Some Musket & Pike and a side project

I got a chance to play a game of the excellent Musket & Pike Battle Series again. This time it was the Battle of Nyborg, 1659. The Danes and the Swedes are at each others throats again. The Swedes were on defence with good morale troops, but the Danes had the numbers.

The opening setup. The Danes outnumber the Swedes but are restricted by some quarreling in the command chain. The Swedes have good ground and superior morale.

The Danes move closer but the hedges make retaining formations difficult. The cavalry wings on the left clash, leaving the usual chaos in their wake (Two equal cavalry wings tend to erase each other off the field in this game).

The Danes attack the Swedish line but are repulsed at every turn. The terrain makes it difficult to exploit numerical superiority, and the Swedish combination of superior morale and advantageous ground makes for a too hard a nut to crack this time.

I didn't remember to take more photos as the game ended up being rather quick. I played the Danes and was unable to find a weakness in the Swedish defense. Even though my troops were recovering their shaken formation in easy charge range of the Swedish cavalry, he would not be baited from his position. It really is a tough puzzle to solve for the Danes. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Next, here's a picture of the hill system I'm working on at the moment:

I've successfully used.. whatsitsname.. the mattress foam thing for hills before. Until now, I've had to cut each hill according to scenario design every time, but now I thought of a better idea. I've started to replace the pre-cut hills with foam hexes, 6 inces across. I lay them out to form a mass closely resembling the hill needed, tape them down using painters tape, and then just lay the gaming mat on top. It worked just fine, and I doubt you noticed any unsightly hex angles poking out of the terrain in the Antietam report!

Last, I've begun building a 1/700 scale Airfix Titanic. My sister usually gets me something rather uninspired like cologne or a pair of boxers as birthday or christmas gifts. This time she let my 7 year old nephew choose a gift for me for my birthday last summer, and I'm quite pleased. He understands!

Anyway, I better finish the model before my nephew forgets he ever got it for me. I haven't done models such as this in ages, and the smell of the poly cement gives me flashbacks to my teenage days and badly painted Spitfire kits.

T-minus 6 days

Less than a week to go, but I think I'll finish the table in time. Here's some work in progress shots before I grab the paintbrush:

This is the table after I cut the elevation levels and glued them into place with a hot glue gun. The streams ended up bigger than I intended but I think they won't look as dominating in the end result. The elevations are lower now than in my practice piece, and I think it's ok now for 6mm.

And here it is after two layers of acrylic caulk (the stuff you can paint on) and added sand. The caulking process took about 4 tubes of the stuff and cost 15 euros or so, but if you have the money, I think the caulk gives a good, flexible base to do your terrain on.

I added sand here and there, especially on the banks of the streams and other places, where there will be breaks in the green flock, like roads.

As you can see, the caulk smooths out the step effect of the elevation levels quite nicely, and adding the sand breaks the pattern even more. There's about 4-5 layers of cardboard to the top of this knoll. 

There you go. I'll try to paint the thing today and maybe flock it tomorrow. I ordered some 6mm americana buildings from Total Battle Miniatures and they arrived yesterday. They look great!

Exotic units at Bull Run

My painting has been progressing nicely although I haven't finished the basing of a single stand yet. A great mass of blue and gray, but the stands do look quite alike each other. So I started thinking whether I could add some color to the set by adding troops which wore uniforms setting them apart from the rest or had a distinctive battle flag which could be used to pick them out from the crowd. Zouaves, especially, give this opportunity, although there is a lot of confusion about which units wore the "genie in a bottle" type of uniform and which units looked more like standard rank and file.

The dramatic history of the American Civil War contain lots of "celebrity" units such as the Black Hat brigade, the Irish Brigade, the Stonewall brigade, Berdan's sharpshooters and so forth. Looking at the roster of Bull Run, I found the following which might give me a reason to include a bit of color in the ranks.

11th NY Volunteers, "The Fire Zouaves"

The Fire Zouaves were composed of firemenm and apparently didn't wear the normal Zouave uniform at Bull Run, but red shirts and black trousers. I think I'll paint some Zouave figures using those colors and I think it'll look just fine. 

1st Louisiana Special Battalion, "Wheat's tigers"

These soldiers wore a uniform closer to the typical Zouave clothing. There wasn't awful many of them on the field during the battle, only some 5 companies if my reading material is right. At 1:200 scale that isn't many figures, but I think I'll inflate their numbers to three stands for visual effect. 

69th NY infantry, "The fighting 69th"

The first regiment of the Irish brigade saw action in Bull Run already. As far as I know they wore the usual union uniforms but they have that nice, green flag which I will definitely include.


On the subject of flags, the confederates did not march into battle with the classic confederate battle flag, but with the CSA national flag, which caused some confusion during the battle as the flag was confused with the stars and stripes of the union. Also, apparently Louisiana troops marched into battle with a very colorful flag indeed. I might as well do my confederate figures in a manner so that I can change their flags (I have an idea) so I can include at least some of the historical flags into the game.
 

There was also some confusion with uniforms as some of the union soldiers fought in grey uniforms and some of the confederates in blue. I think this can be easily modelled by swapping some of the stands between the armies.

If by any chance you know something I don't about the visual look of the armies at Bull Run, do tell. Just remember these are 6mm figures I'm working on :)

Chinese trees

Within a couple of weeks of purchase, the chinese Ebay-seller "everestmodel" delivered my 400 model trees to my post. Quick delivery and cheap as dirt. The trees were very tightly packed, and I was a bit worried that they're in bad shape, but the few examples I pulled out of the mass are in perfect shape and the flock is firmly stuck in the wiring that makes up for the armature. I recommend their stuff for the price and quality, but I have a nagging feeling that I'm taking part in exploiting cheap chinese labor with this purchase. Now I just have to figure out how I want to base (and store) all these trees.

You can also sneak a look at the figures in development on my desk, but they're not ready for parade yet! :)

Rebasing in progress

Nothing too delicious to show you so I've been quiet, but not idle! The laser cut wooden bases and their magnetic bottoms arrived from Litko Aerosystems and I've been hard at work rebasing my old 60mm*30mm bases to 25mm*19mm. I really like how they're shaping out. The bases themselves are great. Thin, cut to perfection and no warping at all when I glue the figures and the sand on. I really recommend these and I'll be ordering a new batch myself.

I also like the look on the miniatures now that they're on the new stands. Somehow they look more like a mass of troops even though the number of fires per stand is less. I'll post some pictures once I've finished the bases on my old models. In the same time, I have already painted some fresh ones. High time, too, two months of time left!

Terrainwise, I've found a cheap supplier of trees I ordered from, the package should arrive in a month or so. I'm working on some of the basic terrain features and they're shaping up like I hope. I just have some problems on how I'll do the rivers and roads so that they look good and don't take too much effort. Any hints would be appreciated.

Well, better get back to work. I've had some union troops in shallow water waiting to be released from their old basing!