So, as sun goes down over the fictitious town of Nebenstrom, the French withdraw from the field and the Prussians are left to count the cost of their victory.

It had certainly been a close game and the scenario worked quite well. It provided just enough background to keep things interesting but was simple enough not to distract me from getting to grips with the rules. I think my idea of using an off-table brigade for each side, and rolling for its arrival each turn, helped add an extra bit of suspense.

The odds were probably stacked slightly against the French, seeing as they had some difficult terrain to get through on their way towards the town. They also suffered from a bit of bad luck in terms of their deployment and the later arrival of their off-table brigade.

The Prussian deployment wasn't perfect though, and it took a long time for their second infantry brigade to advance round on the right and cross the woods and stream. In the end, they didn't really do much in the battle, but they arrived just in time to keep the French reinforcements occupied.

I thought the Prussian cavalry gave a good account of themselves. They had to pull back out of the fight near the end, but by then they'd done enough to keep the French cavalry busy and disrupt the advance of Boche's infantry brigade towards to town. Having the landwehr reinforcements arriving on the Prussian left flank was a stroke of luck. Even though all three units were eventually routed, they played their part in distracting the French from their objective.

The fight for the town itself was pretty exciting, going back and forth. I have heard that some players are considering a modification to the rules for fighting in built-up areas, and I can understand why. It does feel a bit odd that you would still make use of line and column formations rather than skirmish or some sort of open order, but then again – in this game at least – it did all work out fine as far as providing a satisfying narrative of attack/repulse/counter-attack etc. I would maybe think about tweaking the use of formations in BUAs, and I will be interested to find out on the SotE forum what ideas other people might have, but on the whole I don't think I'll be too quick to dive in and change that much just yet. It was only one game after all.

Did I make any blunders?

Hopefully not too many! As I say, this was only my second outing. I think I got most of it right. Probably the most important thing I forgot about (and it is an optional rule anyway) was reserve movement. This allows units to move more quickly when they are a certain distance away from the enemy. I suddenly remembered about it at the start of turn 4, but by then it made more sense just to ignore it and carry on. I think I'll keep it in mind for future games. On a 6 x 4 foot table using the suggested measurements for 20mm figures, there is definitely scope for moving the units more quickly into the action.

The only other part of the rules I was unsure about was fighting in squares. I'm not entirely convinced I got this right. Essentially, I wasn't sure if I was rolling the correct number of combat dice for the French square when it was being attacked by the Prussian landwehr. I need to check this. In the end, the important thing was that I was happy that the outcome felt right. The Prussians basically ruined themselves in trying to break the square, and their fall back move precipitated the complete rout of the already severely weakened Prussian left flank. It was a memorable gaming moment, and this battle provided a clutch of them, which I think is a good sign you've had good fun.

(EDIT: Keith has kindly pointed out that one thing I did get wrong was my calculation victory points. Given that it's only about a third of a page of text, I really should have done a quick refresh before playing! There's more to it than just the basic totals I used (or 'Losses' to use the proper rule term). Wounded units are taken into account, as are leader casualties and the taking and retaking of objectives. In the end, using the correct method gave more or less the same result, and it still would have gone down to the final turn. I'll pay more attention to this next time!)

Movement

If there is one thing that makes me shy away from any game, it is complicated movement rules. In fact, I seem to have a developed a natural aversion to using any kind of measuring device these days. It's probably the reason why I haven't ventured much beyond my comfort zone of hex-based games like Commands & Colors. I'm happy to say, though, that Shadow of the Eagles doesn't burden you with complications when it comes to moving your toy soldiers around the table. The basic Napoleonic formations are represented (line, column, square, skirmish), and the table of movement rates for those formations and troop types are not too complicated once you get your head around it. Columns are good for moving your troops quickly about the battlefield, but you'll generally want to be in line formation when it comes down to shooting and fighting. Nice and simple really.

Firing

There is a separate firing phase in SotE, which is pretty straightforward. The most significant thing to point out is that all firing is simultaneous. I like that a lot. There is a shooting penalty for any significant moves, so stationary units will usually fair better against other units that advance and then engage in ranged combat in the same turn. Artillery didn't feel overpowered, but over the course of a few turns it has the potential to cause at least one or two hits on the enemy, enough to make a difference when that unit then tries to get stuck in. You're unlikely to destroy your opponent with artillery fire, but you can certainly soften them up a bit before your infantry and cavalry are sent in.

One thing to note about artillery is that the arc of fire is straight ahead, so careful positioning of artillery pieces in movement phase is important. I did wonder whether I might add a rule to allow for at least some small pivoting before each piece fires. If you move first in a turn, it's possible that your nicely lined-up target of infantry in column will simply march out of the sight of your guns. That could be a bit frustrating, but then again maybe that's the point.

A final thing I should say about firing, and about the accumulation of hits resulting from it, is that I didn't use the rules for skirmish screens in my game. It will be interesting to try out the skirmish screen rules next time round and see what effect it has.

Charging and combat

Charging takes place first in the movement phase and is one of the most interesting aspects of the rules. There are two stages to it, the first being closing fire and the second being the charge resolution. Both sides fire during the charge (including any nearby supporting units with line of sight, provided they successfully activate). If not enough damage is done to halt the chargers or drive off the defenders, then the two units will fight in the close combat phase.

I really like this aspect of the rules. It happened once or twice in my game that a charge failed to go in because the defender caused enough hits to weaken the charging unit. Equally, there were times when the attacker managed to drive off the defender before the two sides closed.

Close combats are usually resolved in one turn, one way or another. This isn't a game that will give you turn after turn where two units are grinding it out, and it's all the better for it. Usually one side will be forced to fall back or will rout altogether, depending on how damaged it already is. The victor might pursue, or might not. This leads to interesting decisions about what to do in the following turns. Do you try to rally your battered units before sending them into the fight again next turn, or do try to swap them out for fresh units? Do you press your advantage and pursue a retreating enemy, or do you hold your ground and consolidate?

There are some dice modifications to take into account when rolling combat dice, just as there is with firing. However, these are very few in number, and it's something else I was glad about. I don't usually like games where there are large tables of modifiers to consult. The ones in SotE are easy to memorise.

Morale and rallying

I didn't say all that much during the battle report about the rallying phase, but it is an important phase when it comes to using your commanders. The rally phase is where brigade and army generals can make a small movement to attach themselves to a unit (or detach from it, if already attached). They can then try to rally off hits from any unit they are attached to. Units can still attempt to rally even without a general attached, provided they are far enough away from the enemy, but it's easier to do if a general is attached. You'll find that generals – especially the army general – can be very useful in this respect, and you'll wish you had more of them!

You can also use generals to assist units during close combat, but you run the increased risk of leader casualties. My dice rolls favoured all of the generals in my game, except for poor Fournier, who was taken out by a fateful cannon shot right at the game's end.

Tactics

As I say, I've only played one proper game of Shadow of the Eagles, so I'm hardly in a position to talk about it with lots of experience. However, I can already see how the game will reward careful use of your forces when it comes to deployment, knowing when and where to attack with your troops, and keeping back some reserves if possible. Your units will start gathering hits fairly quickly once they're engaged, and I think there is a fine balance between knowing when to push on with an attack and when to withdraw your units and save them from routing. This idea is well supported in SotE by the nice and simple rules for passage of units, and by the rules for unrestricted movement backwards.

Units can recover from being almost annihilated, but they'll never be as fresh as they were at the start of the game. And it does take time to rally hits, unless you get some lucky rolls in the rally phase or you happen to have an army general to restore a unit's morale.

It's also worth adding that in Shadow of the Eagles there is the all-important luck of the dice. This is where the game scores again for me. Yes, there are rules and dice modifications that take account of formations and movement and whether a unit is weakened or not; whether it's charging over rough ground, or if it's behind an entrenchment. But even with these adjusted probabilities, few combats ever felt entirely like a foregone conclusion. There is enough room left for Lady Luck to play her part, and that is what brings an essential bit of excitement to the experience, without making it a completely random affair. And because firing and close combat are both simultaneous, there is almost always a cost to being involved in a fight. You may well destroy that infantry unit that is hanging on by 1 or 2 hits, but you may also take some hits yourself in the process and be left unable to do anything else for a turn or two, or worse.

Solo play

I am primarily a solo gamer, and you may be wondering how I found this aspect of playing with Shadow of the Eagles.

Up front, SotE isn't designed as a solo game, but my admittedly limited experience of using them hasn't shown me any reason why they don't work just fine for one player playing both sides. There are no game mechanisms like simultaneous movement, secret bidding for initiative, hidden orders, surprise strategies, or any other of those things that solo players can have trouble with.

The turn sequence is a nice mix of IGOUGO (charges, movement, rallying) and simultaneous play (firing, close combat), all of which can be managed just fine on your own.

Surprise, suspense, friction, fog of war – call it what you will – is usually a good thing for solo players, and there are certain aspects of SotE that contribute to this. For starters there are the command and control rules for particularly good or bad generals, and whether units can function fully if they happen to be outwith the command range of their brigade general. I deliberately made nearly all my units and generals regular/capable in this respect, just to give me one less thing to think about this time round, but it's definitely something I'll included in future games. Badly led brigades will have a tougher time doing what you want them to do, whilst those led by inspiring generals will potentially move much more quickly. For those of you who know Black Powder, it's a bit like the command rolls in that game, but without the extremes. You're much less like to witness the oddity of some units taking massive leaps across the table whilst others spend the whole day staring at the grass under their feet.

The rules for pursuit is another occasion where the dice are (potentially) in control. If you drive your enemy off during a charge, or force them to fall back during close combat, your victorious unit has to roll for pursuit, and depending on the dice roll you may or may not have control over what happens next. Again, it's a fun aspect for the solo player.

Like any game that isn't dedicated to solo play, I think it will be all about what ideas of your own that you bring to the table when using SotE. I used a very basic method for determining each side's battle plans and deployment, and introduced the idea of reinforcements arriving at an unknown turn. Those things aren't covered in SotE. There are no rules for brigade orders or deployment, but those can easily be bolted on. There are also no rules for game length or how many minutes a turn of play actually represents. Those are for you to decide, and I think it's something that you'll get a better idea of with experience. In my game, 8 turns happened to be just about right, which was a bit of a fluke. I could have played another 2 or 3 turns, but I think the battle had reached a satisfying conclusion by that point and I was happy to end it.

Whether you're playing alone or with an opponent, I think it's important to give thought to your scenario, and that's probably true of most wargames, regardless of what period of history it represents. Simply lining both armies up and shuffling them straight across the table gets dull very quickly, and Shadow of the Eagles would be no different if you played it that way. What SotE is, is a good engine, and you can add your own chrome in the form of interesting scenarios and set-ups – and of course a campaign system, if you use one.

Final thoughts

I hadn't meant to make this post go on for so long, but if you're still with me, you'll probably realise by now that I am liking Shadow of the Eagles. When I first heard about them last year, I understood that author Keith Flint wanted to create a set of rules that were easy to play but not so simple as to be, well, boring. That got me interested, and I'm pleased to say they have exceeded expectations.

There are, of course, a tonne of Napoleonic rulesets out there, and lots of them are excellent. I own quite a few, but have only played maybe half a dozen. That hardly makes me the most experienced Napoleonic wargamer in the world, but wargaming preferences are a personal thing, and I think searching for the holy grail of Napoleonic rules to use for your games is actually more about discovering what kind of gamer you are than it is about trying to find a great set of rules. For me, SotE feels like a coat that fits. I'm sure I will not stop being interested in other rules (Lasalle 2 is still on the agenda for next time), but I fully intend to play many more games with SotE, and I am confident they will be just as enjoyable as this one.

It took me a few days longer than expected to get this lot finished, but my goodness what a joy it is to see them all finished and based.

These are the Dragoons of the Imperial Guard - or Dragons de la Garde Impériale, to give them their proper (and very splendid) French name. Also known as the Empress' Dragoons, which is much less of a mouthful for us wargamers.


These were hugely enjoyable to paint. Figures are once again by Newline Designs. Lovely uniforms and they will look great on the tabletop I think. I'm really pleased to get this first unit of Imperial Guard cavalry added to my French army, and already looking forward to adding more Guard units, including infantry.


I'm going to focus on a bit of terrain building first, though, so I might not have any more painting additions for another couple of weeks. Still hoping to do a battle report of some sort (French vs Prussians, of course), but I'm still undecided about whether to do this on my hex terrain using Commands & Colors, or on my modular terrain tiles using another set of rules.

Either way, I'll hopefully have some more pics etc soon. :-)

Bit if a gap since my last post, but not because I've been idle. Having undercoated the latest batch of minis for the 20mm Naps project, I suddenly felt the urge to take a break and ended up spending a few weeks on a couple of other projects.

Suitably refreshed, I'm now back on the 20mm wagon once again. I decided, first off, to get the French foot artillery finished. I had previously painted all four cannons but only half the crew, and the figures were individually based. I decided I wanted to keep the basing consistent with my Prussians, and this week I finally got round to painting the remaining 10 crew and getting everything rebased.


That done, I turned my attention back to the undercoated dragoons I mentioned in my last post...

...only to discover that they weren't just your average dragoons!

They were, in fact, the Empress' Dragoons! No wonder I thought they looked a bit more ostentatious than expected when I started putting the paint on. So, it seems I had picked the wrong bag out the lead pile back in May. Plainly, I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time, but I'm quite pleased in a way, because I was planning to get started on the guard element of my French army sometime soon anyway.

These are not just dragoons...these are the Empress' Dragoons

With a bit of luck, I'll get this group of 12 finished this weekend, but it depends on how much I get distracted by what dropped through the post earlier today (more on that in a moment). Also, there is the small(er) matter of some 10mm guys to get painted, as you might be able to see in the background there.

Although I haven't posted much besides my 20mm Napoleonics, I do, like most wargamers, have more than one project on the go. One of those projects is 10mm Napoleonics (as if I didn't have enough to paint already). It's a bit of a slow-burner - a collection that gets added to on impulse every now and then - but it's steadily getting bigger and gathering pace, so I'll start posting some pics of this project in due course.

Staying with Napoleonics, you probably know by now that I'm a fan of the Commands & Colors system by Richard Borg, and was rather pleased to hear recently that another expansion is planned for the Napoleonic series. The new expansion will be number 7, and will feature a number of La Grande and Epic scenarios, along with some new rules and units. Certainly something to look forward to if, like, me you enjoy this particular series of games.


Here's the link to GMT web page if you want to know more. Hopefully it won't be too long before it reaches print.

GMT C&C Napoleonics expansion 7

Which bring me back to today's earlier postal delivery...


It's been far too long since I got a game in of something, so this weekend I may well take a break from the paint desk and have a go at the new Medieval expansion for C&C. Should be fun! Tonight's entertainment will involve knocking back several hundred cups of tea whilst fixing a few stickers to blocks (I mean the other way round, of course), but that's ok - I am one of those oddballs who enjoys that sort of task.

The Spanish expansion for C&C means I now have the full set of Napoleonic expansions, although I have to admit I haven't had a chance to play through them all yet. My goal to replay all of these expansions using miniatures would probably take me several lifetimes, but it's nice to dream and plan nonetheless.

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been bulking out a few of the units for the Prussians and (to a lesser extent) the French. Nothing entirely new, but it's good to have the units a bit bigger than they were. Here's just a few of them...

Most of these will possibly be added to in the future - particularly the hussars - but for now I'm considering them as done. I still need to add a flag to those hussars though!

Horse artillery - now two bases strong

Aside from adding to the terrain collection, I'll be focusing a bit more on the French for the next little while. They don't have any heavy cavalry yet (apart from some cuirassiers), so I have some dragoons undercoated and ready to do next.

Hussars - 12 figures on 6 bases

All of a sudden it feels like I'm not far off getting both the French and Prussian armies to a point where I can call them finished. Besides the heavy cavalry, I'd like to add some young guard and old guard for the French, a couple of bases of horse artillery, some more light infantry and a few more bases of light cavalry. Both armies could also use one or two more command bases.

Dragoons - 12 figures, but still to be rebased in twos

I'm in no rush to add all of these. I'm enjoying being at the point now where I can paint up units at a more leisurely pace whilst concentrating on building up my terrain and playing a few games games here and there. My mind is always thinking about the next project, of course, but I'm keeping my options open. As far as the 20mm Napoleonics collection goes, besides painting extra French and Prussian units, I can start adding troops from other nations too, but still make use of them on the tabletop as allied contingents. I already have some British and Hanoverians in the lead pile, so I may decide to do those first, but then again I'm also very tempted to paint up some Russians (or maybe Austrians...). Who knows!?

Wargaming is a bit like being at a huge buffet, but it's easy to bit off more than one can chew. I shall endeavour to remain focused, and will undoubtedly fail completely, but still having great fun all the same.

Although I haven't posted a huge amount of painting updates in the past few months, I am still chipping away at the lead pile, adding extra bases to existing units and generally rounding out certain parts of the Prussian and French armies (mostly Prussian though).


The most recent addition was another 6 figures to the Prussian landwehr cavalry, which takes the total to 18 figures and should be enough for most games/scenarios. I also decided to revert back to using two-figure bases (30x30mm) to give more flexibility. Rebasing wasn't as much of a chore as I'd feared. Soaking the MDF for about 24 hours softens it up nicely, and I only had a couple of minor repairs to do in the course of it.


I think I've mentioned this before, but I really do like the figure of the landwehr colonel (picture in the front rank next to the bugler). All in all, very nice minis once again from Newline Designs, with just the right amount of detail for my tastes.

Seeing as the camera is set up today, I'll take some more photos of the other units I've been working on, and upload these soon.

Next up will be to get started on those excellent buildings from Total Battle Miniatures you see in the background. They should look even better once they're painted up.

Some enjoyable time was spent this weekend putting down a few random pieces of Hexon terrain and looking again at the best way of making them work with my 20mm Napoleonics. Having abandoned the idea of my 6-inch hexes and chipboard table, I needed to come up with something that would be smaller and more convenient to set up and use.

I like Hexon. It's a great product, and although the hex sizes are probably best suited to 6 to 15mm figures, I think I can just about get away with squeezing my 20mm minis on them. The size of the units might not be as grand as what I had originally intended, but they still look fairly decent.

Figure-wise, I can fit four bases of infantry and four bases of cavalry on a hex quite comfortably. It's a bit more of a squeeze for hexes with buildings or trees, but still possible. The hills work well too. The slopes are high enough to give some reasonable elevation, but are also gentle enough for my bases not to fall off.


I have enough Hexon already for a standard C&C board, along with plenty of hills, but I need to add some river sections and get them finished up, as well as paint the buildings I bought from Total Battle Miniatures. Other features like bridges, redoubts, lakes etc, will also need to be considered.

Rather than using casualty markers, I can also use bases to represent blocks on a like-for-like basis, so I'll remove bases as they're lost throughout the game. Some players don't like figure removal in games, but it's always been my preferred way of playing. I like the table to be free of tokens or markers as much as possible. The only exception will be artillery, which I'll represent with a single base and use some sort of markers.


So, I'm happy that I've finally settled on a way forward for this project. I'll be back to more regular posts from now on, so I'll share more on this project soon.

The finished board - big, but a bother to move about

The past month or so has been pretty much a write-off in terms of available hobby time. As normally happens when work and other things take over, I tend to lose my momentum a little bit with projects, so when time does become available I've run out of steam somewhat.

Enough of the complaining though. Life is returning to normal once more, so I'm slowly climbing back on the baggage train.

As you can see in the photo, I did at least mange to finish making my Commands & Colors board. All six chipboard sections are done - all hexed up and flocked. I should be pleased, but...

A bird's-eye view of the board with seating space for an impossibly slim opponent

But, I'm having second thoughts. In the process of laying out the boards for the first time, I realised just how much space the whole thing takes up. Silly, really, since I had calculated all this beforehand, so it should have been no surprise. And it's not just the space requirement - it's that the boards are quite heavy and cumbersome to move, with the added hazard of getting a splinter or two. All in all, the effort was enough to be annoying.

Some 10mm buildings from Total Battle Miniatures - still to be painted

Having painted in the hex lines using white paint, the next step was to go over them using a dark green. So far, I've done this for four of the six required boards. You can see three pictured here, slotted together.


Once this was done, it was time to add the flock. I'm using Noch flock, which is the same stuff I use on the bases of my figures. I used a slightly watered down PVA as the glue, and then used a sieve to apply the flock, which helped to ensure the application was even. I don't want the finished surface to be too uneven, since there will be MDF terrain hexes sitting on top.


And here's a shot of the first finished board. It's ok, but I've learned a few things about how I'd do it differently next time. My biggest mistake was using a fine pen to mark out the lines needed to plot the hexes. I had assumed these wouldn't be visible underneath the flock, but I was wrong! I'll make sure I use a pencil next time.

I think a bit of colour variation would improve the look, so if I do this C&C board again, I'll paint a thin coat of browns and green over the hexes before applying the flock. This will also help to mute the hex lines a bit.

This weekend I'm hoping to get most of the other 5 boards finished. After that, I'll be thinking about putting together the terrain hexes for hills and rivers etc. For buildings, I've ordered a 10mm scale black powder set from Total Battle Miniatures, so I'm looking forward to those arriving and getting them painted up.

Meanwhile, figure painting progresses steadily. I added more bases to the Prussian infantry this week, and have another base of horse artillery currently on the paint bench. More photo updates soon!

It's been a bit of a slow week or two for the hobby. Too much work, not enough leisure time. A familiar story for many. I have, however, found time to progress the Commands and Colors hex board.

I started marking out the hex grid on the first three sections of chipboard, which are now almost finished. I'll need six of these for a standard size 13 x 9 hex C&C map, so I'm about half way there with this part of the project.

It didn't take too long, once I got into a rhythm. It's not a terribly exciting task this - but strangely therapeutic at the same time.

I'm using white acrylic paint to begin with, but at this stage I'm undecided about whether I should leave the lines at that, or colour them some sort of green or brown shade. I'll probably do the latter, which is more work of course, but I think it'll look better (and less conspicuous) once the hexes are flocked.

As far as figure painting goes, I'm continuing to add extra bases to most of the units in both the French and Prussian collections. This past fortnight it's been mostly cavalry, and now I'm adding bases to boost the Prussian infantry. I did take some quick photos with my phone, but the light was awful, so not much point in sharing them. I'll add a few photos to the next blog post when I get a chance to photograph them properly.

Hope to show you a couple of finished sections of the board soon.

I knocked out a couple more bases of French line infantry this week. I'm picking my way through the lead pile at the moment, painting up what I have left before I order some reinforcements from Newline Designs.

With these two bases done, it means I now have a total of 5 line infantry units at 36 figures per unit. I'll be adding more units as soon as I can, probably to take me up to 8 in total. It's doubtful I'll have enough units to match the contents of the Prussian expansion set for Commands and Colors any time soon, so once I have my board and the terrain ready I'll probably just be playing scenarios of my own design using what I have available.

Alongside this, I need to add light infantry and cavalry. I'm adding stands here and there at the moment, bringing each unit up to the number of figures I need for each (12 figs for cav).


These three chaps are next in line for painting. It'll take my chasseurs a cheval unit from 9 to 12 figures, and I'll be doing the same for the line lancers. Lots more cavalry will be needed though.

In case you're wondering, I don't use Golden Acrylic paints on my figures - these are just old pots that are very handy for attaching the figures to for painting. They're a comfortable fit in my hand, and hold the blu-tack well.

Meanwhile, I'm still deliberating my choice of surface for the hex board. More on that in my next post.

Having settled on 6-inch hexes as the best compromise between hex size and table size, I ended up shrinking this ever so slightly. I'll explain.

My new gaming area is going to be a spare room in the house which is big enough to accommodate an 8 x 4 foot table reasonably comfortably. I will be able to walk round both ends of the table and also have a decent amount of space along each side. As a maximum, I could extend this to 10 x 5, but for now I'm aiming for 8 x 4 as my ideal size.

I'm planning to use chipboard loft panels as my gaming surface. They measure 4 feet long by a little over 1 foot wide, and are tongued and grooved so they'll fit together fairly snugly. The room is used for other activities besides gaming, so I need to be able to dismantle my table and store it away somewhere, hence my idea to use the loft panels (on top of fold-away tables or trestles, probably).

After some quick calculations, however, I realised that using 6-inch hexes would be slightly too big to fit a standard Commands and Colors 13 x 9 hex area onto a 4-foot wide table. The ninth hex on the short side would be cut-off slightly, and if I ever wanted to increase the depth to 11 hexes in order to play an epic battle, then I'd need more than 5 feet of width, which would be too tight for the room.

Anyway, the short story is I reduced the hex size from 6 inches to 150mm, which is only about 2mm smaller but means I can just fit 9 hexes inside a 4-foot wide board.

The heritage trail at Gillies Hill. You're on the west side of the battlefield at this point.

Crossing over the Bannock Burn. Still on the west side of the battlefield at this point, behind where Bruce's army would have been.

I've been giving more thought recently as to which set of rules I'd like to focus on for my Napoleonic games. To tell the truth, I've owned far more sets then I've ever played, or even got round to reading, and I often made snap purchases of this or that ruleset whilst building up my collection of minis last year. I was happy to browse the possibilities, always feeling sure that I'd settle on something eventually.

But I never really did, and not having a particular game in mind has, I think, allowed the project to lose a bit of steam.

Despite dabbling with various rulesets, popular or otherwise - and also (briefly) contemplating making my own rules cannibalised from all the bits I liked from other people's - there is really only one game  that I have played consistently. As you can probably guess from the blog post title, that game is Commands and Colors.

I bought the Ancients version of C&C years ago and loved it so much I quickly acquired the Napoleonic version, which I also throughly enjoyed. I added several of the expansions and, for a while, was more than content to play the game out of the box using the pretty blocks and the terrain tiles.

Like many other gamers, however, I soon desired to convert the experience into one involving miniatures rather than the wooden blocks. I did manage this a few times, but only in a limited fashion. My relatively small figure collections meant that units were only thinly represented and the overall effect wasn't the superior experience to boardgame I hoped for.

Besides my 20mm French and Prussian armies, I have a some Austrians and French in 10mm, and experimented with both of these scales using Hexon terrain tiles from Kallistra.


My 10mm mins on the other hand are much better suited to the 4-inch tiles, which is no great surprise since Hexon tiles go hand in hand with Kallistra's own 12mm figure ranges. If I wanted to do Commands and Colors using 10mm minis - and I do plan on doing this one day - then these 4-inch hexes will be my product of choice. But, at the moment my preference is for something a bit bigger.

So, back to the 20mm figures and I started experimenting with other sizes of hex, including 5, 6 an 7 inches. 5-inch hexes are an improvement (obviously), but still don't quite deliver the overall look I'm aiming for. 7 inches is luxurious and roomy - a bit like a super king size bed - but the resulting table size would be an issue for this house (as would a super king size bed, sadly). In the end, a 6-inch hex seemed like the best compromise all round.

I found that using this size will allow me to field a decent mass of troops on each hex, whether infantry or cavalry, whilst still leaving a reasonable amount of space for terrain. Crucially, the existing base sizes in my collection are well suited to it, so I won't need to consider any rebasing terribleness. For infantry, it will mean 36-figure units; for cavalry, I'm looking 12 figures in a unit. Light infantry will be something similar to line but with a few open order bases mixed in, while artillery units will probably consist of two bases. Leaders will be based separately as the game requires.

The full set-up so far: 3x4' (12 tiles)

In between dabbling with various painting projects, I spent some more time on getting my terrain boards finished, and have now finished most of what I own. This gives me enough to put together a 3x4' board, with four more tiles to complete.

The roads are a mix of sand and Javis earth scatters

They're a mix of plain tiles, road tiles and a few hill tiles. It's not a large board by any means, but there are quite a few different combinations possible, so I will be able to vary the battlefield set up. The remaining four tiles are streams, which will require a bit more work than the others.

The Prussian commanders eye the French on the opposite hill

I got out the 20mm Napoleonics to see how they looked on the boards, and I'm really pleased with the result. It'll look better with some trees and other terrain features added, and I will go back and touch up some of the edges of tiles where the MDF is still showing through.

A few tiles warped slightly, creating a bigger gap when joined together. Nothing that can't be easily fixed or dressed up a bit before play

The tile normally click together very neatly

Pond / lake feature using Woodland Scenics resin

Kurt Helborg - rescued from a 20-year stint in the lead pile

I had almost two weeks off work during Christmas and New Year, and I had hoped the time would be filled with a feast of wargaming, but it turned out to be more of a wargaming buffet than anything else (lizard on a stick, anyone?).

With a new year on the horizon and my 20mm Napoleonic armies mostly done for the time being, I inevitably started thinking about possible new projects for 2019. My 20mm Napoleonics will be added to this year certainly, and I hope to enjoy many games with them, but for my main painting focus I would like to shift to something different. The question is, what?

My miniatures collection has a number of unfinished projects, and I mulled over each of these in turn, trying to decide whether I had enough enthusiasm to move any of them forward. In no particular order, I have (in various stages of progress):

- 28mm ancient greeks and spartans
- 28mm El Cid armies (a mixture of Spanish, Andulusians and Berbers)
- 20mm Napoleonic British
- 10mm Napoleonic French and Austrians (yes, more Napoleonics!)
- 10mm Seven Years War Prussians and Russians
- 15mm crusader and muslim armies
- 28mm WSS French (not really a collection; rather, a couple of units bought on a whim)
- 20mm Mahdist War

I couldn't (and still can't) really decide what to focus on first, so in the end I got all nostalgic and dug out something from my Warhammer Empire army: Kurt Helborg, Captain of the Reiksguard. This was one of only two unpainted miniatures from my collection from way back in 4th edition fantasy battle, and after 20 years or more languishing in the lead pile, I have finally rescued him with some paint.

Complete with Goblin Green base, naturally

I must say, it was thoroughly enjoyable painting an old classic again; even doing the plastic barded warhorse was fun (ah, the memories...). I was a bit daunted at first by all the details on the figure, but once I got things underway it was just like old times, except that my freehand skull and scroll painting skills have gone a bit rusty. And of course, like everyone else in my Empire army, Kurt had to been given the appropriate Goblin Green basing, which is only right and proper for a hero of his time.

There was no such thing as being too colourful in 4th edition Warhammer fantasy

I'm sure my fingers experienced a weird sort of muscle memory when they started painting another of those plastic barded warhorses

So, what next? Well, I could keep going and paint the Supreme Patriarch, who is now the only remaining unpainted figure from my 4th edition Empire army. Or I could get stuck in to one or more of the above historical collections. Or I could start something completely new. Or I could just skip about a do a bit of everything, and let my focus eventually settle where it wants to.

Whatever I decide to do, I want to spend more time playing and a bit less time painting this year, and that means finishing off my terrain boards and getting my hobby space a bit better organised to facilitate some dice-rolling! The terrain boards are coming along nicely. I worked some more on them this month, so I'll post of some picture of those next. After that, some battle reports with the Napoleonics would be good. And after that? Who knows, but I'll have fun finding out.

Well, it took longer than anticipated but I finally got round to finishing the unit of Prussian hussars I started in early December. They've actually been finished for about a week or so now, but it's taken me some time to dig the camera out to take a few snaps.


I decided to paint them as the 4th hussar regiment, which I believe is also known as the 1st Silesian. It seemed to fit with the fact that I've painted a lot of the line infantry as Silesians. I also liked the idea of doing the brown and yellow uniforms, which might not sound like the most colourful uniform choice from the Napoleonic era, but which is still rather smart I think. I still need to add a flag for the unit, but so far I've been unable to find out any information on what the flag looked like for this particular regiment. I thought about just using a generic Prussian flag but I'd rather use the correct flag, so I'll keep looking.


I must admit, I put off painting these hussars for a long time. They were part of the initial main purchase I made a couple of years ago, and having never painted hussars before I was a bit daunted by the uniform details. There were certainly some fiddly bits - and I'm sure I haven't got all the details correct (the blue horse reins / bridle etc are pure fantasy, no doubt) - but I persevered and got there in the end. They make a good addition to the collection and now gives me four cavalry units for the Prussians (besides the dragoons, landwehr and cuirassiers).

These will likely be the the last of the 20mm Naps to be painted this year, since I now want to spend some of my free time in enjoy playing a few games with what I've painted up so far (some battle reports to follow, hopefully). As the year draws to a close, I'm also starting to think about other projects for 2019, so don't be too surprised to see other wargaming periods (and scales) popping up on the blog. However, I'm certain that the 20mm Naps collection will continue to be added to throughout next year, so I look forward to sharing more with you as the collection grows.