Sunday, April 25, 2021

Vauban's Wars - WSS Dutch to Man the Siege Lines

Good afternoon,

I have just finished my PaperBoys WSS Dutch army for my Vauban's Wars games. I wanted to create a Dutch, British and French War of the Spanish Succession armies to fight siege games with. I have been enamored with PaperBoys by Peter Dennis for years now, and decided to jump in the assembly process last month. As usual, click on the photos for larger images. 


Order PaperBoys PDFs Here and Peter has different collections on his site.

One great advantage of doing Siege games is that you don't need a lot of units, especially for the garrison, and you really only need a single line of figures per base (I like two ranks of figures for my field armies) since they are in trenches or behind fortifications. So I thought what the heck, lets see what I can do with these PaperBoys!

First off the assembly line are the Dutch infantry. Fourteen units! Two Guard, 2 Grenadier, and 8 line units. I'm going to do the French next as that would allow me to fight a siege with them. After that it will be the British on the cutting table.

PaperBoy figures come drawn in 28mm scale, but with a PDF you can scale them as desired. I settled on 62% as that was roughly 16/17mm in size and fits in with my existing 15mm armies. Since I'm doing one rank per stand, each printed sheet will give me two units. Another bonus is I don't need flag stands as they wouldn't have been used in a siege, nor do I need cavalry. I may make some mounted Dragoons at some point, because they come on the dismounted dragoons page in the pdf. 

Quick photo of the entire Dutch Army:


Assembly Method

Print at 62% scale, cut out the figures in blocks, score the paper on the fold lines, glue them together, then cut out the with x-acto knife (hardest part), glue them to the bases, then touch up the edges of the paper soldiers with inks and paint. I haven't decided on the base "flock" or just brown paint for trenches.


Above you can see the four stands of Dutch with yellow cuffs (painted the cuffs as there were red). One of the stands has no folded base so I use either a single office attached to give them strength or glue them directly with a cannon holding them in place while the glue dries.


Below are two Dutch\Prussian units that have not had their edges touched up. You can see their white outline. I'm also messing around with command stands (stand on the right) just for the heck of it. I will add flags to that stand later.


Dutch Army

I'm a bit ashamed that I don't even have names for the Dutch units. I found some uniform guides and just picked a bunch of different uniforms for variety. I'm just calling them Line Unit #1, #2, etc. Any help with names would be grateful. :-) So all figures were edged with Faber-Castell Pens and the bayonets were done in silver acrylic paint. I liked how they turned out.

Dutch Guard - no modifications. (two units)


Dutch Grenadiers - some white coats were turned to grey and blue cuff colors for that stand. There are 9 stands in multiple colors. Vauban's Wars has four stand units so I will make two units out of these stands.


Dutch Line Infantry - here I did the most modifications. Two white units (#1 and #2) were unaltered. The other four, had all their white coats turned to grey. Of those four, one had their cuffs painted yellow with acrylic paint. One had their cuffs painted blue and given blue stockings too. The last one was given red stockings to match the cuff color. One of the red coated units had their white cuffs changed to yellow. The two blue coated regulars have no changes.

Line #1 and Line #2:


Line #3 and Line #4 (here you can see some officers in the line):


Line #5 and Line #6:


Line #7 and Line #8:


Line #9 and Line #10:


How do they look in the fortress? Damn good I think!



For artillery and sappers I will use my existing miniatures. PaperBoys has sappers, but I don't know exactly where to find them. Anyway, I'll post more as I complete them.

Over the Vauban's Wars FaceBook page you can see a siege in action from Geoff Crick. It is a private group so you will have to join to see the the rest of the photos and discussions. You can pick up the rules in hard copy or PDF at the Piquet site, or On Military Matters, or in the UK at Lancashire games.


Cheers!

Eric



Tuesday, April 13, 2021

2020 - A Year in Review

I've looked back on my goals versus accomplishments for 2020 and I did pretty good considering the state of the globe.

First, Happy New Year! May your families be blessed with happiness and health.

I was able to get in 120+ face to face games. MG stands for Miniature Games, while BG stands for Board Games. My list of other goals is after the game list. I would have liked to have gotten in more miniature games, but I was focused on rules writing most of the year.


JANUARY (MG: 0, BG: 9)

 8th - Black Orchestra
15th - Terraforming Mars
18th - Jaws x 2
22nd - ACME 
23rd - 2 x Undaunted: Normandy
29th - SpaceCorp
31st - Champions of Midguard

FEBRUARY (MG: 0, BG: 9)

 1st - Jaws, Champions of Midguard
 5th - Virgin Queen
12th - 3 x Undaunted: Normandy
19th - 218: Hannibal
22nd - Virgin Queen
26th - Storming the Gap - Scenario 4

VIRGIN QUEEN - GAME DAY

FEB 22 - EB, Phil, EC, Brian, Wes, Ben
9:30 to 7:30
Ottoman (Brian)
Spain (Wes)
England (Ben)
France  (Phil)
Holy Roman Empire (EB) - winner!
Protestants (EC)

MARCH (MG: 0, BG: 4)

 4th - 218 BC: Hannibal
 5th - Race to the Rhine
11th - Rurik
21st - Tuscany

APRIL (MG: 0, BG: 1)

 2nd - Raiders of the North Sea


MAY (MG: 0, BG: 22)

 2nd - 2 x Pandemic 
 6th - Crusader Kings
 9th - 2 x Pandemic
13th - Atlantis Rising
15th - JAWS, 2 x Azul
20th - 3 x Table Battles
24th - 2 x Azul, 2 x Fistful of Meeples
25th - Zombicide
26th - Pandemic, 3 x Fistful of Meeples
28th - Terraforming Mars

JUNE (MG: 3, BG: 19)


 1st - Robin Hood, Fistful of Meeples
 3rd - Terraforming Mars
 5th - Culture Wars 
11th - Dungeon Saga 
13th - 2 x Copenhagen, 1 x Fistful of Meeples
17th - Dungeon Saga
20th - 3 x Fistful of Meeples, 2 x Azul
24th - Dungeon Saga 
26th - Tuscany and 2 x Fistful of Meeples
27th - Explorers of the North Sea
29th - JAWS
30th - Viticulture and Fistful of Meeples

JULY (MG: 0, BG: 9)

 7th - Imperial Struggle
 8th - 2 x OP Arena
12th - 2 x Viticulture
15th - 2 x OP Arena
22nd - Game of Thrones + Mother of Dragons
29th - JUNTA

AUGUST (MG: 0, BG: 15)

 4th - Viticulture
 5th - Explorers of the North Sea
 6th - Viticulture & Fistful of Meeples
 8th - Viticulture & Fistful of Meeples
12th - ROOT
15th - 2 x ROOT
19th - ROOT 
22nd - 2 x Azul, 2 x Fistful of Meeples
26th - Nemesis 

SEPTEMBER (MG: 1, BG: 4)

 2nd - Steampunk Rally
 4th - Gaia Project
 7th - Congo
 9th - Gaia Project
30th - Mare Nostrum

OCTOBER (MG: 2, BG: 5)

 5th - 2 x Dungeon Saga
28th - 3 x Quartermaster General
31st - 1 x Tuscany, 1 x Trekking the World

NOVEMBER (MG: 0, BG: 6)

 4th - QMG 1914
11th - QMG WW2 
27th - 1 x Trekking the World , 2 x Azul
28th - ROOT

DECEMBER (MG: 1, BG: 16)

 9th - AuZtralia
13th - Blood Red Sky
13th - Caesar
16th - Junta
20th - Caesar
23rd - Caesar
26th - 9 x My City
27th - Caesar
29th - Caesar
30th - Conquistadors 

ERIC'S 2020 GOALS

  • Publish Vauban’s Wars in the third quarter of 2020. (done!!!)
  • Finish building my PaperTerrain Vauban fortress in 15mm. (done!!!)
  • Finish painting and flocking my 15mm Potemkin Russian forces. (failed)
  • Finish painting, basing, mounting flags, etc for my SYW Russians. (Only need to flock now, all the rest was done) - Blog post on this one coming.
  • Finish flocking my Maximilian collection: Imperials(done), French(done), Republicans (done)
  • Finish my Japanese for the RJW: 2nd division (done), Imperial Guard (done), and 12th Division (TBD)
  • Finish painting Taiping collection, then flock them. (incomplete)

All in all a great year of gaming and project completion.

Still doing lots of gaming in 2021 with over 40 games played so far this year!! May will be a massive Napoleonic festival with wall to wall games and miniature battles in honor of the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's death.