Russian Command

 

Finally finished painting something.  These are 3d printed 54mm Russian Command figures to complete some units.

Pleased with how well they have come out as slightly rough (I've improved my printer settings for the second lot of figures I printed).

The Sound of the Guns (printing)...

 

Working on Artillery at the moment.

Having 3d printed some Russian Guns for the new 54mm Russians I have moved on to:

1) Rebasing all my existing British artillery onto smaller bases
2) Rebasing the French Guard Artillery
3) Printing guns for French Line artillery and starting to paint some crew
4) Printing guns and crew for French Horse Artillery
5) Just bought and download some Prussian Foot artillery and crew and the first file for those is currently printing...

That should cover just about all the artillery until I start on the Austrians.

1812 Napoleonic Russians

 

I might have bought a "few" 54mm Napoleonic Russians...

The 100 or so at the back were given to me for free from an old customer a while back.

They need rebasing into units of 12 and I need to do some touching up and some repaints.

I am experimenting with printing a cannon scaled up to 54mm at the moment and will be playing with some officers/drummers/standard bears 3d printed as well to see how well they print.

This gives me 22 foot units, which means I might "need" more French and allies

I also need more cavalry - so I'm looking at 3d prints, printing just the rider and using existing spare horses  or converting some figures -

54mm Napoleonics: France vs Prussia

 

Played a Napoleonic game this week using slightly amended Neil Thomas Rules and my 54mm collection.

The scenario saw a Prussian force defending a crossroads from the French who march on to the table from the south. The Prussian reinforcements arrive from the North.Initial forces arriving.  The Prussians have more Infantry but the french have more cavalry.I got caught up in the action so didn't take many more photos.

The French advanced and sent their cavalry round the right flank, the same side as the Prussian cavalry unit.  The Prussians threw their cavalry unit in against the French Guard cavalry hoping to win the melee force it to retire into their own troops and thus be eliminated.  It was a 50/50 chance and unfortunately they only scored 2 hits while the French won the melee with 4 hits.  The Prussians were thrown back and then charged the next turn and eliminated.

Across the rest of the battlefield it was a fairly even fight with units on both sides whittled down but not eliminated.  I made a mistake as the french of exposing my horse artillery to infantry fire (after a unit masking it was eliminated) and lost the battery but was able to destroy the French Foot artillery in turn.

When we called the game it was a close run thing with the Prussians have more intact Infantry units but the French still have a fresh cavalry unit.

I made a major mistake in not sending my horse artillery with the cavalry and using it to knock down the strength of infantry units so I could charge them safely which would have probably won me the game.

Travel Battle try out

 Second outing for the 54mm Napoleonics in a week!

This time using the Travel Battle rules from the Perries playing against Anthony.

I set up an approximation of the Travel Battle boards using a 4" gridded mat which gave us 12 squares by 18.  The travel battle board is 20 x 10, so we ignored the back square on each side.

As you can have 2 infantry units in a square in the open, I settled on using a single base fo the infantry (though, in the game, neither of us doubled up any units) - I think I had forgotten this rule by the time it might have been useful.

The rules are simple but do present you with the type of decisions you would face in a Napoleonic battle - cavalry get an advantage against Infantry in the open, Infantry in Square or built up areas get an advantage, etc.

The game was frustrating initially as I rolled a series on 1s and lost a number of units.  But eventually the tide turned.  I wiped out the British Cavalry Brigade and then my decision to include both my Guard units in the same brigade (whereas Anthony had split his between brigades) paid off with a frontal attack on the British in a built up area and I finally destroyed a second British brigade for victory.

It is a fun game and I'd certainly play them again, perhaps in a scenario rather than pick up game.

54mm Quatre Bras

 

Played a scenario vaguely based on Quatre Bras at the Guildford Club on Monday night with my 54mm collection (well, a small part of it!) and the Frog and Toad rules - which are an enhancement of Neil Thomas Napleonic Wargaming to add some simple command and control.

Nick took the French and made the mistake of sending his lightcavalry round a wood without support and putting his horse artillery on the other wing.  The Prussians formed square and shot the cavalry to pieces after they bounced off the squares.  In the centre my shooting finally improved and his attacking infantry were thinned out and the french attack faltered.

Fun game and we both enjoyed it.

 

 

Latest attempt at 3d printing 54mm

 

 I have now printed 4 54mm figures using my 3d printer and this is the latest of them after tweaking a number of settings.

The figures are Russian Napoleonic Infantry designed for 28mm and resin printing rather than the FDM printer I have.

The figure is scaled to 175% size and I have tweaked settings to thicken the walls of the figure, etc which means that the thinner scabbards now cast properly and don't break off.

I am pretty happy with this one and think I should be able to print off a unit to experiment with painting.

I have been asked about printers and settings so technical info follows:

The printer is a Cubicon Style which I bought in 2016 as it had an enclosed case (which made printing ABS easier and I wanted to use it to print components to turn into metal in vulcanised moulds) and it had an auto-leveling plate.

The settings for the figure above are:

0.4mm nozzle
ABS
0.2 layer height
supports are everywhere with an angle of 65 degrees, 10% fill and a grid pattern  (I find that these are the easiest to remove.)
There is no raft beneath the print.
Wall thickness is 6, top and bottom are 3

Playing with 3d printing of figures

 I have been watching the growing list of 3d printable Napoleonic figures with interest.  They are mostly available for 28mm with a very few people offering them printed in 54mm, but at that size they cost £5+ for a single figure.

I have an FDM printer (which I've had for 8 years) and have started playing around with a new version of the software and some 28mm Napoleonic Russian stl files to see what can be achieved.

The files supplied are really designed for resin printing but I have managed to work out how to create files that will print on an FDM printer.

This is a quick photo of my first effort.

On the left is a HAT Austrian line infantry man and on the right is a 3d printed Russian Fusilier officer.  He could do with some more cleaning up on the supports but I think he had come out quite well.

He is printed at 175% size of the 28mm original figure and comes out about the right size for matching with HAT.

If I can get some consistent results this would mean I could add a small Russian and Austrian contingent to my 1/32 Napoleonics collection at some point in the future.

54mm Napoleonic Game

 

Anthony and I played a 54mm Blucher game on an 8'x 5' table.  I took the  French vs Anthony's British (as usual). 

We played through 16 turns (8 each) before having to stop as we ran out of time.  The game was  still pretty even at that point - I'd lost a light cavalry unit but his light cavalry was pretty spent and his allied infantry was starting to be worn down.

We were able to resume the game 3 days later and play it through to a conclusion.

My left flank ended with the mutual destruction of both sides Light Cavalry with me losing 3 units to the British 2.

But, I was able to apply pressure to the weaker Dutch Belgian allied corps on  their Right  wing and that forced Anthony to use his command to slowly withdraw them as they were in danger of losing 2-3 units.  He also concentrated his main attack on the his left wing heavy cavalry who were facing the French heavy cavalry.

This meant that he was unable to manouevre the higher quality, stronger British corps in the centre and it was left to exchange skirmish fire with my weaker french/allied troop corps.

His concentration on the heavy cavalry was his undoing as he was convinced he could win the combats and I managed to consistently throw slightly better dice than him which meant his units were worn out slightly faster than mine.  Also, he didn't withdraw any units as they neared breaking point and I kept enough of an upper hand to break all 4 of his heavy cavalry with the loss of 3 of my own units.

This put us on 6 units lost each - the British break point was 6, the French 7, so the British army broke and ran givng a French victory.

It was a very close and quite tense game at times - we got a couple of things wrong but that didn't change any outcomes.

54mm Napoleonics with Blucher Rules

 

Tried out the Blucher Napoleonic Rules with my 54mm collection (well, part of it) on a 6' x 4' tables using 3" Base Widths.

I have played Blucher a fair amount at the Guildford Club and it usually gives a good game in 2-3 hours and you get a result.

I took the French, Anthony had the allied British force (as usual!).  Our cavalry corps faced off against each other and we both chose to put the stonger infantry corps in the centre.

The French had 1 extra gun and the British 1 extra infantry units (around 200 points a side).

My right flank took some heavy casualties but I rolled some great melee dice and eventually won the cavalry melee, completely destroying the British cavalry.  With one British unit destroyed in the centre, that broke the British moral and they conceded.

My artillery and fire dice were terrible all evening but I was save by being able to retire damaged units in the centre and Anthony not following up after them.

Some pictures of the action:

54mm Napoleonics for Sale

 

 

 I have updated the for sale page  (link on the right) with some 54mm Napoleonics that are surplus to requirements.

Please contact me here or through mike@blackhat.co.uk if interested.

Cavalry and spare horses will follow.