Uhlan Cavalry

Spurred on by Salute I purchased more goodies from Pendraken Miniatures to add some interesting bits to my early First World War armies.  Of course, this has forced my hand to finish up the dribs and drabs from the last batches.

So here are the German Uhlan cavalry corps complete with command stand. I noticed after the pictures were taken they were not quite finished; still needing the tips of their lances metalled. That has been subsequently resolved.

 

My ability to paint cavalry has improved somewhat since I had a crack at my French Cuirassier bases at the beginning of the project. Bearing in mind I painted a 15mm Hunnic army in between it should hardly be surprising!

 

Next up I'll be having a go at finishing the regimental supporting heavy artillery. 

Goodies from Salute!

As with recent years I have endeavoured to get to the Salute, one of the highlights of my wargaming calendar. I am often accompanied by a non-wargamer, sadly I was unaccompanied this year. There were still plenty of people to talk to.  This year as usual I Spent the best part of the day wondering around looking at games and new products rules and models. Yet again I missed the bloggers meet, although I suspect I do not blog enough to be considered a proper blogger!!

 In any case the purpose of this blog is not to review the show. There are many more capable of that than I. I’d suggest the Madaxeman’s Salute podcast as a good place to start!

The purpose of today’s post is to show off my German Observation Balloon which I acquired at Salute  from Red Eagle Miniatures,  rusted home to build and paint.  It is a lovely model of a  Parseval-Sigsfeld Drachen balloon from Light weight foam ,  with a really  excellent metal  truck containing  the winch to get the thing up and down.  

It was a good opportunity to get the air brush out and give it a lick of paint. I am quite pleased with the way it has turned out. 

I have never done any rigging before and on reflection I think the darning thread I used is way over scale it seems to resemble the rigging and It should  look okay on the gaming table hovering over my  earlier Great War Germans,  spotting targets for off table artillery batteries.

Cuirassiers

If you listen very carefully you can hear the clatter of tiny hooves on plywood. This sound heralds the long awaited five bases of French WWI Cuirassier cavalry. 

They make a splendid edition to the three and a bit companies of poileu and the battery of Artillery  who I am close to completing. I am looking forward to getting these guys finished. This project has been going on far to long. 

It is to be hoped that by the end of the week we can get them all done and dusted with a big reveal in the form off a blog post.    

“Probably the most one sided game I've played to date”.*

That game was a great fun! Phil and I lined up with our Early Roman Imperial 800 point Army against Simon and Mark who fielded a later Macedonian pike army. True to form we lost the initiative. Despite this under the new rules Simon handed the choice of terrain back to us. After much discussion we opted for a hilly battlefield terrain. During the terrain placement Simon rolled all odd numbers so all the terrain pieces ended up on our side of the table. This dictated our set up, allowing the Legions to set up between terrain pieces.

Battle kicked off in the usual way we have lined up our heavy foot opposite one and other in preparation for the pike and legions units to mix it up. The medium foot set up on the left flank with some cavalry and light horse.  I noticed Simon placed some Cretan archers on my far right flank positioned to attempt to take the high ground. I felt it was important not to allow him take this high ground so because it would overlook my the main battle line of legions commanded by Phil. Using horse archers I charged them up the hill on to the high ground which not only deterred this Cretans from advancing on the high ground but it also gained the attention of a battle group of superior cavalry.          

On the far left we found ourselves outnumbered 2-1 on cavalry battle groups. I felt this could have got a little sticky at some point if my superior cavalry got flanked. Nevertheless, Mark opted for the direct approach and steamed in with both his cavalry units. Two to one he must have thought he'd have me. I survived the impact well getting the better of it on the right. In the following melee with two dice against four I got two hits to nil which on the cohesion roles dropped Mark's cavalry two levels. This was bad luck on his part. 

After lousing up my deployment of Numidian light horse and running them backwards and forwards in my usual manner. I let my medium foot form up into the battle line. All that was left for me to do was to march forward. 

While the legions matched up against. Simon's massed Macedonian pike for a slogging match which were basically evens. After the impact the roman medium foot found themselves with an advantage. In a couple of round the protected Macedonians broke and headed for the hills. This freed up Phil’s forth legion to create an overlap on the left of Simon's pike block and my pursuing auxiliary foot broke off their pursuit to hit the disordered pikes in their flank. Considering the number of disorder markers the pike had this was the end of the game, marking the most emphatic victory to date by winning six points to nil, (unadjusted for army size).

*Mark's remark after the game over email. 

Early Imperial Roman Army

Well, with a minimal fanfare of trumpets, the clatter of pots and pans and the sound of hobnails on cobbles I can finally announce I have completed painting my Early Imperial Roman Army. 

At this point it is worth while doing a little recap of the main elements that make it up:

We have three legions of  legionnaires making up the main force. These legions are made up of six bases apiece but obviously could be configured in to more flexible four base battle groups.

Supporting the legions are two battle groups of Roman Auxiliary who are classified as medium foot. They can fulfil a number of roles in addition to dealing with broken ground but also they can offer rear support.

In addition to the Roman Auxiliary I have included some archers units despite never having used before. Nevertheless, I have given myself  some extra options including using them on high ground or interspersed in a line to fire and withdraw.

Rocking up behind the Auxiliaries are the noble Roman Cavalry  who in my experience die quite easily no doubt due to my own poor handling. However I have promised myself not to squander the lives of the sons of Roman by charging it to all and sundry.

Next up are the light elements which comprise of a load of blokes who throw a load of rocks at the oncoming enemy and then get out of the way just in time for the next battle group of Equites Satgitti to sweep in and unleshing a volley of arrows before charging off on a heroic flanking mission of some description. 

On to the one of my favourite units the Numidian Light Horse who can case no end of mayhem to the enemy ranks by racing up and throwing pointy sticks at them. 

The final battle group is the light bolt shooters who can sit on an hill getting drunk waiting for anyone to stray into their field off fire and then they can unleash a couple of larger pointy sticks at  them before getting back their picnic.

One must not for get the illustrious command stands whose job it is to lead this army around the fields of felt and over the plywood hills to Elysium.

Roman Cavalry

Following my auxiliaries the next job was to move on to the Roman cavalry. I had not painted a horse before in any scale.

This possibly shows because I think they are all a bit dark again. However despite this they seem to come together in to a convincing looking battle group. Although they might of benefited from being placed more randomly when I based them up. I must admit. I enjoyed painting up the shield and adding touches of details.

I took the liberty of adding laurels on one set of shields because in a game a while ago my Roman cavalry managed to rout some of Tamsin’s light horse. I was so pleased with this because normally my Roman cavalry die or run around in a pointless manner. Furthermore, it is well worth checking out Tamsin’s blog post on painting horses, impressive…