French Army for Blücher Completish

So to round off my "completed" Blücher armies we have last, but certainly not least, the French. You can't really have Napoleonics without Napoleon's army!

This is the largest army I've made so far and unlike the others it's definitely going to get larger. I've got quite a few packs of troops left unpainted!

As with the others these are all Heroics and Ros in 6mm on 60mm x 30mm bases. They're organised for the 1812 Invasion and Retreat from Russia, but will also be used for the 1813 campaign, with additions as appropriate.

On the front row from left to right, we have Davout's I Corps, Oudinot's II Corps, Ney's III Corps, Eugene's Italian IV Corps and Poniatowski's Polish V Corps. At the back there's the Imperial Guard and the 3rd Reserve Cavalry Corps.

So with those completed I've already started with my 1813 Prussians. For the first time I'm actually keeping track of how I'm painting them with photos. This should mean that the next few posts will be a short series concerning getting them from ziplock bag to table ready.

Russian 1812 Army for Blücher Complete (for now)

So next up on my run through of my "completed" Blücher armies is my 1812 Russians. To add more will mean I'll have to buy more models. For once I've actually run out!

The 1812 invasion of Russian was the reason for moving to do 6mm Napoleonics. I'd just finished reading (ok, listening to) War and Peace after also massively enjoying the BBC production of the same and I was very, very interested in the 1812 campaign. Everything else in my Napoleonic interest had just been leading up to this...

The British Army in my previous post I had painted a few of years and years ago, but many of these Russians had been sat unpainted in their packets since then. I think I'd even attempted to sell them a few times. I'm glad I hadn't managed to do so!

Again they're all from Heroics and Ros in 6mm and the original box of troops has been supplemented with quite a bit more. They're organised for the Vyazma battle with additional units added for other parts of the 1812 Russian Army. Each base represents a brigade and again measures 60cm x 30cm.

There are three basic Corps, II, III and IV with cavalry detachments for II and IV for Vyazma. Additionally there are Militia and Cossack Corps. Rounding it off are the two Cuirassier Divisions. All the commanders and sub-commanders for Blücher are also modelled.

There is of course room for more. Unlike the British Peninsular army in the last post the Russian Army of 1812 was huge with several different army groups etc. Moving on to 1813 next will mean I have to think hard about how to make best use of this force. Maybe some units will have to be re-assigned, maybe I'll have to paint more!

Next up with be the French.

British Penisular Army for Blücher Complete

So a little while ago I managed to complete my British Peninsular War Army for Blücher. This was the first army I started and the first one I'm sure I'm convinced I've completed. If anything further is added then it will be to make it usable for the 100 days and Waterloo.

There are many mistakes in the army. There should of course be two flags, not one, on each base and most of the troops have belgic shakos rather than stove pipe shakos, etc... but it will just have to do. It wasn't the main reason I got into this anyway, there will be more accuracy in my other armies, I promise!

The models are all 6mm from Heroics and Ros on 60mm x 30mm bases with each base representing a brigade.

The brigades are organised into the various divisions under Wellington's control during the war, including Portuguese and Spanish allies. I think I have pretty much the entire British Army in the Peninsular here.

There are only 3 division commanders with special rules for the army in the Blücher rules and these are attached to their divisions in the photos.

The front rank has divisions 1 through to 7 and then the Light Division on the end. Behind that are attached and massed artillery batteries, the cavalry division, 2 divisions of Spanish allied infantry and a division of Spanish allied cavalry.

My Russian and French armies have also reached "conclusion" for now as I will be starting on Prussians soon. I will post photos of those "completed" armies in a few days.

Blücher two day battles

I just realised that I've not been posting! How bad of me! ;)

Anyway... I have been busy wargaming and painting. I just got out of the habit of posting about it. It happens every so often and I apologise. I will try and make up for being remiss!

Anyway, the main wargaming I've been doing has of course been Blücher. The Mini-Borodino was the last big battle we got played but in addition to that have been a Vyazma demo at Recon 2019, which I forgot to take photos of, a big Penisular war game, and a couple of small 2-day battles.

The idea for 2-day battles came when we found we really struggled to reach a conclusion to a Scharnhorst battle in a single 3-hour club night. Not reaching a conclusion in a day was something that happened from time-to-time during the Napoleonic wars and when that happened they would sometimes rest and deploy during the night and fight again in the morning. Perhaps we could do the same, with the second day being played on a subsequent night?

With a bit of thought I came up with some rules to handle this and have added those rules to the Blücher house-rules section of this blog, see menu on right.

We've had a couple of trial games with this system. In one the second day produced a good definite result, though closer that we expected. But in the other one the Russians managed to get themselves in a very good defensive position which meant that the attacking French couldn't break through, but had mauled the Russians badly.

Here are some photos from those two battles.

 The Russians at the top right were to take the brunt of the attack from the French forces, but the Russians at the bottom right pushed against their rear-guard and did major damage. The Russians down by the town did very little as they waited for French Reinforcements which would arrive at the town they defended. The re-inforcements did not arrive.

Starting position for the first battle.

French unit cards at the end of the first day with damage marked. The photo allowed us to reset the battle.

Russian unit cards at the end of the first day with damage marked.

I didn't take enough photos of this battle... so on to the second one!

A similar thing happened to the Russians in this second battle. Again they found they had a force in the top right of this photo which was pushed and pushed by the French. Meanwhile on the bottom right the French were attacking a very heavily defended village.

At the end of the day the unit cards were put back next to their units and the number of damage markers written on them.

Again I took photos of the unit cards when I got home...

The second day was mainly about a big French assault on the Russian held village and a big cavalry race around the battlefield...

The first of these two games we didn't know that we were going to go for a second day and committed troops with the intention of winning either way. With the second game we were playing to a higher points value (300 as opposed to 200) and had determined from the start that we would be playing a second day. This lead to a much more cagey game, with a lot more retreating under assault going on. Quite different and interesting approaches to the battles!

Overall this seemed to work. No doubt there are improvements that could be made, but I think we'll be using these new house rules again in future!

Oh... and I nearly forgot, here's a photo from the big Peninsular war game we had...