In an ideal world it would be nice to refight the battles of the Napoleonic era with all the correct forces on a wargames table that accurately reflected the terrain and conditions on the battlefield. However, the majority of my gaming takes the form of club gaming with my wargaming buddies at the White Hart pub. We turn up with fairly evenly matched armies every Thursday night and battle across a gaming cloth with a bit of scenery on it and to be honest, I’m quite happy with this state of affairs. It means that I am wargaming at least once a week and enjoying the company of like minded people.
However, there’s been talk of organising a campaign. To be fair, I’ve been edging towards producing a set of campaign rules that would allow us to link our battles together in an informal way to provide a narrative to the battles that we fight. Well, things are very slowly moving in the right direction and I have a few ideas as to how we can achieve this without it becoming a major chore as some campaigns can be. I will get to publishing some of these ideas but the first requirement is for each army to have a named commander.
Private James Riddle shows his defiance to the French!
I did have a commander for my army but it wasn’t an inspiring model and I wanted something that would perhaps reflect my personality on the wargames table. So an idea came to mind when I saw a model of a British Infantry man giving the ‘victory sign’ – I’m not even sure which manufacturer produces the model – it was actually given to me. All I needed was a officer to go with the soldier and I would have my command base. When I saw the Front rank model of Rowland -Hill, I thought that he was just the sort of commander that I was looking for. The model is a superb sculpt and doesn’t immediately look like some of the other big personalities of the time. So I chose Sir Rowland -Hill as the commander. Of course, as far as the campaign goes, he will be known as Sir Sydney Ruff-Diamond!
Sir Sydney Ruff-Diamond
I thought that the base needed another model to balance it off, so what could be better than a British Bulldog! Fortunately, I have a great looking Bulldog in my very own DeeZee range, so there was no problem in acquiring this model!
Oh Yes! Its Churchill!
So with each model painted it was then a simple matter to assemble them all together on a 60mm MDF base. I followed my usual basing techniques although I have added a little something special. The rocks and detail on the base are actually some earth straight from the Battlefield at Waterloo, so I don’t want any complaints about accuracy here! I also added a few tufts and flowers and hey presto! My new army commander, Sir Sydney Ruff-Diamond and his faithful companions, Private James Riddle and dog Churchill are ready to take to the field!
Sir Sydney Ruff- Diamond watches on as Private James Riddles rebukes the French!
There will be some battle reports to follow, so keep a check on my blog to see how Sir Sydney and his companions fair on the field of battle at the White Hart!