More Duchy of Warsaw figures

 Latest figures completed for my Polish (Ducky of Warsaw) Division.

1st Chasseurs

Prince Poniatowski

Old Guard Command stands

 Think I've now completed all stands I'll need if I ever table my complete Napoleonic French Old Guard.

French Command Stands (1)

Back in 2015 I'd taken the decision to sell my 15mm Napoleonic French figures and replace them with figures that I felt happier with owning and seeing on the table. Well this has been a very long process which has stagnated during the few years. My previous post invigorated me to conduct an appraisal of my Napoleonic French figures. In keeping with my gentle introduction back into painting figures I decided to focus on the command stands. Checking the number I'd to need for my envisage French Line Infantry Corps. I found there were only a few that required the basing finishing, with a few others to be based along with labelling them all.

Across all my Napoleonic Armies I'm following a figure basing regime of;

• Army - 4-5 figures
• Corps - 3 figures
• Division - 2 figures
• Brigade - 1 figure 

Above are all the completed command stands for my French Line Infantry Corps, consisting of three Divisions of three brigades plus the attached Light Cavalry Division. I need a few ADCs also command stands for my French Reserve Cavalry Corps and French Old Guard Corps. Napoleon will make an appearance later to command them all.

A start is made in completing a few figure bases

 

Last night, for the first time in 2023, I finally sat down at my workbench. The intention was to try and get my mojo following again for wargaming. Rather than break out the paint brushes I decided to apply grass to a few command stands. These had been languishing in my wargaming drawers for upwards of 2 years waiting to be finished. One thing led to another and I ended up applying grass to all the above bases.

In the photo above are, at the front, Napoleonic figures consisting of 3 Austrian & 4 French Command stands, 3 French skirmish stands along with 12 stands of  French Young Guard, at the back are Peter Pig figures which are the start of a WWII Canadian Army. There's still work to be done in making movement/storage trays and creating labels but it felt good to making a start.

Just shows that once I get motivated 15 minutes can turn into an hours worth of enjoyable work.

Selling and Painting

To raise funds for my new Model Railway project and any other future projects I’ve been spending some time pontificating on which wargaming figures and model railway stuff I could sell. Some hard decisions have been made along with making commitments to finish painting the figures that I want to keep.

The decision made with this Duchy of Warsaw Corp was to sell one division’s worth of painted infantry figures totaling 144 figures miniatures. This may seem a strange decision but painted figures fetch the best price. In doing so I was left with a number of figures to paint to complete the Duchy of Warsaw project. I’ve now just about completed the Infantry Division including the artillery and two of the four cavalry regiments. Flags need to be added to the infantry stands and I may have a few infantry pompoms to repaint but feel they are coming on nicely.

Above is the Corps so far, further additions that need painting to complete are a regiment each of Chassuers and Krakus cavalry along with a command stand with Marshal Poniatowski and ADC’s.

It’s just a shame that I’ve moved away from my regular gaming opponent (may post how this  in another blog) so they may not see action for some time unless I go solo.

 

A long overdue update on my wargaming projects

Wow, I didn't realise it has been four years since I posted on this blog.

Much has happened in the last few years, the main one is that I've taken early retirement, more to do with health than anything else. Nothing life-threatening might I add. Retirement should have freed up a lot of time for modelling projects but, possibly due to my gradually taking more of a relaxed attitude and enjoying life, wargaming modelling time has still been at a premium.

So what have I been up to? Apart from Model Railway projects, starting to play golf again along with rekindling an interest in playing bass guitar and bass ukelele, the main wargaming project I've completed since retirement is a Napoleonic Saxony Corps. Other wargaming projects I've been working on are:

• Painting a Napoleonic Franch Corps of two Infantry Divisions & supporting Cavalry Division.
• Painting a Napoleonic French Reserve Cavalry Corps of three Divisions
• Painting a Napoleonic French Guard Corps of two Infantry and one Cavalry Division
• Painting a small Polish Napoleonic Division
• Continuing to gradually paint my collection of WWII German figures and vehicles

I still have good stocks Napoleonic figures along with WWII figures and vehicles plus a few DBA Armies to paint, so I've no excuse to sit idle.

Anyway a few photos of my Napoleonic Saxony Corps below.

I'll try and post updates a little more regularly in the furture.

The epic battle - Waterloo

Well, we finally achieved getting our act together and had a very enjoyable day refighting The Battle of Waterloo. This all took place before Christmas so sorry about the very belated blog.

I'd purchased this Waterloo terrain many years ago but never had the space to put it all out as intended. Normally, on gaming nights, we only have space for a 6ft x 4 ft board on which parts of this terrain have been used to create terrain on these smaller boards. After gaming Quatra Bra and Warve earlier in the year it was mentioned it was a great pity that we could not game Waterloo. This was "Red Rag to a Bull" and it took a while but finally we managed it.

We borrowed some tables to create a 10ft x 6ft space and squeezed them into the lounge of a gaming friend. Unfortunately the tables did not give a totally flat area which resulting in some tiles not laying flat, this can be seen in a couple of photos. We also had to reduce the width by one row of tiles but we don't think this had too much of an affect on the deployment.

In the end there were only three of us taking part so we tossed a coin to see who was taking which troops, this resulted in one French General and two British. Even though we'd spent much of the year collecting and painting figures to fill in the gaps of our joint collections, we still had to make some compromises and it took us a good couple of hours deploying the 2,500 or more figures ...

Deployment looking East to West Hougemont in the foreground

Deployment looking East with Papelotte in the foreground

Troop deployment around Papelotte

6th Cavalry Divison poised for action on the French left flank

The Allies right flank

French start the attack

The race for Hougemeont is on. British Advance towards the farm as the French come down off the ridge

The Battle for La Haye Saint begins

Units converging on Hougemeont

It's hotting up with attacks going on at La Haye Saint & Hougemeont and French Cavalry find a gap between the two.

British Cavalry advance to meet the French Cavalry and drive them back.

End of the day

We had to call it a day around 23:00 as one of the 'Generals' had to be at work at 6:00 the next morning. The battle had a few more turns to go before the Prussians would arrive but the overall consensus was the Allies had, so far, been very lucky to hold back the French.

Would we do it again... you bet!