Liberators Game using Fire & Fury Rules.

After six months away from the gaming table Mr. Ireland & I finally got together for our customary seasonal game in the "armpit of the year".

The initial set up was as follows:

Patriot forces on left hand baseline, Royalists to the right.

Patriot left wing looking toward Royalists.

Patriot centre.

Patriot right wing.

The object of the game was for the Patriot forces (me) to break the defending Spanish (Paul) and open the pass in the centre of his line.
In view of this objective the first & subsequent turns saw me pushing forward hard across the board to achieve this.
On my right flank the Venezuelan & Colombian cavalry brigade advanced at their fastest pace to attempt to outflank the opposing Royalist Aragon & Cantabria Regiments whilst my sole artillery piece offered long range support.

The 3 shots above show the advance of the Patriot Cavalry to break the  Royalist left wing over 4 turns, having caught the two infantry regiments disorganised by cannon fire.

In the centre things went less well for the Patriot forces, accurate gunfire from the Royalist howitzer on the hill & a spoiling charge from the FernandoVII Hussars slowed down the Colombian Santander & Caracas Battalions, the latter of whom was then shattered by musket fire from the Spanish Burgos Regiment.

A sequence showing the steady attrition of the Patriot centre.

Fortunately the day was recovered to a degree by the charge of the Peruvian Hussars de Junin who in a sharp action broke the Fernando VII Hussars, whilst in the right centre the Bogota Battalion advanced to help mop up the Royalist left.

Clash of the Hussars de Junin & Fernando VII Hussars

The Bogota Battalion pushes forward.

Meanwhile over on the Peruvian flank the 1st Peruvian Battalion & the Peruvian Legion also advanced aggressively to engage the Royalist Talavera Regt & the supporting Hussars de la Concordia, with ultimately mixed fortunes.

A confusing fight on this wing to say the least. The Peruvian Legion & the Talavera Regiment engaged each other in musket fire that would eventually rout the Peruvians but leave the Talavera shattered. While this firefight continued the 1st Peruvian kept the Royalist hussars disorganised with musketry so they were unable to position themselves for a charge. though they did eventually break off to help rout the Peruvian Legion.
At this point we mutually agreed that there was little more the Royalists could do to continue the fight in any meaningful way, with only the Burgos regiment still intact but hopelessly out of position. As the Hussars de Junin (also intact) had a clear route off the Royalist baseline it was agreed that the Patriots had won a minor victory, though with such huge losses that any subsequent campaigning for the year was likely to be out of the question.
All in all a very enjoyable & well balanced game. We keep returning to the Fire & Fury ruleset as we both find it easy to interpret although we were a bit rusty through the first couple of turns, but that is to be expected after a 12 month lay off.
Happy 2013 everyone & thanks for all your kind remarks during 2012.

The Opposing sides for the Thirtieth.

Here they are as promised:

Spanish 1st Division.

Spanish 2nd Division.

Spanish Reserve & additional command.

Gran Colombian Division.

Peruvian Division.

Patriot Cavalry Division.

Patriot Command.

Theres a few bits and pieces to finish off before Sunday but the above should, I hope, give a flavour of whats in store.

The Seasonal Wargame. A South American Battle.

A belated Merry Xmas.

After the bacchanalian orgy that formed the cornerstone of my festive season despite all my best intentions normal service has been resumed here at HGA Towers. Being as both Mr. Ireland and myself are under employed because of construction industry shutdown between Christmas & New Year this is when we usually get to physically war-game rather than just talk about it wistfully. So in respect of this yearly tradition we will be getting together on 30th instant to play a small South American War of Liberation battle using Regimental Fire & Fury rules.

The battlefield will be set up on an 8'x4' table roughly as follows:

Notable geographical features include two large but low hills on the Spanish baseline, two small but fast flowing water courses running roughly parallel across the battlefield & a small ruined farm on the patriot baseline.

The entirely fictional scenario will have the Spanish defending the pass between two hills against a slightly larger Patriot force, these will consist:

Spanish/ Royalist.

1st Division.
Burgos Regt 1 stand grenadiers, 4 of fusiliers & 2 of lights.
Talavera Regt 1G, 4F, 1L
Husares del Concordia 3 Squadrons

2nd Division
Cantabria Regt 1G, 4F, 1L
Aragon Regt 1G, 3F, 1L
Dragones del Peru 2 Squadrons

Cavalry Reserve
Husares de Fernando VII 3 Squadrons

1 Medium Artillery piece.

Patriot.

Gran Colombian Division.
Bogota Infantry Battalion 1G, 4F, 1L
Caracas Infantry Battalion 1G, 3F, 1L
Santander Infantry Battalion 1G, 4F, 1L

Peruvian Division.
Peruvian Legion 1G, 4F, 1L
1st Battalion 4F, 1L

Cavalry Division.
Husares de Junin (Lancers) 4 Squadrons
Venezuelan Husares Los Colorados 2 Squadrons
Dragones de Colombia 2 Squadrons

1 Light Artillery piece.

Frankly I've no idea how this will play out with regard to balance etc, we'll just pull the trigger & see what happens.
Hopefully if there's time later I'll take a few pictures of the various commands as a further taste of things to come.

Liberators! Royalist Command Base.

As promised earlier this weekI have completed another Spanish command base featuring the part finished Fernando VII hussar featured earlier this week.

 Turned out a little differently to how I originally had it imagined, the hussar looks rather keener on murdering his two bickering superiors than reporting to them. Note also the allegorical road to ruin represented by the cobbled area, some of that art history must have crept in un-noticed all those years ago.
In other news I finally managed to score a copy of Bar Kochva's work on the Seleucid army. Cambridge University press had put it back in print at around £ 70 which was a little harsh for my tastes, but I found one at an online bookseller for £28.00 inc p&p so treated myself to an early Christmas present.

I've only scanned through it as yet but the Holiday period should provide ample opportunity for a proper read, could this foreshadow a return to some serious ancients painting & gaming next year?

Colonel William Miller. Peruvian General.

I don't know whether it was too much strong drink or the fever accompanying a winter cold I have at the moment but last night I went mad and attempted a couple of more ambitious conversion attempts.
It started off simply enough, I needed another Royalist command base & to this end I knocked up this dismounted Fernando VII hussar:

He consists of the torso of a Perry French hussar with repositioned right arm, a Victrix British infantry head & the lower half of a Perry British infantry officer. The intent is to have him reporting to a couple of senior officers straight from action, hence the bandage & drawn sabre.
So far so good, nothing vaguely remarkable here.
As the night progressed I was looking at the top half of the unfortunate British officer whose legs are now trapped out in fetching canary yellow & started wondering what possible use I could make of him; the Perry sets only having limited command figures I wanted to extract maximum useage from them. What my fevered ( intoxicated) mind came up with was this:

All of the parts came from Perry miniatures sets, Horse & riders legs from the French Hussars set and riders torso, head & arms from the British infantry command sprue. I had to remove the blanket roll from the back of the saddle to accommodate the tails of the jacket, which also had to be thinned down to fit over the riders buttocks. All in all though remarkably little work to achieve a reasonable facsimile of Colonel William Miller, commander of the Peruvian Legion. As always there may be a few liberties taken; I can't tell from the single picture I have of him whether the jacket should have long tails or not, obscured as they are by his fetching poncho. He perhaps should have different horse furniture as well, but this is what I had to hand so in my usual pragmatic style it got used.

Making further use of my recently acquired Perry boxed set I've added another company of Peruvian infantry to the collection:

Up to now I've been using some left over Victrix British infantry for Peruvians, but having now tried out the Perry Miniatures version of the same won't be going back for the simple reason that the arms fit to the torsos a lot better. Some of the Victrix body & arm combinations are a little awkward to fit together convincingly, whereas the Perry figures don't suffer from this problem.

Patriot Light Bobs.

Despite needing to finish more Spanish troops for the South American project I found myself distracted away again. As much as they look great those Spanish uniforms with their differently coloured lapels, turn backs & collars are fiddly to paint; its really difficult to establish any sort of rhythm with them. This was the main reason why the project stalled earlier this year.
So to give my poor blasted brain a short reprieve I swapped to painting some much needed light infantry for their opponents:

Peruvian Light Infantry.

Venezuelan Rifles.

The Venezuelan rifles are plastic Perry miniatures which translate perfectly into the South American theatre, the Peruvians are the usual mix of Victrix British & French plastics.

Hopefully will be back in the painting groove tomorrow, still recovering from a weekend of debauchery. I'm too old & really should know better by this time of life.

Prototype Peruvian Fusilier.

Some one was kind enough to post up an OOB for the Battle of Ayacucho over on the Liberators! forum & usefully included details on the uniforms of the various participants including the titular Peruvians. Up to now the only pictorial reference material I've had at hand has been the venerable Osprey title and whilst its a useful volume its hardly what you'd call in depth. There is a description of Peruvian uniforms but this seems to be for the earlier years of the wars so not relevent to the later campaigns that I'm interested in. So this is where the brief descriptions in the aforementioned OOB comes in; the author notes that the Peruvian infantry at Ayacucho wore French style shakos & had six rows of braid on their jackets similar to Napoleonic British patterns.
The resulting mash up of Victrix plastics has yielded this fine chap:

As ever I'm sure there are a few fine points of detail that aren't entirely accurate, but it does allow me to use up more plastic figures thus keeping the project budget down.

Liberators! Royalist Artillery etc.

Very steady progress is still being made in preparation for Boxing Days South American Wars of Liberation (henceforth known as SAWLs) game. Most recently off the production line is a Spanish artillery piece:

These fine chaps are an even bigger hash up than usual being a mixture of Victrix French heads & bodies and British artillery arms & 5 1/2" howitzer. What information I can glean on Spanish artillery in  theatre indicates they should have jackets not French style tunics, but until something suitable comes out in plastic they will have to serve.
In addition I've been bringing some of the other Royalist Battalions up to strength, first up a light company for Cantabria Regiment:

and a partly complete command group for Aragon Regt. :

Don't ask why I decided to add a pelisse to the one fella, perhaps he's holding it for a friend, maybe he feels the cold or its remotely possible I just may have been slightly pissed during this phase of the project.

Anyway moving swiftly on there's more Aragon Regiment in the pipeline along with another Peruvian Battalion for the Patriots which being frank is all I'm going to be able to squeeze in before Boxing Day. This will give us 5 foot battalions for the Patriots & 4 for the Royalists, 3 variously sized regiments of cavalry per side & one piece of artillery each, not a massive game by any means but playable in a day when taking into account eating & shooting the breeze etc.

Liberator! Royalist Aragon Regiment.

After a short discussion with my regular opponent Mr. Ireland last weekend the theme for our Boxing Day game this year is going to be South America, although we may yet squeeze in a quick ancients game as well depending on how things go. In view of this decision a certain amount of finger pulling out is required to field enough figures for a decent sized game, so in pursuance of this goal I've started another regiment of Spanish infantry:

As ever these are Victrix Miniatures with a paint job conversion, they're not perfect by any means but for a gamer on a budget ( some would say 'tightarse') they substitute very nicely.
More to follow soon.