PAINT DAY

A wonderful evening of brushwork's was shared with Bluebear Jeff.


I worked on some Napoleonic Austrian foot and four 1/900 scale Portsmouth Miniature sailing ships.

They were all primed and dark undercoated, the evening was spent in quiet conversation on topics ranging from Emperor vs. Elector Blog items of interest ~ the Frankzonia proxy battle ~ to historical tidbits, such as the pre-dreadnought ships and plans of Jeff.


Jeff's work concentrated on some tricorne foot for Bearstein and conversion of some more xmas buildings for tabletop use.

All in all both an entertaining and productive evening.


The ship finished product looks great with all the sails!

Little Table Top

My youngest son, Marcus, was excited to learn that on May 2 we were to play out a game that he could control the troops for.

I set up a simple little skirmish on the kitchen table.

Some red coats and some blue coats.

Marcus liked the blue ones.

After a few musket exchanges, where Marcus got to roll lots and lots of dices, we came to an encounter with the cavalry and a 'square' of red coats.

The blue riders did not fare so well, the red coats did loose one unit also.

After sneaking around the trees (and having the house move?!?) the 'green jackets' sent off one more of the blue coat men. Marcus turned his final unit and blasted the 'green jackets' out from the trees and won the game!

Fast Tabletop Action

My son Alexander really wanted me to run a game on the first afternoon I got back after a biz trip away for 4 days.

So I decided to set my time to the boys (his younger brothers wanted to watch) for the afternoon after getting home like that.

So a fast SHAKO game got put on the tabletop.

Alex wanted the redcoats vs French.

We set it in Spain in 1813.

Rolling for terrain we got lots of 'rough ground'

The troops were simple, one foot gun with a light and heavy foot for the British and a force of light cavalry. For the French some hussars a pair of horse guns and a light and heavy foot force.




Alex set his men into a mass on his left and Horse to his right, with the Gun on the tall hill in the center ~ set to dominate the field!

I had set the French into defensive formation, with the horse on the left (the only open ground) and the light infantry to support them.

The action took a couple of turns to get into the main thrust, Alex's guns were not able to get any hits and he chose to move the Horse forward, putting them into the range of the French horse gun on the flank. Then the horse formations together clashed, here we see that the French Hussars have withdrawn from the first encounter and were rallying to come back again.

Here we see the field at the moment the British commander chose to fall back ... their horse were defeated, first a salvo of artillery broke their morale, then the French Hussars charged into them ... sowing great confusion and sending the unit from the field.