Tactica Review (1) - The Battle of Aboukir

Once again this blog fell silent for a couple of weeks. Again my apologies for but my reason was just since I had to concentrate all my hobby time on finishing my share of our game for Tactica wargaming show namely one unit of redcoats, a rowing boat with 38 figures and a British gunboat. From time to time I didn't believe that I'd make it but delayed holiday, sleep deficiency and negligence of household duties do miracles sometimes. In this context I cannot praise Mrs Monty's patience enough!

Anyway somehow everything was done and finished by Thursday evening and so I set sail to Hamburg on Friday morning with a bag full of miniatures. As I mentioned a couple of times we prepared a game to recreate the Battle of Aboukir which took place on 8th March 1801. From the morning fog there were British landing crafts emerging that told of the advancing landing force under command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie. He brought 17,000 troops to breeze out the French but those are ready to fight their last stand as hard as possible. Once again after Nelson's famous naval victory and after a failed Ottoman landing operation in 1799 the fate of the Orient is decided at Aboukir.

The initial setup with the French on the beach and the British advancing by sea.

28th for Aboukir: First sestet done

This time it's really late that I throw my hat into the ring during our painting challenge but actually I've been hoping to be able to present my interpretation of the 28th Regiment of Foot at Aboukir as a whole. However currently I'm somehow smack in the middle and the deadline for the mandatory first post is coming closer. Thus I have to bring some fellows of the unfinished unit before your critical eyes:

So these are the first five men for the centre companies of the 28th Regiment of Foot during their mission in Egypt in 1801. The figure are actually pieces from the Napoleonic plastics the Perry twin are producing but I severely converted them with parts from several other boxes and some greenstuff. This was of course work from before the challenge but in case that you're interested in it have a look at this post here.

However I decided to go for a rather late version of the uniform worn at Aboukir. For that reason the soldiers are wearing those whitish overalls over their breeches and gaiters. On the one hand I found a picture of this kind of dress in the Osprey book about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and on the other hand I wanted some figures reusable for the later Peninsular campaign. For that I'll create an alternative command group but have the remaining 21 figures versatile.

Anyway we'll need those chaps for our presentation game at Tactica show in February so I have my hands full with painting them. In addition I'm planning to have a version of the unit on board of a landing craft. A bunch of work for a slow painter like me...

Anyway I hope you like those first impressions. Unfortunately I too those pictures before finishing the bases and didn't find to take new ones during the last days. But upon my word I covered them with sand and painted and highlighted them with three shades of sandy colours.

A bunch of conversions - 28th Rgt. of Foot for Aboukir and Peninsular

The annual Painting Challenge is coming nearer and actually I should take time to prepare figures for it. Luckily my lead mountain is filled with primed miniatures so I can use my little time at the workbench to proceed with my contribution to our club's next show project: The British landing at Aboukir 1801.

Besides a couple of boats my largest task is a 24 figure unit of British redcoats that shall respresent the 28th Regiment of Foot. Comparing the different ranges available - mostly of course those perfect 1801 British by Alan Perry - none gave me satisfaction. Excellent figures all around but I wanted to have something more characterful. So I decided to create a unit of conversions:

The whole unit with an additional command for Peninsular

Gunboat for Aboukir - Preparing our 2017 Tactica game...

Since our bloggosphere fellow Miles presented some lasercut kits from Laserdreamworks during the last painting challenge, I've been strolling around the 28mm ships Matthew Green and his team are offering. Lately my friend Bernhard and me were pondering about our Tactica 2017 game and I got roped into preparing some more boats too easily. Our game will address the British landing at Aboukir in 1801 and of course we'd like to have more than the two rowing boats we brought to Hamburg last year. However that brought me back to Laserdreamworks and made their kits even more seducing. Well... 'Landing at Aboukir' implies that we'll not likely present whole Neptun's ocean but a piece of the shallow Aboukir bay and a piece of its sandy coastline of course. So the larger ships dropped out and I went for one of those rather small gunboats.

The kit is based on an improved design by Commisioner Hamilton from 1806 or 1808 but it's well reported that the British employed larger ships than rowing boats at Aboukir before. Unfortunately I'm not au fait enough with naval history to explain the different types of tenders Royal Navy ships carried along during the Age of Sail but as far as I know from different pictures a launch of this gunboats size seems plausible.

Converted Napoleonics WIP

Yesterday evening I had another very pleasant video chat with Dave and Martin during which I kept working on my conversion unit for our Egypt 1801 game at Tactica 2017:

Work in progress

Basically I'm using the Perry Napoleonic British plastics as well as their AWI sets for British and Continental infantry. Those combined give the figures themselves in somehow unusual poses. For our presentation game I wanted to create something special so those and some additional chaps will form a unit which takes a small rest after the exhausting landing at Aboukir. Alan Perry himself inspired me to this conversion project with a Facebook post he published lately.

But a view conversions have to be made to make them credible:

Since the Napoleonic figures have the post-1805 trotter backpack I decided to remove its straps and add a trumpline instead. From my personal point of view that gives them a kind of early war look. Pretty useful for 1801.

Anyway since the cartridge boxes and the water bottles are part of the trotter piece I needed to cut them from the backpack and glue them directly onto the figure.

Luckily the remaining parts of the 1808-1815 figures work rather well because the stovepipie shakos was worn in Egypt as were such trousers or overalls.

On the other hand I didn't want to use 24 trumplines and leave all the AWI troopers without baggage. Thus I decided to make some of the parts I needed by myself. To accomplish this I used an incredible stuff called 'Instant Mold'. Very useful but more on that in another post.

The figures above are pretty much finished but I need to add the shoulder tufts for center companies. Currently I'm not sure how to add flank company soldiers. Most probably I'm not able to sculpt the shoulder wings myself so I'll need to work around that somehow...