Category Archives: Whats on the work bench?

Actually the title was just an intro to another round up on the progress with my  Hanoverians. But, before we get to that, a couple of things have set my mind working. The first was a throw away comment at our regular Black Powder game last week. My opponent, Pete, was explaining our game to his new ally and they were going through the troop types. He pointed out my Hanoverian Landwehr Battalion and said that ‘Steve uses them as British, so they still get first fire (Black Powder rules)’. Now, nothing derogatory was meant by this comment, Pete was just pointing out why one battalion looked different to another, on my side of the table. But it set me thinking about how should I differentiate between my various troops.

The other thing that was on my mind was that I had just finished reading my sixth book on Waterloo. Since my visit to the actual battlefield, last May, my fascination has intensified and I cant help but keep reading about it! The book that I had just finished was an account of the defence of Hougomont by Julian Paget & Derek Saunders, a nice little book that looked specifically at the attacks on Hougomont and the brave defence by the British Guards. Except that it wasn’t just the British Guards. There were Hanoverians and Nassauers there as well. Now before you think I am going down the Peter Hofschroer route of  ‘it was the Germans wot won the Battle really’, I’m not, that debate can wait for another day. What I’m interested in is the perceived quality of the troops involved in the battle and how wargamers portray them on the table.

Barry Hilton has touched on this subject in a very good article in Wargames Illustrated and I think he’s got a point. Should we really judge how good troops are and give them extra advantages over opponents based on reputation or should we let the dice decide as the game goes on. In other words, should all troops should be equal at the start of the game and only broad National traits based on operational factors  built into the rules. The latter is  certainly my preference, when it comes to general wargaming.

Back to Waterloo,  Wellington himself was concerned about the quality of his allied troops, partly due to their inexperience, I think and perhaps because some of them had been fighting with the French not so long ago. Reading accounts of the battle though, very few of these troops appeared to have under performed, ie. run away! Its been argued that this was because Wellington had cleverly bolstered the morale of these troops by mixing them with seasoned British battalions. Certainly at a Divisional level this was true, but not so much at brigade level and rarely at Battalion level. It looks to me as though the Allied troops performed every bit as well as the British regardless as to whether they were Landwehr or line battalions.

Being Devils advocate (why not, it’s my blog!), there were three notable instances of troops that ran under fire or refused to attack and ran away. The most serious example were the Duke of Cumberlands Hussars, who simply refused to engage and ran away. They were in effect an amateur regiment of dandy soldiers with fancy uniforms that didn’t want to risk injury….They had very little impact, if any, on either the battle or the troops around them.

The other notable incident, often referred to, is the retreat of the Dutch Brigade under the command of Bijlandt. This incident is still a matter of debate amongst armchair generals and historians (usually the same thing…) but to be fair, the general impression that I have, was that the Brigade had conducted itself well at Quatre Bras, losing a fair few casualties, only to find itself at Waterloo on the front line facing the full force of D’Erlons advance after being softened up by the French Grand battery. They appeared to have cracked and retreated under the sustained pressure.

So to the last of my three instances of Troops that cracked under fire – I bring you the French Imperial Guard! These boys had been loafing around for most of the battle until being led by their beloved leader, Napoleon, across the battlefield to engage an enemy that had been under fire all day, charged repeatedly by the French Cavalry and were now facing yet another massive attack. So who was that broke and ran away? Why, the French Elite Infantry, taking with them the rest of the French Army. Confronted with an enemy that stood and fought, the Imperial Guard broke and ran. Well to be fair, they retreated in reasonably good order but retreat they did!

So the next time someone suggests that my Hanoverian Landwehr should be down graded as they are inferior troops, I’ll be happy to oblige if he’ll accept that The Imperial Guard will take a massive minus on their morale if they should come under fire, as history shows that they wont stand…

Right, tongue out of cheek now! Here’s some pictures of my Hanoverians. You can see that I have modelled the cords on the shako’s using green stuff and thickened up the plumes using Vallejo filler which was much more suitable for that job. Painting is now underway, and the first four are nearly finished. Just the highlighting and basing required.

The title of this weeks blog says it all! Progress has indeed been slow and I am stretching my  ‘sculpting’ ability and patience to their limit. The Hanoverians are the problem. I’m trying to match the conversions that I have done to the original Victrix models that I had painted. The first task was to make some blanket rolls to go on their backs in the place of packs. I have actually cheated with a couple of the models and despite saying that I would cut the british packs off of the ones that I had put on in error, I decided to leave a few on. May be those guys had picked a few spare packs up from Quatre Bras! Anyway, modelling the blanket rolls was not too difficult, although a bit time consuming, as I am not used to working with green stuff. You can see the result in the picture above – I think that once they are painted they will be fine.

The real problems came when I tried to modify the shako’s. The first thing that I changed was the plumes which are a bit long and thin. I simply trimmed these down and then used a tiny amount of green stuff to thicken them up. Well, that took forever, partly because I managed to get the green stuff to stick to my scalpel more effectively than the model! Again, if you look carefully at the picture above, you can see the difference it makes. The model to the left has the original plume, the centre model has the the modified one and the right hand model the thin tall plume that I want to replace. After a while of fiddling around I thought that I might just either cut the plumes from some other Shakos & replace them or perhaps just try some filler.

While I had the green stuff mixed though, I thought that I might try and make the cords for the shakos. To do this, I carefully rolled out a very fine ‘sausage’ of green stuff, cut it to the correct length and then attached it to the first shako. Or rather I tried and tried and tried and failed!!! I just could not get it to stick to the model. It stuck to my scalpel, it stuck to my needle. I tried using water to dampen the tools but it still would not stick to the model. After 20 minutes of this I gave up and I think it is back to plan B – using cotton. It may be that the green stuff that I am using has gone off a bit – it has been kicking around in my model box for sometime now. So I may have another go with a fresh batch. At this rate though, it will take me a fortnight to get to the priming stage with these models!

As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, the other project on my work bench hasn’t gone too well either. Having painted Lucid Eye’s Ke-Zhor, I thought that I would paint his mate, Harranah. I think that this was a case of trying too hard as I just could not get the finish and flesh tones that I wanted. Nevermind, I guess you learn more from your mistakes and maybe I’ll give the model another go later. In the meantime, She’s done and going in the cabinet once the basing is finished! Checkout Facebook later for some more scenic pictures of her in perhaps a more sympathetic setting!

Having finished the Lion Rampant Campaign, it’s back to painting my Napoleonic Army. I’m still working on the British 6th Division at Waterloo and having completed the English Regiments, I’m back on the Hanoverian contingent. There were four Hanoverian Landwehr units in the Division, Verden, Lunberg, Munden & Osterode and so far I have painted two of them. So on with the third unit now. First of all a disclaimer! I have decided to model two of the units wearing Stove pipe shakos and two wearing the flat field hats for no other reason than they will look nice on the wargames table. Actually finding accurate descriptions of exactly what the Hanoverian Landwehr really wore is difficult to say the least, with the usual conflicting advice from various sources and experts.

Broadly speaking, the Hanoverian Landwehr were dressed as British Redcoats but with stovepipe shakos rather than the new Belgiac shakos and with a blanket rather than the usual haversack & kit. The stove pipe shakos also seem to have the cords that weren’t present on the original ‘Peninsular’ Stovepipe shakos. Just to add to the confusion, the Hanoverian Field Battalions, or regulars were dressed more or less as British regulars and did have Belgiac shakos & all the kit! As for the officers, they were drafted in from the KGL or other British regular units so could be wearing any Regts uniform although they probably adopted the yellow sash of the Hanoverian Army.

I suspect that the general principle was that the regular field units were kitted out in the ‘latest’ British uniforms whilst the Landwehr had the cast off’s from the Peninsular campaign and anything else that was kicking around the quartermasters stores when they were called up!

To add to my modelling woes, whilst Victrix used to do a nice set of conversion heads that I used for my first unit, they have now been discontinued, so some conversion work will be required! I already had 8 extra figures left over from my first go at painting Hanoverians so I would incorporate these into the new unit. The picture at the top shows how the new Battalion will look when finished. I decided to use the running figures from the Vitrix set as I had some of these left over from previous projects. Rather than have a lot figures in the same pose, I thought that Iwould convert them to look as though the unit was taking casualties. I like to have different poses in my units and try to have a bit of a story going on. I know that some wargamers prefer a uniform look and like to see all of the figuresin a unit in the same pose. Whilst it does make life easier, I find it tiresome painting the same pose over & over again. Besides, I like to do a bit of modelling for a change!

The close up above shows the original running figure on the right and the conversion on the left. To get the figure to look as though it is falling it was simply a matter of cutting through the back of each leg and bending them backwards. Once the glue had set, I put some filler into the gap on the front of the knees and I had my falling casualty. I then used a couple of standard arms from the set and the head is a spare peninsular head from the Perry boxed set. I’ve actually made an error by adding the back packs, so these will come off and be replaced by a simple blanket made using green stuff. The shako’s aren’t correct either, as they are missing the cords. So the plan is to carefully shave down the badge plate and either use cotton thread, thin wire or green stuff to make the cords.  I suspect that modelling the shakos will be the biggest challenge & somewhat time consuming but it will mean that the models in the unit will look about right. When they are painted , I’m sure that they will all blend in.

As you can see, for a few small cuts, you can get a very different and dynamic pose!

So there is my next project under way, a total of 14 more Hanoverians to finish modelling & painting. Meanwhile, I’ve been busy with the paint brush as well. I finished off the DeeZee standing Lion:

and I couldn’t resist painting Ze-Khor, Lord of the Jungle, from the Lucid Eye range. These are just quick pictures. I’ll get some better ones up on face book later!

With one eye on the coming 200th anniversary of Waterloo, I am still adding units to my Napoleonic Army. Work is progressing slowly as I am being distracted by the need to finish my new Lion Rampant Retinue for a games day on 31st January and the steady stream of releases from Lucid eye and DeeZee. More of the latter in another post. Back to Napoleonics, though and as you can see from the picture, I have painted the two Mounted Colonels from Victrix as commanding officers for the 1/27  and 1/40 battallions. As both these units had buff facings, the officers would probably had the same, although as ever, it depends which reference that you look at. Some show a dark blue facing on the uniform and from what I have read, some officers customised their uniforms according to their own taste. Still, they look pretty enough for the wargames table, so they will do for me!

The rank and file for the 1/40 are in progress, with the six men representing the two flank company’s almost completed. Here is a picture of them, work in progress, just having been sprayed with matt varnish after coating in army painter strong tone. They now need basing and I will retouch the lighter colours and metallics to enhance the highlights. So it is just the command group to finish and another battalion will be ready for the table!

Much as I am committed to my Lion Rampant retinue, I couldn’t stop work on my Napoleonic Army. I intend to  complete the 6th Division as it appeared at Waterloo ( with some artistic licence, of course). Having added another Hanoverian Battalion, I decided to go back to the British. I had already painted the 1/27th Inniskillins, and the 1/4th Kings Own, so the final British battalion in the Division was the 1/40 2nd Sommersetshires. This battalion has buff facings and so is very similar to the 1/27th. Fortunately, when I assembled this unit from the Perry boxed set, I made all of the figures, so in effect I had 12 extra men already finished in buff facings. It is now just a question of adding the command group of 6 and 6 figures to represent the flank companies and another battalion is ready for battle.

As usual, I will use the Mont St Jean web site for reference when painting, but for the time being, here are a few pictures of the additional models being assembled & made ready! As you will see, the easiest way of making the command group was to order a spare command sprue from the Perry web site. I’ve slightly altered the Officer and used a head from the Victrix set to make him different from the 1/27th officer. I’ve also added in a Sapper from a Victrix metal command set. As a side project, I’ll also paint the mounted Colonels that the Sapper came with as Officers for the Battalions, which will use up the whole pack and reduce my lead mountain reserve slightly! The rest of the command are assembled as usual.

For the Flank Companys’ I have used a mixture of Perry’s & Victrix parts to make the six required figures. Here’s the Left flank:

And here is the Right Flank:

As you can see, the Perrys (grey plastic) and the Victrix (Light Brown plastic), mix very well and there is very little difference in the size of the figures so they are quite compatible. Mixing sets is a very simple way of making conversions and giving variation to the troops in a unit. So it’s just the painting now….

Well I am just about going to scrape in with my objective of finishing a Hanoverian unit by the end of October! As you can see the officers are close to being finished – final highlights need to be applied. The only figure that needs painting now is the Drummer and I will then have my unit of 24 finished. The next stage is to base them and then finally the add the flags. Ah! the flags….

The problem here is that I cant find any reference to flags used by specific regiments of Hanoverian Troops at Waterloo, particularly the Landwehr units. Indeed, it is possible that they did not carry any into battle. But that wont do for a war games unit – my aim is to make a representation of the unit for the war games table and they look prettier carrying flags! As I have already stretched history by giving my unit the flat peaked caps, it wont hurt to use a bit of artistic licence when it comes to the flags, so I think that I am going down the route of using a conjectural Hanoverian Battalion flag and a Blue Kings Colour for the other ensign.

If there are any of the ‘fashion police’ or ‘button counters’ out there twitching at the liberties that I am taking with this unit, dont worry, I’m twitching with you! One of the dilemmas of historical wargaming is deciding whether you are trying to build an entirely accurate scale representation of the units involved in a particular battle or a general representation of the units that were around at that point in history. Of course, the further back in history you go, the more difficult it is to be sure of who wore what and when. Even the modern day infantryman appears to supplement his uniform by purchasing kit from ebay! It always amuses me that we are told exactly what style of armour/helmet/weapons various ancient tribes used when after a battle, the first thing that the winners did was loot the dead of their possessions.

You can just hear the conversation now. ‘Oi Ulrich, there’s no way you’re wearing that Saxon Helmet, you’re a Viking, so put it down, besides, you’ll make us look silly when Osprey come to take our picture…..’

It seems I digress, but you see the problem. Regardless, this weekends task is to finish painting the drummer, re highlight the officers and then get the whole lot based up and another Hanoverian unit can join my growing British Napoleonic Army!