League Of Augsburg and Mini Campaign

 After painting my League Of Augsburg armies earlier this year I received countless demands (actually 2) that I play a game soon with them. Therefore, bowing to the peer group pressure I have devised a small mini campaign for the armies.

The Battle Rules

All games will be played using the One Hour Wargame (OHW) Napoleonic Rules. I am using these rules instead of Pike and Shot because I want to use my artillery and skirmishers. For each battle the two sides will roll on the OHW tables for their army composition.

To make it a little more accurate for the period infantry can't form squares and artillery can't move. Also units with 9 or more hits must roll a D6 to activate. If the total of the die roll and their hits exceed 15 they cannot move forwards, they can run away.

The Campaign Rules

Premise behind the battles. The first battle must be fought to a conclusion, that is, a definite winner.  The attacker in the second battle is the winner of the first battle as they have the initiative. This battle must also be fought to a conclusion as who wins the battle determines the subsequent and final battle.

To win the campaign one side must win all three battles for a decisive victory and end the war. Otherwise with only two wins you have the advantage in the war in the following year, that is, just bragging rights.

Losses are not carried over from battle to battle. Each side starts with a full army for each battle based on the random OHW army tables.

Battle One OHW Scenario One  Pitched Battle   This battle sets the scene of the campaign with the winner having the initiative as the attacker in the following battle. 

Battle Two OHW Scenario 11  Surprise attack

The winner of Battle One becomes the attacker here

If attacker wins go to Battle Three B

If defender wins go to Battle Three A

Battle Three A Scenario 18 Counter attack

If the defender wins Battle Two they counter attack.

Battle Three B Scenario 15  Fortified Defence

If the defender loses Battle two they are on the ropes and make a final stand. The attacker needs to win this battle to win the campaign.

The Battle

Note that only the hills are the only terrain that impacts the game. The rest is just decoration to make the battlefield a little less sterile. The edges of the battlefield are the woods on the left and the river on the right.

The Alliance forces are in the foreground and the French are in the distance.

The Alliance rolled up 3 infantry units, 2 skirmishers and 1 artillery.

The French rolled up 4 infantry, 1 cavalry and 1 artillery giving them a more powerful force.

I have made a short video (not using AI so pretty rubbish 😂) that shows the battle with all its glory and includes sound effects so make sure to turn your sound on and up to 11  😁

Hopefully it works but I wont be surprised if it doesn't  😂

Here are some close ups of the action as the video is pretty ordinary.

Setup with the Alliance in the foreground and the French in the distance.

End of turn 1. Both sides advance and French artillery gets first blood on some skirmishers

End of turn 2. Both sides' left wings move to contact. The Alliance artillery gets some hits on some French infantry

End of turn 3. Fire fights erupt across the battlefield. The French cavalry attack but are repulsed.

End of turn 4. More firefights across the battlefield.

End of turn 5. On the alliance right after taking a beating the Alliance skirmishers retreat  from contact. Only one French unit follows up as the other fails its activation roll. On the alliance left one alliance infantry unit is destroyed but casualties are mounting in the French units.

End of turn 6. From the Alliance left, another alliance infantry unit is destroyed but so is the French cavalry. On the right one skirmisher is destroyed and the French infantry successfully move forward.

End of turn 7. More firefights with units on both sides getting close to destruction.

End of turn 8. One French and one Alliance infantry unit are destroyed. The Alliance skirmishers run behind the hill to avoid near certain destruction. With only two units left the Alliance must vacate the field to the French who claim victory of King Louie the X. 

So fun to play with the newishly painted figures and on to the next battle.

Thanks for reading.

Perfect Painting Procrastination Plan

 Per my last post, I have 450 or so Napoleonic French figures to paint. So obviously I need to get straight on to that and start painting. But just as obviously as this is too big a job to do and so I must find something easier to do to put it off for a little while but still feel productive.

My purchases earlier in the year included some eight different Sci Fi infantry packs that I was going to test paint and this is the perfect excuse to do something without actually being very productive. So here they are with their Pendraken name and imagined paint scheme. All painted with contrast paints.

Each has been painted with an idea of a different force in mind, taken from various movies or genres.

Probably not that interesting to anyone but a useful resource for me 😁

Theocracy Regular Infantry .... Painted as dystopian soldiers somewhere in the wastes. The lighter brown scheme is good the darker one not so much.

Collective Power Infantry... Painted as a regular force for a dystopian nightmare. Both the grey and green look OK, although the grey is probably a better fit for the theme.

Collective Regular Infantry... More dystopian forces. Both come up OK with the brown for the waste lands and the grey for the cities.

Free States Regular Infantry... Finally something different. Movie themes. Aliens and Starship Soldiers, In green they look good for the marines in Aliens and in grey OK for the marines in Starship Troopers

Emperical Regular Infantry .... Tried to paint them for advanced Prussian and British VSF, but not a good result and better just using my existing forces.

Corporate Regular Infantry.... a bit of a China theme here. In grey it looks ok but the red is not great.

Emperical Power Infantry.... painted for star wars proxies, the black is not good as any detail is lost,  but the white comes off ok.

Griffon Regular Infantry... more potential star wars infantry in white are good, not so sure about the grey for starship troopers although some detail comes out clearer.

Matching the cards to the Pendraken names.

Anyway a useful bit of time spent and gives me something to think about as I work through the French Napoleonic hordes 😂

What have I done!

 As usual, an epic plan finally comes to realisation, and I have to confront the enormity of my decision. 

I decided that I needed to build armies for the  Napoleonic period. The small Dutch army has already been completed and obviously I need a much larger French army to beat them plus the purchased British army.

You plan an army or a new period and it is all fun and games until you have the figures ready for painting and you realise the job you have ahead of you.

So here it is:

300 Line Infantry        10 units of 30

55 Skirmishers              5 units of 11

60 Cavalry                    4 units of 15

9 Guns with 36 crew.

5 Command stands.

Optimistically, based on my speedy painting of the League of Augsburg armies, this should only take three months, give or take a year 🤣

One day I will think about it before I place the order, but not yet!

It is a bit like having children. "We are going to have so much fun playing with them." 

Somewhere and sometime there must be someone who knows what they are doing, it is NOT me. 😂

Expect to see a whole lot of poorly painted French Napoleonic's on the blog for the next six months.