Tigers 3 and 4

The third of the Louisiana Tigers miniatures is somewhat different from the run-of-the-mill.

This is another in my series of miniatures-cobbled-together-from-bits. In this case Warlord Games Ancient Briton legs and War of the Spanish Succession torso, mated with Perry ACW arms, head and cartridge case.

The aim was to capture the feel of a Zouave who's discarded his blue jacket and is instead wearing his red undershirt and non-uniform trousers.

I'm going to revisit the paint job slightly. The stockings into which his trousers are tucked need to be in a slightly more contrasting colour.

Figure four started out as a stain-painting experiment. His flesh and blue jacket were painted with heavily watered-down acrylics over a white undercoat. 

I applied a mid-brown wash over the whole miniature.

I'm not particularly happy with the result but he'll look OK when ranked up with twenty-odd similar figures.

 

Tiger 2

The second of my Louisiana Tiger zouaves is done! 

This is similar to the first in painting style. I have actually done the jacket using a three-colour approach. The base colour is Vallejo Dark Blue with Intense Blue shadows and the highlights done by adding a little white to the Dark Blue. The result is quite subtle when seen in real life and even more so in photographs.

The trouser stripes are in Intense Blue and I'm quite pleased with the effect. I've used a brown wash on the gaiters and haversack.

Figure 3 was going to be an attempt at using the stain-painting technique (a predecessor to commercially available "speed paints") but the lack of large areas on single colour on these figures means it's not really achieving much. Look out for a significant departure from the approach so far in the next figure!

Sharp Practice Scenario Generator

Regular readers of this blog (I know there are a few of you) will know that I've been working towards  a mini-campaign set during the 1812 French invasion of Russia. Rather than going with the well-known march to and retreat from Moscow, the plan is to cover Marshal Macdonald's advance towards Riga with a corps made up almost entirely of German and Polish troops.

Inspired by the approach used in Osprey's Rogue Stars sci-fi skirmish rules, I decided to have a go at a random scenario generator for the campaign. The following system doesn't try to establish every single detail of a scenario. Instead treat it as a source of ideas; you'll still need to nail down some of the details by agreement (if you don't have an umpire).

To generate a Sharp Practice scenario, start out by rolling a D20 to get an idea of the general terrain on the table:

If a village shares the table with terrain that precludes farming, eg forest or boggy ground, the village is (or was) inhabited by Jewish traders and artisans. They are used to being attacked so their caches of food are well hidden. Add 5 to the foraging Task Values.

Next we need to roll twice (once for each side) to see what orders our respective detachments have been given:

Finally roll once on the Complications Table to find those unpredictable items that make life even more, well, complicated!

These tables reflect the Narrative Snippets I've captured while reading contemporary accounts of 1812 and other campaigns in Napoleonic Eastern Europe. I plan to treat this as a living document and add to or amend the plot elements as my reading continues.

There's no reason this approach can't be adapted for other campaigns in the Napoleonic era or at other times.