French Voltigeurs 28mm Perry

Voltigeurs. These are more Perry plastics, based to be used as skirmish elements in Lasalle or whatever other rules I use. Like many wargamers before me I found myself cursing the intricacies of the French infantry uniforms. These uniforms are the basic troops so you need thousands! I ended up going with something of a simplification and even that was bad enough. At least some of the Perry line infantry are in great coats... except that I'm fussy and don't like the great coats so I will do them separately as conscripts or something.

Naturally as soon as I'd finished the white I found myself thinking that maybe I should have done some in blue as Legere, but oh well, now I have plenty of Voltigeurs!

And a photo of all of the voltigeurs I've painted up thus far.

I'm also facing a conundrum with the rest of my line infantry, as they are currently based up 4 to a 50mm square base, as used by some other locals. However the more I look at them, the more I want to do them 6 to a base. This would mean much difficult rebasing and painting many more infantry.... Le Sigh.

French Guard Artillery 28mm Perry

A couple of French Guard 12 pounders. Figures from Perry again.  Almost need to be on bigger bases(?), but I wanted to keep the basing the same as the other artillery at this stage, hence squeezing everyone onto 50mm x 75mm bases!  Still working on a better lighting setup for photography, but that will be sometime in the future. In the meantime, please note the blue is not really that bright in real life!

Reserve artillery was more likely to be committed in a battle than other Guard troops as I understand it, hence these are the first Guard units I've painted up (excepting many in 1/72nd scale decades ago!).

French Line Artillery 28mm Perry

Six line artillery for the French. These are more metal figures from Perry. Four 6 pounders and two howitzers. Two of the 6 pounders were from Limber packs, and I'm using an extra pack of artillery crewmen, and the "infantry drafted to help" pack, to make the overall look a bit more interesting. I still have 4 figures left over from these supplementary packs.

I was originally waiting for Victrix to release their supposed plastic French arty, but got sick of waiting and decided to make a start on these instead. I might add some more pieces from Victrix should their plastic set ever eventuate...

The front and centre gun below has a wounded officer and two drafted infantry.

The closest gun below has two gunners with trail spikes, and another reaching for the ammunition box.

Reinforcements - Austrians

I decided to pick up some Perry Austrians just before the recent price increase - this lot should keep me busy for a while! 8 infantry boxes plus some extra command sprues, 8 Line Artillery, 6 Cavalry Guns, 36 Hussars, Generals and a few other bits and pieces. Perry have just released their Austrian Cuirassiers so I'll get some of those too, and I also want some Uhlans and Jaegers but they don't make these yet.  As for my French I'm planning basic organisation around Lasalle lists, but able to be used for Blackpowder or whatever other Napoleonic rules we end up using.

Here's one of the Austrian Limbers - how the heck do those 4 little bits, and the cross beam above them go together? Time to ask the knowledgeable folks at TMP I think... or please comment below if you have any helpful ideas or links!

Also picked up some French Dragoons to round out my French cavalry! That will make 12 regiments of French cavalry, and might allow myself a couple of Guard regiments once those are done!

And now for something completely different...

WARNING: Those with particularly delicate historical sensitivities should perhaps ignore the rest of this post and divert to the Southern Strategists blog to see some historical demo games! :) These demo games were lovely by the way, and included General de Brigade Seven Years War, Pike and Shot English Civil War,  Bolt Action Pacific WW2,  a modern skirmish game, and also a 15mm Napoleon at War game on the second day. 

This time of year is the annual Conquest Tournament here in New Zealand. I was planning on spectating  this year, but got a last minute request from my mate Damon umpiring the Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) competition, asking if I could join and even up the numbers...  He seemed happy with my mad proposal to use Napoleonic cavalry as a WFB Empire army, as it would eliminate players having byes in the competition. By coincidence the basing favoured by many 28mm Napoleonic players in New Zealand also matches WFB.

The Empire army in WFB is loosely based upon Renaissance Germany. However, my proxied Napoleonic troops were recognised easily enough by my opponents after a few words of clarification at the start of each game.  I used Cuirassiers for Knights, Carabiniers for Reiksguard (elite knights), Hussars as Pistoliers (light cavalry), and Artillery as Artillery. I quickly converted two spare Chasseur eagle bearers to an Army Standard Bearer and Wizard and I was ready! 

For those unfamiliar with WFB, the rules have a Donald Featherstonian feel, with saving throws, individual casualties and so on. I wouldn't want to use this sort of clunky system for large battle historical games anymore, but it still suits "heroic fantasy" style gaming I think. It also reminds me of playing Featherstone rules with Napoleonics many years ago - albeit considerably refined and thus without all the confusion!

Here's the Army Standard Bearer and Wizard I converted from spare Chasseurs. For the Wizard I vaguely had in mind real Napoleonic "wizards" like Murat, with outlandish ostrich feathers and divine powers of battle!

Game 1, fighting some Dark Elves who arrived with a couple of monstrous Hydra (top left). Hydras are scary but they don't like dodging 6-pounder cannon balls. Neither did their big cauldron on a wagon thing. Take that Elves. 17-3 to me. 

Game 2, against Chaos. I didn't think this was going very well, but then my opponent Al announced he had lost too many banners plus his general, so it turned out to be 11-9 to me.

Game 3, against Skaven (ratmen). My cavalry were riding down the ratmen like, well rats. Unfortunately the victory conditions in this game prioritised holding that building on the left. Cavalry can't take buildings easily and I had no infantry, so the game ended up 11-9 to my opponent (another Mark).

Game 4, against Daemons. The left artillery piece is about to obliterate those giant blue stingrays with grapeshot, very satisfying! Also many Daemons were blowing themselves up randomly and disappearing - I didn't understand why but I didn't complain! 11-9 to me or my opponent, can't remember which.

Game 5, against Skaven again.  The 5th Hussars have got a little too close to a very bad big pink Abomination and are about to rout again, demonstrating their consistency across rule sets. If I recall correctly this was a solid win to the Skaven 16-4. Incidentally this photo also shows my entire army, of three large heavy cavalry units, three small light cavalry units, 2 artillery, and four characters in the cavalry units.

Happy to report all the Fantasy players were very tolerant of my 'Fantasy' army. I ended up coming 11th out of 24 players. Thanks also to Darren who helped me sort out an army list for the tournament.

Right, back to regular Napoleonics in the next post, as a large bundle of reinforcements have arrived in the post!