Thursday 30 April 2020

Some French Allies for Lutzen 1813 - Baden, Hesse Darmstadt and Croatians

My task of getting my troops ready for the Spring 1813 campaign continues. With these latest French Allies I've just finished the French force for Lutzen. They complete the III and IV Corps as defined by the Old Meldrum scenario

Here's the huge III Corps under Ney completed.



Here is the somewhat smaller IV Corps under Bertrand.



Researching all of the new allied units proved difficult.

The first of the new troops is the 2nd Provisional Croatian Regiment. Croatia was a new part of the French Empire having been gifted to them from Austria. They had sent units to Russia in 1812 and those had had their brown Austrian uniforms replaced with new green ones in the French style, even in one case being given a French Eagle. However the 2nd Provisional was not one of these and continued into the 1813 campaign in their old brown Austrian uniforms, but with French style pom-poms and cockades on their shakos.

I decided to continue to use the French Line infantry miniatures, but painted brown and since the cockade was actually mentioned I decided rather madly to completely paint those. You can just seen in the photos that they do have all three colours, red, white and blue.



The second unit is the 3rd Baden Line Regiment. Finding information on their uniforms in 1813 was even harder, though I did find that they had replaced their helmets with French-style shakos. Their flags were easily found though.



Finally there is one of the Leib Regiments from Hesse-Darmstadt. These Hessian troops again were a bit complex to research, everywhere I found seemed to have different uniform details for 1813. Then I found a site saying that in fact their uniforms were all over the place after the defeat of 1812 and that even within units they varied massively. So I decided it was almost impossible to be wrong and stopped worrying.



So that's the French force for Lutzen complete. I checked for the Allies and it looks like there were a heck of a lot of Russian Guard and Grenadier regiments at the battle, a lot more than I have anyway! Looks like I'll have to put an order in...

Edit: Since posting the above someone mentioned to me that the Hesse Darmstadt unit in the 1813 German campaign did not re-organise in the French manner, only the one sent to Spain did that. So I've done a quick remodelling job to remove the colours and plumes from the grenadiers and voltigeurs...


Wednesday 22 April 2020

French Marine Artillery 1813

When looking at the French Army of 1813 one unit drew my interest more than the rest, Napoleon's Marine Artillery.

By 1813, these troops were not at all useful in their original role and needing to replenish losses from the failed 1812 invasion of Russia Napoleon changed them into several units of infantry. They kept their uniforms much as they were before and were often in battle with their distinctive blue greatcoats. The colour of which got them confused with the Imperial Guard.

Anyway, since I've moved on to the next battle of the 1813 campaign and need VI Corps, the Marine Artillery was my next project. Luckily they were simple to paint and will look great in my French army.



I've also made some attached artillery markers as I have done for my British and Prussians. I'll need a lot more of these.



Sunday 19 April 2020

1st Battle of Möckern 5th April 1813

This afternoon myself and my son, Brendan, played the first game with the new miniatures I've been painting. The first battle in the 1813 campaign, the Battle of Möckern.

Actually several small clashes over a wide front this is quite a small engagement which didn't result in much really as the French pulled out quite early. I'm basing our battle on the scenario in the "We shall meet in Vienna" scenario book by The Wargaming Company. This is intended for their "Et Sans Resultant" rules and I've had to do quite a bit of modification to get it to work in Blücher's normal scale and have referenced the Old Meldrum scenarios and the Nafzinger books quite a bit.

Anyway, here are the forces ready for the battle.

The French. I will control these.

The Prussians. Brendan will control these.

The battlefield itself is very wide and the scenario I was basing the game on was also very wide. I decided to compress it all to fit on my normal table.

The river is the Ehle and though narrow was very boggy. The Wargames Company scenario says that it should only be passable to infantry with artillery and cavalry having to cross at the bridges. I saw no reason to change that.

The top of the map is the South East side where the Prussians and Russians enter. Prussians to the sides and Russians in the middle. There are four villages, from left to right Möckern, Vehilitz, Danningkow and Gommen. Each of these I garrisoned with French troops. The Prussians have to push through these and get at least 3 units down the roads to Magdeburg at the bottom.

The French have most of their troops off table down those roads.


The Wargames Company Scenario had off-table movement for the reinforcements rather than the random roll that Blücher normally uses and I decided to do the same. I split the roads up into 2BW segments off-table and moved the formations down those at the end of the turn. The troops arriving on table as they did so. This worked well.

Anyway, Brendan decided to bypass all the garrisons with one Prussian force pushing down my left flank and the others crossing the river in the middle. This left me with garrisoned troops on their own able to move out of their towns and in the case of the Italians in Möckern attack Brendan's troops in the rear.



The first half of the game was this movement and the turns went by rapidly, until Brendan got close to the road entrance behind Möckern. At this point he was successfully pushing my Marie-Louise conscripts back each turn. I was taking heavy casualties.



Just as he was about to move the left-hand corps of Prussians off the table though, my main reinforcements arrived to block his route.


Faced with fresh troops arriving to fight his worn out army it didn't look good for the Prussians, but a few terrible combats later the French had been pushed away from the road. The Prussians saw their chance and in their last turn got the 3 units they needed down the road, right under the French noses.

This was truly a very close and enjoyable game, not at all bad for something I had thrown together based on several different sources.

The next battle in 1813 is Lutzen... I need quite a bit more for that one and quite a bit bigger battlefield as well. It may be a few weeks yet before that happens.


Friday 17 April 2020

1813 French Conscript Infantry aka Marie-Louises


I've just completed my first French Infantry specific to 1813 (and 1814). These are the conscript infantry raised quickly at the start of the year and nicknamed Marie-Louises after the Empress.

In order to distinguish them from my other French Infantry I've used the models with greatcoats, a common approach used by wargamers from what I can see.

I'll have to do a load more of these...




Next up is the rather interesting Marine Artillery Regiments...

Monday 13 April 2020

1813 Prussians Finished, plus I Corps and II Corps at Leipzig

Phew, that's them all done! My 1813 Prussians are complete. Well ok, I could add a few more attached artillery and cavalry markers and a second base of Garde zu Fuß would not come a miss, but those will have to be in the next Heroics and Ros order.

Here they are in all their glory... three corps of them, with markers, sub-commanders, etc.




And since I did it for III Corps, here is I Corps & II Corps ready for Leipzig. This time with attached cavalry and artillery markers and limbers for tracking artillery ammo.

II Corps
I Corps

Already on the paint table is the next project, some Marie-Louises for my French 1813 army.

Saturday 11 April 2020

Prussian III Corps at Leipzig in 1813

This year I've mostly been building my 6mm scale Prussian army up for 1813. I was wanting to be able to do the whole of the campaign in that year using Sam Mustafa's Blücher rules.

I initially started using The Wargaming Company's "We Shall Meet in Vienna" campaign book to organise my troops and some units were painted using that as a guide. Later on I've been using the order of battle from the Old Meldrum Wargames Group's Leipzig scenario. As such some of my units don't 100% match up with that, though only in facings and flag details.

At Leipzig the Prussian troops were split primarily into three corps, as they were through much of 1813.  The Third Corps was commanded by Bülow.

The III Corps is split into three infantry brigades, a cavalry reserve and corps artillery. The photo below shows all of these.

The entire III Corps for Leipzig
The first of the infantry brigades is the 3rd Brigade under Hesse-Homburg.

Like the other two brigades, this consists in Blücher of a line infantry unit, a reserve infantry unit and a landwehr infantry unit. As with the other brigades the corps the reserve infantry are actually wearing British supplied uniforms in Prussian Blue.

The front view of 3rd Brigade

The rear view of 3rd Brigade

Next up is the 5th Brigade under von Schoon. Again 3 bases: line, reserve and landwehr.

Note I've included both rear and front photos of the models. Whilst doing my research it became apparent that people don't think to photo the rear of their models. I'm making sure I don't make the same mistake!

The front view of 5th Brigade


The rear view of 5th Brigade

The third and last infantry brigade is the 6th under Kraft. 

Again as with the others the landwehr and reserve bases are right, but the line base was painted earlier and isn't actually the correct unit. Flag, and facings are not quite right.

The front view of 6th Brigade

The rear view of 6th Brigade

The flags are generally transfers I made myself using the images from Warflags. Except that is for the "Black Cross" which I had problems with and had to hand paint.

Next up is the Reserve Cavalry under Oppen. This consists of one each of Hussar, Dragoon and Landwehr Cavalry base along with some horse artillery. The unit markings are all correct on these.

The front view of the Reserve Cavalry

The rear view of the Reserve Cavalry

Finally the Corps artillery. This consists of a heavy (position) artillery base and a foot artillery base. 

In the Prussian range from Heroics and Ros there is only one artillery pack, these all have the same gun. I noticed however that the gun in the limbers was different, so I've used those as heavy artillery. I have no idea if they're right. To be honest I can barely see them at this scale without my magnifier anyway.

For Leipzig there should also be a Russian heavy artillery base. I have plenty of those in my Russian army and will use one of those should I ever actually get around to playing Leipzig.

The front view of the Corps Artillery

The rear view of the Corps Artillery

In addition to the books and sites already mentioned I found the following very useful for research:


So that's III Corps. I do also have I Corps and II Corps almost complete, which will hopefully be in a follow-up post.



Friday 3 April 2020

Man O'War Slaanesh Hellship

I was going to use my Chaos fleet for the Man O'War UK Championships at Black Dragon Miniatures. I didn't go in the end.

I was just going to add a single model to fleet for the tournament, the Slaanesh Hellship. I painted this up over a month ago now and just realised I'd not posted a photo... So here it is!