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Napoleonic book that’s a must read!

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I’ve always been an avid reader and tend to pick up interesting books even if  I may not read them right away or maybe even for years. They are sitting on the shelves like little gems just waiting their chance to shine. Now finding the time to read some of these gems has always been tough but the current state of world affairs has somewhat changed that. We have all lost plenty of our daily routines but what nearly all of us have gained is “time and solitude” and those are the two main ingredients for an activity called reading!

One of those books that I decided to pull off the shelf and give a read turned out to be a real gem and takes its place on my list of must reads when it comes to Napoleonic military books. The book covers the roles of Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and how Command and Control was used to tie them all together. There is also a great section on Siege warfare, an often overlooked part of the period. The book ends with nice section on Navel warfare at the height of the Age of Sail.

FIGHTING TECHNIQUES of the NAPOLEONIC AGE 1792-1815 Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin Press

The book is a very easy read unlike many books of this type, and presents the information in a very clear and understandable way. There are lots of great pictures, maps, and illustrations to augment the text when explaining the how, why, and evolution of warfare and tactics in the Napoleonic Age. The book goes into wonderful explanations as to how the different nations armies fought and why some battles were won or lost based on this. I highly recommend the book to anyone gaming or interested in warfare in the period. It goes a long way in explaining or making sense why rule sets give an edge or penalty to various forces in Napoleonic rule sets.

I love how book uses actual battles to show where and how these fighting techniques were used and the effects they had on the battle. A very nice way to tie it all together.

The wife and I spent a great weekend up in the beach town of Cayucos, California over the 4rth of July weekend to avoid the heat and save the dog from the traditional “fireworks freak-out” most of them go through. The book was a great companion to the ice chest of tall frosty beverages while relaxing on the beach!

The book retails at $35 but it’s routinely found below $20. I got mine at a favorite “old book store” in their military section for $16, in brand new unread condition.

There are loads of these types of illustrations to help the reader visualize and understand the information clearly.

 

 

Martian Flyers in 28mm

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These were really cool flying craft, sadly I think no longer produced. I made a few mods to this one as I remember.. Certainly the “Guardrails” were copper wire and craft beads. I also think I did the rear tail area scalloping with a Dremel rotary tool to fancy it up a bit.

Sorting through pictures and found these so up they go for a bit of “eye” candy. These stuck out since I was about to sell a bunch of RAFM “space 1889” figures and they got snapped up by one of the “dogs” (you guess who!) so we may see battles on Mars in the future! I painted these years ago for Chris S. London War-room as I recall and for “Space 1889” or any Victorian Sci Fi situation.

I think I might have been working on Star Trek DS9 at the time and used some “Klingon” lettering for the tail ID! The scalloping I added in the rear tail section now ties the original models scalloping in the front together and improves the look tremendously in my opinion.

There was another control station that never got added since I had misplaced it at the time. found it years later in a “bits” box… I should paint and ad it! I see negotiations in our future Chris…..

I just love the design, so retro 1930’s Flash Gordon! I could just see “Ming the Merciless” cruising over the planet Mongo in this!

This flying “gunboat” was by the same manufacturer but done for the earth-men’s or colonial powers. Again a very nicely done model. I wish I would have picked some of these up but it was one of those times when you think “oh I’ll get them down the road” but then they go “out of production! I guess this justifies our large lead mountains! Get it while you can. I remember buying a bunch of models  for a line called “Maschinen Krieger“ once again because they looked cool and I had some grandiose plans to use them in a project that never happened. I bought them for around $6 to $15 apiece and perhaps 12-15 kits, 10+ years later I sold the now “rare” original kits for 10 times the purchase price (and all to one person in Australia) with people literally fighting to get them, go figure!

Looking at this model I realize I didn’t really finish it with as much detailing as I planned, I did add the smoke stack and a few flag receptacles. Perhaps Chris would like me to finish it out a bit more? Part of the smoke stack was from another project and not used but kept in the “bits” box…came in handy for this modification.

I think this would look great with some German WWI style Submarine type markings!

Being as the boat is very monotone I used the trick of a splash of color (red prop) in the rear to draw the viewers eyes along the entire model.

 

A “Wargamers” guide to: Sheltering at Home!

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Hey I read on the internet “staying warm and drinking prevents you catching the Corona Virus” so this has gotta work right?

So having some time and the thought, I’ve written a short piece to help “Wargamers” survive the Corona Virus Pandemic! It is a piece not designed to play down the seriousness of the situation but a piece to lend spirit and support to my fellow gamers!

Its a long piece so it gets a separate page!

A “Wargamers” guide to Sheltering at Home!

Enjoy, Bill W.

An Ax at 1-1 scale

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OK, about time I posted something up here, not that I haven’t been busy but I’ve just not had anytime to post stuff! Well I still don’t have much time but even a small post will make me feel better…

My project for part of November and most of December was prepping for the Holidays and working 6 days a week which doesn’t leave you much time to paint, build, or play! Now I added to that work load the decision to make my daughters Christmas gift, well one of them. My daughter is a avid camper and hiker, while growing up with us, and now many times with her friends. Several times over the last couple of years she has borrowed my camping ax to use and hinted that she could sure use one of her own.

The condition my $5 ax came to me in!

While up in Washington camping last year my wife and I stopped at a little church bazaar and I picked up an old, rusty, beat-up Estwing camping ax for $5 and thought I would try and restore it for her. Little did I know what a project it would become!

Estwings come with a ring type compressed leather handle and it was completely rotted. cutting it off reveals the steel “tang” The new handle was cut to shape, split, and routed out to mate to this tang using two part epoxy.

I like to push the envelope sometimes and this project was no exception, I got into acid etching using vinegar, lemon, and a battery charger, engraving with Dremel tools, gun bluing, as well as expanding my woodworking skills by custom making the handle out of a chunk of south American “Ipe” wood. This wood is dense and super hard, 3 times as hard as oak! So dense that it doesn’t float in water it sinks!

I’m pretty proud of the handle its shape came out great and is a joy to hold. I also added about a 1 ½ “ to the normal length so as to add a bit more leverage and force in the swing.

My daughter loved it, ran out Christmas morning went to take pictures on the wood pile, and post to twitter, kids!

Into the steel of the ax I etched and ground images of trees, mountains, lakes, and activities we loved to do when camping.

Now she says “Dad I need a second ax to go camping with so I keep this one nice!” oh well I guess I’ll start checking swap meets for another bargain ax….

 

Dogs of War spoken here!

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Several times before I have posted about our gaming group the “Dogs of War” out in California’s San Fernando valley and how activities there might become a regular feature here on my site. The post below is a start in that direction, how exactly this will work is yet to be worked out. We hope to have other contributors, Chris Snell’s weekly reports now with pictures, as well as possible contributions by other “Dogs”. For now they will appear as normal post and be “categorized” under “Dogs of War”. This means that to find all post pertaining to the “Dogs of War” you only need to look at the right column scroll down and where you see “CATEGORIES” simple choose “Dogs of War” under that heading and all of the post linked “Dogs of War” post will be pulled up.

“Dogs of War” News from the front.

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Well after resisting “Flames of War” for over ten years but I finally got hooked into playing a game down at the Dogs and surprisingly ended up on the winning side! Now that is usually enough to hook me into a new rule set and a commitment but no not yet (ok not “new” since it’s been out for 15 years!). I love WWII and the majority of my wargaming over the years has been in that period, Air combat (Mustangs and Messerschmitt’s) Navel (General Quarters) Land Combat (Tank Charts, Frontline, Soldat, Crossfire and many more). I still don’t think Flames of War is “my” idea of a good WWII ruleset, for me it lacks some elements and sometimes the look of the battlefield gets a bit silly (Phalanxs of vehicles wheel to wheel and track to track) but as a “WWII GAME” it’s good. I think its fine, especially for players new to wargaming, new to WWII, and those who want a fast, light hearted approach to the game. It’s got fair detail without being burdensome, lots of troop types, vehicles, air support, bombardment, and tons of options to keep one interested for many months if not years! The rules are exceptionally well written and the explanations are very clear. For me I think it abstracts quite a bit to fit the complexity of a modern battlefield into the fast play mechanics of the rules, I’m not always of fan of this, but for what it is and what it is intended to be it works.

While I’m not head over heels in love I think I might be sucked in just enough to paint a few units, maybe Africa Corps or Fallshirmjager  for Italy or Normandy because after all its about rolling dice and having fun with friends.

The Game we played was early war Europe (France) always fun and I jumped in with Frank on the German side, Chris Armstrong and Dave Dandridge lead the French forces. My strategy was simple, DEFENSE, always a good choice when commanding forces in an unsure situation and not knowing the rules made me unsure! I was also facing David D. a competent and tricky opponent who won’t make many mistakes and is sure to make you pay for yours! Not going to do any type of battle report here, just going to post a few quick shots I took while trying to hold off Dave’s French onslaught!

 

 

 

15mm Prussian Cavalry “Towarczys”

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It seems that as of late I have been doing more painting but haven’t reduced my lead pile at all since I have continued to buy more for myself and all the painting was done for friends! Both enjoyable none the less!

The current project was for my long time gaming buddy Stevie G and a couple of Napoleonic Cavalry units. Steve has a big Prussian force and recently picked up some Prussian “Towarczys” Lancers from Boki miniatures out in Estonia! They are some of those troops that are rare from a collector standpoint but look awesome on the battlefield.

They are going to make a fearsome looking unit on the battlefield! Makes me wish I had Prussians so I could keep them for myself!

The minis are well sculpted with lots of details and are both fun and easy to paint. The casting is a bit off requiring some work in cutting out bubbles and filling some poor cast areas. I believe the problem is that these are gravity cast and not done with a spin cast machine. Its just a small chore and not really a big deal. The minis do not come with horses or lances. Horses from either AB miniatures or 19th Century Miniatures work well, I used horses from Old Glory 15’s (19th Century Miniatures) and though a bit less beefy than the 19th century horses on average I think they work well as eastern European horses tended to be smaller than their western European cousins.

Next were the “lances”, they don’t come with any, not a problem for me as I replace ALL my flag poles, spears, and lances, on all my figures with STEEL! Over the years I have gotten pretty good at this and make some nice looking replacements. That how I got hooked into painting the figures by offering to make the lances and do the pennants for them as well.

Stevie G like I mentioned before is a long time gaming bud as well as the two of us being “grips” in the movie biz in Los Angeles. We have spent many a long day/night together on sets, Star Treks, Profiler, Charmed, and more, passing them time between shots talking miniatures (on Deep Space Nine we spent our lunch hours painting minis right on the set!) Steve has a heart of gold and has always jumped whole hog into any type of miniature wargaming that I dragged us into so the more I looked at the figures and worked on them the more I felt like going the whole way “prep to paint” with them. I felt it would be a great way to thank him for all the support and friendship over the years.

The first stage was cleaning and matching the horses and riders. I always carefully look at the riders pose and position, then select a horse that matches action wise. In other words don’t put a lance down charging figure on a horse that’s standing still! I also look at the figures and try to get as many varied poses in the unit and space repeated poses out to make them less obvious. Sometimes small mods can help with this, same rider different horses, bend a sword arm, cock a lance, and gently twist a head. Then since these riders and horses were from different manufactures I took time to cut and file both the back of the horse in the saddle area and the rider to get a good natural looking fit.

Hot gluing the figure to nails is something I started doing 30 years ago as an alternative to the common practice of gluing them to Popsicle sticks. A chunk of Styrofoam is used as a base…easy peazy!

I always assemble the figures into the unit and determine each figures position in the unit before painting. This can help give the finished unit a more cohesive fee. I might have a figure that is pointing complimented by selecting a figure that has his head looking in that direction, have charging or running figures on the same stand, charging figures in the front, etc.…

They were a lot of fun to paint and work on!

For a larger view just click on the picture!

Flags are something I added and perhaps were not historically carried but they look good and heck this is wargaming!

Unit colors were selected from text of one of Knotels prints from the excellent books by Elting on Napoleonic uniforms

I’m really happy with the way the poses came out. I think the units have a very dynamic feel, truly looking like they are just laying down their lances to begin a charge!

Black primed with Vallejo primer and ready for paint!