Salamanca day again...

Hoi There,

Another year without much progress...or so it seems! For the last few years I have been much in doubt whether I would be able to finish this project due to a lack of decent early French infantry figures. None of the available French sets offered enough decent figures in marching poses compatible with the HäT British.
Now this dirth of good sets seems to have come to an end, HäT have released testshots for both pre- and post-Bardin regulation figures including flank companies in greatcoat and a pre 1812 command set. Pictures of all these testshots are shown below.

Now when these Frenchies are released in earnest, I will buy a load and get planning and painting in a more serious way. So for now, yet again, you will have to be content with just a small peak at a possible future although the sun is shining more brightly on this little horizon at least. In the real world it is a bit more grimm...

Cheers Sander

83rd Regiment of Foot

Hoi,

This time I am not even going to apologise for the long absence of posts here on this blog. I knew from the start that this project was going to be one for the long run. Most of my hobby-stuff ends up on the other blog, so for regular updates you should look over here.

That said work has not altogether been reduced to nil over here. In a recent bulk shipment I acquired a lot of British Peninsular Command sets from HäT and have been able to put together the set up for one of my Salamanca regiments.

The 83rd of Foot was amongst the second line brigade advancing upon Thomieres division with Pakenham's Fighting 3rd Division, well actually it was Picton's division but he was sick at the time of the battle. In my calculations the regiment (actual strength on the day was 319) should amount to 70 odd troops so I put these together on the table to see how it looked and well it looks like this:

Now a few things are not totally historically accurate, the formation is a bit off for the regulations of the day. The officers and nco's I've put behind the line should actually be interspersed amongst the ranks in between each company. The musicians should be put behind the line but I found it visually more attractive to put them together with the pioneers behind the mounted officers. But to limit the frontage of the regiment I have chosen to put them behind. In this regiment the companies are all about 8 man strong, as figures of the regiments involved varied greatly, form the huge 2 battalion 5th Regiment of Foot, counting 1210 actives on the day, up to the 3 companies of the 60th Rifles amounting 254 troops. It would be nicest if I would be able to adhere to the figures I have counted out but I guess I will be settling for less...

Cheers Sander

200 years!

Hoi,

It's rather a special day today: exactly 200 years ago the Battle of Salamanca took place! I'm a bit sorry that the diorama is not ready to commemorate this feat but hey you can't have it all!

Cheers Sander

Doing the numbers...

Hoi,

A while ago I laid out the modules in my table again, and just to try out how it looked I took some HäT Peninsular British and set them on the board where they will end up in time for real. This made me realise that I have made a startling mistake in the first place: my ground-scale and figure-ratio are not compatible! I had planned the first British brigade to have regiments of about 250 figures each, after putting figures on the board this showed that I can have regiments of about 40 figures instead!

This means I will have to do the numbers all over again. But on the bright side is the notion that I will be able to finish earlier since I have to do less figures.

Cheers Sander

2012 and all that!

Hoi,

Yes yes I know: I have been neglecting this blog immensely last year! This came to be because I hold the opinion that it is better not to overflow a blog with nonsense posts (like this one) and rather update it with real news. So 2012, the 200 year Jubilee of the Battle of Los Arapiles has come round and I should at least get something done on the diorama before the year's end. Some friends suggested I'd get the entire work done this year to celebrate but that  won't work since I'd rather have quality then a job done too fast and therefore badly. Besides there's the problem regarding the French- and Portuguese infantry miniatures or rather the lack there of as described elsewhere in this blog. At least HäT have announced they have picked up work on the British Peninsular Light- and Heavy Cavalry which is great in any case.

So we come upon my New Years Resolutions for 2012. I'd like to divide this in two types of resolutions: first the goals I really have set myself to actually fulfil for this year:
- painting the remaining skirmishers of the 60th Rifles still sitting on my workbench.
- creating the groundwork/ terrain on the modules so as to make them ready for the placement of the figures.

second up are the resolutions I would like to finish but I realise I might not actually get them done.
- paint up some of the first line British regiments
- paint up some of the French train of equipage that I want to accompany the marching columns including the artillery that supported Thomiéres Division.

Oh well we'll see how much I'll get done in real life :-)

As always I'll keep you posted and in the meantime you're invited to see what's distracting me on the other blog!

Cheers Sander

French Fantasies

Hoi,

It's a bit of a sketchy title to this topic, I admit it, but bear with me and all will be revealed in due course. Anyone checking the HäT website has discovered that their 1:72 scale French Napoleonics have gotten a separate page all to themselves 


http://www.hat.com/currentF.html

On this page masters and drawings of the new French MAC infantry sets are show:

French 1815:
http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8294Mast.html


http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8295Mast.html


and French pre-1812
http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8296Mast.html

http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8297Mast.html

It's about the latter two sets I'm thinking a lot lately. For the diorama I will need heaps of pre-1812 Frenchies of course, and while it is perfectly possible to make such a force of combining all kinds of existing plastic and metal figure sets, I really want my figures to have an overall same-ish look. The new HäT British Peninsular Infantry will set the benchmark (with some converted Revell Brits mixed in for diversity) and this is no problem as most other troops I have for the project will mix with those nicely: Italeri Hussars and Revell Chasseurs of the Guard as the 3rd French Hussars, Revell Life Guards as Portuguese Dragoons and Revell and HäT British artillery as... well RHA and RFA obviously.

The real problem at the moment is the French infantry as stated above. The present HäT 1812 Big Box is not a bad set at all but the figures are pretty chunky and very different in style to the newer Brits and French Légère MAC sets and while I could opt to alter several sets of the latter into regular infantry it would take a lot of work.
Seeing these shots of the pre-1812 masters has convinced me to wait for them and start with the Brits already lying around here. The drawings clearly show the panoply of separate head-options were gonna get with the French sets and these are superb for my purposes because I want to depict the rigours of campaigning in Spain at the time and have a big diversity in headgear and colours of clothing.

Other opportunities arise as well with the spare heads in these sets like using the Tarletons provided for AWI light troops. Or converting Dutch Light cavalry into British Peninsular LD's since the announced HäT set on Peninsular cavalry has been a little slow in progressing so far. The shako's included will be great for loads of conversions: i.e. I want to make several wargames units of French Artillery with shako's rather then the horrible Italeri busby's or the bicornes on the latest HäT set because I don't do the very early Napoleonic Wars.

Still the problem with all this is: we'll have to wait for a while yet before these figures become available. Argh! I want it all and I want it NOW! as the popular saying goes...

While I got a grip on myself again, let's talk about the MAC system. HäT has come up with, in my eyes, one of the best ways to sell plastic troops in current production by dividing the sets in 3 boxes: a box with Marching figures, a box of Action poses and a Command set. Now we can buy just as many boxes as we need figures and so will not have poses lying around which we have no use for and do not need to buy even more boxes to fill out our units with enough troopers that we do need.This system does have an Achilles heel: it will save us money because we need to buy less boxes but will leave HäT with lower sales... Hopefully we will all buy more of these sets in total then we are buying sets that leave us with spare poses but all the same it's a humongous gamble HäT is willing to take for the convenience of us customers; thanks heaps guys!

For my Salamanca project this just works out great indeed, since I need but a few action posed French and quite a lot of marching ones. So I will keep my fingers crossed the progress on these sets is speedy and without much of the trouble which happens during the production process.

Well that's my ramblings for today,

Cheers Sander

They have arrived!

Huzzah!

As I posted earlier today, on the 196th birthday of the Battle of Waterloo, the diorama modules for my Salamanca Project have arrived at my home.

Hans Slaager of Waterloo and Cambrai fame delivered them this morning and together we unpacked them into my purpose build table. Without further ado I hereby present you some pictures of the occasion:

Hans showing the modules in their excellent cassettes.

Of course I had the honour to put in place the first plate in the table...

...and the final one!

Enjoying Hans' handiwork together.

If you have never seen any of Hans' work up close and personal you cannot begin to perceive how excellent and with just how much eye for detail he makes his masterpieces. This isn't only true for his landscapes but also for the cassettes they come in. It all fits like a glove.

At first we were a little afraid the modules wouldn't fit in the table, but as we put them in place we discovered we actually have about 2 cm's to spare, which is no problem since it makes retrieving the modules from the table easier by far.

I'll make some detail shots later on, and leave this with just one more really big THANK YOU to Hans.

Cheers Sander

***Newsflash!***

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Breaking news this afternoon: on the historic day of 18th June 2011 the long expected Diorama Modules will arrive here at home-base!

Huzzah!


Cheers Sander

Blogger trouble!

Hoi,

I am having some trouble with placing comments on other peoples blogs but now on my own as well so sorry if you're not getting a reaction you'd hoped for!

Quick reaction to the chaps who commented on my last post:

@Matt: thanks mate, that's sound advice and I will wait for them.

@ Peter: your blog is brilliant, nice stuff. Sadly the diorama will not be finished next year or even the year after that, because of the 1:1 project that will be ready in september and from then on will probably request all of my free time. Besides for someone without a car or driver's license it's nigh on impossible to get anywhere with a big diorama...

Cheers Sander

Update anyone?

Hoi,

Work on the diorama is slow, well fairly non existent at this moment. I still have a large amount of 60th Rifles primed and awaiting a paint-job on my desk, but somehow I cannot bring myself to start painting them. Perhaps having the diorama-tiles in here will help motivate me, but they are not due till somewhere halfway June.

I have been reading quite a lot on the Peninsular War lately and this keeps me tuned and not too much distracted with the other projects I've got going.

On my night stand are these two books:

Oman's "History of the Peninsular War Volume 5"


http://www.amazon.com/History-Peninsular-War-Valencia-Salamanca/dp/1853676349/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305974358&sr=1-4

and

"Albuera, Wellington's 4th Peninsular Campaign" by Peter Edwards.


http://www.amazon.com/Albuera-Wellingtons-Fourth-Peninsular-Campaign/dp/1861269463/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305974400&sr=1-7

The first one I hoped would reveal some more details concerning the Battle of Los Araphiles or Salamanca, which it does, but not particularly useful for the actual work on the table. Oman is a brilliant read however so I enjoy this book immensely anyway.
The latter isn't just about the battle of Albuera, which was fought by Beresford and not Nosey after all, but also tells about the first siege of Badajoz. Very interesting details are given of the discussion which started after some accusations were directed towards Beresford for the way in which he (mis-)handled both Albuera and the first stages of the siege, before Wellington took back overall control.

At this time I am suffering from a dilemma: HäT has announced they will be re-doing French pre-1812 and post 1812  infantry. This is good news in itself, specially if they decide to produce them in their recent MAC-format, but it means I will have to choose between using the present set of pre-1812 French of which I already own several and so can start painting mini's at this very moment, or wait till I get the new ones who will be undeniably in better sculpted style and details and thus fit better with the other stuff on the diorama.
  So what to do, what to do?

When I have more thoughts or opinions on this issue, the Peninsular War or Salamanca to share, I'll post them here but for now this is all folks...

Cheers Sander

diorama base here we come!

Hello!

Since updates on this blog don't pop up too often I'd like to bring you a bombshell each time they do! So here are some pictures of the modular plates the diorama will consist of.

First up a birds' view of the lot:

Next a side shot with some 1:72 figures for scale reference

Then a picture with the plates and the travelling casettes to the right:

And last a picture of the modules in their casettes.

All the work has been done by Hans of waterama fame http://www.historyinminiature.nl/ who has done them exactly after my "instructions" the final details I'll have to do myself and then the great "placing of figures will start!"

Hans you're the best!

Cheers Sander

Doing the numbers...

Hoi,

As a prelude to any of the painting and building on the diorama, I was thinking of sharing the numbers of the project with you all. So here is a table showing what units I will have to complete for the thing to be finished.

Division:	Brigade:	Unit:	Org. Strength:		Strength:		Details:
British & Allies
3rd Division	Pakenham		5.875		1127		-
1802	Wallace	45th	442		89		Blue-green4
		74th	443		89		White3
		88th	663		132		Yellow18
		3 cy 5/60th	254		50		Rifle/ red
1876	J. Campell	2xbtn 5th	1210		242		Green (yellowish)
		83rd	319		65		Pale Yellow
		94th	347		70		Blue-green
2197	Powers	9th Line btn	732		145		Port.
		21st Line btn	732		145		Port.
		12th Caçad.	732		100		Port.
482	D’Urban	1st Port. Drag	482		48		S. o.f.t. P.W
		11th Port. Drag	meegeteld met 1e drag.		48
	Arentschildt	14th L.Drag.			48		Well. L.C. B
		1st Hus. KGL			48		S. o.f.t. P.W
Total:					192
	Bull	RHA 1 batt.			6 pcs
	Douglass	RFA 1 batt.			6 pcs
French:
7th Division	Thomières	1st line 3btns	1.763		350		1e bat. In line 2 & 3 marching
4.543		62nd line 2btns	1.123		225		Marching
		101st line 3btns	1.449		280		Marching
		Artillery	208		40		10pcs
					895
Light Cavalry	Curto	3rd Hussars 2sqdns		248	50
1.879		22nd chas. 2sqdns		253	50
		26th chas. 2sqdns		278	50		Nap.Chas. E1[1]
		28th chas. 1 sqdn		94	20
Total:					170
Grandtotal (excl. Arty)							2384

---

[1] Not actively engaged.

---

4 MAA Wellington’s Infantry 1: Plate A

Cheers Sander

Custom Gaming table!

Hoi All!

Today's update brings you some pictures of my custom-made gaming table. It features shelves to store rulebooks and drawers for dice and other accessories and two cupboards for my terrain. I got the idea from this blog:                 http://lordashramshouseofwar.blogspot.com/ 


An uncle of mine is a pensioned furniture-maker (antiquary) and made this entirely by hand according to my wishes. The tabletop measures 151 x 151 cm on the inside in order to receive my 150 x 150 Salamanca diorama when finished. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Cheers Sander

New blog online!

Hello people!

As you can see I have launched a new blog. Why is this? You might ask, well for a long time I have been working at the beginnings of my "Big Project". Everybody has a Big Project and so do I. When first starting with 1:72 figures, I intended to display part of the Battle of Waterloo in plastic. Over the years it became apparent to me that I was not alone in this and since I wanted to do something that was not being done by others already, I went on a search for a different battle to display.

My extensive reading and love for all things Wellingtonian soon brought me upon the battle of Salamanca in 1812. This was arguably one of the Iron Duke's greatest victories and after reading Rory Muirs excellent book Salamanca !812 I just knew I had to "do" this battle for my project.
http://www.amazon.com/Salamanca-1812-Dr-Rory-Muir/dp/0300087195/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287490031&sr=1-1

At this point I got stuck as to what part of the battle and in what scale (well 1:72 obviously but I mean in which figure ratio) was I going to build it?
My Dad came to the rescue and together we calculated that it would suite me best to do the attack of the Fighting 3rd Division, led by Pakenham, in a ratio of 1:5. Pretty fast it became our joint project, my Dad has been helping on and off ever since; thanks heaps Dad ;-)
Over the next years  we did a lot of fine-tuning and some figures were obtained as well, no actual building or painting has taken place though. Last year has seen several developments that put things in motion.

First is the fact that HäT, my all-time favourite company, has been producing Peninsular Brits, new 1805-1812 French light and regular infantry and has Britisch Cavalry in the pipeline.

Second is that a good friend has offered to help me build the base-plates (landscape) of the battle, a discipline in which I am rather bad.

Last but not least  is the fact that an uncle of mine has just finished my custom made gaming/ diorama table. The table has been fine-tuned to received the 9 modules of 50x50cms each which will eventually form the landscape. The modules can be put on show in the table or put away safely in cassettes after which I can use the table for gaming.Pictures will follow soon.

Well this is it for now, I will try to update this blog as well as the regular one, but progress on this one will be far more irregular I fear.

Even so keep watching this space ;-)

Cheers Sander