West Country Quatre Bras: 4th Hanoverian Brigade

It might seem a bit "sad" to be posting on Christmas Day but I was going to email the Quatre Bras project team and send some reassuring photos when I thought it would be just as simple to blog it to them. So Happy Christmas Kevin, James, Tony and Richard :-)

Here's a reminder of the closing stages of our Quatre Bras refight Part 1

The thin red line in the foreground is three Landwehr battalions, Verden, Osterode and Munden, of 4th Hanoverian Brigade. Only three? Well I have to confess that I ran out of time back in September and could only give Kevin three finished battalions for the game. He took it well, like the gentleman he is, and we claimed the fourth battalion, Luneburg Landwehr, had got pushed off the road to QB by a British Guards Battalion taking precedence!

So this post is mainly to reassure Kevin and James that Luneburg Landwehr are now complete and will be ready and drilled for QB Part Two. They have that "lived-in" look I like given by Army Painter Quickshade and have just the matt varnish to do.  Here are the pictures to prove it.

For those who care about such things the brigade started as a job lot of Warlord Games plastic when they had a massive sale of surplus sprues.  These were for the basic infantry, and I converted  a variety of figures I had in stock for all the officers, NCOs and musicians. These were a mixture of Victrix Peninsular British, and Perry metal Hanoverians, some repainted from my 1:3 scale La Haye Sainte Hanoverian battalions.  Just for fun here are some photos I took when I was busy on the assembly line - raw casting parts stuck together and then all four battalions having just received their Army Painter red spray undercoat.  

As I did for the 1:3 massive battalions I painted as many as possible "in one go" but  in this case I ran out of time on the last 36. They won't win any prizes but I'm still very pleased with the overall effect,  I think it is a smart and business-like uniform even if they count as Raw in the game.......

Project team - see you at Quatre Bras Part Two.  Punters - many of you have your invitations now so I hope you will be able to come. Meanwhile have a Joyous New Year.

A Lancerette for Weinachten - 1761

Giselle loved the feel of the oriental silk against her skin….. Count Gregorius of Grunburg had spared no expense in getting his Viennese tailors to design this lancer uniform,which he had told her was based on the Prussian Bosniak lancers he had seen when the Grunburg contingent fought at the Battle of Zorndorf.  To model it for his pleasure was the least she could do in return for the extravagant diamond necklace he had bought her for Weinachten……..

For those who need a reminder about Giselle's past role as a Hussarette please see The Count's Christmas Treat 1760

An Imagi-Nation's year later, amazingly, Giselle is still in favour at Schloss Grunburg, and evidently Sir Joshua Gregg RA has made another sojourn in her company to paint an intimate portrait. He has called this one 
"Giselle and the Bosniak shirt - Weinachten 1761". But she is now a "Lancerette" complete with oriental style sabre and a custom-sized lance. Add the flamboyant plumed turban and the dazzling oversized diamond necklace and these will make her stand out at the Elektor of Reikland's New Year masquerade no doubt......And of course heighten Count Gregorius' status in the eyes of his rivals for the Elektorship.

For this year's Christmas card, which I hope many of my readers, clients and wargaming associates will have by now received in the post, I wanted to keep the red and white theme and of course something Seven Years War appropriate.

Available on line (Pinterest if I recall) are contemporary prints of Bosniak Lancers in the service of Prussia, and since Count Gregorius of Grunburg can sell his services to any of the German speaking monarchs, this fitted my purpose. With his apparently bottomless purse, fed by wine exports from the Grunburg vineyards, our hero likes to spend freely on new uniform designs, jewellery and women. And then hire a notable English artist to paint them!

Looking through my archives of reference photos I found this one of Ella looking, at the same time self-satisfied but also a bit quizzical, and it was a quick transition to imagine her in the basics of the Bosniak uniform. You can see my first outline sketch on the canvas. Main change is the baggy trousers instead of boots but they are pretty cool I think.

 Applying thin layers of acrylic paint it began to come together. Calling on my ill-spent youth in the antique trade it was not difficult to conjure up a design for a full length adjustable mirror stand. No doubt Count Gregorius would have been keen to acquire some of Mr Thomas Chippendale's carved furniture for Schloss Grunburg, and that is a faint hint at a young Robert Adam console in the background.

Now putting more depth of red and a few shadows

The navel in this pose is particularly cute and often the military costume seems to cover it in my paintings, so that was a small bonus.

Lots more detail now. In particular having to make a credible attempt at Bosnian style lace - this is only 7 inches by 5 inches so not as challenging as painting a 28mm figure! Also I try to put the young lady's name in the picture somewhere and that wash bowl seemed a good idea.

 The final effect in close up. This segment is 2 inches x 2.75 inches so please forgive the imperfections seen at this range.

As usual I have painted the sides of the canvas  and for this one gloss varnished the whole, and strung the back so it is ready for hanging.  I'm pleased to say 2017 has been a very good year for the Hussarette genre, I've added 6 to the list and am up to Nr 19 now, and I got a commission for another yesterday. So if anyone fancies working with me to acquire a customised 2-dimensional military lady please get in touch Chris Gregg.  This small painting of Giselle is available at a mere £40 plus postage so email me if you are interested,

Meanwhile Happy Christmas and a Great New Year to all my readers, and particularly to those who comment, have signed up to Follow or for email notification, it is appreciated.

Chris

Attempt on Machtigburg - an Imagi-Nation Mini Campaign, Part One

Attempt on Machtigburg, Part One - Introduction and Background

Reading the background to other wargamer's Imagi-Nation countries can be tedious, but reading about their activities can be stimulating - just look at the success of the Charles Grant family publications. I hope this series of blogs will fall into the latter category so I'll spare you too much "political" detail.

Project history
I started my Imagi-Nation armies back in about 2008 inspired by Henry Hyde's then new magazine "Battlegames" as a transition from my 28mm French and Indian War, so the nucleii were British and French armies of the 1750s.  I had just had a lovely holiday in the French Alps where one of my nieces lives and realised that the real province of Savoy (Savoie) offered me the potential I needed as it had French names and location on the French border with Switzerland and Italy.

Thus I could take the Games Workshop (basically late Medieval) fictitious campaign map for Warhammer games, which was based on Germany, and freely translate it. Forget Switzerland and my Savoy bordered Reikland. I created the "Duc de Deuxcheavaux"  (don't ask) as the ruler of Savoy who was thrusting and expansionist and looked to Louis XV to support his pretentions on Reikland's territory. The year was 1760 and France had lost a lot of colonial territory so was looking for revenge and replacement lands. Savoy could have French style imaginary units backed by real French historical units, though not strictly 1760.

Reikland, for its part, was the South-West "Elektorate" of "The Empire" and Count Gregorius (um, yes me when I choose to be) von Grunburg ruled the county bordering Savoy. Would you believe Gregorious favoured British style red uniforms? He could also call on any Germanic units that took my fancy, never mind that Prussia and Austria were at war most of the time! They were all nominally subserviant to "The Empress" in Vienna in my mind.

I first blogged about this back in 2011 with the Battle of Futonville  report

and the units and games have been featured a lot since, although I had a long break from early 2013 to mid 2016 forced by two house moves and the 2015 bicentennial of Waterloo. This coincided with the opportunity to try out Keith Flint's "Honours of War" (HoW) rules and along the way I had had tremendous stimulation from membership of John Ray's "A Military Gentleman of the 18th Century" Forum.

2016 was time to revive my campaign, which is always done by my trying to link most games by vague reference to the"map " which is now just in my head, and with characters and units that come and go as I pragmatically use them to suit the circumstances of the game. No one to please but me and the friends who I can persuade to partake :-).

Savoy's latest invasion of Reikland - Background
AMG led me to meet Ken Marshall who was happy to help me test HoW using the three test games in the rule book. By game 2 we dragged AMG member Guy Barlow along too and for game 3 brought in my old mate Kevin East. Each one was getting a bit larger and our confidence building.
All these have been fully blogged and with a rough background brief. Please see the links below if you need a reminder.
Battle of St Ulrich

Clash at Kutzdorf

Surprise at Spittelwitz

Spring of 2017 got me custom building a 10 x 6 foot terrain for Kevin's big weekend Napoleonic test game Battle for Hoeke Valley

and I desperately wanted to expand the scope of our 18th Century games so launched into my first original HoW scenarios using this terrain, adapted, as my excuse.

Attempt on Machtigburg - the concept
Inspired by Charles S. Grant's various handy books on mini campaigns, (see for example Caliver Books website Search for Grant books at Caliver) I came up with the germ of three ideas for games, getting bigger each time, to be played over the Summer and Autumn.

• A petite guerre style battle involving mostly vanguards composed of quite a lot of light troops; Savoy/French trying to secure, and Reikland/Imperial trying to block, a passage through a river valley on the way to Machtigburg
• Based on the tabletop territory gained by the vanguards, two armies of all arms, with the French force having to protect a siege train required for the siege of Machtigburg and Imperial force trying to destroy or capture them.
• A third battle based on the the outcome which would involve the biggest forces we could game with in a day and on the 12 x 6 foot battlefield left over from West Country Quatre Bras part One

This evolved into me and Ken playing "Vanguards in the Wahlental" the day before we both attended the splendid AMG 17 weekend at Kenilworth in mid-June. Here is an idea of what it looked like, Ken contributed  a fair amount of the figures.

A month later we used a lot of Ken's Prussian style Imagi-Nation figures and he continued as the Reikland/Imperial commander and we invited Kevin along while I enjoyed umpiring "Siege Train in the Wahlental". A couple of pics of that one.

For the third and final battle, in early October, I was a very lucky chap as both Ken and Guy provided most of the troops. These were a good part of Ken's completed Imagi-nation forces - an interesting mix of British/Hanoverian/Prussian and white coated "Austrians", and an unknown part of the total of Guy's historical 1740-50s style French, British and Hanoverian Western theatre armies. All these were Minden, Crann Tara or Fife and Drum figures. They were supplemented in places by my eclectic mix of historical and Imagi-nation regiments owing no allegiance to one style of manufacturer. We mustered about 1500 figures for the day. Probably about another 500 or more stayed on my shelves for another time.  Better yet we were joined by Gloucestershire "locals" Roy Boss of Cirencester, and HoW author Keith Flint of Northleach.   Again I was GM and umpire/tea maker, which is my favoured role.
And now some taster pics from the "Battle of Edelstein"

That should give you some idea of the scope of what I expect to be describing over the next few weeks. (Though not all at once as I feel some Hussarette paintings beckoning to be shown!)  I'll include the full briefs as Downloads in the Imagi-Nation sidebar  as I go along.
 I will leave you with the map of the Wahl Valley I devised to use the adapted Napoleonic terrain for the first two games. Please click to expand.

Map of the Wahlental - if the names intrigue bear in mind this terrain was devised in the last week of May in the UK :-)