Tuesday 6 March 2012

French & Indian War

The game last week with the Southern Strategists at the Redwood Redoubt gave me reason to celebrate. It was the first 28mm French & Indian War game that we have put on and also proved a personal milestone for me as it was the first time my British and French SYW troops got to experience combat. Some of my units had been painted and based for a number of years and after managing to survive a 7.1 magnitude earthquake where my figure cabinets smashed to the floor, they still remained languishing in my new cabinets until now.

Another reason to celebrate was the unveiling of a frontier stockade and blockhouse that had been scratch built by Rodger Wood, one of our resident terrain experts. He's made a great job of putting it together and I felt a bit guilty after he had told me he had spent two weeks building it after I had jokingly suggested that he make one. The fort is now residing at the Mess due to limited terrain space at the Redoubt....bugger! I'm sure it will see plenty of action in the years to come.

Rodger's frontier fort and French colonial artillery battery

The fort manned by a battalion of Compagnie Franches

A battalion of the La Reine regiment marching to the rescue

The 42nd Foot advancing through the woods

A warband of Mohawks about the deal to Canadian militia

A battalion of Compagnie Franches supported by French colonial artillery and a battalion of the Royal Rousillon regiment.

The Royal Rousillon and artillery exchange a series of volleys with the Highlanders

A view of the action from the blockhouse of the fort

The British force moving towards the fort

A view of the action just before the Royal Rousillon battalion was destroyed in their first engaement

The 1st Foot and 48th Foot refuse to advance after twice being ordered forward. Hardly an auspicious start to their military career!

A birds-eye view of the layout
As my thesis and book writing is taking precedent over painting figures at the moment I thought I would publish some shots of my troops in their first action on the superb terrain layout that was put together by Rodger, Gavin and Geoff. All the photos were taken by Rodger, our resident photographic war correspondent. A report of the game can be found on the Southern Strategists' blog:

http://southern-strategists.blogspot.com
   

8 comments:

  1. What a great setup! The armies look great too. For the longest time I have been meaning to paint up some FIW armies, but so far I have managed only to do a hand full of models.

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  2. It's taken me a while to get my FIW forces together but the beauty of this period is that you can use the regular troops for a range of wars...Austrian Succession, Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and the Seven Years War in Europe, India and the Caribbean.....and I forget to mention imagi-nation campaigns as well.

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  3. Great stuff, you guys know how to put on a show!

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  4. Glad your troops have had some action. Roll on our next FIW game..

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  5. Yeah, it might be a long time between drinks for them depending on how quickly I can finish the thesis and book. I might have a couple of cavalry regiments to accompany them for the next game.

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  6. Superb! If I can get my terrain and scenery looking anything like that I will be very happy. I really like the unit sizes you have for your FIW figures. I have a small collection based for 'Age of Reason' rules using the 12 man units. I have never felt that happy with such small unit sizes...now I can see what I am going to have to do, and it involves more spending and more painting! Thanks for the inspiration.

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  7. Jason, Most of my regular battalions for this period are 7 stands strong (4 figures to a base). The reason for this is that I buy the Front Rank battalion packs that have 24 figures in them, but the British packs don't have grenadiers in them...so I have to buy 4 grenadiers to represent a company. However, once I've painted up enough battalions I intend to take the grenadier stands from each battalion and form a composite battalion of grenadiers for the Brits.

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  8. Hi Stacky.
    Its Chris Packer here. I would like to catch up with you some time, maybe even have a game. My napoleonics collection is growing (35 french & allied foot units, 12 but soon to be 20 russian foot units in 20:1 for GDB), and I have my SYW collection here with me also.
    My email is chrispacker66@gmail.com
    Hope to hear from you.
    Chris

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