AWI: The Problem With Light Infantry

So here's my first British light infantry unit for Black Powder: Rebellion! and the American War of Independence, which I painted last year while getting a commission done for some other Brits.

This unit has yellow facings and cuffs and really could be for any of the units with this regimental colouring - e.g. 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 15th, 16th, 20th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 34th, 37th, 38th, 44th, 46th 57th.


There are however, several minor but nevertheless enjoyable issues to overcome when producing British light infantry in this scale, for this period and rule set.

Firstly, for plastics, the only figures available are the A Call to Arms range's Set 65 British Infantry 1775 which contains British light infantry and grenadiers. Although these are highly detailed with accurate proportions and uniform, they're a little bit short.


Left to Right: Imex officer with helmet conversion, ACTA LI, IMEX Drummer, ACTA LI, Revell Jager (SYW Austrian)

Against the Accurate/IMEX figures they're short and against the other figures in this range and other periods close by, they are even shorter - almost by a head - closer to 18mm than 20mm/25mm.


As you can see, for instance, the IMEX drummer is a giant of a man compared to the light bobs. So what's to be done?

Cuban Heals is the answer or more precisely Cuban Bases. These guys and the shorter Accurate/IMEX figures are getting high heals in the form of 3mm thick bases from Litko, while the taller figure ranges get thin plastic or card for their bases.

This at least puts everyone's head near the right height which works well for units and for festooning the Brit LI battalions with command and musicians, then shaving off the molded plastic base on IMEX figures also evens the playing field.


The next issue, to overcome confusion during a game regarding which stand belongs to which unit, is how to dress the unit.


For this war it was common practice to combine companies of light infantry and grenadiers into their own battalions, stripping them from the line regiments to form their own units.

In a period where the only real discernible difference between regiments were the colours of facings and cuffs, this creates an issue.

Although BP: Rebellion! has many different (awesome) scenarios and hence unit size for these troops (they can be Small, Standard or Large), if sticking to history then each base in a unit should have a different colouring; and each unit of LI (and grenadiers for that matter), should have several colour facings/cuffs.


As light infantry regiments weren't formed until a few years after this conflict, in the early 19th century, you can either go with different colours and potentially get confused - i.e. which green stand goes with which unit, or paint the entire battalion in one facing/cuff colour.

As I wanted some LI unit's at battalion level and to act 'in line' with the cool shooty stats, I've opted for one facing/cuff colour for this unit which is technically incorrect but at least looks cool (unless of course the LI companies were taken from several line battalions, all with yellow facings - :o !).

It'll probably turn out that it really doesn't matter in terms of playability and each base will get its own colours to represent an individual company at battalion level. The rest will be formed as small skirmishing units in any case.


In fact I've probably overthought the problem but:

a) even with the molded base cut away, that drummer is huge! That's the last time I use one on the same base as the ACTA figures!

b) at least the hobby has, yet again, taken up a decent amount of my time and prevented me from hiring prostitutes and doing drugs :)

AWI: Hesse-Cassel Brigade

... Mirbach sighed, moving forward past his adjutant, straining to see the dispositions of his brigade through the dust, as an infantry major rode up beside them expecting new orders.
There was still no sign of Lossburg's fusiliers, expected overnight, and he had had to fill the gap in the lines with a detachment of grenadiers. 
At least they had shown up, he thought. The large combined detachment from the south, including his own grenadier companies, had arrived just after dawn, just as they had been sending out the Jager companies to reconnoiter before the brigade.

It had been a hard decision to split the large detachment into two, but with both battalions of his regiment leading the brigade, supported by only one other battalion, he knew they would need further support. So he'd reserved a battalion strength group of grenadiers and sent the rest forward. 
'Still no sign of Lossburg'.' said his adjutant to the young major, who nodded in reply, steadying his horse and searched forward through the dust.
Mirbach could now see that the grenadier detachment was moving to the rear of his battalions as instructed - happy that he had split out the colours between his two battalions, so as to readily identify the units in the field - and had now taken their place alongside the Prinz Karl troops. 
These in turn were following the day's standing orders and crouching down behind their sister regiments as if to receive horse, to avoid the errant bounce of canon balls .
While acknowledging the wisdom of the practice, Mirbach could not abide the slack and lackadaisical practices of the British and the rebels, who allowed their men to sit or lie on the ground as if at a picnic, when in reserve. 
Considering it hadn't rained for over a week in the area, he conceded that ordering men in the rear units to go 'low', was a practice of some merit and would otherwise reduce the casualties expected from canon fire that day.
 After all, he mused, one high ball had already sliced a tassel off of the first colour of his regiment and it was not yet nine'o'clock. But at least the soldiers of his brigade would rest at the ready and look respectable as they held their formation.

Suddenly, in the distance, a huge line of grey puffed smoke rose before his brigade, followed closely by a muffled and staggered roar; the rebels had started firing.
'Send a rider out,' he said finally, turning to his adjutant, 'we need Lossburg's troops here now...'

So something a bit different - after a comment at a recent Sudan Black Powder game regarding the lack of colour on the wargame table ;) - the first brigade of my AWI collection ready for Black Powder.

Two standard sized units of musketeers.

The line and grenadier figures are from Revell's Seven Year's War set 02572 Prussian Infantry.

Another standard unit of musketeers from the Revell Prussian set.

The slightly converted Jagers are from set 02574 Austrian Infantry.

A company of skirmishing Jagers - a small BP unit of 12 figures.

The command is a mix of the mounted officer from the Prussian set and I think, slightly converted 'officers' from set 02579 Austrian Artillery.

General von Mirbach aus Hesse-Cassel and ADC, with mounted battalion officer.

At this scale there is not a lot of discernible difference between the uniforms of the two periods - if any - and 'slight conversions' only involve slicing off errant plumes from hats - and other spurious bits of uniform and equipment as desired - with an Exacto knife, so these sets have been commandeered into line for AWI.

Combined battalion of grenadiers, small and standard sized BP units.

The awesome flags are once again from warflag.com, poles made from brass and bits off of the molded flags of the standard bearers from the Prussian set.

Close up of 2nd battalion, line regiment von Mirbach, the Warflag flags just add the right touch.

The paint job is a mix of a commission from Fernado Enterprises in Sri Lanka and my own efforts, from quite a few years back. The commision figures are a reasonable standard - called Collector - for the money paid.

Another company of Jagers, small skirmishing unit.

There is such a lot of variation within each nationality which, while it puts some folk off this period, a little careful reading can provide a great deal of nuance.

Far right, freed African slaves in paid service with the German mercenaries, many of the younger men and boys were employed as musicians.

All have been recently rebased for Black Powder and all in all I'm happy with the final result, and looking forward to a table covered in the bright colours from the uniforms of the period.

1st battalion, line regiment Prinz Karl,for a 24 year old set of figures, they have come out great.

Then There Was Four: Collecting 1/72

So a package arrived in the post the other day - oh yea!

Two boxes of OOP French Infantry for the American War of Independence, to complete a total of four boxes - more on this later.

I've been after these things for years and years, then earlier this year a mate of mine Tim, offloaded six boxes of 1/72 scale AWI figures. Six! One of which was the long OOP French.

I warned him and did my best to convince him that they were now collectors items and selling for as much as £25; trying to foist fistfuls of money upon him, but as a true gentleman he gave them away. Thanks Tim!

This triggered my OCD (Obsessive Collectors Disorder) and I wondered how I could find the other three boxes I needed.

Why three?

Because in 1/72, especially if you're playing Black Powder, you need to buy multiple boxes to make decent and regular looking regiments - also ironically in some cases, to make decent irregular looking regiments.

This is because there are some very varying pose qualities in a single box and you only get so many figures of one pose per box. So when collecting 1/72 figures and building BP units, you spend a lot of time trying to divide 24, 12, and 6 by the figure numbers listed at Plastic Soldier Review, then subtracting the number of command figures available; and producing the number of boxes you *NEED* to buy.


About half of my AWI 1/72 collection - I still need four more boxes of Americans!

So I went onto my friend - eBay - and started playing with the search functionality (to those familiar with eBay's search functions you can skip this bit).

So first I played with the search string as just typing 'italeri 6043 french infantry' returned hundreds of pages selling Italeri's Napoleonic French infantry sets.

To get rid of these sets from the results, I narrowed the search by removing those listings with the words 'line', 'napoleonic' and their box numbers; by adding a '-' before those terms.

Giving this search string:

italeri 6043 french infantry -6066, -6002, -line, -napoleonic

Accurate but it returned nothing because there were no current listings -  :( - and I cried hot tears of disappointment...

I didn't want to have to keep checking eBay for this listing, I'd been doing that for years and getting nowhere. So I created a regular and automated search using eBay's Follow Searches function, using the search string above.

eBay emails you when a new listing which meets the search criteria is put up.

Within three months of setting up the followed search, I was the proud owner of the three additional boxes of infantry I was after - remember these are rare OOP boxes - like hens teeth.

What joy and excitement prevailed in those early mornings, I can tell you, for me and even my two cats - who were rudely awakened from their respective positions on the bed by my hoots of merriment - to wake up to emails offering me the boxes of these long OOP figures - mostly because I'm a sad old git without a girlfriend :)

Anyhow just thought I'd share a decent, automated way of finding OOP bits and bobs on eBay.

Now alls I need to do is paint up the regiments!!

Edge of the Empire: Splinter of my Mind's Pie

Something a wee bit different, a game report for the RPG Edge of Empire by Fantasy Flight Games. So quite a long post BTW focusing on getting as many shots of the figures and terrain as possible - so heaps of eye candy.


Nick came over and wanted to try out EoE using some of his (now long OOP but available from ebay - check out Noble Knight's ebay Store) Wizards of the Coast figures, so I said I'd break out the Battle System Terrain.


So settle down to some decent looking (pre-painted) figures, some excellent looking (pre-painted) terrain, and a whole lot of characters named Bob.

Set Up
I spent a good while remembering how to build the terrain and finally settled for a simple Imperial bunker complex.


The idea was to swap out scene dressing as we went to make different locations which kinda worked well, with the basic set up having a few open rooms, a traditional long corridor for shoot outs, and a closed room for added mystery.

Scenario
My character Jack Mattwe - Space Pirate (oh yea!) had been hired by Yog Soggoth - Space Pirate to receive some information and a droid being held by the Imperials.

Part One: Location of the Information

"Come on R5, we need to get out of here... I'm missing Coro..."

First up Jack had to grab the information regarding the whereabouts of the droid and its speical information from an Imperial base.

So Jack and R5 sneak into the base dressed as an Imperial captain - well Jack was dressed like an Imperial Captain, not R5.


R5 trips the door on the second go.


And we head to the command room of the base way down the far end of the corridor.


... way down the end of the corridor.


R5 trips another door...


... and we're greeted by the base commander (Captain Bob).


Through some fast talking and good deception and skullduggery rolls I convince the commander that we were there on official business of Jeff (you'll need a tray) Vader; and he lets us waltz in past the guards...


... and into the main complex full of stormtroopers and imperial engineers.


I negotiate for R5 to interface with the systems and get the information we're after, again rolling well for deception.

Yes, this terrain is as amazing as it looks!

The Imperials may be slow and a little gullible but R5 had used some old codes to trip the doors and questions started flying.


But we were able to maintain our guise with a Triumph Deception roll when it counted and head out, but were caught by the base commander and our rouse was discovered.


We shot through the internal door and R5 rolled a successful lock.


Which left us in the middle of the corridor with sirens and alarms blazing around us.


More stormtroopers burst in from the main entrance.


As well as a couple appearing in the control room from the corridor behind us.


But I ordered the troopers to get the door open with another deception roll and fled down the corridor; the base commander got his act together and then the lights went out as R5 got his system stuff together (Nick as GM was kind).


But by that time R5 and Jack were out and Jack changed out of the Imperial uniform (mostly because it was chaffing badly) and headed back to find Yog Soggoth.


Part Two: Information of the Location

"... Yog, I need your attitude to be a bit more positive..."

To be honest although Nick was a great GM, I got confused regarding what I was meant to be doing... the information of the location of the information provides the location of the droid and the information it can use - or something.

So I went to see Yog at his apartments for some clarity.


As R5 downloaded the captured information, Yog started touting an MF attitude along the lines of "How dare you bring me the information I asked for..."


So got the red rage.


And this happened.


With Yog unconscious from the blast and now tied up, R5 and I went 'splorin in his apartments and nicked 100 credits.


Then after a good talk about attitude along the lines of  "space is hard enough without *%#^$ like you making it harder" Yog agreed to get on with the next part of the mission and we met up with an associate of mine on Yog's star freighter - Bob the Boffen (called Boff from here on) on route to Dantooine.


Part Three: The Temple on Dantooine


So we needed to get R5 into the temple and retrieve some valuable information which Yog's droid could use to great advantage, but the place was crawling with Imperials.


Turns out the temple was the main power generator of the area, drawing power from a volcano near by.


So day time visits coincided with a heavy Imperial presence.


Including droids, guards, and engineers.


Although some areas were a little less occupied and maintained.


But the front door looked inviting...


... so we we went and knocked on it.


But were rudely accosted by the guard scouts and told to sod off.


With such a heavy presence we went back to the hanger where the freighter was parked to have a good old chin-wag about what to do next; and wouldn't you know it Bob the Davonian shows up, all Mr Exposition like.


For a price hes got a secret way in and knows when maintenance is occurring. Dangerous maintenance, so the temple is not posted  - oh yea! So we wait till 2300 and pop up in a maintenance closet, smack in the middle of the complex - we've got 30 mins to get the info and get out.


And lo and behold, the Davonian is right, its pretty  much deserted.


Pretty much...


So we burst in, not sure how to play it but the clocks ticking.


There's Captain Bob again, oh wait its his clone.


So we start firing, seems the best thing to do, and troopers start to drop, until...


Dead Imperials everywhere.


But we've lost time and only have 8 minutes left, so we get R5 into action as the alarms start blazing.


But we make it out just in time thanks to the Davonian who heads away with a nicer little earner.


Part 4: Get HK-149


Yog's droid is  being held by the Imperials on level 15 of a droid reprogramming facility in an Imperial City nearby. Now we have the information the droid can use to great advantage, we need to get the droid itself. So we grab a taxi from the spaceport and head on in to the city.


Upon arriving at the building where the droid is being held, the Rodian driver - Dragos Tona - is persuaded to join us for 500 credits.


We take the lift to the 15th floor all nonchalant-like, walking right past Imperials and civilians alike.


After a brief chat with Major Major in the lift - where we convince him we're bounty hunters taking R5 in for reprogramming - we reach the level and break out HK-149... no problem...


... well... so we trip a door and the alarms start ringing again, what could possibly go wrong?


Stormtroopers, lots of them... we start firing at point blank, its the right thing to do.


As the air becomes filled with blaster fire casualties start falling on both sides, even Boff goes down in a smoldering heap, but eventually the corridor is filled with dead stormtroopers.


We make a break for a launch pad near-by while R5 trys locking the door and HK-149 remotes the speeder, and further Imperial troops show up.


But the troopers spring the door and they start firing.


Down goes Yog Soggoth - he'll be sorely missed - just as the transport shows up.


And in a hail of blaster firing from the emerging stormtroopers we fly away to safety... classic.


Heaps of fun, played like 5th Ed. DnD with droids and Imperials.

Classic.