History

History
History is Fun

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The Corps de cavalerie, 1759-1760

Happy New Year!!

Well I have continued to have some time to paint and today I was able to start and finish this unit of miniatures.  This is for our clubs games of F&I War using the Donnybrook skirmish rules.  This is the dismounted portion of the unit, I have the mounted figures ready to paint up int 2015.


Check out the information here at this site for the history of the unit: History of the unit




I have always wanted to paint up this unit and I finally found someone who makes the figures in 28mm. Redoubt Enterprises is the company that makes them.  They are good figures but the faces are all the same and these are probably old molds.  Check out the line of F&I Miniatures here: F&I Miniatures



I will get some more F&I Figures in this coming year, both French and British as well as the great Indian Miniatures that are now available.




Thank you to all of you who have starting to follow me over the last 3 months. It has been great restarting my painting and learning new techniques for painting miniatures.  I still need to work on faces and particularly eyes. 

Have a great 2015 and keep tuned for more Wargaming in Sweden!!!

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Battle of Chancellorsville

Good morning everyone!
I hope all is well in your parts of the world!

The Generals place there troops
     I wanted to do a quick write up of a great game of Black Powder that our club had this weekend. Soren put the game together and it consisted of all the tables in our humble club placed side by side to provide a battle space that represented parts of Fredricksburg to Chancellorsville VA. There were a total of 5 players, 3 Union and 2 Confederate.
  
     BLUF: The Union was able to win, Two of the 3 Confederate "Army's" broke and only one of the 3 US "Army's" It was a good game and there were a lot of opportunities for the game to go the other way.  One of the key points was that elements from the 11th Corps who started disordered were able to rally and hold the line for a few turns, this gave the Union time to stabilize his lines and then start to beat back the Confederate onslaught.

Enjoy the pictures and check out Dalauppror's Page for more pictures.  Link

Southern Cav behind the Union lines

Ambulance doing it's work as the Confederates push forward

Check out this link to the Wikipedia page on Chancellorsville: Link

Lee in the Center pushing on the Union defensive position

The troops under my command before crossing over the pontoon bride in Fredricksburg
Also check out the animated history page as well! Link

The bridge into town

Lee overlooks his troops

My troops before the game began

The initial Confederate position

Another view of the field of battle

The center of the Union line in Chancellorsville

A closeup of the troops

A view of the union line in Chancellorsville

The rear of the Union Army in Chancellorsville being overrun by Confederates

A view of the Union Center at the beginning of the game





The Confederates work to eliminate the last units of 11th Corps

My units taking some early hits

I start moving my 3 units across the river to support my 2 units holding the bridge

The rear of the Union line still holds

Southern Cavalry coming to stop my force from crossing the bridge

Four out of five of my units on the west side of the river

Bobby Lee moving to add pressure to the Union center

Another shot of the Union rear. Things are not going well for the Union

My situation before the arrival of the Confederate cavalry and the Confederate unit on Marye's Heights

My situation as I finish deploying my five units on the Fredricksburg side of the river

My units are formed and move forward to fire on the enemy

A view of my side of the battlefield as one of the Confederate units breaks from fire from the Artillery and Infantry

The Confederates assault the Union center and fail to take the defensive works

The Confederates also launch an attack on my position

Both my left and right flank is hit by charging Confederate units, one of my units routs and one of the Southern units runs as well.

My end position, I lost one unit out of my five and the Confederate lost three of the four units he sent to stop me.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my post.

Mark

Friday, December 26, 2014

Merry Christmas!!! WWI US Navy ships

Hi all!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas!
I know I did! I got some great gifts and had some excellent food with some great people!
I also received something I have been wanting for a while, that is time!
I had time to day to pick up the paint brush and paint some more ships!

Today I present to you the Pre-Dreadnought USS Rhode Island and the Dreadnought USS New York.
  
USS New York
The USS New York served as the flag ship for the US Naval detachment that sailed to England to join the British Fleet during the later part of WWI.  She was the last of the Dreadnaughts before the building of the Super Dreadnoughts.  The USS Arizona falls into the Super Dreadnought category of Battleships. The USS. New York is the first of two ships that are in the New York class Battleship. The sister ship to New York is the USS Texas, which joined the first four US Battleships in England a number of months after the first ships arrived in England.  The USS Texas is still afloat! She is a museum ship in Houston Texas and you can get some information on the ship here: battleship-texas

Here are my painted versions of these ships.

Enjoy!!



Here we have all three WWI Era ships that I have from GHQ, The Rhode Island, New York, and Arizona.

Top view of the USS Rhode Island.


Great view of the ship, the Virginia Class Battleships had a unique turret configuration.

All three ships in Battle line.

Another view of the ships in battle line.


Here are the ships with there data sheets for the game.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

BB-39 USS Arizona WWI

Good evening everyone!
I hope all is well and everyone is getting ready for Christmas and New Year.  It is nice to be in Stockholm and to hear Merry Christmas not Happy Holidays like in the state. This is Christmas time!!!

Well I have been busy with work and preparing for Christmas so my painting has suffered from this increased activity.

I switched from painting my WWII German Naval ships to my WWI ships. Currently I have 3 US Navy ships from WWI, I have only painted one and that is USS Arizona.  I have lived in Arizona and I have also been to Pearl Harbor to see the final resting place of this ship.

The miniature is from GHQ and it is very well cast and is of the highest quality.  It was easy to assemble and to paint.


The US Ships of WWI had a very distinctive look because of the conning towers that were designed to be light weight while being strong enough to withstand battle damage.  So this is what the USS Arizona looked like when she was commissioned in 1916. At the time she was the biggest Battleship in the world.

Here is a link to great article about the USS Arizona and I recommend reading it for anyone who is interested in the history of this great ship.  BB-39



Well I will leave you for now and Starting Wednesday of this week I will be on Christmas break from work and I will be doing some painting.

Here is a previously unknown picture of the USS Arizona in Stockholm in 1918.  
This was discovered in the National Archives this past week.
 (this is just me having fun with my photo editor)


Have a good weekend