The next update will be devoted to the showing of a British army I painted up over the last 10 or so years. It is centered on that of Picton's 3rd Division with other elements thrown in such as Cavalry etc. The figures are all AB and the paints used are Enamels from the Model master and Humbrol ranges.
He is a panoramic view of Picton's 3rd Division with supporting Cavalry and Artillery. These troops are based for my own House Rules system which correspond to the metric equivalent to Empire basing :
This next set of pictures shows some of Wellington's Heavy Dragoons, these are AB Dragoons in Bicornes including a Spanish Dragoon Regiment :
In this set of pictures are the Light Dragoons :
In this set of pictures are the guns of the British army both Royal Foot batteries and Royal Horse.
In the next few days I will introduce the Infantry to the Blog, these pictures will be extensive showing multiple Line regiments, Rifles and Portuguese...
13 comments:
Hi Shane, Very cool blog!
Drew
Dragonfire Games
G'day mate,
Good to hear from you, thank you for your comments. Look forward to you coming to games if and when you get the chance.
Shane
A lovely collection! I like the way you have left the black in the detail of the faces to help them stand out, very effective. A nice Blog I will follow with interest.
Thanks Secundus, I try to put as much detail into the figures as possible to animate them. The secret is to not let each colour touch.
Hi shane just came over to have a look great looking blog and awesome looking collection. keep up the great work, I'm working on a 15mm diorama of Quatre Bras just posted first pics of the infantry, you might be interested. Once again love your blog and i'll be back.
Shane,
I wanted to ask you a question about your recent posts on TMP in the 'casualty' thread but didn't want to get involved in the heat, so I thought that I would post it here instead.
You say that put a lot of modifiers in your rules to account for the various things that made a difference in the various aspects of Napoleonic Warfare, right? Like an expanded version of Bruce Quarrie's rules with percentage dice?
But how can you know whether a factor reported as making a difference actually did or not, and what the extent of that difference was?
For instance, if you were in the God-like position of knowing every fact about the Napoleonic Wars and you knew that, say, resting a unit's musket on a wall for firing made a 0.4% difference, then including it in one's rules would actually make it less realistic than ignoring it in your percentile system - although of course you could never know that to begin with anyway.
And since i'm on here I should just say - lovely figures!
Hi Galpy,
Thank you for your kind words, I am very appreciative. I hope to expand this blog soon with details of a new battle we are going to start late this month, Albuera.
Shane
Hi JWH,
Thank you for asking those questions.
I have to say that my system design, although it is focused on simulated realism I will be the first person to admit that you can only go so far to achieve this. My idea of simulated realism is to focus on aspects of battles, what happened, how it happened and what were the outcomes.
From this I try to develop rules mechanics that will re-create those occurances through a focus on simulated realism. This sounds very vague I know but unless you were standing beside me in one of our games it is too hard to explain. You need to see a situation unfold on our table top to see what I mean.
However, I can explain to you that for example when I researched musketry fire a couple of years ago I understood through research that the number of hits on an enemy formation depended on several factors, skill, rapidity, discipline, proximity and so on.
My charts I use are matrix orientated to calculate actual casualties in, "men", not figures. So I went about utilising the research I had into the matrix I developed many years ago and improve it, or adjust it towards an even closer representation of realism. Realism in the sense of adjusting the casualty rate towards a closer depiction of the number that should be derived from that matrix via modifiers and so on.
Along the side of my matrix is a series of percentile fractions that represent for example, .1% hits, 1% hits, 2% hits, 3% hits...and so on up. I then found a documented case in a book of a situation where a particular number of men in a unit fired at an enemy which gave a confirmed number of hits. I then set about adjusting my matrix and the factor modifications until I got the exact same outcome.
We then set about aligning our rules to this new table and adjusting the tables to simulate the same outcome each time. We then ensured that a D100 dice modifier could adjust the outcome either upwards or downwards but made sure that these adjustments even at a maximum would only be slight to the actual mean.
I did this for every aspect of our rules by basically doing a huge amount of research and putting what I learnt down on paper and adjusting my mechanics to account for every situation I could and its chance of occurring. How I did this is just too complex to write here but I think you get my meaning.
On a side note, I had a player only a couple of years ago join us, he had wargamed for 23 years previously with other groups and systems. He took one look at my system and thought, wow, this is way too complex. But after just one single battle he became convinced (of his own accord) to join us permanently, build an entire new army, based it to my design and is now a complete adherent to our club.
The reason why is because in the first game he became involved in a sequence of events in the game that unfolded that convinced him that what he was seeing and witnessing was by far the best simulation of what he had read in history books over that 23 year period of wargaming.
He told me that the situation, the sequence of events as they unfolded and the eventual outcome were exactly how he pictured it should have ended in his own mind's eye because of his own study of the period and experience through books. And like I said, my system is designed from my own research conducted from books on the period.
As I said, trying to convince someone over the Internet like this is too hard. you have to see a game to understand it. The testimonials from my group from guys who could easily walk away to play easier, quick play simple systems said it all to me. They prefer to play my system even with all its complexity simply because "they" feel what I have done is realistic to them, and that is all that counts for me.
Shane
p.s. If you desire to see them for yourself I could email sections to you. Like I said though, they are hugely complex and scare 99% of guys off. They take years to fully understand and master and I made them that way for a reason, Napoleonic warfare was not easy, if you did not know how to command properly you did not survive. The guys I play with like that because you need a huge amount of experience in the system to master its complexities, not of the mechanics but of the coordination of troops on the field and how they interact. The mechanics are simple enough but its the tabletop that sorts out those who understand how to use them with skill and those who get hammered.
Shane
Thanks for taking the time to reply in detail - very interesting. I will take you up on your very kind offer - I'm sure it will be a big contrast to my normal rules of choice! I did start playing Napoleonics with Bruce Quarrie's rules though, so hopefully I won't find the concepts totally unfamiliar.
I'm at jwh*0714*@yah*oo.co.uk
(naturally without the asterixes)
Hi Shane
I was delighted to see your impressive collection and also that you live in Brisbane. I have just got back into painting 15mm napoleonics after a 20 year break (raising children). Do you belong to a club or can you point me in the direction of one in Brisbane?
G'day mate,
Thank you for your comments.
I do not belong to a club but a group of guys who get together every Tuesday night at my home. We do Napoleonics and many other games in between so as to keep up the enthusiasm for gaming. You are more than welcome to join us. Also, one of the guys here is a member of several clubs in Brisbane also, he could put you in contact with others.
You can email me on, sdev2749@optusnet.com.au
I will give you my address by email privately.
Regards
Shane
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