More House Building..

 Still working on the Dutch style houses.

This is the prototype for the 1/3 relief houses that will sit on the back of the city board giving the illusion of more houses, etc behind.  Still need to make a couple of tweaks - they will be in strips of 3 mainly. I have left the fronts separate so I can mix and match.

These are the 4 style of house front I've drawn up so far - will probably add a couple extra and also want to do a couple of shops and perhaps a couple with slightly different window arrangements.

Onto shutters next as my 1mm card has arrived.

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.

Dutch/Belgian Style House

Finished cutting the first protoype house for the city of Dendermonde.

Still need to make some changed to how the walls connect to make it easier to put them together.  Next stage is to find some 1mm card and cut some shutters to go round the windows. And add a chimney.

It is deliberately downscaled against the 25mm figure so it has a smaller footprint.

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.

 

 

New Year - some sorting out.

 

I decided that if I really am going to crack on with the Dendermonde scenery I need to have it setup so I can tinker when I feel like it.

This is the city half of the board setup on a 4' x 6' at the end of the games room.  I decided in the end to go with 6' wide and not compromise the size of the city walls.

I still have space for a 6'x 4' table for games when I need it.

I spent some time yesterday cutting 11 more hex board to complete the base board and I can start to spray the city boards grey and the ditch boards brown (they will eventually be textured) to give a better feel of how the areas split up.

I spent some time drawing up plans for the glacis and laying big bits of paper to get a feel for size and shape - a couple more revisions should have the base areas of the Glacis worked out.

I have also planned where the citadel and the ditch surrounding it will go and settled on a 75mm x 95mm footprint for the basic houses.  I will also be adding a set of 1/4 depth houses along the back of the board to give the illusion of more housing, etc.

I printed out some Gabions I had downloaded and resized them to 75% to get what seems to be about the right size.  These will be combined with laser cut trench sides and either plaster or DAS to create siege lines.

Finally I started sorting through the Minifigs French and British Grenadiers that I picked up on Facebook before Christmas for less then £1 each.  I'll be adding French Grenadiers and some extra officers to bring the units up to 24 strength.  The painter has picked units with all the same facing colours, so it will be easy to mix them, and I'll probably repaint some stockings, etc to distinguish the units.

Still lots to get on with....

And on to Austrians...

 I have some HAT Austrians that I intend to paint at some point (some are currently painted as British, French and Dutch!) so I thought I'd tried printing a 54mm Austrian Cavalryman as a test.

Still needs some cleaning up but looks pretty good.

The cavalryman took 2 hours to print, the horse 5 hours.  I have a load of spare painted 54mm Napoleonic horses in the loft that I am not using, so I'll see if he will fit on one of those which might be easier to produce a unit.

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