Franco-Prussian War Project Part Seven

I finished painting and basing all the baggage wagons and limbers and I am in the process of adding the flags I printed to both armies.   The Prussians have been finished and the French are about one-third completed.   This will be finished this weekend, leaving only flocking the bases as I have time.  The armies will have their first outing at the South Bay Gaming Club meeting on the second weekend of October.

I used some flags I found on the Warflag website and others from the L'Armee de Napoleon III book.  Paintshop Pro is the graphics program I used to reduce them to the proper size for the figures.    This program allows me to keep the detail of the flags as they are reduced in size.  As an example of how this is done I will use an original image that is 25mm from the bottom of the flag to the top and has a resolution of 72 dots per inch.  It will be reduced to a height of 5mm which is one-fifth of the original.   In order to keep the detail from becoming blurred I multiply the dots per inch by a factor of five, which is the reciprocal of one-fifth, resulting in a resolution of 360 dots per inch.

After reducing and saving them to a folder on my computer, I then copied them into a word document.   The images were copied as many times as needed with some extras.   After cutting them out they were folded and glued to the cast flags of the figures.

Below are pictures of the printed flags.   These are all about 5mm tall.  The first picture shows almost the entire set of printed flags.   All German flags are from the Warflag website. From top to bottom there is Bavaria, Saxony, Baden, Wurtemberg, Hesse, Prussian cavalry, Prussian infantry,   French flags from Warflag,  and French flags from the L'Armee book.  I kept the guard flags separate from the others at the bottom

The next two images are closeups that I hope show the detail of the flags.

Franco-Prussian War project part six

Finished painting and basing the French line cavalry yesterday.   I ended up with more than I had originally intended to.   While I was doing the Germans I realized that I had forgotten to include the army reserve artillery.  I also found a few more figures in my collection that I had previously missed.  Fortunately I came across an Ebay listing for 13 packs of French infantry, cavalry and artillery and was able to win them at the minimum bid price.  This, with shipping, was still less than purchasing the additional infantry and guns that I needed.  The additional cavalry also allowed me to put six figures on each cavalry base instead of the five that I would have had to do previously.  I still ended up with eight more units of cavalry than I had planned.

The entire French army now consists of the Guard Corps and ten infantry divisions in three line corps.   There is a cavalry division in each of the corps and enough for the three reserve cavalry divisions.  The purchase also allowed me to replace the ACW Zouaves that I was using for the guard Zouaves.

The additional figures I came across in my collection also added enough to increase the Prussian infantry divisions to seven.   I will eventually purchase some additional infantry and guns to add an eighth infantry division making three Prussian line infantry corps, the Prussian Guard corps, a Bavarian corps, and two reserve cavalry divisions..  This will be just about enough to do Mars-la-Tour.  

The picture below has the cuirassiers, chasseurs and hussars in the left column from front to back and the dragoons and lancers in the right column.  In 1868 new uniform regulations were issued for the line cavalry.   The dragoons would keep their helmets, but would be changing their green tunic for a dark blue one.   The lancers, hussars, and chasseurs would all exchange their head gear for red kepis.   The Hussars and chasseurs would exchange their traditional uniforms for a blue tunic that was lighter than the dragoons and cuirassiers.   This change was only partially implemented by 1870.   Le Armee de Napoleon III shows all kinds of combinations of uniform pieces in the various cavalry regiments.  Hussar regiments are shown in their traditional uniform colors with both the red kepi and their original head wear.   I decided to paint the chasseurs and dragoons in a mix of units that have some in their new uniforms and some in their old uniforms.   One regiment of lancers has the red kepi.  The figures are actually Rush's lancers from the ACW range that I had spares of.

This only leaves limbers, wagons, and generals to finish painting and flags to add to the units.

Franco-Prussian War Part Five

Finished the French infantry.   Still have the French cavalry and Generals and the baggage to complete.   Below are the final five divisions consisting of a total of 960 infantry.   Troops are based on 1.5 inch by .75 inch bases (38mmx19mm) with 16 figures per base.   These are for the 1871 rules where each base represents a battalion.  All figures are Heroics and Ros.

Franco-Prussian War Project Part 4

Completed the French Imperial Guard, all the foot chasseur battalions and the artillery.   This was 72 cavalry, 380  infantry, five artillery pieces, 2 miraellueses, and 33 gunners for the guard.  112 chasseurs, 30 guns and 10 mitrrailleuses, and 188 gunners for the line.

I still have about 1000 French infantry, along with the French line cavalry, and wagons to finish.  The French cavalry takes longer to paint than the Germans due to additional colors and items to paint along with reversed colors for the musicians.

The photo below is the guard and chasseur battalions.   Voltigeur division at the top, Grenadier and Zouave division next, and the cavalry division at the bottom.  The chasseurs are at the top right and the guard corps artillery reserve is below.

Pacificon

Made it to Pacificon on Saturday.  There did not appear to be as many miniature or board games as last. year.   Nor did there seem to be as many people participating either.   There were quite a few Command and Colors games at the convention this year covering ancients, Napoleonics, ACW, and WW2

My first game may have been too early in the day as  no one signed up to play.  Fortunately the same set up was being used for the second game which had a full complement of players.  There were several other early games that had one or maybe two players where the gamemaster had to step in and play.

Below are some pictures of other games at the convention.   I was not able to get pictures of all of them.

Retreat From Moscow 1812 with 54mm figures.

Battle of Anzio in 15mm using Battleground rules.

Battle for Hoth using modified Bolt Action rules.  28mm

WW2 escape from Falise in 15mm using Fireteam

Western gunfight using Desparado rules.

This was the smuggler scenario with four factions.   The smugglers whose objective was to meet with a local gang at the tavern and deliver the contraband to them.   The third group was a rival gang who were trying to intercept the contraband for their own purposes.  The fourth group was the local law enforcement.   I used teams from the Galactic Heroes companion book.  The smugglers were the Kreng, the Ornks were the gang they were making the delivery to, the rebels were the other group and empire were the local law.

East Moss Landing.  Spaceport in background.  Ornks entered along main road just to the right.  Law enforcement entered along the road just to the left of the trees.

The Kreng ran into trouble early as the rebels opened fir on them putting wounds and/or shock markers on three of the five Kreng. Meanwhile the Ornks advanced through the town to the tavern.   They also came under fire from the rebels.   One of them went berserk  and charged the closest rebel.   The Ornk gang leader snuck into the tavern and waited for the contraband to arrive.   The wounded Kreng recovered and was so enraged by being wounded and seeing another team member killed that he tore the closest rebel apart in close combat,  He then attacked the next rebel and after a couple of rounds of combat tore him to pieces also.   The next turn he charged another rebel and did the same to him.   Mean while the Ornk had killed the rebel he had been fighting.

Another view of the town.  Rebels entered on the road between the lab (two story building) and the container yard.  Tavern is near the center of the picture to the left of the lab.

While all this was going on the law enforcement team had been slowly advancing towards the center of town.   One of them took out the last rebel with a long range shot.   They then headed for the tavern where they broke down the door and proceeded to open fire on the Ornk leader wounding him.  They would continue to fire at the Ornk leader for  several turns causing additional wounds and shock markers.   The Ornk leader finally succumbed to his wounds while making a recovery attempt.
The law enforcement team was plagued with faulty ammunition.   Throughout the game they would take shots at the Kreng, rebels and Ornks with almost half their shots resulting in out of ammo rolls.

While this was happening the Kreng were able to deliver the contraband to the Ornk specialist behind the tavern.    The Ornks then headed for the outskirts of town with the contraband and the Kreng returned to their ship to join the one team ember who had fled to it earlier following a failed shock recovery attempt.

Final results were victories for the Kreng and Ornks.   A total loss for the rebels with all of their team members dead with bits and pieces of most of them scattered about.   The law enforcement team claimed a political victory with one gang wiped out and the leader of the Ornks killed and all of their team members surviving.

The third game was set in a different location.   R. E. Howard, Inc and H. Beam Piper, Ltd.  had established a  joint mining operation n a barren moon.  Eventually they had a falling out and H. Beam Piper, Ltd had taken control of the mining operation.   R. E. Howard, Inc hired a group of mercenaries, Conan's Barbarians, to sized the mining facility.   The mercenaries had two squads of two four man fire teams each riding in an Infantry fighting vehicle equipped with a rail gun.   This was treated as a heavy laser in the rules.   The IFV's had heavy armor.   Both the mercenaries and the security force defending the mining base had light armor.

The security force had five four man teams.  Two of the teams had an Anti-tank rocket launcher and three riflemen, one team had a heavy blaster and three rifle men, and the other two teams only had four riflemen.   Both sides were armed with blaster rifles.

The mercenaries would win by eliminating the security force and/or capturing the power plant.  There was a road going through the mining base from the spaceport to the mines.  Vehicles could drive along it with no problem, but if the attempted to move off road there was a chance they could break through the ground surface and become stuck.   Infantry could move cross country without any problems.

The mercenaries dismounted outside of town and advanced on foot supported by the IFV's   They soon came under fire from the security force.  One IFV was disabled immediately after it put a round through the nearest building in an attempt to take out the guy who had fired on it.  It was eventually knocked out  The other used its railgun to support its team killing a couple of men on the security team.   Though several mercenaries were wounded or shaken, they eventually overcame the security force.   With half the security force dead and several others incapacitated due to wounds and shock hits the surviving members of the security team surrendered.

The mining facility.  Security force fire teams  

another view of the mining facility.   Conan's Barbarians in upper center of picture.

 

The mercenaries advance.  Security teams are actually inside the building.  The figures were moved to the roof after combat began to make it easier to keep track of who had acted.   One mercenary IFV has been disabled.  One squad is advancing along the road while the other is outside the picture on the left.  By the end of the game all the guys in the building were either out of action or wounded.