Vimiero 1808 - Test Game

 Vimiero 1808 is the largest engagement I have tried thus far using Muskets and Marshals, so before having a full crew over to play I wanted to get in a test game.  To that end I had a couple of brave volunteers willing to brave the cool temps in my garage head over to test the game (Thanks to SD and JD for their enthusiasm and great ideas).  Once again the rules performed very well with results that seemed historically based.  I have been consistently pleased at how well this simple set of rules has performed.  I did make a few tweaks to accommodate my big battalions and I wanted to make sure they did not adversely affect game play.  Not wanting to give away the game entirely since there is another bigger game day planned, I'll just present a brief overview of the day's action.

 

Starting positions as a French brigade faces off against three British brigades a few miles North of Vimiero.

 

British assault up the hill.

View from the French side as the battalions clash - Note the skirmishers have retreated behind the line.

Intense fighting at the top of the hill.

The British breakthrough in the center and their right has pushed back the French, but on the left of the line the French have mounted a stubborn defense, delaying the British advance.

Brennier's brigade arrives in the nick of time - maybe too early - with a regiments of Dragoons in the lead.

Lead elements of the British advance around their left flank, form square in the nick of time and the Dragoons flow around the square taking heavy casualties in the process.

The next British regiment suddenly finds themselves unprepared for a cavalry assault and still in line.

More bad news for the British - Colonel Macara of the Black Watch goes down!

On the left of the British line the French refuse to give ground and send one British Regiment streaming to the rear just as a second engages them.  Despite overwhelming odds the French hang on by the skin of their teeth!

Oh the shame of it all!

But what is this?  Major Dornier of the French 69th is down!

More good news for the British as their second flanking battalion form square just as the French Dragoons bug out due to British fire from the first square.

At this point it seemed like a good place to call it for the day, as the next phase of the battle was likely to take some time to resolve.  The game was a great test of the rules and really helped identify a few questions I need to ask, and most importantly, how to calculate the victory conditions and the timing of reinforcements.  Many thanks to SD and JD for their input and of course Stryker over on the Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargame Figures blog, for his development of the rules and willingness to share!

Terrain for Vimiero and Works in Progress

 After taking over ownership of the Tennant collection and starting in on the repairs and re-basing, I thought it would be fun to recreate the early Peninsular War battles using the figures.  Little did I know what an all-encompassing and time intensive endeavor that would be!  The initial online battle was Rolica, fought with Wellington Man of New Zealand using a turn by turn passing of orders and each of us rolling for outcomes and fire results while half a world away.  Almost a full year and a half later I am finally knocking on the door of readiness for the subsequent battle of Vimiero.  

The year is 1808.  The French have fought a successful delaying action at Rolica, but were nonetheless, resoundingly defeated in the field of battle by the aggressive tactics of the British and Portuguese forces under the command of Wellington.  Their sacrifice did however buy enough time for the French forces to combine and converge on the small town of Vimiero, where Wellington lay camped and hopefully (if you are French) unsuspecting of the rapid approach of the French army...

Vimiero was essentially two battles; the battle for the town, and the battle several miles to the North.

 

The northern battle was fought on gently rolling hillsides separated by deep ravines

When scaled to the footprint of the miniature battalions, my wargames table is ~ 1.1 x 0.6 miles, which corresponds to the area of the battle shown above, and centered on the small farm of Ventosa.

 

Construction of the hillside begins with 1/2 inch thick blue insulation foam.

A hot wire foam cutter that I got at half price from the local art store long ago makes short work of trimming the edges, but open garage doors are a must!

Frequent reference checks are required.  The final map is marked with a grid to make the transfer of the hillside shapes reasonably accurate.

Getting there.  The magnifier is essential for reading the contour map!

Still had plenty of left over paint from building the Rolica terrain.

The hillside assembled with roads and rivers added to the ravines.

The main road along the ridge was just painted onto the hills with a thick textured paint made from white glue, sand, water and brown paints.  At this point the battlefield is essentially done and just awaiting the arrival of the troops!

Works in Progress

In the meantime I have been working on a variety of different modeling projects that have piqued my interest over the last month.

After painting the Legion du Midi, I really wanted to paint some figures with well sculpted figures.  The Franznap Bavarian foot artillery is an amazing set with beautifully sculpted figures and details.  Here you see the artillery and limber almost done.

The limber will be pulled by a six horse team.

I realized I need another light infantry Colonel for the Vimiero battle, so here he is coming along.

The Bavarian artillerists

One of the 54mm sculpts from a friend's dad's collection.  I'll be priming the whole piece white shortly now that construction is done.  Getting the light foil of the reins to behave is proving to be a challenge however.

Some guard Chasseurs a Cheval from that collection.  These were quite the challenge to assemble, but if I can ever find the time to paint them will hopefully look truly impressive!

I was inspired to add a bridge to my collection of terrain when I saw a post by Wellington Man featuring a river crossing, so I pulled out the Linka castings I had on hand.  My son had cast up a ton of these from dental plaster, and I had just enough of the required pieces to pull this out of my hat.

The bridge before adding a dilute plaster wash to smooth the joints and the placement of the end pillars.

The diluted plaster really does an amazing job at disguising the seams, but I still wanted to texture the roadway pretty heavily to further hide the joints.

The final piece.  The variegated stone colours add visual interest as well as functions to disguise the seams.  This was a super fun and quick project that really only took a couple of afternoons since all of the pieces were pre-cast.

I hope you have enjoyed this rambling post.  The next post I had hoped would be all about Vimiero, but alas, I miscounted and need to prepare one more British battalion.  The 23rd Welsh Fusiliers are prepped and should be a relatively quick addition as I am only adding a few command pieces.  Until then, stay safe and happy gaming.

Légion du Midi

Légion du Midi

In 1804 the Piedmontese Legion was renamed Legion du Midi. The legion took part in the following battles: Beja (1808), Corogne (1809), Busaco (1810), and Fuentes-d’Onoro (1811).  From: Napoleon's Foreign Infantry - https://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_Napoleon_3.htm

 
 The legion was made of discharged Piedmontese veterans, who probably were occasionally drunk and disorderly. It went into Spain, where it served well enough but gradually fell off in strength to a single battalion. - John Elting

 

Uniforms of the Légion du Midi

 In researching the uniforms for the Légion du Midi, I was fortunate to have Philip Haythornthwaite in my corner, who kindly sent me an extensive description of the likely uniform worn in 1811 as a response to a question I had regarding the shakos and whether cords were worn.
 

Here is the response from Mr. Haythornthwaite:

 

 

Der Kriegspieler Old Guard Grenadiers serving as Grenadiers of the Légion du Midi - note the extra card under the base to give the rather thin bases a bit more heft.

From Napoleonic Uniforms - John R Elting, with illustrations by Herbert Knotel

The Voltigeurs have a similarly altered base, but the most evident change is the removal of cords from the shako, and the replacement of the eagle with the lozenge shaped regimental badge.

A Franznap French line Colonel serving as General de Brigade Jean-Pierre Maransin, who commanded the legion from 1807 to 1811.  From Wikipedia: Maransin participated in Andoche Junot's invasion of Portugal and was stationed in the southern province of Algarve when the revolt against French occupation broke out. When his bedridden commanding officer Antoine Maurin was captured by the Portuguese, Maransin gathered up the troops in the province. These 1,200 men included the Legion du Midi and one battalion of the 26th Line Infantry Regiment. He successfully withdrew to Lisbon via Mértola and Beja.

The officers, drummer and eagle bearer are all Der Kriegspieler with minor modifications, such as the lozenge shaped regimental badge on the drummer's shako along with removal of the cords.  While the Boisselier print emphasizes the helmet style of head wear for drummers, you can also see the more traditional shako peeking out from behind the Drum Major's colpack.

The Chasseurs of the Legion have all had their shako cords removed, regimental plate added from a square of card stock, as well as epaulets and 'lentille' shaped pompom sculpted from epoxy putty.  There is no escaping the fact that DK figures are just thin and weedy however.  Forage was difficult to obtain in Spain for the French, so who knows, maybe the emaciated look of the soldiers is quite accurate.

While this drawing of Boisselier features a Voltigeur, it can be seen that the Chasseur in the background also carries the sabre-briquet, which had to be added to the Der Kriegspieler miniatures at the last minute, as I had missed that detail!

The Legion ready to receive it's paint.

Primed plus!

Almost there...

Le Légion du Midi

Five months from start to finish!

 

Jean Pierre Maransin was promoted Colonel of the Legion in 1807, but must have been well connected, as he was promoted again to General de Brigade in 1808, while retaining command of the Legion.

He is pictured here in the uniform of Colonel.

The natural imperfections of the casting process served well to dapple the rump of his horse.

I really think the Franznap miniatures are the best sculpted figures on the market.

The Legion to the fore!

The eagle is from a set of standards cast by Hagen in Germany, with the wire pole replacing the original cast on thick flag and staff of the Der Kriegspieler figure.

A GMB designs 15mm flag slightly modified was used as the standard, which I have embellished with gold tassels.

Note the swords on the Chasseurs front left.  Originally the cross belts ended in nothing on this side, which was a bit odd.  When I realized the Chasseurs were also equipped with sabre-briquets, I quickly attacked some plastic grenadiers and stole their swords for the role here.

I love the uniforms of the Voltigeurs and Grenadiers especially.

So many back pack and greatcoat straps!

The Legion du Midi was brigaded with the Legion Hanovrienne, which was the inspiration for creating this rather obscure battalion.  Dick Tennant did the original work on the Legion Hanovrienne, so it seemed only right that I finish what he started and paint their companion battalion.

Next up will be something much simpler I hope...