A little something arrived this morning....

Hi everyone I just received a very nice package this morning.... If I can get out of decorating for five minutes I'll have a read!!! :)

Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro Order of Battle

Hi everyone :) I've been researching penninsular war battles in an effort to direct my collecting and painting efforts.

I decided the battle of  Fuentes de Oñoro would make a nice first engagement for me even if it is a big first project! The idea is that it will give me two core armies for penninsular gaming and will be transferable to other theatres of war with the french force so they can fight against the Austrians, Russians and Prussians in the future.

To that end I've been researching the  Fuentes de Oñoro OOB'S (Order of Battle) as its an interesting and evenly matched battle with lots of interesting units to help me choose which real units my battalions will represent (hence all the Highlanders!?)

So I now have a long list of French and British regiments at the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro but I need some advice on which ones to pick!? Should I try and represent entire actual divisions/brigades? Or should I just pick whichever I like the thought of? Unforrunately I'm not sure what scale I'm going to represent the battle with - the infantry figure scale is roughly 1:25 do I translate that to battalions aswell? I'd prefer to refight the battle as a whole rather than just part of it and I'd like to represent the different types of units involved but at a scale I can handle?
All advice very much welcome!

As an aside I've just invested in the General de Brigade deluxe edition rules so I'm looking forward to having a read when it arrives in the post - a backup in case my own rules fall short! :)

Progress Report and Victrix Highlander review

Hi everyone :) Ok, so the whole trying to publish a post once a week thing hasn't worked out so well its been another month!? Unfortunately life and especially work are getting in the way let alone problems with internet connections!

However, I've been busy nonetheless making alot of progress! :)

So first up I finished basing my first napoleonic french infantry battalion.

I'm very pleased with how they've turned out as a first attempt I just need to source a flag manufacturer and decide which battalion they are! If anyone has any advice on what flags to get it would be appreciated, I've done a bit of research and various outfits such as the flag dude are recommended but some suggestions would be very helpful!

Then, due to my massive purchase of victrix models I jumped into building my 5 boxes of victrix napoleonic british highland infantry! Now before I continue I have to say this was a pretty mammoth task! lol So far I've managed to build 6 full battalions of 40 models!!!???? and I've still got one more battalion to assemble on my table!

I really like the victrix napoleonic british highlander models they're very well sculpted and I would highly recommend them. They take a lot longer to build than perry miniatures due to the variety of poses you can concoct as the models allow for different arms, heads and backpacks to be used as well as a number of different torsos including kneeling models.

I do have a few gripes though.... Firstly there is quite a bit of flash and mould lines on some of the parts especially on the torsos. The fragility of some of the parts is a bit of a problem. Now, having read other reviews I personally haven't had any problems with bayonets falling off but the most fragile part of a model I have ever come across on any model ever is a particular tassle on the bagpipes!? It's a good job there's so many of them because even though I'm a very experienced model maker I broke loads of them just trying to get them off the sprues let alone when trying to glue them and I'm pretty sure a few broke as I breathed on them!? lol

The other particularly fragile part are some of the musket straps which break with monotonous regularity. Although I like the look of the victrix models alot there are some parts that I wasn't keen on - some of the heads were very offputting as some of the faces look like they belong to old age pensioners (no offence but they shouldn't be on the battlefield lol) or some of them look like John Bull - a little bit rotund of face shall we say and therefore a little too comic looking! I want stern scottish diehards!

Having said that though, the models look great and victrix offer the best value for money out there(especially with their deals) and the quality of the models are first rate - other manufacturers whom offer inexpensive models often lack quality - that isn't the case with victrix they are as good as perry if not a bit better!

My last gripe, and its the biggest one(!?) is the number of command models provided in the boxes - there's just too many of them! I currently have 13 officers and 6 standard bearers I have no current use for.... although they may come in handy for brigade commanders and the like.

So here's the roll-call:

 

 

I'm particularly fond of the unit with the kneeling front line and the standing second firing line :) Although it only occured to me afterwards that forming those guys up into a marching column might not look so good!

 

So thats taken me an entire month to do! In addition I may have made contact with a chap whom could take some of the load off of me on the painting front for a reasonable fee and to a good standard although I'll still be doing the vast majority of it! I also bought another 800 renedra bases as I was starting to run out! 

 

So as soon as I get this last Highland battalion built I'm going to start concentrating on building some more french units so I can get a game going soon! :)  As I've got the next week off from work I'm planning on getting alot done and lets hope I can keep posting on the blog a bit more regularly!

 

Lastly, I'm going to be heading up to salute in April to hopefully source some additional reinforcements, flags and some terrain - in particular some buildings for my wargames table :)

 

As always all comments and advice welcome

 

Rob :)