Battle of Wavre Refight

 

Looking for a big game, we decided to re-fight Wavre in 28mmm, but with Grouchy starting earlier then expected. The game had around 80 Infantry units, 16 Cav and a 18 batteries, on a large table with 6 players. A fun affair, with the French pushing the Prussians as they did historically but not enough to take the position. 

I felt the French had just done enough, but not enough to stop the result up the road.

Luck and Kampfen prepare to defend Wavre Town

French assaults about to begin.

Gerard streams past Limale to assault Bierges from the west.

 

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

 

As the silence of this blog the past few years has highlighted, motivation has been low and far in-between. 

I've painted and gamed, but when it comes to documenting it all, I have simply not bothered. As such, yesterday's crescendo on an otherwise unremarkable day, was the several boxes of 28mm French hurtling towards the floor as they were tipped over by mistake.

Gravity wins again.

So, now I have made a start on fixing and rebasing something in the order of 200–300 figures. Perry figures are nice, but the light infantry all became amputees, and the front rank figures packed a scrum at one end of their boxes. Lancers broke, standards came off and so on.

So, what a good reason to try and document this all.

 

 

Testing Rules for refights

 

 I will be planning a variety of re-fights over the next year or so, with a target of a very large game. As such, the topic of rules always comes up, so my trusty companions and I will play test some rules over the next few months.

Today was Black Powder, a rule set I have used a few times before in a lot of periods. Some pics from the game below, French defending a crossroads from an Allied attack.

 

 

 

  

 

A French Victory as the Allies ran out of steam at a crucial time and with some excellent dice rolling.

Fantastic Book

 

On  a whim, I recently purchased a secondhand book of an auction site, and it has been a pleasant surprise. Page after page of these excellent examples for many periods I know nothing about but have figures for.

In particular, the Seven Years War which my imagination armies are set. This will be a great resource as I paint the finer details of the figures.

 

Battle of Pleasant Hill, 1864

Some time ago, Archduke Piccolo and I decided to play a 1/72 ACW game, a great set of "old school" rules with lots of dice rolling and very bloody battles. It has been a while so I cannot recall the detail, but a fierce confederate attack was held by the union lines.

The figures are a mix of Airfix, Esci, Italeri, Revell and 20mm pewter.

 

All talk and no trousers.

A full 18 months since my last post, a new record.

Well, despite being in New Zealand, the global epidemic has hit me very hard. My industry destroyed, had a large pay-cut for a year, had to make redundancies and see a lot of clients businesses go under or have at least 90% staff loss. That is the way it sometimes goes, some ends up getting the smelly end of the toilet brush and the alternative was far worse, dead industry and sick community. I have a lot of friends and family globally, so I saw what they went through and wouldn’t wish it any other way. It certainly felt like "going down with the ship" at times, but it did highlight to me the importance of this hobby in my life. However, we are still here and things are looking up for 2022.

Recently there was an excellent mental health YouTube post - I recommend viewing it. 

Despite the extremely stressful times, I found that painting gave me that nice release away from it all.  I have accomplished quite a lot in this time, painting and gaming, but when it came to the blog I simply could not be bothered. A few times to be honest, I have even been tempted to simply exit this hobby, but that is more to do with my accumulation of unfinished project, so I have been sorting those out. 

I hope to document these projects more, as I have completed a vast amount of painting and basing. So below is a small sample of my 2020/2021 results work, and it is almost purely all 1/72 scale from a variety of periods.

I plan to make posts on the completed forces, and you can read all the Colonial Campaigns at Archduke Piccolo

Sailing up the Limpopo.

Archduke Piccolo made an excellent account of Portable Wargames Colonial action, so I will not attempt to re-write it.

For the original positions, I went with several baggage trains, intermingled with foot troops and cavalry bringing up the rear. I had hoped the Cavalry could use the clear ground to some effect, but in the end, they were "swamped" with the rest.

 

As bad luck has it, a large force of M'Butu was stationed mid-table and close to the column, there was not a lot I could do here, apart from form ranks and prepare to receive them.  

 

The gunboat looked impressive, but Azeitonian gunnery appeared to have been influenced by the hot weather or rum. The did not achieve a lot during the whole game.

 

The advance party fixed bayonets to repulse the initial attacks.  This advance guard survived most of the battle despite being in the thick of it.

 

The M'Butu swarm out of the bush, overwhelming most of the line. 

 

Governor Relaxado rallies what is left of his fragile command on a small rise on the banks of the Limpopo.

 

As the M'Butu withdraw, a mysterious party watches the forces separate...