Creeping Elegance: Everyone Switch Units (Musical Sabots)

Creeping Elegance is a general classification here - any odd sorting-out or reorganising jobs which are not obviously a high priority, but which still irritate me when they don't get done.

It's easier to get on with it when there are several reasons all pushing in the same direction - i.e. the planets align (which doesn't happen very often).

For a while I've had the following in mind:

(A) There are a few units in my French army which acquired a 3rd battalion at some point. My improvised house standard for these French 3rd battalions seems to have stipulated that they have no mounted officer and no eagle - I can't remember why, maybe I was short of command figures at the time. Yes, quite. Subsequently I changed my mind - I decided I already had a real, serious house standard, which is that the infantry of my French army in the Peninsula will consist of divisions, each of which has 2 brigades and a battery; each of these brigades will comprise 2 regiments, plus a converged mini-battalion of voltigeurs from these regiments; each of the regiments will have 2 battalions. Not 3, 2. 

(B) Some of my battalions do not please me, because their appearance does not match up to the rest of the army. A case in point is provided by 2 battalions of old 20mm Garrison fellows, some of them recasts, which I've had since 1971 or so and which I've always thought I should upgrade sometime.

(C) Fairly new idea - I need to raise some more little 12-man battalions for my developing siege games.

So I've decided that I can rationalise much of this in one go - thus:

(i) The 1/50e Ligne (apart from their command figures) are of these old Garrisons - if I combine the Les Higgins rank and file from the unwanted 3/50e with the command from the 1/50e then they can become a new, rather smarter 1/50e, and the Garrison troops thus released can be reallocated (very appropriately, in fact) to siege duties. Good. They'll be happy there. The idea of making the 3rd battalion into the new 1st battalion works for me, but I suspect that the 2nd battalion will be furious when they find out.

(ii) Similarly for the 59e Ligne, except that they previously did not have a 3rd battalion, so the replacement Higgins troops for the 1/59e will come from the (unwanted) 3e/15e. The Garrison boys will go for siege basing, as for the 50e.

(iii) The 3rd battalions of the 6e and 25e Léger can also be released, to be allocated to forthcoming Divisions which are in the Refurb Queue.

This is the revamped 1st battalion for the 59e Ligne - the command figures were previously surrounded by Garrison men for many years, and the replacement Higgins rank and file have arrived from the (now defunct) 3/15e.

Here are the troops released to be rebased for siege games - mostly Garrisons - some old friends here!

So I've done the necessary basing adjustments and unit labelling, I've taken new photos for the Napoleonic Catalogue, and I've adjusted the sabot numbering slightly so that the battalions may still be placed consecutively in The Cupboard. So far, I seem to have done everything correctly, though I am half expecting to find two units with the same catalogue number in The Cupboard.

Time to have a cup of tea and read for a while. Nice sunny day here - freezing cold, mind you. 

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

Pensioners: some grenadiers from the old Garrison battalions, now re-based and ready for siege duties.

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

Champs de Mars - August 2019

Today my wife is trekking along the coast, from just north of Berwick to St Abbs, with her walking group, so I'm busy doing some work sorting out The Cupboard. Nothing very exciting - just a delayed Spring clean, to shift the Anglo-Portuguese down one shelf, clear out some scenery pieces and odd junk, re-organise the French army to give more room to accommodate the new units coming from the Refurb, and smarten up the layout of the A4 boxfiles which hold the overflow.

It makes sense to empty the lot, and do a bit of cleaning and tidying. Since this involves laying the troops out so I can change the shelf order, a photograph or two seems appropriate - it's a while since I did a full army photo.

So today's presentation is the French army - the lighting and my photography could certainly be better, but I hope you enjoy the pics. I'm delighted that inspection reveals no damage, which is not really a surprise but is a bit of a relief anyway.

From this end, the columns are Confederation infantry, then Italians plus King Joseph's Spaniards, then 5 columns of French infantry, then the Imperial Guard (with the band at the head!), then dragoons (with various generals and marshals at the rear), then light cavalry, then cuirassiers; at the far (right) end, the field artillery is in front, behind them is the siege artillery, then the garrison artillery, at the back are the engineers, with some logistics stuff alongside

As we used to joke, never mind the quality, feel the width!

Storage Wars - Boxed Bavarians

Deroy's Division on the move

One of the great truths of the world is that painted soldiers take up a lot less space than soldiers which are being painted, or which are about to be painted. In the chaos presented by my current situation, which I refer to as "getting there", my inner OCD keeps a little vision of how it should work out...

When the Spanish Army is finished, when the missing Portuguese Brigade is finished, when a number of other incomplete projects are finished, I'll have a lot fewer Very Useful Boxes containing unpainted units sorted into freezer packs, a lot fewer cardboard boxes full of things still to be promoted to labelled freezer packs (or, ultimately, disposed of). My main "showcase" storage unit (which is a laugh, since no-one can see into it unless they open the doors), known here as The Cupboard, will correctly contain the Napoleonic French and Anglo-Portuguese armies (minus the artillery, logistics vehicles and staff, since they won't fit), and everything else will be stored in an orderly manner in magnetised A4 boxfiles.

I'll have a lot more space - it will work - I will be able to find things - I have the spreadsheets to prove it...

This is not entirely down to my becoming more peculiar as I age, though a big driver is the ease with which I am able lose entire regiments - for a recent battle, I dug my heels in and refused to give up on searching for a French general in a carriage - it took about an hour, but eventually I found him in a boxfile labelled Mules & Carts - that's not too good, is it? Happy ending, and he got to be Massena for the day, but things have to become more organised. He should really have been in French Staff & Odd-Bods, obviously, but that is now full, and waiting for French Staff & Odd-Bods (2) to be commissioned.

The current (ongoing) expansion of my French army means that The Cupboard has to be cleared of anything that shouldn't really be in there - the buildings have mostly gone, the strange little wooden trays of things that came from eBay and are still being thought about are in the process of being relocated. Yesterday's big step was to re-house my Bavarians into official boxfiles. That has always been the plan really, but I'm kind of sorry to see them move - I've got used to seeing them lined up on the bottom shelf, but they have to shift so that Ferey's Division and Taupin's Division and the new Guard Division can be accommodated properly in their rightful place.

Anyway, they'll be happier in their new home. I thought someone might enjoy the sight of a couple of boxes of Bavarians - the dragoons and three brigade commanders are still be be painted, but it is evident that a Bavarian division fits neatly into two A4 boxes. That's rather satisfying. A Bavarian division, in passing, is a nicely-sized and balanced force for a wargame, it seems to me. This morning's extra task will be to replace the household's labelling machine, which finally died of exhaustion...

Old Guard Command Figures Finished

Here are the rest of the command figures for my two battalions of the Old Guard. Art Miniaturen figures, from the same set as the mounted colonels who were finished last week. I had some flags printed ready - unfortunately I can't find the beggars this evening, but I'll have a better look tomorrow.

When they are properly based, with flags, the two new battalions may take their place in The Cupboard, ready for action.

This has been rather a good week for painting - with luck, I should have some more Bavarians ready for finishing off in a few days. 

This and That

I guess this post is mostly about OCD, and maybe ineptitude - both topics on which I might claim a small amount of expertise.

Topic 1: The Catalogue

Recently, in relaxed conversation, Stryker, having had the mixed pleasure of inspecting my Soldier Cupboard (in semi-darkness, on his knees - it's an architecture thing), asked, as one might, how many units there were in my armies. An innocent enough question, quite appropriate in the context.

The Cupboard - current state; these days it contains only the French and
Anglo-Portuguese cavalry and infantry...

I answered, correctly, that I really didn't know, which surprised him a little, and then the conversation moved on. Afterwards, I found I was actually slightly concerned that I didn't know. Firstly, there is a faint whiff of schoolboy bravado in the implication that I have so many units that I don't know how many there are - I wouldn't like to give that impression - that's a bit like claiming not to know how many yachts one owns. More worryingly, I felt it was more than a little odd that I didn't know - I should know, really, shouldn't I? If I were in control of this silly obsessive hobby thing then I would know.

Now I do maintain a very detailed catalogue of my armies - which unit is which, what all the figure castings are (including known conversions), where they came from, who painted them - all that. I get a lot of value out of that, but one surprising omission is the date when they arrived - I wish I had thought of recording that, but I could probably reconstruct most of that information if I were pressed - at least approximately. Have you ever been approximately pressed, by the way? - no matter.

...everything else is in boxes - the pink boxes are ECW, the remainder are
the rest of the Peninsular War stuff.

The Catalogue is in a dirty great Word table, with hyperlinks to photographs of all the units. Being a table, though, it doesn't lend itself well to proper statistical analysis. So after I had thought about it for a little while I set about linking a spreadsheet to my Catalogue tables, and - of course - the spreadsheet very readily coughed up the numbers. As is always the case with worthy, obsessive jobs like this, after I had studied the numbers and thought about them, I was at a loss what to do with the information.

One obvious thing to do was to send it to Stryker - that'll teach him - but it also occurred to me that I could post it on the blog too; not so much because I think you'll be interested, or even remotely impressed, but because the blog in some ways is a sort of confessional - forgive me, Father, for I have far too many soldiers - in fact I have now quantified how many I have. If you can give me some pointers towards an official algorithm, Father, I could add a column to my spreadsheet giving the appropriate number of Hail Marys.

Situation as at 11:00, 14th June 2017...

Anyway, I'm pleased I have the thing under better control - well, not under control, maybe, but at least more accurately measured. I feel better for it. Cleaner.

Now I'd better have a look at doing one for the ECW, and all the Napoleonic transport items...

Topic 2: The Plastic Forest

This is really just a fleeting mention - I seem to have accumulated what must be one of the world's largest collections of Merit fir trees - the little plastic jobs for HO railways, out of production since about 1970. I didn't set out to achieve this, but people kept selling them on eBay (I guess railway modellers must be dying off too?). In its way it is a fine thing, and I am increasingly concerned about storing and looking after these little trees, because they are very old and fragile, and the plastic is rotting - they are very like me, in fact. I have a new solution to the storage, which I shall share with you when it is ready. You will be impressed - you may not wish to copy it, but you will be relieved to learn that someone else is as weird as this.

Anyway - more soon. Oh - and, yes, I do know how many fir trees I have, but I'm not saying.

Topic 3: Plonk

I do enjoy a glass of wine now and then. My wife drinks almost no alcohol these days, so opening a bottle of wine means either:

(a) I drink the whole bottle, which is not a great idea, or

(b) I try to recork it and make the bottle last a few days, which - let's be honest here - doesn't work very well - the stuff really doesn't keep, despite all the patent air-pumps and sealing stoppers we have accumulated - or

(c) I can drink some of the bottle, and then pour the remainder down the sink, which is maybe the worst idea of the lot.

Recently, someone jokingly suggested that I should buy wine that I didn't like, so that I wouldn't feel bad about wasting it. As is often the case, there is a germ of commonsense in that daft thought.

What I have been doing for a year or two now is buying a box of wine. You can have a single glass, and it will still be drinkable for a week or two. OK - that's a working solution (the issue of sticking to a single glass is important, but a separate problem). However, on the general subject of wine...

There are some excellent wines available now - I don't know how Brexit might affect that, but at the moment our local supermarket has some splendid wine. I find that I am having to be a bit choosey - this comes down to personal taste, of course, and my taste is no better than anyone else's, but it's me I'm making the choices for. A large proportion of the good wine on sale comes from the sunny countries of the world - Australia, Chile, California, South Africa and so on; it's good stuff, much of it, and its ancestry is from the classic vintners of Old Europe, but it is often too strong for me now. Too much sunshine? I can buy an excellent 3 litre pack of Australian Shiraz for about £15 - super stuff - but too serious, too fiery, too intense - I can't casually sip a glass of this (13.5% alcohol by volume) while reading or watching a film - too much Marmite in the taste, too many headaches.

I find I'm moving down-market a bit. Nothing new - I always used to like French Table Red - Chateau Plonko - vin ordinaire - you can't buy it now, as far as I can tell. No demand, I guess. I prefer simple red wines - Tesco do a good Sicilian red which is not too beefy, I like Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Corbières - things which are soft and friendly.

Quick digression. I was listening to the radio a week or two ago, and there was a chap on from the British wine-growers' association. I might have overlooked that there was such a thing as a British wine industry, but it seems they have been having a tricky year. The mild, wet winter produced brisk budding activity early on, and then the frosts of April did a lot of damage. I made a mental note that there was a British wine industry capable of being damaged, and promptly forgot about it.

Last week, in Tesco, I spotted a box of British wine! Never seen one of those before. It was very cheap, 8% strength and described as "refreshingly fruity". It is a poor life that does not extend to a little research, so I bought a box - I expected little and - as you expected - that's what I got.

The box suggests they have the neck to sell this stuff in bottles, too.

The stuff is awful. It tastes like a cross between Ribena and boot polish, to be honest. I could, I suppose, grin and bear it in a spirit of Good Old Patriotism, but the final straw is it isn't actually British. The box says that it is made from imported grape juice. Good grief. My dad used to produce home-made wine like that years ago, and it was all crap and it all tasted mostly of sulphites. A long and honourable tradition, then, of putting a brave face on things. Personally, I feel I humoured my dad for quite long enough, I want no more of this. I mention this only as a gentle warning - if Brexit requires you to change your drinking habits, don't be tempted to change in this direction, lest you, too, get to rinse out your kitchen drains with it. 

The small print.

Where Have You Been All the Day, My Charming Billy?

Yesterday was Flatpack Day here – I took delivery of a tall, 80cm wide Billy bookcase unit from our trusty Swedish friends at IKEA, and it is now in position in my office, and the job of shifting and re-storing everything I can think of is well under way.

I have even secured it to the wall in the approved H&S manner, so small children may climb up it with impunity (unless I catch them).

I have now moved my soldier box-files from Cupboard No.2 (beyond the door at the end of the office in the photo below) on to the lower shelves of the new unit, as you see, and shifted the wargames terrain boxes from Upstairs Hall Cupboard B into Cupboard No.2 (I hope you're taking notes here), which is much handier, and means that I will no longer be at risk of waking up the entire household when putting away my terrain at 2 am.

That's Billy, in the corner; the white door is Cupboard #2

What is going to happen in Upstairs Hall Cupboard B, then, I hear you ask? It will go back to storing bedding and towels, which is what it was intended for, but that’s probably out of scope for this blog. Maybe.

It’s a fascinating field of study, this constant re-engineering of space to conceal the fact that our armies have become – well, too big, I suppose. Did Warhammer ever do a title on this?

I enjoyed the flatpack job so much I have been thinking of ordering another unit I don’t need, just to build it. The nice thing about IKEA stuff is that it goes together perfectly – everything lines up. No dremel, needle files or pin-vices needed, and no piping around the turnbacks to paint.

In the final picture, you will see the neat fit offered by this size of shelving to A4 box files; grey ones at the bottom are Peninsular War artillery and staff, blue are Peninsular War Spanish and pink (sorry, light red) are ECW. The remainder of the Peninsular troops are still in The Cupboard in the dining room, this being the infamous glazed display bookcase which no-one can see into, since it is fitted with black curtains to keep out the sun…

Here Be Dragons - Pitfalls of Planning

The 20eme Dragons, in fact. I'm pleased with these - a chance purchase on eBay, they arrived in good shape. The original paint job was really very good, though the passage of time and a few "improvements" had had an effect.

I got them cleaned up, retouched, based and in the cupboard very quickly - I only received them yesterday afternoon, and I finished them off this morning. Here they are, then, all looking eyes-right and with their carousel horses dancing in step - the best and silliest aspects of Old School in a single picture. They also gave me cause to wonder about a few things...

(1) Since I had already decided that I had more than enough units of French dragoons - in fact I had even sold off and otherwise disposed of a good many such figures already - I am not clear just why I needed these. It may be something about the sight of painted soldiers on eBay.

(2) Further to (1), how is it that a rogue arrival like these chaps can completely leapfrog the existing painting queue and make a mockery of any pretence of planning or prioritisation? Though I guess it is a hobby, after all.

(3) Most serious of the lot, my in-house unit numbering system has now failed. This is the first unit to which I cannot allocate a new number - I've run out of numbers. The end of the French army has just collided with the start of the Spanish. This may not sound serious, but the organisation of the cupboards, the catalogue, the picture library, and even my in-house computerised wargame all rely on these numbers. So, for the third time I can remember, the most recent being some four years ago, I shall have to re-do the numbering. Apart from the admin and the re-naming of the computer records and retyping the spreadsheets, this will require me to replace the little Blick number labels on a great many (probably most) unit sabots for the Peninsular War armies.

My intention is to allocate numbers 1-200 to the French and their allies, 201-400 to the British-Portuguese and their allies, and 401-500 to the Spanish. That should all be OK, leaving a good bit of headroom, and the next bit of head-scratching concerns how to arrange the numbers within these blocks. A man with an IT background like mine can see that certain arrangements are more capable of surviving organisational change and new arrivals than others, but the tabletop fighter in me sees that the most convenient way to address this is to number the units consecutively within the higher army organisation, so that the battalions within the regiments within the brigades within a division, plus their skirmishers and attached artillery, form a single number series which sit next to each other in The Cupboard. At set-up time, and during tidy-up (which is much more of a chore), there are few conveniences to match just moving a contiguous section of a shelf onto the table (and back).

It does mean that any re-organisation or insertion of additional units can cause a bit of hassle, but there's not so much of that these days. Apart from when new, unplanned units like the 20e Dragons arrive in the post.

Changing the numbers is actually rather fun - it does come, admittedly, from the same group of hobby jobs as re-basing, but involves nowhere near the same level of pain. However, because it is quite a pleasant job, it is likely to jump the entire queue of hobby tasks I have in mind - in the same way that the fitting of magnetic sheet to subunit bases and sabots did last year (or was it the year before?). That particular interruption formed a dangerous precedent, because I have been delighted with the results, and it does offer a case in support of changing my mind about things. This really does not help the concept of The Grand Plan at all.

On the subject of getting things done in the right order, I am pleased to present the thoughts of one of my favourite popular philosophers, AA Milne. I think there are familiar echoes in much of this.

The Old Sailor 

There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew 
Who had so many things which he wanted to do 
That, whenever he thought it was time to begin, 
He couldn’t because of the state he was in. 

He was shipwrecked, and lived on an island for weeks, 
And he wanted a hat, and he wanted some breeks; 
And he wanted some nets, or a line and some hooks 
For the turtles and things which you read of in books. 

And, thinking of this, he remembered a thing
Which he wanted (for water) and that was a spring;
And he thought that to talk to he’d look for, and keep
(If he found it) a goat, or some chickens and sheep.

Then, because of the weather, he wanted a hut
With a door (to come in by) which opened and shut
(With a jerk, which was useful if snakes were about),
And a very strong lock to keep savages out.

He began on the fish-hooks, and when he’d begun 
He decided he couldn’t because of the sun. 
So he knew what he ought to begin with, and that 
Was to find, or to make, a large sun-stopping hat. 

He was making the hat with some leaves from a tree, 
When he thought, “I’m as hot as a body can be, 
And I’ve nothing to take for my terrible thirst; 
So I’ll look for a spring, and I’ll look for it first.” 

Then he thought as he started, “Oh, dear and oh, dear!
I’ll be lonely tomorrow with nobody here!”
So he made in his note-book a couple of notes:
“I must first find some chickens” and “No, I mean goats.”

He had just seen a goat (which he knew by the shape)
When he thought, “But I must have a boat for escape.
But a boat means a sail, which means needles and thread;
So I’d better sit down and make needles instead.”

He began on a needle, but thought as he worked,
That, if this was an island where savages lurked,
Sitting safe in his hut he’d have nothing to fear,
Whereas now they might suddenly breathe in his ear!

So he thought of his hut … and he thought of his boat, 
And his hat and his breeks, and his chickens and goat, 
And the hooks (for his food) and the spring (for his thirst) … 
But he never could think which he ought to do first. 

And so in the end he did nothing at all, 
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl. 
And I think it was dreadful the way he behaved - 
He did nothing but bask until he was saved! 

AA Milne

_______________________________________________________________________

Late edit - I'm thrilled to bits to report that the bold Stryker has contributed a nice little addition to the verse. It appears in the Comments below but, since no-one ever reads those anyway, I've copied it in here. How marvellous to acknowledge a little class on this blog, for a welcome change!

There once was a wargamer who’d played for a while

Kept changing his mind on the right basing style

That flocking and filler it looks pretty cool

But would they be better all based up Old School?

He lined up his lancers in neat serried ranks

(and sooo wished he’d gone for those King Tiger tanks)

My Romans are finished, but then again no

I’d like some auxiliaries armed with a bow

He tossed and he turned all night in his bed

Trying to work out what to do with his lead

At last I’ve got it (he exclaimed with a will)

I’ll do it all again but in 28 mil!

Stryker

Behold the Glaringly Obvious – Two French Armies

The Cupboard - a lot more comfortable now that the Spanish, all the

artillery and vehicles and the ECW are stored in magnetised box files in

The Other Cupboard

Quite often, I find that I have brilliantly deduced something which has been staring me in the face for a while. I don’t like to rush my break-through moments – maybe that’s it.

My Peninsular War French army is quite big. Not compared to some, of course, but in terms of the extent to which it has exceeded the bounds of what was needed and what would have been sensible it is kind of big. An inability to stop collecting – all the usual excuses. My French army is about twice as big as could possibly be employed on my tabletop – it offers some entertaining choices of line-up in a wargame, and it is fine for providing the manpower for a campaign, but some bits of it don’t get used very often, which is a shame.

The French bit of The Cupboard - general staff are in wooden trays a few

shelves down, and guns and anything with wheels are stored elsewhere

I must explain that my army is originally built around historical fact, with the necessary large pinch of wargamer’s licence. It started out as a workable subset of the Armée de Portugal of 1812. As it grew (thank you, eBay) I could have simply increased the size of the subset – grown the thing from the original 3 divisions of infantry to the full, historical 8 divisions. Problem is that the units in that army were all pretty much vanilla French regulars – fine chaps, but you know how it is. Short on colour.

So the growth has included all sorts of Confederation, Spanish and Italian units which have enriched the army in a number of ways, but the structure is increasingly convoluted (and unlikely), with all sorts of secondments from other French armies. A couple of things have happened recently which got me thinking about the matter.

(1) My solo campaign required me to break the army into suitable units to occupy a big area on the map – it made sense to follow some kind of historical organisation (if very approximately) to do that in a sensible and satisfying way. The army began to break up a little for this one-time activity, and I have found it interesting to think of the subdivisions as separate entities. The conflict between the various army commanders was, in any case, an important sub-plot for the war.

(2) My Spanish army has grown beyond recognition – it is now big enough to take the field on its own. Maybe they should have a regular opponent. Aha.

So – although choices and variety are still important – I have come to the idea of making the permanent structure of the army such that it is in two official parts. They will continue to mix and match and visit each other as necessary, of course, but they will firm up, and not just be a temporary feature of a map game. I will, in short, have an Armée de Portugal to fight the Anglo-Portuguese, and a (slightly bastardised) Armée du Centre to fight the Spaniards – regular and/or irregular.

Great. I started sketching out the changes – which are really very small. A little evening up of formation sizes and a short list of extra commander figures which I’ll need, and we are there. In a spirit of appropriate comradeship, the two armies can share engineers and siege/fortress artillery as necessary.

The proposed structure is thus:

Army of the Centre (King Joseph & Marshal Jourdan)

Division Darmagnac

            Brigade Neuenstein

                        2e Nassau (2 Bns) & Regt de Francfort (1)

            Brigade Chassé

                        4e Hesse-Darmstadt (2) & 4e Baden (2)

            Brigade Verbigier de St Paul (Italians)

                        2e Léger (1) & 3e Ligne (2) & 5e Ligne (2)

            Italian Foot battery

Division Guye

            Royal Guard (Merlin)

                        Grenadiers (2) & Fusiliers (2) & Voltigeurs (1)

            Brigade Casapalacios (Spanish Line troops)

                        1e (Castilla) Léger (1) & 2e (Toledo) Ligne (2) & Royal-Etranger (1)

            Brigade Leberknoedel (Duchy of Stralsund-Ruegen)

                        Grenadiers (1) & Fusiliers (2) & Jaegers (1)

Spanish Guard horse battery

Stralsund foot battery

Division Villatte

            Brigade Thouvenot

Dragons à pied Provisoirs (2) & 28e Léger (1) & 4e Etranger (Prusse) (1)

& 4e Vistule (1)

            Brigade Soulier

Grenadiers Provisoirs (1) & Garde de Paris (1) & Chasseurs des

Montagnes (1) & 3e Berg (1)

            French foot battery

           

Cavalry (Gen de Divn Treillard)  

            Brigade Maupoint

                        13e Cuirassiers (3 Sqns) & 4e Dragons (3) & Dragoni Napoleone (3)

Brigade Avy

5e Chevauxleger-lanciers (3) & 7e (Vistule) Chevauxleger-lanciers (3)

            Brigade Kleinwinkel (Stralsund-Ruegen)

                        1e Chevauxlegers (3) & 2e Chevauxlegers (3)

                         

             

Army of Portugal (Marshal Marmont)

Division Foy

            Brigade Chemineau

                        6e Léger (3 Bns) & 69e Ligne (2)

            Brigade Desgraviers

                        39e Ligne (2) & 76e Ligne (2)

            Horse battery

Division Clauzel

            Brigade Berlier

                        25e Léger (3) & 27e Ligne (2)

            Brigade Barbot

                        50e Ligne (3) & 59e Ligne (2)

            Foot battery

Division Maucune

            Brigade Arnauld

                        15e Ligne (3) & 66e Ligne (2)

            Brigade Montfort

                        82e Ligne (2) & 86e Ligne (2)

            Foot battery

Heavy Cavalry (Boyer)

            Brigade Carrié de Boissy

                        6e Dragons (3 Sqns) & 11e Dragons (3)

            Brigade Col Boudinhon-Valdec

                        15e Dragons (3) & 25e Dragons (3)

            Horse battery

Light Cavalry (Curto)

            Brigade Col Desfossés

                        3e Hussards (3) & 22e Chasseurs (3)

            Brigade Col Vial

                        13e Chasseurs (3) & 26e Chasseurs (3)

Park, Engineering etc

            2 Foot batteries

            5 Garrison batteries

            Bridging Train

            4 cos Sapeurs/Mineurs

Prov bn of regimental sapeurs

This is not the state of my current campaign (except coincidentally). These units all exist (apart from a couple of generals, which are in hand), and each infantry brigade also includes a small combined tirailleur battalion of 9 or 12 figures. There are still some things in the spares box which should join the army at some future date, but I have deliberately excluded anything which exists only on paper.

If it seems appropriate, I may post some new team photos when everything is done. With two armies available, the Emperor himself might make the occasional cameo appearance, if only to witness the lack of co-operation at first hand.

The Cupboard

I've referred to The Cupboard before - I think I once mentioned that I might do a post on it.

It has come to mind again lately because it is getting to be a bit of a squeeze in there. It was all planned so carefully - I even got rid of my unwanted Ancient armies to make more space for the Napoleonics - but my recent acquisition of an unexpected Pommeranian contingent has messed up the space planning. It's only a matter of time before I start having to employ supplementary Box Files, or maybe Cupboard II...

Once upon a time, it was a glazed bookcase. An elderly neighbour of mine (in a former life) had a huge personal library, and he had a number of suitably serious bookcases. After he died, I was told that his widow would like me to have one of them, which (apparently) I had once admired. I couldn't remember ever commenting on it, but I was delighted to get it. It's a nice, sturdy item, probably 1920s or so, and has solid shelves, 0.5" thick and 12.5" apart - three of them.

When I first got it I knew at once what I wanted to do with it. I worked out that I could fit 2 glass shelves between each pair of wooden ones, giving enough height for standard bearers and chaps on horses (and those delicate games of leapfrog which are always needed to get the right units for the evening's battle), so I got some heavy quality quarter-inch armoured glass shelves made up, polished all round, and fitted them - it was a lot easier than I expected. I was also delighted to find that my unit sabots, which are 110mm deep, fit very nicely on the shelves, two deep.

It has gradually filled up over recent years - the soldiers now occupy almost all of the shelves, though the floor of the cabinet currently holds my Peninsular War buildings (which do not normally do well in boxes). Next step will be some Box Files (no idea why this should warrant capital letters - maybe it just feels appropriate for a back-up for The Cupboard, which has always had capitals). I may put some of the buildings in box files, with magnetic arrangements to stop them rattling around. Bell towers and fortress gates will not go in a box file, but this would still free up enough space to get the planned limbers and so forth a home on the bottom.

Though the dining room of our house is a fairly dark room (this being where the battles take place), some perverse accident of astronomy means that the early morning sun in the Summer falls right on The Cupboard, so - to protect the red paint and the flags - I arranged for my wife to very kindly fit black blinds inside the glass doors. This may seem a bit overprotective, and it certainly means that my soldiers live in a glazed display cabinet which does not display them, which has occasionally struck visitors as odd. I may change my mind about this some time, but at present the troops live in the dark.

The Cupboard has a significance beyond mere storage - only units which are complete and finished may go in there, so "being ready for The Cupboard" means ready for action, and no mistake. It is a standing joke here that the end objective for all my collecting, painting, basing and organising activity is to get units ready to go into The Cupboard, where they cannot be seen! All witticisms about closet wargamers to Chateau Foy, please, on used 5-pound notes.