Late recruits for Partizan

This morning I sprayed the varnish on Colonel Driant for James and these other dozen chaps for my own collection.

Before I went on holiday I did the first half dozen and completed the rest when I returned from Barcelona on Wednesday. They are done using my standard method that you can find here.

First up are a couple of officers, one keen young fellow with a whistle and an older head in a Chasseur kepi.

I've done another NCO, this time in a Chasseur kepi.

Two bombers.

A Hotchkiss machine-gun with three crewmen. The sand-bags are by Renedra and were supplied by Nick at Northstar.

Finally, four casualty markers.

All the figures are from the excellent Gripping Beast range by the Woodbine Design Company. I thought that this would be it before tomorrows game, but a late effort saw another half-dozen figures painted, I hope to photograph those before we get started tomorrow.

Bois Des Caures - A practice for Partizan

On Thursday evening James, Dave and I got together at the Polly with the intention of setting up the table for our game at Partizan this weekend. It would also give us the opportunity to review the troops we had on hand.

As it was it all came together very nicely so we played a small game on about half of the table to get us in the mood.

James commanded a Lieutenant with four sections of infantry, a sniper and a Hotchkiss in support holding the front-line positions against Dave with a Lieutenant, six sections of infantry, a sniper, flame-thrower and a Maxim in support.

Things went rather well for the French, early on they accounted for one of the German junior leaders. Although the Bosche pushed on and soon redeployed a jump-off point very close one of the French revetments, deploying another section there along with the flamethrower.

The Poilu countered by knocking out the flamethrower that exploded in a ball of fire, so the German Leiutenant arrived on the scene, rallied the wavering troops and led both sections in a bayonet charge against the revertment.

The Germans carried the day and took the position, despatching the French section and in the process bayoneting the Lieutenant.

It was a good quick game and rather a bonus as we had originally planned just to formulate a plan for what we are doing on Sunday.

Only a few photos taken with my phone I am afraid.

Partizan painting update: Émile Driant

This week James M made a model for us to use as Lieutenant-Colonel Émile Driant for our upcoming Bois Des Caures game at Partizan this weekend.

Here is the original that James kit-bashed from a Scarab Miniatures communications set member

His article on the build is here.

On Thursday evening James had sprayed with Army Painter Wolf Grey and handed the figure over to to me for a quick paint job in time for the weekend.

Before work on Friday I did the base-coats and then gave a wash of Vallejo Sepia Wash. That evening when I got home from work, I completed the highlights, picked out some detail with W&N inks and then did the base.

In Driants last action it is said that as they abandoned the command bunker they burn the paperwork, so I wanted to show that on the base, it's a simple fire of bamboo skewers with a bit of Green Stuff for flames and a few pieces of paper still burning.

 If you are at Partizan tomorrow, pop over and say hello.

More Poilu for Partizan

Partizan is in a couple of weeks and I'm hoping to be able to make a reasonable contribution towards the number of Frenchmen in our Bois Des Caures game.

In the previous update I had done the first 18 but over the past couple of weeks I really concentrated in getting more terrain done. However, this week I finished off the highlights on another half dozen and have painted another dozen from scratch.

This time I wanted to add some that were Chasseurs so have painted a good number of them with Dark Prussian Blue trousers and puttees and even one in a Chasseur kepi.

I also wanted to do some in 'raw leather' straps and pouches so used a base-colour of US Tan Earth and a highlight of Tan Yellow to represent the buff colour.

I also made an impromptu sniper, when I was cleaning the figure up I broke off his bayonet, so I selected a bare head that had a somewhat professional looking cast to his countenance and added a telescopic sight made from an old spear-staff.

Again, all figures are from the Woodbine Design Company supplied by Gripping Beast, With the exceptions noted above, all colours are as per the previous article.

 

Something New - Square Bashing

A few weeks ago James purchased a copy of the Square Bashing rules from Peter Pig. Having read through them there were quite a few unfathomable steps and much scratching of heads.

During a chance meeting at Salute with old chums Pete and Simon, talk came about to Square Bashing and how it played. Pete and Simon are old hands and offered to host a game at their club.

So yesterday evening I drove over to James' had some pizza for tea and then we went to Burton Upon Trent for a session of Square Bashing.

Simon has a lovely collection of 15mm armies for 1914 games and a collection of some rather lovely terrain. James and Simon would play the vile Bosche while myself and Pete played the noble Tommies.

We played out the pre-game sequence and it appeared that we would be attacking the Germans who had set up a defensive position around a small town and the neighboring woodlands, two of our battalions had used public transport so arrived early at the battlefield to gain a small advantage.

The game started and Tommy pushed on, immediately seizing two of our four objectives while a concentrated bombardment caused Fritz to cower in terror, things seemed to be going rather well. However, we could not have it all our way, on our left the advance guard who came by bus were ensconced nicely on an objective and Fritz could get nowhere near, but then the German artillery opened up and our centre was unable to push on for two turns and were badly shaken up by the suppressive barrage.

On our right, leaving a Vickers platoon to hold the woods we had to take, the remainder of the brigade pushed on towards German held crossroads pushing towards the right to avoid the Maxims deployed there.

The German reserves were now pushing on from the rear, although their woodland in the centre was struggling it would not take long for them to reinforce that position. A concerted bayonet charge by our troops on the left soon cleared the Hun from half of the woodland although they were unable to press the attack and clear the entire area.

On our right the German reinforcements came up to blunt our flanking manouver, but Tommies aim was true and the attack was driven off, however when we tried to follow up on this success we were also driven back.

With the clock ticking things were not going well for the British attack, we had secured two of the four objective and were unable to make headway against the remaining two while German reinforcements poured on to the battlefield.

A poor day for the British, despite the early gains they were eventually driven back by the Hun!

Pete, Simon and the Burton club were great hosts. The game seemed very easy to play although the pre- and post-game phases seemed a bit odd, maybe after a few more games we would understand that better.

All the lovely figures and terrain are from Simons collection.