Building Better Communities - Eastern Europe

Slowly my villages are coming along. They will look more impressive when deployed on the battle field, but this will give you some idea anyway.

I now have a nice big "community meeting house" for my early European (mostly German and further east) villages, to go with a sizable collection of small residential houses, so I think I can assemble a pretty impressive looking village on the tabletop.

These buildings will get a lot of use, as I have so many Germanic, Russian and "countries in between" armies that these will be suitable for. Maybe other special buildings can still be added, but I'm happy with what I currently have, so adding to this collection will be a low priority.

Building Better Communities - Celts

Slowly my villages are coming along. They will look more impressive when deployed on the battle field, but this will give you some idea anyway.

My Celtic vilage now comprises one residential dwelling and three store houses for the clan's food. Plus, some fencing to surround the village.

I want to add two more residential dwellings. For a small clan, all buildings might be inside the perimeter fence, or there may be no fence at all. For a larger village, perhaps only the storage huts will be inside the pallisade, with the residential dwelling outside. If there were enough of them, "streets" might begin to appear - not as well paved as Roman (or modern) roads of course, but certainly you could see a distinct pathway.

Hopefully, my collection of buildings for a Celtic village will be complete and fully ready for any tabletop battles I may require it for by the end of June.

Busy weekend - photos to follow!

Except for limbers, my Austria Seven Years War Battalion guns are now done. Just need to take the photos for the blog and book.

Also finished painting my meeting house for my East European villages that will be part of battles featuring East European armies. Also have added a third store house to my Celtic village (two more homesteads to do and that will probably be it), and painted some more walls for my Japanese village.

My various townships are looking in pretty good shape.

April project will be the second infantry unit for my Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth army, to finish that off, then on to Great Northern War Russian and Swedish armies for most of the rest of the year.

Lots still to do!!!

More pics etc coming.......

Been a little pre-occupied over recent weeks. Hopefully I will have these Austrians finished within the next couple of weeks, then on to the other European nations from the 1700s. (especially Russia, Prussia and Sweden.)

I'm also not far from finally finishing my Japanese village so also shots of that coming soon.

Lots going on. Just nothing finished and ready to post!

Back at Bluffton High School Wednesday

My soldiers and I will be back at Bluffton High School Wednesday afternoon (March 9) helping Mike Kracium with one of his history classes.

This time, we will be covering the 100 Years' War.

We'll have about 30 photos for display on the high school Smartboards, which hopefully wil help give the students a better understanding of the period.

Seven Years' War Austrians

Every now and then a new army, or multiple armies, from a "new" period comes along that I want to study, but just can't find the right information to build them up.

Back in the early 1990s, I struck that when new ranges of Austrians and Prussians from the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) suddenly appeared. I could find lots of general info about the period, but virtually nothing reliable on unit organization, and even uniform painting. So I went ahead with a "best guess" option and built an army for each.

"Murphy's Law" then kicked in, and as soon as I had "finished", the very stuff I had been looking for started to appear, telling me all the things I had got wrong, including the uniform colors of the Austrian artillery I was so proud of.

In the intervening years, I have been splitting the blame on an obviously incompetent quartermaster for ordering the wrong uniforms and the clothing factory that messed up his order, depending on my mood. This year though, with Russians and Swedes from the 1700s now also on the shelves, I've decided my major project for this year will be my armies from the 18th century.

I've started on reshaping my Austrian army first up. I've completed my two infantry regiments, each of two field battalions. (I don't really need the third "depot battalion" because that stayed back in headquarters and took care of the routine stuff like recruitment and training.) I'm going with a later Seven Years' War army, simply because I don't want to buy more figures. (In the early part, the battalions formed up in four ranks, in later years, three. Three ranks works better for me with what I have so I'm sticking with that. If I'm fighting an early war battle, then my battalions will be a little under-strength, but that happens in wartime, so I can live with that.)

One of the regiments is pictured above, although the Oberst battalion is standing behind the Lieb battalion, so you don't quite see all the figures - 84 plus officers in this shot. Grenadiers are deployed on the right flank (the left as you look at the photo). In battle, the grenadiers from each battalion were usually split off into a separate grenadier battalion, but for the photo I've kept them together.

I haven't done the battalion gun that will accompany these guys into battle yet - that will happen when I get onto the artillery.

Cavalry will be the next part of the project, as I bring my regiment of dragoons up to speed, and try to figure out whether I can use some of the hoardes of Prussian hussars I have as Austrians. Not sure yet what to do for Cuirassiers (heavy cavalrymen who still wore an armored breastplate into battle - against gunpowder, it gave no extra protection, but apparently it helped the men "feel invincible", so provided them with a morale boost, and it's always a good thing to keep the troops morale up when they're in a fight.)

Enjoy!

Muscovites Vs Swedes - a lesson in patience!

Ugh! It took three weeks to get through that one. A combination of being busy at work and my own laziness.

The battle turned into a real, war of attrition, as the swarms of Muscovite cavalry chipped away and finally overran the Swedish positions.

I really didn't realize just how big this Muscovite army really is until I laid it out on the table. Not all the infantry I painted up was involved, but the huge numbers of light cavalry (including the Sons of Boyars pictured above) just took up so much space.

More than a handful for any opponent.

My next battle will not be a tournament scrap. I have to work on a 100 Years' War presentation for Mike Kracium's history class, so I'll be doing that next.

The next competition battle sees Japanese againnst Poles (the Poles previously lost to the Ottoman Turks and this is the first outing for the Japanese - hopefully I will have their village finished in time to use in the battle.) We'll see how the Japanese can cope, but right now, I'm thinking it will come down to Muscovites Vs Turks in the final battle.