Last Riga Rehearsal

Andy and Gus came over on Sunday and I was able to run through a final practice game before running A Spy in the Suburbs at Steel Lard.

I can't give too many details here as I don't want to forewarn players about the details of the scenario but I'm happy that a two-player variant of the four-player game worked reasonably.

The table layout is finalised and I just need to number the models under their bases to speed up the process of setting up the game on the day.

Unfortunately Richard P was unable to join us with his Russians so it looks like the first run-through of the game with the right figures will be at Steel Lard. Jamie's French Revolutionary Wars models (and a few of my Woebetides sailors) were used to stand in for the absent Russians and Royal Navy types.

For example, here we see some French militia types standing in as Cossack skirmishers...

They seemed to quite like spending time knee-deep in Riga's open drains. As this particular drain runs between the market's pigsties and cattle corral we can make an informed guess as to its contents.

A new addition this time was this Tangent Models figure of Major Ducos (or B-stard as they call him) from the Sharpe TV series. In our case he was standing in as Colonel Têtard de Crapaud of the French Imperial Guard. He was purchased at Fiasco last weekend and needs another coat of matt varnish before I'm entirely happy with him.

The Golden Hind

I'm currently enjoying building models and painting them regardless of any future gaming usefulness. Yesterday saw me dig out two rather battered old examples of the Airfix Golden Hind kit. This is the old kit that dates back to the mid-1950s, not the newer 1/72nd scale kit they produced in recent years. I reckon this model is about 1/350th scale so it could in theory work alongside my Great Northern War 6mm armies.

The two models, which had been built probably in the late 1970s, were both somewhat damaged but I managed to get one half-decent model out of them.

I did consider having a go at rigging the model but in the end I decided against as I don't have any suitable thread and I'd rather just get the model done to a useable wargaming standard.

I haven't added any flags at this stage as I thought it would be good to keep it as generic as possible until I have a scenario that needs a ship. 

Pictish cavalry

A recent addition to the Pict force is this unit of horse.

They are Gripping Beast's generic Dark Age Cavalry modified by the addition of various parts from their Dark Age Picts set.

The modifications are straightforward - just swapping out heads and shields mostly. For a bit of variety, the chap in the purplish tunic has a beard added from Green Stuff and I replaced his spatha with a shorter sword from the Pict set and added the appropriate scabbard from the same source.

These models complete the set I need for a planned Lion Rampant 2 play through of the old "Ambush!" scenario from an ancient copy of Military Modelling magazine (or was it Battle for Wargamers). When I've done that I might have a go at re running it with Infamy Infamy.

Getting my head around X Corps

Having recently found Edward Foord's Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812 on Project Gutenberg, I thought I'd have a go at updating my homemade timeline of the Riga/Livonia campaign and really getting a handle on what happens when and, more importantly, where.

I've laid out the map of Latvia I bought when we visited the country in 2006. 

Naturally life is not simple. The map is double sided and the actions of Grawert's Prussian Division in the Mitau-Riga sector are on the opposite side from Granjean's 10th Division around Dünaburg.

Add to that the fact that everywhere has two names (Mitau/Jelgava, Gross Ekau/Iecava, Dünaburg/Daugavpils), most Russian commanders have at least two English transliterations of their names, and all events happened on two different dates depending which calendar was used by the people recording them.... I think I may need to go and lie down soon.

More architecture for Riga

I've finished a few more bits of 1812 Riga including the partly burned-out house I showed previously.

As usual (for me, nowadays) this is foamcore and balsa wood on an expanded PVC board base. The base is scribed as flagstones using an old ball-point pen. The stable block is roofed with Merit pantile sheet while the main house is laser-cut tiles mixed with home-made equivalents after I ran out of the commercial ones.

Also from foamcore and PVC board is this cluster of pig pens. I'll probably addd some gates to the individual pens made out of thin wood from the wooden boxes that camembert cheese comes in. 

Finally, as one side of the Riga board seems increasingly to be representing an area of former animal market, I've created a couple of mostly depleted haystacks.

As I said in the previous post, these are made from wooden rod, a couple of map pins and sculpted Milliput.

I think Riga is pretty much finished now. Anything else I add is purely for decoration and won't play a significant role in game play. 

 

On the workbench - sort of

Further progress of terrain for Riga...

A bit hard to see as the sun is quite low in the sky over my usual photography spot but this is another cluster of buildings for the suburbs. I've just spray undercoated it and will start on painting tomorrow.

Also under way is this pair of haystacks. I'm assuming that the area of the suburbs that has animal corrals for the market (one of them features in my terrain set) would have some space for animal feed. I'm working on a small piece of muddy ground (left over from my experiments in making terrain cloths) and these two will stand on it when complete.

As you can see the structure is built around a piece of wooden rod. I topped both rods with a round map pin for decoration. The shape of the mound of hay is built up from foam core offcuts. I then added layers of Milliput caved into a believable pattern with a craft-knife blade. This is basically an adaptation of the approach I use for thatched roofs.

Picts Finished!

The recently acquired box of Gripping Beast Picts is done. I now have four units of Pictish warriors and two of skirmishers for use with Lion Rampant.

There were 25 models in the box and they can be made up with a mix of axes and spears (oh and one sword). That was fine to give me two units of twelve tribal warriors.

There are also a few crossbows and one spare figure left over. Could I possibly find a way of cobbling together a unit of skirmishers too?

Digging through the piles of leftover bits I found a half-completed figure I'd built out of Greenstuff and spare parts. He was originally going to be a generic Dark Ages archer but the Medieval longbow I'd used just looked too big. I cut off the hand holding the bow and replaced it with a crossbow from the Gripping Beast box. Two down, four to go!

Then I found some unused GB Dark Ages Warriors left over from when Jamie was building his Saga warbands. A couple of white metal short bows and scratchbuilt arrow quivers and I was up to five figures (I left one of the figures with a spear - I don't see the Picts as organising themselves into differentiated units by weapon type).

Finally, a white metal wolf left over from a long-ago Hordes of the Things project enabled me to add a sixth figure to the unit in the form of a hunting dog.

This gets me to a 20 point force for Lion Rampant (I'm using David Sullivan's Crepusculum Imperii variant stats). I might see if I can cobble together a light cavalry unit to complete the picture.