions ) 

            - 1 Battery Field Artillery

        Brigade Dauber 

            - Jager battalion nr. 3     (1 battalion skirmishers)

            - Line Infantry IR39  Dom Miguel ( 4 battalions ) 

            - 1 Battery Field Artillery 

I have not included the complete 2nd Division, which seems to have  had an extra brigade in its original organisation, plus yet another brigade which had been attached from another corps a few days before the battle - I didn't want to make the Austrians much stronger than  their opponents. You'll notice there there is no cavalry mentioned, this is simply becuase there was no cavalry in the Divisions listed above. There was a regiment of cavalry (4 squadrons ) attached to VIII Korps, so I think I will add one Neil Thomas 'unit' of cavalry to represent them. It's clear from the OOBs in the book that infantry vastly outnumbered cavalry in the actual campaign.  I chose these formations mainly because of their commander - Graf Von Benedek seems to have been about the only senior Austrian commander who really knew what he was doing and acquitted himself well at the battle! 

 

Piedmontese :  3rd Divison, commander. Lieut-Gen. Mollard 

    Brigato Cuneo:  commander Maj-Gen Arnaldi

        - 10th Battalion Bersaglieri   (skirmishers)

        - 7th Regiment di Fanteria  (3 battalions Line Infantry) 

        - 8th  Regiment di Fanteria  (3 battalions)  

    Brigato Pinerolo : commander Maj-Gen Morozzo della Rocca 

       - 2nd Battalion Bersaglieri   (skirmishers)

        -  13th Regiment di Fanteria  (3 battalions)  

        - 14th Regiment di Fanteria  (3 battalions)         

    Divisional Cavalry :  Regiment Cavallegri de Montferrato 

    Divisional Artillery:  3 batteries Field Artillery

The Piedmont/Sardinian 3rd Division was involved in assaulting the hill of San Martino which Benedek's troops were holding, so these seem appropriate opponents for the Austrians. 

 

French :  (from 1st Corps)  1sr Division : General de Division Forey

    Brigade Dieu 

        - 17e Chasseurs a Pied  (1 battalion skirmishers)

        - 74e Ligne  (2 battalions Line Infantry) 

        - 84e Ligne  (2 battalions)  

    Brigade D'Alton

        - 91e Ligne (3 battalions)  

        - 98e Ligne  (2 battalions)  

    Artillery  :  2 batteries Field Artillery  

This was a division from Marechal Baraguey d'Hilliers  1st Corps, which seems to have done well enough in the battle, having 'pushed the Austrian outposts back from one crest to another, until they reached the ridges before Solferino' , then being involved in fierce fighting in the assault on the Monte di Cipressi - Forey himself being wounded.  The division also has a fairly 'bog-standard' composition, with no units of Zouaves, for example - I haven't got any figures for those yet!  

If you also have the book I'm using, you may notice that the numbers of infantry battalions  don't always tally - I have made some adjustments to allow for the different sizes of battalions in the three armies.  French and Piedmontese infantry battalions were about 600-strong, but Austrian battalions seemed to be larger, with almost 800 men each. I pondered how to reflect this - should I simply ignore the differences and  treat all battalions as equal in power? This would seem to treat the Austrians a little harshly, even if their army was hardly a model of efficiency at the time! Should I make the Austrian battalions stronger,  perhaps having 5 bases to the other nation's 4? But this might cause issues with the game rules, and of course would involve buying/painting  25%  more figures for the Austrians! In the end I have (roughly) treated an infantry unit in the game as about 800 men, so that Austrian units remain battalions, but French and Piedmontese need fewer units to make a brigade than the real-life number of battalions ( the French 1st Division actually had 12 battalions of Line Infantry, I have 9 units).  Hopefully that piece of wargamer's license won't cause any problems. 

As a result, the overall strengths of the three forces should be as follows: 

Piedmont    12 units Line Infantry,  2 units skirmishers, 3 batteries artillery,  1 unit cavalry. 

France        9 units Line Infantry,  1 unit Skirmishers,  2 batteries artillery 

Austria:    16 units Line Infantry,  4 units Skirmishers, 4 batteries artillery,  1 unit cavalry 

I think these should give plenty of scope for games large and small, with over 50 available units in total, even at 6mm scale they should fill a table!     

So, that's the proposed organisation, now I need to get them painted.  To keep things organised, I have used cardboard 'templates' to lay out the formations, starting with the units I have already painted - as units are completed they can be temporarily mounted on the cards using blu-tak. For example, here is the incomplete '1st' brigade (Brigato Cuneo) of the Piedmont Division, which is only missing  one of its  6 line infantry units, and the Divisional Artillery ( 3 batteries ) and Cavalry regiment. ( I need to change '1st' Division to '3rd' on the cards - oops!)

 

and here, the Austrian 1st Division, 1st Brigade (Watervliet) which is already complete, from the units I have previously painted. 

 

That all looks good, but the rest of the formations are still in this state:

 So there is a way to go! I'd better get started with the priming, at least... I don't think this will be 'all over by Christmas'.  But at least I have a plan, and it's eminently do-able if I just get on with it! 

Now the 'festive season' is upon us, there are cards to write and send, gifts to buy and wrap, etc, so there may not be quite so much hobby  time available, but I'll try to press on with this, and we'll see how it goes.  Next time, perhaps a progress report?  Until then, keep well everyone.