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.

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:

• "Napoleon at Leipzig" by George Nafziger
• "Napoleonic Army Handbook - The British Army and her Allies" by Richard Partridge and Michael Oliver
• the Blunders on the Danube blog
• Flags of the Napoleonic Wars (2) by Terence Wise
• the "Napoleon, His Army and Enemies" website.
• the Napoleon Series website - the only place I could find with details of the weird reserve infantry uniforms

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.

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!

Some models for Salute 2020 (postponed)

We (COGS) were planning on running a large fantasy participation game at this year's Salute, but of course that is not now going to happen. The show was cancelled/postponed some weeks ago and the venue is now one of the new NHS Nightingale hospitals.

A lot of the game was going to be made from models and terrain we already had, but a few items had been prepared especially for the game. I thought I'd share a few photos of those. In keeping with the theme of the game, which is based off an old White Dwarf article, these are all old models.

I bought and painted this first one back in about 1986. It's the D&D Red Dragon from Citadel and is the dragon from the cover of the D&D Red Book. I re-based it and touched up the paint job a little bit. It always was a favourite model of mine.

The main objective of the scenario was the Holy Grail. The model from the King Arthur set from the Grenadier Fantasy Lords range, this one dates back to 1989.

The last is the leader of the evil faction, a necromancer on undead pegasus from Ral Partha. It's in the current Ral Partha catalogue, but not in any of the old ones, so may perhaps be a bit newer than I'd originally thought. Still it's very much in the classic style.

Blücher at Hammerhead

This Saturday I'll be running two Blücher participation games at Hammerhead.

There'll be the Vyazma 1812 game I've run at other shows and you are welcome to drop in and try your hand at that. But it's a complex game and will take all day to play!

If you fancy something more manageable I'll be running a short training game. This will take about 45 minutes to play and will introduce the game to new players. The scenario is based on the Battle of Arroyo Molinos on 28th October 1811 and features General Hill's combined force of British, Portuguese and Spanish versus a small French force under General Girard.

So if you would be interested in finding out about Blücher in 6mm come and say hello!

General Girard's forces rest at Arroyo Molinos...

... General Hill's troops have sneaked up during the night!

The Battle of Vyazma is progressing (at WMMS last weekend)

A Random Update

Busy, busy, busy....

There's been loads going on this February, but nothing especially new or finished enough to deserve a blog post all of its own. So here's a quick mixed bag post.

There were a few games of Blücher with my new Prussians...

I have nearly the full first two corps for the 1813 campaign done. The third corps will need another order from Heroics and Ros, but I put that in by email last week.

In that order I also looked at my next 6mm project, English Civil War and managed to get a large lot of unpainted H&R ECW minis on eBay. I've been planning how to base these and I think I will be using 30mm square bases, three to make a regiment, with command markers on 20mm squares meaning that the troops can count for either side as needed. I trialled this layout last night. I have a lot to do before I get round to these!

Here's what I have in progress on the workbench. Note that I still use glue and filler rather than acrylic sealant for the bases of the artillery. You can also see the Slaanesh Hellship I need to get painted for the Man O'War tournament I'm going to in a few weeks.

The large hill/mountain is well underway for Arroyo Molinos at Hammerhead. I just need to add some additional details. I got a couple of games in with it as well.

I did think I might get chance to do the 1/1200 Spanish Napoleonic ships I've had for a couple of years, this after a couple of very enjoyable Fighting Sail games. But no, other things have jumped in again. I "need" to get some 6mm Marie Louises painted for the French 1813 army!

Arroyo Molinos - A Blücher Participation Game

We'll be putting on a couple of Blücher participation games at the Hammerhead Wargames Show. One will be the Vyazma game that we'll be playing all day, people can join in if they want. The second will be a boot-camp style game.

I've been looking around to see if there's a real battle that could be played in about an hour with small forces without too much complexity. I wanted it to be in the Peninsular as that then fits with what units I have available after contributing to the Vyazma battle.

The battle I've decided to go for is Arroyo Molinos. On 28th October 1811, General Hill assaulted General Girard's forces in a surprise attack. It's a really small battle but has quite a good story behind it and manoeuvre over relatively open ground by both infantry and cavalry on both sides. Something Blücher is good at simulating. Of course it's a foregone conclusion as the French are heavily outnumbered and will always lose, but this scenario is all about how long they can last!

I just finished the first trial game with my son and it took the 1 hour needed to play it through. It also was a lot of fun. We managed to get about 17 turns in! I think if he'd used his cavalry a bit earlier he'd have reached victory a lot quicker!

Above, the French defensive line. The hills behind are the impassible Sierra de Montanchez. I will make a specific model of those ready for the show.

The French forces are scattered at the end of the battle, but in this game the British didn't fair that well either!

So, please do come and say hello to us at Hammerhead and get a game in!