Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Friday 31 October 2014

Background Artillery Project - Surprise Landmark

Yesterday I finished off another British artillery caisson, and was very surprised to find that I had one more caisson than I thought, so I have now reached the target of one limber plus one caisson per battery rather earlier than I expected. Here's the contents of the Anglo-Portuguese artillery boxes, as of this morning. The target organisation of my battlefield artillery is: each battery has 2 model guns, 1 limber (with gun attached permanently - no more dropping spare guns on the floor for me), 1 caisson; horse artillery limbers have 4 horses, all other vehicles have 2 horses - it cuts down on the space requirement (and the horse painting!) and you get used to the look of the thing.

Allied Box 1 - 6 British artillery batteries (3 horse, 3 foot), plus a Portuguese howitzer
battery on an odd-sized base (can't remember why), plus the recently-added British
howitzer battery, which is in here only because I ran out of room in Box 3
Box 2 - a limber and a caisson for each of the British batteries (note 4-horse teams
 for RHA limbers), plus a limber (with mules) for the Portuguese howitzers, plus the new
(weird) spare wheel wagon
Box 3 - mostly siege stuff - 3 heavy (18/24pdr) siege batteries, 2 of the iron M1800 10" howitzers,
2 of mortars, 1 rocket battery, plus a couple of those strange S-Range shot-carts
Siege equipment has no limber provision (sieges are chaotic enough without a car park), and all (most?) of the siege pieces have mud-brown bases, with slightly modified sizes and crew sizes.

This is indeed a small and fleeting landmark - the Allies are now a bit ahead in the Infrastructure Race - the French and their Confederation chums have some 8 or 9 half-painted limbers, so there's lots to do. Idle hands are, as we know, the Devil's wassname. However, this has been a quick squint inside some of my boxes; if I am spared, I'll show inside the French boxes when the time is right.

I realise that organised is not the same as good, but it helps a lot. Note to myself: ECW campaign notwithstanding, I really must do some more Peninsular sieges...

In passing, I was reading my Carl Franklin book on artillery last night, and started working out the column length of a RHA troop on the march, with all the guns, ammo carts, service equipment, supply vehicles and animals plus mounted gunners - I didn't finish the calculation, but the numbers were getting very big. If an RHA troop marched past your house, it would be passing by for quite a while.

7 comments:

  1. Very well done. I can well understand your sense of satisfaction upon seeing this collection completed.

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  2. When artillery train makes it into the finished box, the project is, indeed, nearing completion. At least for me, that would be the case. I have a distaste for painting limbers but we must press on, right?

    Nice project!

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  3. That's the wargamers equivalent of finding twenty quid in your pocket that you never knew about! Looks impressive I must say.

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  4. That is very impressive indeed! Is there any likely scenario using your favoured rule system where you might get to field the whole lot?

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  5. Thank you all, gentlemen - I think my wish to show them off a bit was largely as a result of my surprise that they got this far! Ian - field the lot at the same time - very unlikely - this is really just the completist sickness in action - the whole army might take part in a campaign, of course, and all the siege stuff might appear together. I've been thinking about setting up a full double-width C&C game, along the "Epic" or "Overlord" style, and oversized C&C is one rule-set which might handle such big armies - sadly, it doesn't really have any use for limbers etc! Apart from that, I'd need to paint a few extra boards, find something to stand them on (folding tables?) and hire a church hall - I'd also need to come up with some friends to help out - that might be the stopper...

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    Replies
    1. Sounds great - I'd just have to sneak off past Mrs S next time I'm in Edinburgh so count me in!!!

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  6. That's the problem with the big projects: you never can show them at full in the table. I can not remember how many Old Guard units I own. :-)
    Best regards
    Rafa

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