British Napoleonic Diversity

Fluter, flutter go the butterfly wings as another couple of diverse items roll off the production line.

Item number one is the second limber for the British in Egypt.

Item number two is a by-product of item number one in that they are are the gun crew from the Victrix British artillery sets. Now I have six sprues each with one gun, one limber and five crew and from these I will make my six British in Egypt limbers and have six guns for other British Napoleonic projects. But I only use four crew with my gun sets and this would mean that I would have six crew left over.  Luckily I have a need for gunners for another little project.

Readers may remember that for the War of 1812 blockhouse that I made back in May (https://stracmark.blogspot.com/2018/05/war-of-1812-blockhouse.html) I had cobbled together a gun from various bits that needed some crew. Well these are the crew. 

Four of them will crew the gun. The officer and the sixth leftover, which will also be made up as an officer, will serve as artillery officers in the different British projects because I always find that artillery command is neglected in our wargames - hopefully this rectifies that.

Ottoman Forces for Egypt

Flutter number three of the wargames butterfly wings leads me to land on a third project for the week.

Back in July I completed some Janissaries, the second unit of Ottoman Turks from Brigade Games to serve as allies to the British in Egypt. My plan was to add three units of cavalry and three of infantry.

 

But since then our dollar (some unkind elements have been known to refer to it as the “Pacific Peso”) has taken a hammering against the $US, dropping over 13% since I made my initial plans back in March. This, combined with the fact that Brigade don’t offer a post free purchase level,  has disrupted my purchasing plans. What was to be a relatively small investment had ballooned out to $621.

 

Then I remembered that Gripping Beast did some plastic Arab cavalry and infantry. I jumped online and played around with the pack quantities and prices quickly discovering that I could buy two boxes of heavy cavalry, one of light cavalry and one of infantry for a landed cost of $165 and that would create four cavalry and two infantry units. The thought of saving of $456 appealed to me, but what would I be missing out on by using these figures over specifically designed Ottoman Napoleonic figures? On closer examination the answer was not a lot. Reading contemporary descriptions of the Ottoman army it was described largely as a medieval horde. The only significant difference appeared to be the addition of firearms and perhaps a few less shields.

 

Digging through the plastic bits boxes I had lots of muskets left over from the WSS project some years ago. I had some pistols left over from an old ECW project and a friend gave me a bunch more pistol arms left over from his ECW/TYW project. With a bit of kit bashing skill, adding muskets and pistols to the figures would be a relatively simple task. I also had some sets of arms left over from the Napoleonic dragoon sets that with a  little carving and some Green Stuff might enable me to create some figures firing muskets.

 

So the order was placed. Within a week and a bit four boxes of Arab infantry and cavalry were waiting for me on the doorstep, and here are the first efforts: a unit of Malmuk cavalry and a unit of foot.

 

I am pleased with them and some more may follow.

Spanish Cavalry

The second unit to result from my butterfly fluttering between various projects is the first unit of the Spanish Napoleonic project - the Coraceros Espanoles or Spanish Cuirassiers, a unit equipped with cuirasses, helmets and equipment captured at the Battle of Mollet from the French 13th Cuirassier Regiment, according to René Chartrand.

I can hear the cries now “…why…there were only a couple of squadrons of them and they didn’t survive long in the army organisation”. The answer is simple I had six French cuirassier figures to spare from the French 1812-13 project and the uniforms are so close that I figured it would be a crime not to put them to good use. So here they are in their resplendent red jackets.

 

Of course this rather ties me to the middle period Spanish Napoleonic army (1808-1812) whereas the bicornes of the pre-1808 period are more appealing to me. So could this mean two Spanish armies…?

Another French Battalion

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I am being a bit of a butterfly at present with four concurrent projects running. This post shows the first unit, the 2^nd Battalion 33^rd Régiment de Ligne, before I flutter onto the next.

I finished this sometime last week, but have only just given the final touches to the bases.

 

British in Egypt Artillery Limbers

The final pieces in the British in Egypt project are under way. These are the limbers for the artillery.

 

The British had issues with the artillery in this campaign largely due to a chronic lack of horses. When the fleet sailed for Egypt there were only around 800 poor quality horses available for the entire expedition. After the landings at Abukir Bay the number of horses landed for the artillery was 186 to support 46 field pieces and 36 siege guns. It was a woefully inadequate number and for the advance on Alexandria large groups of sailors from the fleet were drawn on to drag the guns by hand.

 

To compound their issues with the horse shortage, the wheels to bit deep into the soft sand of the Abukir Peninsula and impeded movement. To resolve this issue some clever individual thought of binding barrel staves to the gun and limber wheels so that they had a wider footprint and wouldn’t sink so deeply. The Perry guns for this period indeed have those staves moulded to the wheels as shown below.

 

The Perrys also make the sailors drawing the guns, but don’t make the limbers and attempts to convince them to supply me the separate components to build these failed. Since I have all the limbers for the French guns, I have to do the limbers for the Brits, and so this little sub-project was born.

 

My first problem was finding out what the limbers looked like in 1801. Were they like the limber we all know from Waterloo with the split trail, split ammunition box and horses in teams, or were they like the Seven Years War and American Revolution limber where the horses were in tandem? Lacking an access to published information I searched the web, but found no conclusive answer. Then I spotted these images on the Perry’s Facebook page. 

Thinking that they have better references than me I decided that if this was good enough for them, it was good enough for me too, although I decided to make mine with just a single ammunition box and may choose to add some stowage on some of the models.

 

The model shown has the barrel staved wheels and two ammunition boxes so I started to figure about how to make them. At first I thought about buying the Front Rank limber and converting it, but then I had a better idea. Victrix make a plastic limber that comes without horses. Of course it comes with a gun and crew, but I can use the guns and crews with the War of 1812 armies and with a Peninsular War army that can be pieced together from the stovepipe shako British from the Egypt collection. What appealed to me here was that I could make the barrel staves from plasticard and fix them easily to the plastic wheels with plastic glue.  

 

I ordered two sets of Victrix British artillery to give me the six limbers I need and in due course they arrived.

My first task was to cut some barrel staves from plasticard. I figured that I would need about 30 per wheel so I got to work. It was a tedious task cutting 30 slightly irregular shaped staves, but I had it done in about 15 minutes.

I then glued them on to the wheel, leaving a gap of around 1mm between them.

I then sought out something to use for the ropes that were used to tie the staves. They would run around the edge of the wheel, but underneath the staves. My first thought was to make the rope from two strands of 22 gauge wire wound tight together by using a battery drill, but this proved to be too rigid and getting the right size and shape was just too difficult.

 

Instead I chose to use some light fishing cord that I was able to cut to the exact length and glued into place around the wheel. 

I had intended to use some sewing thread to lash the staves to the wheels, but this was far too fiddly for me and instead I used small pieces of Green Stuff.

 

 

The various pieces were then assembled to complete the limber.

 

Then the limber was painted.

Finally the teams of sailors were added and the model finished.

That is one limber down, five to go.

I am being a bit of a butterfly at present, fliting between several concurrent projects, as a number of posts in the next week will demonstrate.

World War One - East Africa

Today we played a World War One in East Africa game.

The scenario had a German command of eleven companies, supported by two field guns, two mountain guns and six heavy machine guns retreating before a Empire force of twelve companies, six heavy machine guns and one field gun. 

The Germans had to retreat across two rivers, each of which had a single crossing point, to a plantation at one end of the table. Their objective was  to get as many troops across the second ford as possible at the end of the game. 

Four companies plus two machine guns were around a farm at the  opposite end of the table to the plantation. Six companies, three machine guns, the two mountain guns and one field gun were posted on a hill between the rivers. A single company, a machine gun and a field gun were posted at the plantation.  

Looking up the full length of table from the plantation.

The Empire force consisted of  four battalions. A South African battalion and two Sikh battalions deployed near the  farm while a battalion of British infantry with two machine guns would arrive between the rivers.

The Germans stole a march on the South Africans and Sikhs, slipping away across the first river without taking a single casualty, while between the rivers the Germans took post on the hill.

As the German Askari from the farm made their way through the thick bush, the British battalion pushed forward and engaged them. One Askari company faced the attack while the others raced away towards the second river crossing.

  

The Askari and one of their machine guns were overrun, but at great cost to the British company. A second British company dashed forward and engaged a unit of German Schutztruppen, but the Germans drove them off.

But when the Schutztruppen tried to drive off the supporting British machine gun, they were held in check. The British had time to regroup and drove off the Germans.

The South Africans in the meantime came up through the bush (somewhat belatedly) and took up the fight from the exhausted British.

 

The Germans were now streaming back to the second ford, but the Empire forces were closing fast. The two Sikh battalions formed up on the reverse slope of the hill ready to storm forward.

The Germans reatreated across the second ford and formed up around the plantation.

But the action had cost them dearly - five Askari companies, two mountain guns and a field gun were lost. The loss of heavy equipment was particularly crippling for them. The Empire force lost three companies, although several others has taken significant losses.

Here a very enjoyable game ended.

The 5th Hussars

Today I completed the 5th Hussars, the second (and last) of the hussar regiments for Burthe’s 8^th Light Cavalry Brigade of Pajol’s 2nd Light Cavalry Division at Borodino.

I like the mix of the dark blue dolman and breeches, with the white pellise and yellow lace.

The second brigade of this division, Desirat's 7th Brigade, will contain two regiments of Chasseurs a Cheval and will be completed in November.