Friday 14 August 2009

Regiment Spatburgunder

Weinpfalz almost has it's second regiment of foot.

The Regiment Spatburgunder just needs a little furtle and it will be battle ready.
I find painting over 50 figures a go quite tedious and also a literal pain in the neck. But I set myself the reasonable target of one unit a month and after ten weeks I have two regiments and one half done. I think an artillery battery might be next though.

Regiment Spatburgunder in line.
A while ago I lost "The Wargame" by Charles Grant to a wargame friend who promptly left the country. "C'est la Brie" as they say in Fromagere. However good old Amazon came up trumps last week with a second hand copy for £10.00 from a library in southern England.


While I am a "Charge o phile" The Wargame is a good read full of lovely OSW piccies and an idea or two I might adopt to fill out the lack of morale rules in Charge.
Also in the last week I have received some nice samples of Wodensfeld Seven Years War figures from John Cunningham of Vintage 20mil. Not true 20mm more like 24mm and anatomically realistic.

I have just given it a quick paint job to show it compared to a Revell of the Spatburgunder Regiment (with a Musketeer Miniature GNW Russian as a comparison to "28mm").
Almost a perfect match. Unfortunately only French infantry at the moment but there are 36 poses in the range.



Sunday 2 August 2009

Things get Shorter....

... and a little later.

Contrary to popular belief today was in fact 2 December 1805. And that can only mean one thing - Austerlitz. (Most of it anyway)

Ironic quotes of the day :

Napoleon: "How long will it take you to move your divisons to the top of the Pratzen Heights?"
Soult: "Less than twenty minutes Sire..."

Using simple rules derived from Volley and Bayonet, DBA, 2 by2 etc we expect to reach a conclusion within three hours.


Looking from the north.

In the foreground V Corps under Lannes cross the stream and begin to climb the Zuran while a light cavalry division has crossed the stream.

On the left Liechtenstien moves his heavy cavalry divisions forward past Blaswitz. Beyond Bernadotte and Soult perpare to cross the Goldbach while the French Guard and heavy cavalry reserve wait patiently. The Pratzen Heights swarm with Russkies and Austrians and the Guard lie behind.


Lannes outflanking maneouvre moves on apace unaware that Bagration is about to appear on table.

The Pratzen heights early in the morning


Bagration moves forward, courtesy of a giant hand. Despite early success the French light cavalry can make no impressionon the Russian heavy cavalry divisions. While...

the French Reserve waits patiently.

Bored with Soult's inabilty to break through Bernadotte crosses the Bosenitz stream.

Not French cheerleaders but the devastating effect of Russian heavy batteries upon Lannes infantry. Red is not good.


Liechtenstein's heavy cavalry unleashed upon disordered French hussars of Bernadotte.
Oh Dear! poor old Kellerman division is ridden down.
Beyond Bernadotte's infantry share the suffering.

The inability of the French to even reach the Pratzen means that the Reserve is not activated.
Consequently the lack of heavy cavalry to combat the devastating Russian cuirassiers leads to the units disordered by artillery fire becoming sitting ducks to the big men on horses and are wiped out piecemeal.
History is changed and Napoleon returns to Corsica to run a small corner shop. Oh the irony.