Blau Hoegaarden Regimental Colours

First attempt at the 18thC colours for Hoegaarden Foot.

This is a cut and paste job using good old MS Paint. The background and wreath are taken from colours off the Warflag site. Specifically a medieval fleur de lys and SYW Reichsarmee wreath from the Wildenstein rgt, combined with a Hoegaarden logo from a beer mat! Ive used this method for my Beer Wars Medieval and TYW standards in the past.

Careful use of the copy and paste to mask other shapes and the copy transparent command create the white field around the wreath and logo. Other than that its all done by eye. It might not be straight, but printed out at 28mm size it will look ok.

Gelb Hoegaarden will have a similar but different flag...I wonder if you can guess in what way?

Getting Underway

I finished off the first of my figures tonight, a jäeger Amusette and crew and some quick paint conventions of some British infantry into Frei Korps 

These are for skirmish games which will be the opener for my campaign. Hoegaarden's border march is breached by enemy light infantry and dragoons. The Jaegerkorps are deployed and a series of sharp actions are fought before regular forces begin to appear.

The Perry miniatures Jaeger are painted in green with red facings and cuffs - following the Hessian pattern. The Frei Korps are Front Rank British picked up from Hinds Figures to let me crack on a bit and get a game on.  A lick of grey and they stand in for Austrian Landstandische Frei Corps (honest!!)

Still a bit of touching up to do, and their bases of course, but I think they'll be fine for what I have in mind and let me play while my line infantry are assembling at their depot - ie getting painted! 

I plan to use Muskets and Tomahawks for these initial skirmish games. The small 200point battles use 20 or so figures on a 4x4 table so are ideal for what I am after - a raid on an important bridge and customs house, the fight for a small village, etc.

I have a game planned for late Feb, by which time as I will have a line unit or two in place.

More pics once they are completed.

Death & Taxes !

Well, we all know no plan survives contact with the enemy...and neither did mine. After compiling a list of the units I wanted, complete with uniforms, flags, grenadier info and the suppliers I intended to buy from I settled down to wait until the new year before kicking it off with an order to the suppliers.

At least that was the plan...!

The taxman paid a visit, just before Xmas, the bu**er, and lets just say that my grandiose plans are scuppered. Bad news!

However with every cloud comes a silver lining.

I've been gaming quite a but lately with some the chaps in the Oldmeldrum Wargames Group and we got talking about my SYW project. Another side discussion about Austrian Casquets and when they were introduced also took place and between the two my mind made a salmon like mental leap!

The Casquet was brought in after 1767 and both I and another club member have revolutionary period Austrians. Another has Prussians for the SYW, whose uniform didn't change until Frederick the Greats death. Why not therefore bring my project forward a few years and set it in the time of the War of Bavarian Succession - the Potato War of 1778-79. As this war really didn't feature much fighting and we had the figures for both sides already , I could scale back my concept and paint up an imagi-nation force for the 18thC.

The Archbishopric of Hoegaarden and the Hops War of 1778 was born.

The army of Hoegaarden would be fairly small. No more than a handful of foot and horse and a small artillery contingent, it would be supplemented by jaeger and militia and would thus allow me to play skirmish games and larger battles. (John Ray's book providing yet more inspiration!)

Archbishopric of Hoegaarden, c1778

Foot;

Blau Rgt (2btn - ea. battalion of 4 stands plus a grenadier stand and a battalion gun)

Gelb Rgt (2btn) Jägerkorps zu fuss (2btn)

Combined Grenadier Battalion (4 stands - 1ea from Blau and Gelb)

Militia zu Hoegaarden - (8 coys) Garrison Rgt -  (4 coys)

Horse;

Celis Hussar Rgt (4sqd)

Julius Dragoon Rgt (4sqd)

Jägerkorps zu pferde (4sqd)

 

Artillery

Battery zu fuss (6x 6lb)

Jägerkorps Amusette Battery (var.)

 

The infantry will be in either white or blue with dark blue and yellow facings.  Grenadiers will be Prussian style. The Jägerkorps will be the figs I bought from Charles Grant. The militia are figures from Eagle. Lastly the garrison troops are a whimsy - but the Perry hessian garrison figs are lovely!

The cavalry will be blue and white for the hussars and white for the dragoons. I can use my 1790s French plastic Perry Hussars and Trent Austrian cavalry for these initially. I might change the hussars out later for Lazuns legion Hussar figures. The mounted jäger will be Mr Grant's troops again.

2 hessian guns will form the battery with some amusettes (like jingols!) to support the jäger who will be able to fight in skirmish games too. The battalion guns will be added later, perhaps!

Not a huge army, but 6 units of foot, 2 horse and 1 artillery to start with is quite neat and can be bolstered with the Militia, Garrison, Austrians or Prussians to make a bigger game when needed. Best of all it's only 5 foot and some guns and command to paint. Very do-able!

A Diversion - The Battle of Barra - 1308

A slight diversion (Oh isn't always thus with wargamers!!).

As a member of Oldmeldrum Wargames Group I was asked to help out with a local history project by another club member Alistair Massie. A video was being put together which covered the history of the Garioch and Meldrum in particular and would we, could we, put together a demonstration of the Battle of Barra in 1308 as part of the film.

Luckily we had some medieval figure which would "do" - Crusader, Gripping Beast, ClannTara, Games Workshop and we were very very lucky to recieve a collection of Ebob "Rebellion" figures which we used for close up work.

As the group were busy putting together their participation game for Targe at Kirriemuir and everyone suffered from the usual family, work and hobby balance we were really pushed to get things done in time. However the figures of Robert and Edward Bruce and John Comyn, Brechin and Mowbray were painted, heraldry added and flocked just in time for the shoot.

Terrain was provided by Alistair, whose excellent hex system gave us quite a good representation of the landscape around the battlefield. The slopes of Barra hill and the road from Meldrum to Inverurie were particularly well done.

The filming itself was interesting to say the least! Not content with taking pictures of the set up, they wanted us on camera, talking about it.....oh great!! No script, but I think we might have just about got away with it - we'll see what the editor can do!!!

Anyway here are a couple of shots of the recreation of the Battle of Barra. More of the figures when I get them!

 Alistair giving live commentry

 

 

Part of the collection loaned from Ebob

My Project for 2014

Well I've decided what I'm going to do next. After a couple of years of shako's and having British, French, Prussian and Russian Armies (ok ok still to complete B, F, P & R armies..!!), I've decided that I'm going to turn to......

 

Seven Years War

 

The reason (justification?) for this is I've just taken ownership of an incredible limited edition privately printed book by a chap called John Ray called "A Military Gentleman" which tells the story of an officer in the armies of the latter half of the 18th C. It's photographs, drawings and paintings are just stunning and having hankered after something in Tricorns for a while I've decided to plump for that period. I toyed with doing AWI, but the armies are a bit more limited - I wanted bright colours and the ability to not only play larger battles but also smaller "kleinkreig" skirmishes, raids and the like using the Muskets and Tomahawk rules - just shifting their focus to Croats, Jaeger and Pandour instead of Indians, Ranger and Coueur de Bois. I'll use a version of the Neil Thomas Napoleonic rules with SYW Mods for the larger battles.

 

I'm going to collect three "armies". The first will be that of Ferdinand of Brunswick and will include British, Hanoverian and Hessian troops along with some Prussian Freikorps and Jaeger. The second will be a Reichsarmee force with some of the more colourful micro-nations to add a splash of vibrancy. Each of these forces will include a couple of units of light infantry and hussars based singly to take part in the skirmish games. The third force will be civilians, militia, hangers on, etc - set dressing to make the games look good and also, sometimes to defend their homes and families from dastardly raiders. The armies won't be huge - 8-10 units so they will be designed for a club night game.

 

I've decided to make use of the figures by Front Rank, Crusader and Redoubt Miniatures for the majority of my armies with additional figs from the likes of Perry and Foundry for civilians. The two main combatants forces will have a strong influence from our beer wars campaigns and so will be led by fictional characters with their entourage, coach, hangers on, baggage etc. I took a look at the excellent figures from Minden Miniatures and others, but these are not so easily and readily available and so I decided to use the less anatomically correct and more traditional 28mm figs. For scenery I will need some typical german looking buildings. At present I am looking at those made by PMC, Conflix and similar looking constructions. These arent the most archtecturally correct but they look good and are simple to modify.

First job will be to compile my army lists and pick the figs....