WSS: A Gratuitous Group of Glossy Generals

 I've been picking away at some more generals, and am pleased with the results. Pretty run-of-the-mill 20mm chaps really, but the progress is welcome after a bit of a wait.

 

This is (or could be) Earl Cadogan, accompanied by his faithful companion, Jupiter, who is black entirely because I cribbed it from Aly's blog

 

 

Normally I'm not really in favour of British Generals wearing cuirasses over their uniform coats, but this fellow is obviously some form of flaky cavalry commander or similar, so I'll take him on; he even has a moustache, for goodness sake

 

 

The main French Command Stand; the grey coat on the Grand Fromage is taken from a photo of a painted sample on the Front Rank website. My research does sometimes use secondary sources, I admit it

 

Two gentlemen from Hesse-Kassel. The chap on the left has a very old-fashioned hat, but he's a Les Higgins sculpt that I like very much. The more characters in my army, the better. His colleague is an Irregular casting, and this is the first official sight of a new experiment, standing Irregular foot figures on little brass discs, to give a better match in height and general appearance with the Higgins lads

***** Late Edit *****

I meant to mention this, because it made me laugh, but I forgot, so here it is, as an afterthought.

It will be apparent that the photos above were taken with the help of my new light-box, which is still quite unfamiliar. I took lots of photos, kept the ones I liked best, cropped them, resized them and all that.

When I had everything ready for the post, I was nonplussed to see something very strange had happened to my selected picture of the Hessian officers - exactly what had happened was a mystery, but the picture was faulty. It was apparent that a small child with a pencil had scribbled on the photo - a strange, rambling scribble, but definitely a scribble. Since I had seen neither children nor pencils during my photo shoot I was once again thinking in terms of some weird conspiracy to gaslight me.

However, when I went back to the original version on my camera, the mark was still there. You couldn't see it until the photo was zoomed, but the scribble was there. It was also present in some other shots I had taken at the same time, and the penny dropped. My light-box is held together with velcro - yards of it - round all the edges; it folds flat for storage, and you assemble it like a play-tent. The velcro had obviously captured a long (man-made) fibre from the sleeve of my winter sweater, and it had attached itself to the figure stand. It was almost impossible to see with the naked eye, but, once I had cropped and enhanced the picture, there it was. 

 

Original version, with supernatural digital scribble... [Click on this for a clearer view]

Easily fixed - the light-box was still set up, I just turned the lights back on and took a couple more photos. Tip for the future: consider wearing a wet-suit during light-box sessions...

*********************

WSS: Just One More, Then

 Time to tidy up my brushes and paint pots, and get my desk cleared ready to fettle some more figures for proper painting. The plan is to get another package of WSS soldiers away to Lee later this week. 

Since I was pleased with my work on generals over the last week or so, I did one more quickie before the tidying starts. This extra figure is one of Eric Knowles' veterans - a wash in warm water, a bit of freshening of colours and some minor chip repair, a coat of new varnish and we're done. Otherwise the figure is as it was when it arrived here 3 years ago. I have no idea what the uniform or the army is, but this period is great for randomly dressed officers. The number of minor principalities which took part, and the complicated (and sometimes fleeting) alliances, not to mention the vagaries of personal vanity and non-military garb, all mean that a General officer will never go to waste - there is plenty of scope for lending them out as need arises!

Nothing particularly special about this man and his horse; this is Les Higgins MP23, the only mounted officer in the original range, complete with baton. One noteworthy point in this case is that this really is a remarkably clean, sharp casting, so it must be a very early example. This fellow must have spent many years lying in one of Eric's cucumber boxes, in his best fighting gear, just waiting for the call.

His cuirass and general appearance suggest to me that he might be a German of some sort - maybe a cavalry commander - but which army he will appear in is up for grabs. Whatever - willkommen.

Ironically, a small parcel of new W&N Series 7 brushes arrived from CurtisWard yesterday, so I'll look forward to getting them into operation sometime soon, but for the moment, apart from being carefully counted and checked over, they can have a rest until my next painting session.

WSS: British Command Group - Eventually!

 It's taken me a while, but I've finally painted up some companion figures to complement the splendid British General that Aly Morrison painted for me last December. So, suitably varnished and based, here they are.

The riders are all Irregular figures. The Commander's horse is an OOP Morion 30YW casting, the other two horses are by Les Higgins. The Commander has been sitting on a temporary single stand since December (he did get a walk-on role in my Battle of Ober Eschenbach, however, in May), so that's another worthwhile tick in a box.

Thanks again to Aly, of course, and to Old John for the Morion horse. The trumpeter is straight from the pages of Osprey's "Marlborough's Army". Once again, I am reminded that I must set myself up with a proper light-box and take some better photos of these armies!

***** Late Edit *****

Further to comment from David (below), here are the existing Command stands with flags for the Bavarians and Austrians. Nothing very clever!

*********************

WSS: Some More Generals

 I've been working away at some more WSS general staff figures for a few days. I have a couple more examples of the new casting ready for duty:

 

Another French one...

 

 

...and a British one

I'm also working on a British C-in-C group, but for this I have to finish off Marlborough's trumpeter - straight from the pages of the Osprey book! I'm not happy with the current selections of gold paint I have available - this guy will be covered in fancy lace - so I need to experiment a little with mixing some more subtle shades. Sounds like a job for a Sunday.

The challenge of trying to take some half-decent photos of my gloss-varnished soldiers reminds me - yet again - that I am still intending to get myself an unpretentious lightbox of some sort. Must get on with that. 

Oh yes - horses...

I'm keen to avoid producing impossible colourings for horses. I used to have a little book which gave very useful guidelines for correct combinations - the book was intended for horse fans rather than toy soldier painters, and of course it reflected modern horses rather than historical ones. Whatever, the point is that it got chucked out with a load of magazines and junk a couple of years ago (I think), and I miss it. My next door neighbour, 400 yards away, is a riding school and livery stable, and the owner, Carol, is delighted to keep me right on horse facts.

I try to keep my miniature horses, painted in my plodding toy soldier style, to varieties I can manage. This time I attempted a palomino-style horse, just for a change [not least because I have a pot of Foundry paint called Palomino], as you will see. I rather like him, but my expert source tells me that palominos would be very rare in Europe in the early 1700s - their use was largely restricted to the personal stable of the Spanish royal family.

I don't care. This French general obviously is well-connected! I shall, of course, refer to his horse as Trigger.

WSS: Something New; Test Paint

 My WSS armies very largely use Les Higgins 20mm figures from the 1970s. That range provides a good choice of poses, but the one obvious shortfall as far as I am concerned is in the choice of general officers. In fact there is only one, so there is no choice at all; Higgins provided a very good officer, in tricorne and cuirass, carrying a baton. I've used a good many of these, painted up in all sorts of colours, to provide for my Austrian and Bavarian armies, but for the French and the British, whose generals rarely wore cuirasses over their coats, this pose doesn't really cut it.

Anyway, work has been proceeding on this, and I now have some new castings, which I've been itching to get some paint on. The challenge has been to provide a cuirass-free general who will sit nicely on a Les Higgins horse, and here is my first test paint effort.

This fellow is a rather conservatively-garbed French officer, as you will see, and I'm very pleased with him. My compliments to Frederico for his splendid sculpt. I'll prepare a few more of these in various uniforms, and this will provide a real step forward on the recruitment front. All sorts of parade photos will present themselves.

 Next up should be a British general...

Black Bob

Lightweight, entertaining little paint session tonight. Digging around in the Eric Knowles boxes, I have found some interesting items in there.

Tonight I restored a couple of little command vignettes.

First off, here's Maj.Gen Robert Craufurd, of Light Division and getting-killed-in-the-breach-at-Ciudad-Rodrigo fame. This is not going to win any prizes, but it's an attractive little piece. The conversions are ambitious; I can see from the figure bases that the starting point for each is Hinton Hunt SC 4, which is a one-piece-casting ACW cavalry trooper. The mounted Rifles officer has had a body swap - I think I recognise the top half of the HH Rifles officer (normally on foot) - the one with the whistle. His shabraque has been cut from lead foil - it's an impressive job. The General's top half is more of a mystery - I thought he might be a Wellington - I even thought he might be an SHQ Wellington, but I think this model was made too long ago for SHQ. The cape is hand-built from lead foil, again, and I imagine the saddle furniture was, too. I've kept Eric's colour scheme. There was evidence of some corrosion on the foil cape - a white bloom on some of the edges. Lead rot? I've cleaned them up, repainted as necessary and sealed with fresh varnish, and put them on an official house-standard base (Division Commander - 50mm x 50mm, white border). I guess Black Bob's days may be numbered, but with a bit of luck he might outlast me.

And here is a HH General for the ECW, complete with dog. This will go well with Lord John Byron's ferret and Fairfax's Mynah bird. I couldn't find the dog in Marcus Hinton's catalogue, so can only assume it must be a Clayton addition.

Bavarians - Brigade Commander

I do enjoy painting staff figures, as I've possibly mentioned before. We have a game coming up next weekend, and I was short of a brigade commander for the Bavarians (who will be getting a run out, though I fear they are going to get thumped again).

Here's a new arrival. In my normal Bavarian organisation (3rd Divn, VII Corps, 1809) this will be GM Vincenti, but next weekend there will be a bit of role-playing going on, so he will be Minucci for the day.

The casting is a fairly recent one by Hagen, though his horse is an OOP Falcata. Yes, he does look a bit as though he's falling from his horse, but I think he's just giving a very dramatic signal for his boys to get a move on. In the honourable traditions of the theatre, the twitch of your eyebrows must be discernible from the back row, or such that even Hansl in the 14th IR picks up on it.

Ney's ADC

He's a day later than planned, but no matter - this is Marshal Ney's ADC, Colonel Pierre-Agathe Heymès, all ready for Quatre Bras next week.

A couple of things about Heymès: his background was in the horse artillery, which seems unusual for an aide; also, because I really had no idea, I checked with my consultant, and it seems that the French would pronounce his name "em-ess", with the stress on the first syllable. The French would probably also regard his name as sort of Spanish, I think. After the Restoration, he was appointed ADC to Louis XVIII, which surely cannot have been a very strenuous role.

The figure is one of the High Command at Waterloo set by Waterloo 1815 (in metal), but in the interests of calming him down a bit I have given him a more placid horse (by NapoleoN Miniaturas). He is still obviously a bit overexcited, but let's just assume he is waving his sword to attract attention, or to motivate the troops. At Waterloo, Heymès is usually depicted as riding a grey - as on Dumoulin's great panorama at the battlefield Rotunda. I have chosen to place him on another of his (numerous?) horses, since I regard a grey horse as a high-risk project, and I would not like to spoil this effort by mounting him on a ridiculous-looking cuddy.

Ney, being of Army or Corps-Command grade, is entitled to have two accompanying figures in my organisation. Commandant Lachoucque insists that Ney only had the one ADC in the Waterloo campaign, so the other one (which I start tomorrow) can be a rather mundane ADC borrowed from a Général de Division.

I must say I really enjoy painting staff figures. Something to do with my attention span, I think. Col Heymès can enjoy the distinction of being the most flashy soldier in the army until I get round to painting Soult's ADC (who is also in the queue).

The Return of Dan O'Herlihy

There's a battle coming up next week, and I have a few bits and pieces to sort out for my contribution to the spectacle. I have to paint up a couple of staff chappies, for a start. This evening's deliverable is Marshal Ney, gentlemen. His varnish is still wet and shiny, but here he is.

I do have an official Ney figure in the spares box - in fact I have a couple. I had intended to paint up Art Miniaturen's Marschall Ney, complete with bare head, waving sword and rearing horse, but I changed my mind. I also have the metal Waterloo Staff set from Waterloo 1815, but they are wildly dramatic - they are also, let it be said, some 25mm to the eyes [Massimo should drink less coffee]. The Perry Twins have now done the definitive charging Ney, albeit in a larger scale than I use, but Ney complete with bulging eyeballs, as seen in the rotunda painting, does not seem a very useful figure for me. So I've gone for a rather calmer Ney - it is an Art Miniaturen casting, right enough, but I think it's actually supposed to be Auguste Coulaincourt - I shall now forget all about that - this is Ney. I've given him a nice dashing white jabot, and he has the necessary red hair.

With a bit of luck he should have some staff by next week, and he should be a lot less shiny.

Old Friends

I was dredging through my "Generals & Staff" spares box, looking for some suitable French ADC figures, and I found these fellows hiding in a corner.

They obviously came from eBay - Lord knows when - they look as though they were painted by the same collector and they have obviously seen some action. Minifigs S-Range figures - they do have a certain battered charm. I recalled that the Lone S-Ranger blog once tried to identify which of these chaps was which, according to the S-Range catalogue (which means VINTAGE20MIL these days, of course), so I checked that out and the results seemed inconclusive. I'm keen not just to go round the same loop again, so though I am casually interested to identify the figures, the main excuse for this post was to feature these three old friends, as a token of my respect. It looks as if they have been together for about 50 years - they are presently resting in my spares box, but no matter.

As far as I can make out, the candidate figures are:

NS 2s - French Marshal
NS 9s - Ney
NS 10s - Murat

though it does seem surprising that Minifigs didn't attempt a more spectacular uniform for Murat. I confess I have no idea; whatever, here they are.

I'll maybe get them a gig in the Guard Division, now that I have one.

***** Late Edit *****

With thanks to Goya, here's an example of post-S-Range "Intermediate" Minifigs celebrity figure - this is Nansouty, who was FNCX5, apparently (and probably still is in the current range, but without a saddle).

And here is a uniform for Murat which appears consistent with the right hand fellow in my original photos...

My thanks to Goya and Alan and everyone who contributed!

*********************

Bavarians - 3rd Division Commander

Needed for action on Saturday, here we have General Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy (on the nimble little horse...) and his General-Adjutant; the figures are both from the old Falcon range, now marketed by Hagen. The Adjutant has the Quick-Reference Sheet handy. The gentleman in the cloak is easily recognisable as the ubiquitous Minifigs FNX1, rescued from the spares box and repainted as an officer of cavalry attached to the Bavarian staff - he's obviously seen it all before. The white edging to the base allows quick location of a divisional general.

The mounted figure has a toy-like, Noggin the Nog air, which I find rather appealing. There is a joke here - one of the few stories about Deroy (who was an older officer, and a bit of a traditionalist) describes his fury when he found that his troops were growing all sorts of non-regulation facial hair on campaign - orders of the day appeared very quickly. This casting has a very luxuriant moustache, so poor old Deroy can hide behind a Full Groucho - maybe it's a move to gain the affection of his men?

Sorry the Arctic light has dimmed down the colours a bit - these Bavarian chappies are pretty vivid normally.

Deroy - no whiskers here

Deroy commanded the 3rd Bavarian Division in the VII Corps on the Danube. A well respected veteran and a good leader, he was mortally wounded at Polotsk in 1812.

A Short Spell of Fiddling Around

I have figures to paint;  I have stuff to do. Hobby progress has been slow, in fact it would be easy to fail to detect any progress at all. I'm going away on Friday to sit in on some Field of Battle wargaming, which should be a valuable and worthwhile experience - not to say enjoyable. More of that another time.

Mostly, I seem to have been sidetracked into doing Real Life things. I guess that includes watching a lot of football, now I think about it - we may debate how real that is.

I have, after a lot of lamentable foot-dragging, made a start on playtesting my developing, homebrewed, grid-based, Napoleonic miniatures game, which has spent a very long time being redrafted over and over. My thanks, once again, to Jay for his patience and his invaluable input, and now my thanks are also due to Martin and Dan Sarrazin, in Australia, who have started doing some playtesting for me (using Commands & Colors kit in their case) and have shamed me into shaping up and getting on with it.

Anyway, I've had a few evenings lately of walking through the exact, detailed sequence of what happens when a unit breaks from a melee (for example), and how it is different when that unit was in square or in cover (for another example). Instructive. I always knew that this process was going to turn up the need for a lot more clarity, which is probably why I've been dragging my feet. I've got used to revisions of the rules becoming smaller as the draft stabilised. Getting the soldiers and the dice on the table is bound to reveal a mass of holes, but it's all good!

Unless the testing turns out to be a complete disaster (in which case the game may quietly fade away), I hope to be in a position to report on some actual battles using these rules fairly soon. As I keep reassuring people (including myself), the aim is not to replace Commands & Colors as my game of choice, but to provide a slightly less blunt instrument with which to fight smaller, more detailed actions. To get back just a little into the world of lines and columns, and all that, when it is appropriate to do so.

In the pursuit of more light on the tactical niceties, I was reminded that I really don't know how the British Army of Napoleon's day managed to operate without French-style attack columns, so I've gone back to some good old standby books to brush up a bit.

I've also been reading a new book - a sort of memoir of Franz Joseph Hausmann, of the Napoleonic Bavarian army. This was translated and annotated by Hausmann's greatgranddaughter, and edited by John H Gill. It's interesting, and does fill in a lot of the "what was it like?" aspects of service in that army. Franz was eventually a lieutenant in the 7th Line Infantry. From 1812 onwards he sent his father detailed letters of his experiences - his father was by this time invalided out of service in the same regiment, and was keen to follow the campaign in Russia. Prior to 1812, Franz's personal journals consisted simply of lists of each day's marches. Much of the interest derives from extra information provided by Gill, and from family stories supplied by the translator.

Anyway, it is interesting rather than spellbinding stuff, and it all adds some personality and context to my forthcoming Bavarian force.

Elsewhere - and this really is trivial - I finally tracked down a little portrait of General Anne-Francois-Charles Treillard, a French Peninsular War cavalry officer who commands a division in my collection of toys. Treillard is noted, among other things, for having an unusual number of alternative spellings of his surname (though "Anne" is consistent throughout all versions), and for being famously portrayed by Robert Stephens in my favourite movie, "The Duellists".

Gen Treillard

I know this is silly, but I do like to know the chaps in my little armies. I've got portraits of most of my French generals now - I didn't have Treillard, and I still don't have a picture of Maucune (the head-banger who largely screwed up Salamanca). Maucune (real name Antoine-Louis Popon, Baron Maucune) was eventually a rich and titled chap, and I can't believe he didn't have his portrait painted, though it is possible he may have been very hard to please in the portraiture department. If anyone knows of a painting of the Baron, or if you happen to live next door to the family, please give me a shout. All I have is some detail on the family coat of arms, and a photo of his tomb, at Père Lachaise.

Maucune's final rest

The Duty Marshal

Another new French staff unit, based to my new standard. The groups for Army/Corps level commanders are 60mm square, and have the general himself plus two staff; the base is bordered in the national colour - in this case blue.

This was going to be, very specifically, General (later Marshal) Suchet, but I had second thoughts. The next in the painting queue is the Duke of Damnation, Soult, and he has a very distinctive ADC, who can be spotted from the far side of the valley - "that's Soult," they will say. Now Suchet also had a recognisable ADC, with baggy trousers - plum coloured, as I recall - and this ADC's greatest claim to fame, of course, is that he appears in one of the Osprey books...

Sanity check - I could set up a whole series of celebrity generals to make guest appearances as appropriate - some of them wouldn't get out to play very often. Thus I have made this fellow rather more generic - the ADC in the blue and red (the guy with the horse, for the colour-blind) is wearing the regulation uniform for the ADC of a Marshal-who-is-not-a-Prince, and the man who is saluting is a visiting ADC for a General de Division, so it's all pretty much vanilla. I shall probably use this group as Suchet if the occasion suits, but otherwise other choices are available. Good.

This could get out of hand - I could have gone for the plum-trousered aide - I have figures which would work in this role. Then I would have to consider named groups for Victor, Jourdan, You-Name-It...

Mind you, Massena would be worth a shout - his group would probably require him to be in a carriage, accompanied by his teenage son, Prosper, dressed up in (white) pantomime ADC's uniform, and Old André's mistress, Henriette Leberton, who is reputed to have accompanied him on campaign dressed as a hussar...    [is it getting a little warm in here?]

Well, maybe - not sure what sort of conversion would be needed for a 20mm female hussar - suggestions welcome.

In the meantime, here is Marshal Suchet (let us say), looking fairly calm about  the job in hand. The black gloves worn by the aides were all the rage among the staffers...

The saluting ADC is from Hagen, whose range of staff figures is getting better and more extensive all the time, and the other chaps are from Art Miniaturen, sculpted by the wonderful Jorg Schmäling.

More French Staff Figures

Just tinkering last night - some retouching, and rebasing to the new house standard. In my OOB, this chap (the one in the very silly hat) is usually Villatte or some such. The casting is Art Miniaturen's figure of Colbert, now discontinued. The regulation ADC (one for a General de Division) is a NapoleoN figure - for a while he had sky-blue overalls, which eventually I decided was a fashion statement too far, so I've toned him down a bit.

The General may be shouting, "Come on, chaps - for France and Glory!",
or he may be saying, "...no, I believe they are still chasing us..."

Next command groups in the queue are serious, 3-figure groupings on the new 60 x 60 bases (Army/Corps Commander) - I have both Soult and Suchet ready to go. This is really getting into self-indulgence territory now - Soult is certain to spend most of his time in the box, waiting for his big chance, though on the other hand his presence might encourage me to try some different scenarios - Armée du Midi stuff.

More French Command - on a run now...

And here are some more. This is the missing artillery command stand - they can also be in charge of the French Siege Train if and when it gets out of the box. The standing figures are from TM1815's set TM-F0002 - French Staff Officers - which are available online from Hagen; the mounted chap is Hinton Hunt FN224, because I have a couple of spares, because it's a figure for which I have a long-standing affection and to get the Old School brownie points score up a bit.

Pleased with these - I'm still not quite sure what artillery commanders do in a wargame, but they can stand around and look smart, I guess. You will observe that they are based on one of my new-house-standard 50x50 jobs (which, strictly speaking, is the size for a Division Commander) and they have the regulation black border, which is used for artillery, engineering and logistics command stands.

Those French ADCs are fun to paint. I must say I do enjoy painting these odd command figures - they don't numb the brain to the same extent as, say, two dozen identical fusiliers.

Poppycock! - another damned waste of bleach

Some of us are destined not to be successful strippers - we just have to face up to the fact. I would love it if bleach worked for me - I keep allowing myself to be duped into trying it again.

I'm currently having a minor blitz on a pile of French command figures which are waiting to be painted - I've just spent a day and and a half, filing and fettling and supergluing - mostly Hagen and Art Miniaturen figures - really rather enjoyed myself. This is partly aimed at shifting some more of the painting queue, but also at moving to my new basing standard for general officers - it may take a while to get there, but the idea is to have brigadiers based on their own, division commanders based in twos (a general + an ADC) and army commanders in threes (a general + 2 staff). I have a nice supply of figures just itching to be painted and based - all good stuff.

I made very good progress, and while I was at it I thought it would be a good idea to do something (at long last) about a Qualiticast command group I bought on eBay - it's been in the cupboard for a couple of years. Problems with it are (1) the group includes Napoleon [gasp], and (2) the group has been professionally painted, to a standard which does not please me. The painting is, to employ a technical term, crap. I could - and shall - do better myself.

So I prised the Qualiticast figures off their little diorama base, being careful to preserve the table (with map) and the scenic drum, crossed myself and placed the figures lovingly in some nice new bleach I had bought specially. I took care to avoid bubbles, and checked they were all covered to a good depth, and left them for 36 hours. When I felt they were ready, I rinsed them off, rubbed them down with the regulation toothbrush and had a speculative pick with the official penknife.

These are not, you will notice, what are termed unpainted figures

They are now drying. When they are dry I shall stick them in the hated Nitromors, or hand remover as it is known here. That will do the job. Speak not to me of bleach, nor Dettol, nor Buckfast tonic wine, nor Fairy Dust - all that can be said for my most recent bleach attempt is that I am very unlikely now to catch any infection from the figures, but the paint on them has become "a little spoilt" rather than "gone", which is the state I had hoped for.

If bleach works for you then you have my envy and my respect - it does not work for me. The number of times I have proved this to myself, you would think I would have got the hang of the idea by now.

Not to worry. Progress consists of small steps. I think Goethe said that. It might have been the Chuckle Brothers, in fact.

****** Late Edit ****** (Saturday night, 1st July)

Nice clean, airtight Douwe Egberts jar containing the Clean Spirit experiment
 - give it a couple of weeks. I'll set up another trial when the Simple Green arrives.

Bordering on Command

This is a figure I've had lying around, undercoated, for years. Enthusiasts may recognise another vintage Alberken/Minifigs20mm OPC commander - this one starting life as the casting for Lt.Gen "Daddy" Hill. I have now painted him up as a senior field officer of the Royal Artillery. One issue I had with the casting was that there is a very prominent shoulder belt, over the LEFT shoulder - for which I could find no use. Given this fellow's map (no, it's not a towel), and the artillery role I've given him, the rogue shoulder belt became a leather strap for his map case. Of course, I hear you say. What else could it be?

I'll come back to this figure in a while - for the moment, observe that his base has a black border.

I've been asked a few times in the past, what is the significance of the coloured borders around the edges of the bases of the senior officers in my armies? Primarily, it makes them easy to spot, but occasionally I myself have questioned this system - house rules can sometimes live on as tradition long after the original reasoning is lost. For my ECW armies, for example, I dropped the coloured borders; I don't think I will, but just occasionally I have wondered if it might be a good idea to retrofit them, after all.

It all dates back to 1970-something, when I was using Don Featherstone's rules (gradually replaced by Charlie Wesencraft, then - later - by the WRG, which was the beginning of a period which I refer to vaguely as The Disillusionment...). In these rules, a simple morale test made use of whether a unit still had its officer present - fellow veterans and game historians will probably be able to identify just which rules these might have been. To help with this rule, I made sure that all unit officers were based on their own, and - to make it easier to spot them in moments of crisis - I painted a dark green rim around the edge of the base. This worked pretty well. I extended this to brown for brigade commanders, white for division commanders and yellow ochre (?) for army commanders. Yellow ochre? - well, the original idea was that I should use vaguely earth-type colours, which would not be too offensive against the house pea-soup green bases and tabletop.

Yes - I know, I know. The pea-soup is already something of an affront to the visual side of things, so picking colours which blended with it seems odd. It's OK - you just mutter the words "Old School" under your breath, and everything is fine. In fact, if I work at it, I can even dredge up a little genial ridicule of other people's armies, where the soldiers carefully drag a lovingly-prepared hearthrug of flock and cat-litter around with them - even along roads and into rivers. I am, of course, jesting. The point is, it's OK.

In a spasm of commonsense, I eventually replaced the unimpressive yellow ochre with a distinctive colour for the army, so that the Anglo-Portuguese army had a red border for its commander, the French blue, and - later - the Spanish had yellow. Yes - all right - yellow isn't great for Spain, but it isn't red or blue and it hadn't already been given a reserved meaning.

Righto. Time passed (that was the easy bit) and I was no longer using regimental officers for this morale rule - though it's always tempting to retain the coding system just in case I wish to use it again in the future. The result was that, long after it had ceased to have any significance, I was still devoutly painting up my units with dark green borders around the regimental officers. A major rebasing project eventually put a stop to that for the infantry and artillery - all command figures are now just glued onto a multiple base, with some of their subordinates, and no bordering colour is added. My regiments still have some way to go with liberté and fraternité, but we have at least made a start with egalité.

However, for the cavalry it persists. Now I would really be pushed to come up with a sensible justification for it, but any new cavalry units I add still have the officer on his own individual base, bordered in good old dark green. The only reason this still makes any sense at all is that - especially in campaigns - it is a commonplace for cavalry colonels to have to take over a brigade, particularly given the horrifying casualty rates in the cavalry arm in my battles. So, just occasionally, a colonel with a green border has been a useful addition to a battlefield, when acting up as a brigadier. I think that one day I shall probably get rid of the green borders on the cavalry, but I'm currently in that twilight, it's-a-tradition-no-it-isn't phase.

I am now slowly moving onto a Creeping Elegance project to change the basing standard for field officers - division commanders are to have an attached ADC, army commanders to have 2 supporting staff - so this gives me an opportunity to reconsider the coloured borders. I think I'll probably keep them.

Fine. Now, if I go right back to 1970-something, I did have an additional classification of field officers. I was aware that proper historical OOBs would identify an overall commander for the artillery, and maybe for the engineers. Since I wasn't sure whether such a fellow would equate to a brigade or division commander in my army organisation, I took an escape route and came up with a separate border colour - black - for officers of what I grouped as "service arms". Thus all commanders of artillery and engineering get a black rim around the base.

Only problem now is - I've never had one! I was never sure what I would use him for (my crass ignorance of how real armies worked is a major contributor to this), and other types of painting jobs always took priority.

Which - at long last - brings me back to the photo at the beginning of this post - long, long ago. I have painted up the old Alberken Hill figure to represent a senior officer of British artillery. I was going to make him Lt.Col Hoylett Framingham in my Peninsular army, but I find that Framingham was in any case a RHA officer, and was absent after being wounded at Talavera, so I'm still pondering his identity. I intend also to add Alex Dickson (a man from Kelso, as it happens) to look after the siege train and all that - Dickson will be in Portuguese uniform, I think. I should also have a commander of engineering. I think it might be appropriate for him to be on foot, and he will have the earlier (blue) uniform. I still haven't really got a clue how these fellows will be used on the toy battlefield (a puzzle with which some real generals of history might empathise, come to think of it), but here, gentlemen, after only some 40-odd years, is my first field officer with a black border.

I shall now, for shame's sake, dig out SGP Ward's Wellington's Headquarters to remind myself how this stuff worked...


***** Very Late Edit *****

I found some old pics of the Picton and Napoleon Alberken figures mentioned in this post and the comments, so here they are again...

I'm also reminded that, though Napoleon came in an eBay job lot, Picton was very kindly given to me by the Old Metal Detector - apologies for my error - one of wargaming's true gentlemen. Thanks yet again, Clive!

Napoleon playing the part of someone else