Horses, carts etc: update

The great equipment drive is continuing apace -- here's the current status:



Since last post, I've constructed two extra powder carts and an extra one horse cart. Some have been primed (I'm using black gesso these days -- I've given up on finding a good matt black spray paint at the local DIY shop), and painting is underway on two of them. I've decided to use a full two-layer paint job on them (which is as high as I go these days, painting quality wise) instead of a quick dry brush job which I usually do for equipment and scenery. So all this will take me a bit longer to paint up :)

Horses, carts and wheels

So I've been steadily working on some horse and musket armies, notably Great Northern War Swedes and Russians and Napoleonic Bavarians. The past few days, I've turned my attention to what might be termed their _support infrastructure_:



That's only just the start. So far, there's a Hovels Dutch wagon with two possible loads (I'll make a third out of coffee stirrers), a Foundry cart and powder cart and two Old Glory _wurstwagen_. The latter have either Foundry crew (for the one without horses) or Old Glory crew with Foundry Bavarian heads transplanted (ouch). Still to come are another cart and powder cart, some caissons (they'll be French crewed) and limbers and horse teams. Obviously, some of these will be more suitable for the Napoleonic than the GNW collection, but there will be a fair bit of overlap.

These bases can be used as baggage train, to generally doll up the battlefield or to provide some 'meat' behind a deployed artillery battery.

Napoleonic unit formations with 9 4-figure stands

So I decided to move from 24 figure to 36 figure battalions for my Bavarians (and French in being). There's a number of reasons for this:

* Visual Appeal (which we know Is Everything) - 36 figures look much more like a block of Napoleonic age troops to me than 24 do. It's still quite a distance away from _real_ old school battalions (which sniff at anything below 48 figures), but in this day and age, 36 men is enough to be considered old school anyway. There's a reason old school attracts increasing interest these days - big battalions work (although I do not care for other aspects of the old school movements: flat painting, flat bases and flat terrain)
* Figure to men ratio - when using a figure to men ratio of 1:20, most standard battalion sizes of the Bavarian army are much closer to 36 than 24. Many rules and attending literature wrg unit organisation and such use a 1:20 man figure ratio.
* Unit formations - in an extension to the first point above, unit formations with 36man battalions, based in 4, look pretty good. The rest of this post will show some examples of this.

I'm still deciding on which ruleset to use for Napoleonic games (and will probably try a lot of them) but the current frontrunner is Republic to Empire (R2E -- others are Lasalle and Black Powder). As R2E probably has the most varied unit formations in the game, if I can represent those in a decent fashion, I guess the rest of the rules are automatically covered. Here they are, with the exception of line, which is just the stands put next to each other.

###Column of march

This is the stands placed one behind the other. This makes for a _long_ column, leading the player to have to think about its use and effect on the battle plan, which is probably historically correct.



The unit showing off the various formations in this and the next photographs is the recently painted [I/1IR](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000364.html), augmented with three stands from its [sister battalion](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000359.html).

###Column of companies

This formation, which is not often represented seperately in wargame rules, is more or less the 'default' formation, the easiest from which it is to deploy to other formations.



###Column of attack

The famous, and probably most overrated and misunderstood, attack column of the French and their close friends. In R2E (and historical reality), this is supposed to be wider than deep, but I find a 2 line formation with 5 stands in the first row and 4 in the second to not look very satisfactory. So I'm applying wargamers license here and use a 3x3 formation:



###Square

For the equally famous square formation, I use a formation with 2 stands on each side and the command stand in the middle - something that is not possible with only 6 stands.



Now, there only remains the issue of painting seventeen thousand other figures :)

Modern British update

I spent most of the last few painting sessions finishing bases for a lot of the things I painted in my mad painting spurt a few months ago. That includes the expansion of my Modern British - here they are all laid out neatly in their storage box:



Off the top of my head, there are:

* 4 Challenger tanks
* 4 Challenger II tanks
* 3 AS-90 Braveheart SP artillery
* 13 basic Warrior IFVs
* 8 improved Warrior IFVs
* 2 Swingfire AT vehicles
* 2 mortar carriers based on FV.432 APC
* 1 Cymbeline radar direction finder
* 2 FV 432 APCs functioning as HQ's
* 1 FV 439 signals APC functioning as HQ
* 4 TUM trucks
* 16 infantry platoons
* 4 AT missile stands (Milan)
* 4 AA missile stands (Blowpipe)
* 4 mortar stands
* 6 sniper stands (no idea what to do with them)
* 1 Harrier
* 1 Lynx AT Helo

And I'm probably forgetting a few here and there. Even then, although on first look it seems like a fairly reasonable amount of troops, there's probably more firepower (if not manpower) there than most of the worlds other armies combined.

Still in their blister packs awaiting paint are 10 Chieftain tanks, 10 Spartan IFVs, 10 FV.432 IFVs, 10 Landrover jeeps and a final Lynx.

Flames of War - my Soviet army

Bart asked me to write up a piece on the army that I have built up for Flames of War. So, here we are, and first, a few words on the game system. Flames of War is basically a company level game, with a design a little reminiscent of WHAB - simple basic mechanisms but lots of chrome and special rules to reflect specifics of individual armies. It works very well. The games are short, violent and often funny.

The rule-set is brilliantly supported by Battlefront, the publisher. It produces the figures (very nice quality 15mm) and armour (the models are made from a mix of resin and metal), packaged in platoon or company packs, with the bases you need and painting guides. The website gives a lot more background, including profiles of different units, guides to putting together the models, lots of photos of painted miniatures, etc. - all extremely useful. They have also worked with Vallejo to provide sets of suitable paints, which again is pretty helpful.

Some might complain that this approach makes it too easy, or takes the fun out of building the army. In a way, this is true, but you have to acknowledge that it is a winning method and will certainly be instrumental in attracting people to historical wargames. You can now buy, effectively, a box with rules, army organisation and lists, paints and a painting guide.

In the same way as WHAB uses 2000 points armies, DBM uses 400 points armies etc., FOW has a system of army lists (those who are allergic to lists can simply use them as a helpful guide to putting scenarios together) that provide for 1500 point armies that slug it out over a 6x4 foot (2x1.2 m) table. The game system currently supports three theatres of war:

- Russian front 1942-3
- North Africa
- 1944 Western Front.

For each theatre, there are a series of gamebooks listing the available armies. Each army has its own characteristics and special rules. I have always wanted a Soviet army, having a slight soft spot I suppose for the command economy and dialectical materialism, so the choice was easy.

Having selected the country, what sort of army? The army list books define different types of company - an infantry company, an armoured company or a reconnaissance company for example. I personally think that if you're playing WW2, you better have tanks, so I decided to build a soviet armoured unit.

The soviets in FOW are characterised, not unreasonably, as 'conscript (ie cheap, difficult to control, very vulnerable) but fearless (easy to rally even when taking casualties). This means you get vast numbers of them - where for a German army you have a company, for a soviet army you have nearly a battalion, but they are pretty unmanoeuverable and are very inflexible. For instance, a German panzer can dance rings around them, can move, shoot and then, potentially move again. A soviet tank can barely move and fire in the same turn, which is very limiting.

The heart of the army is two tank companies and of course, the T34 provides the backbone. I have one company of 7 T34s plus a company of 6 T70 light tanks. These latter are quite pretty and fast, but very vulnerable to enemy fire, having little armour to speak of.




T34s


Originally uploaded by ahuyton.



To back these up, are tank riding infantry with supporting machine guns plus a medium mortar company (these are cheap and very effective in the rules). Additional options that I have available, are heavy KV1 tanks (brutal things), Katyushas (fun but vulnerable - enemy artillery can automatically home in on them if the Katyushas fire), BA64 armoured cars, anti tank rifles and heavy mortars.




Katyushas


Originally uploaded by ahuyton.



Overall, I think, my favourite selection is:

* A Cin C with supporting AA machine guns
* A company of T34s, to provide a fast and reasonably hard hitting shock weapon
* A company of T70s, cheaply bought and handy backup to the other tanks
* A company of 3 KV1e, which even German tanks find difficult to shoot up.
* One platoon of infantry + mg to seize woods, buildings etc
* A medium mortar platoon plus spotter to try to pin enemy infantry or guns
* A reconnaissance unit of light armoured cars, which I think serves little purpose, but I think they're quite fun little models.

I have played three games with them, and lost each one, they are really quite difficult to control. At least that's my excuse.

I can unreservedly recommend the system and everything that goes with it, it has all the elements of a good,well thought out system that works and is properly supported. For the Belgian readers, L'Antre Jeux in Brussels sells all the stuff, including all the paints.

I now have 3000 points worth of Soviets, enough to start varied scenario games as well as giving me different options in the tournaments style games (yes there is a FOW tournament scene). Next, I want to paint up an opponent for them, and have decided, perhaps perversely, to go for a Finnish army - a very different affair. Elite troops, so few in number and with little armour to speak of. I hope it will make for an interesting match up.

_Update_ (robartes): added some formatting, removed big white space after first photo